Best Michigan State Universitys Arts Podcasts (2025)

1
John H. Cochrane, Klaus Masuch, and Luis Garicano, "Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:15:01

13h ago1:15:01

1:15:01

Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro (Princeton UP, 2025) John Cochrane Luis Garicano Klaus Masuch PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2025 Launched 26 years ago, the euro was never expected to have an easy life but it wasn't supposed to be this hard. A three-year solvency crisis, a string of bailouts, and a rescue by the European Ce…

1
Johannes Karremans, "Between Voters and Eurocrats: How Do Governments Justify their Budgets?" (Oxford UP, 2024) 38:20

4d ago38:20

38:20

How do governments in Europe justify their budgets towards the national parliament? Are their socioeconomic policies shaped more by electoral pressures or by their commitments towards the European Union? In Between Voters and Eurocrats: How Do Governments Justify their Budgets (Oxford UP, 2024), Johannes Karremans presents a framework and methodolo…

1
Marlene Laruelle, "Ideology and Meaning-Making Under the Putin Regime" (Stanford UP, 2025) 52:10

6d ago52:10

52:10

Much has been written to try to understand the ideological characteristics of the current Russian government, as well as what is happening inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Refusing pundits' clichés that depict the Russian regime as either a cynical kleptocracy or the product of Putin's grand Machiavellian designs, Ideology and Meaning-Making unde…

1
Ethnic minorities are good for democracy – Here is why 36:50

6d ago36:50

36:50

Democracy scholars often assume that ethnic homogeneity is good for democracy. Politically mobilised ethnic minorities, the assumption goes, stoke divisions and can destabilise democracy. In his latest book Ethnic Minorities, Political Competition, and Democracy: Circumstantial Liberals (Oxford UP 2024), Jan Rovny turns this assumption on its head …

1
Michelle Lynn Kahn, "Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 40:01

7d ago40:01

40:01

What happens when migrants are rejected by the host society that first invited them? How do they return to a homeland that considers them outsiders? Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History explores the transnational history of Turkish migrants, Germany's largest ethnic minority, who arrived as 'guest-workers' …

1
Charles J Esdaile, "The Spanish Civil War: A Military History" (Routledge, 2019) 2:01:58

10d ago2:01:58

2:01:58

The Spanish Civil War: A Military History takes a new, military approach to the conflict that tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939. In many histories, the war has been treated as a primarily political event with the military narrative subsumed into a much broader picture of the Spain of 1936–9 in which the chief themes are revolution and counter-revo…

1
Stephan Kieninger, "Dynamic Détente: The United States and Europe, 1964-1975" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) 45:11

11d ago45:11

45:11

This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western détente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more communication and engagement. Kieninger challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that détente prolonged the division of Europe and precipitated America’s decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam W…

1
NATO, the Indo-Pacific, and the Future of Burden-Sharing: A Conversation with Brian Blankenship 47:31

11d ago47:31

47:31

Professor Brian Blankenship comes back to the New Books Network to talk about what his book, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics (Cornell University Press, 2023), might be able to tell us about the quickly changing nature of US military alliances across the globe. We discuss the implications of Europe's burgeoning…

1
Katarina Kušic, "Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia" (University of Michigan Press, 2025) 1:03:37

17d ago1:03:37

1:03:37

Studies of statebuilding and peacebuilding have been criticized for their disregard of people living the consequences of intervention projects. Beyond International Intervention: Politics of Improvement in Serbia (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Katarina Kušic takes on the task of engaging with spaces and peoples not usually present in I…

1
Thomas Mutch, "The Dogs of Mariupol: Russia's Invasion and the Forging of Ukraine's Iron Generation" (Biteback, 2025) 42:03

20d ago42:03

42:03

In early 2022, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, Tom Mutch, a freelance war reporter, took a trip to Mariupol to take the temperature of this (then) culturally vibrant port on the Sea of Azov. What stayed with him was the sound of the stray dogs and their "rhythmic and frantic barking, as if they were shouting a warning in unison". With…

1
Keir Giles, "Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent" (Hurst & Co., 2024) 42:18

21d ago42:18

42:18

Who will defend Europe? The answer should be obvious: Europe should be able to defend itself. Yet, for decades, most of the continent enjoyed a defence holiday, outsourcing protection to the United States while banking an increasingly illusory ‘peace dividend’. Now, after three decades of reducing armed forces and drawing down defence industries, E…

1
How Do Autocrats Stay in Power: A Discussion with Johannes Gerschewski 34:52

22d ago34:52

34:52

In this episode Licia Cianetti talks to Johannes Gerschewski about his book The Two Logics of Autocratic Rule (Cambridge UP, 2023). We discuss how autocrats try to either hyper-politicise or de-politicise their rule in order to stay in power, whether the word “fascist” is useful today, and what the two logics identified in the book might tell us ab…

1
Nicholas Barry et al., "Constitutional Conventions: Theories, Practices and Dynamics" (Routledge, 2025) 51:34

28d ago51:34

51:34

Constitutional Conventions: Theories, Practices and Dynamics (Routledge, 2025) is an excellent edited volume exploring the various ways in which governments and constitutional structures operate in the spaces that are not necessarily articulated in law, edict, or formal documents. This is not a text about the folks who gathered together in 1787 in …

1
Quentin Skinner, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 57:23

29d ago57:23

57:23

What does liberty entail? How have concepts of liberty changed over time? And what are the global consequences? Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal (Cambridge UP, 2025) surveys the history of rival views of liberty from antiquity to modern times. Quentin Skinner traces the understanding of liberty as independence f…

1
Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:14:54

1M ago1:14:54

1:14:54

What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that people in the West must take responsibility for centuries of classism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and other gross injustices. Of course, right-wingers constantly ridicule this claim for its “wokeness.”…

1
Júlia Király, "Hungary and Other Emerging EU Countries in the Financial Storm: From Minor Troubles to Global Hurricane" (Springer, 2020) 46:31

1M ago46:31

46:31

Donald Trump is putting liberal democracy through its greatest test in 80 years. None of it is original. His style of rule is straight from the democratic backsliders' playbook. To secure long-term power rather than short-term office, rulers must take over the institutions that check and balance majority rule and bend them to their will. Trump has …

1
Make Britain Great Again? The MAGA-Style Rise of Reform UK 42:42

1M ago42:42

42:42

Britain's Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful political parties in history. Local elections in the UK have signalled that they are facing the prospect of being wiped out, imperilled by the rise of the right-wing Reform Party, headed by one of the most pervasive and divisive figures in British politics: Nigel Farage. Reform’s…

1
Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe 1:14:22

1M ago1:14:22

1:14:22

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-rig…

1
Democracy for Sale: Death by Dark Money 1:11:04

2M ago1:11:04

1:11:04

On this edition of Ctrl Alt Deceit: Democracy in Danger, we are live at the Royal United Services Institute. Nina Dos Santos and Owen Bennett Jones are joined by a world-class panel to discuss the dangers posed by the waves of dark money threatening to overwhelm our democratic institutions. Panelists: --Tom Keatinge, Director, Centre for Finance an…

1
The Good Father Syndrome: Why Strongmen Still Seduce 32:50

2M ago32:50

32:50

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein, co-authors of The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future (Polity Press, 2024). In this conversation, they discuss how today’s right-wing movements, from the United States to Hungary, are…

1
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024) 54:38

2M ago54:38

54:38

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of…

1
Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 1:20:48

2M ago1:20:48

1:20:48

Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this post-liberal climate, Russell Blackford asks whether liberalism is truly over. How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration (Bloomsbury, 2023) examines how Western liberal democracies beca…

1
Maurizio Ferrera, "Politics and Social Visions: Ideology, Conflict, and Solidarity in the EU" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:22:50

2M ago1:22:50

1:22:50

The starting point of this book is the 'civil war' of ideas that broke out during the early 2010s about the purpose and even the desirability of the European Union as a polity, with a number of right-wing populist formations openly advocating for exiting the Union. The sovereign debt crisis triggered a spiral of ideological decommunalization: natio…

1
Agnieszka Pasieka, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (Princeton UP, 2024) 46:29

2M ago46:29

46:29

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press, 2024) provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social mo…

1
Serhiy Kudelia, "Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia's War on Ukraine" (Oxford UP, 2015) 1:00:43

2M ago1:00:43

1:00:43

How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when state institutions collapse, and militants take over? The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which started eight years before Russia's full-scale invasion, contains unique evidence to address each of thes…

1
Is Liberal Democracy Dying? 1:06:42

2M ago1:06:42

1:06:42

Live from the Frontline Club in London, Ctrl Alt Deceit is back for its second season. Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones host a fascinating discussion on the myriad threats to democracy, particularly in light of Trump's re-election. Joined by Gabriel Gatehouse is an award-winning BBC journalist and broadcaster, formerly International Edi…

1
Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 1:04:06

2M ago1:04:06

1:04:06

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are today experiencing a profound crisis of legitimacy. In Britain, a landslide general election result was quickly followed by a catastrophic tumble in approval ratings. In the US presidential campaign, meanwh…

1
Giacinto della Cananea, "The Common Core of European Administrative Laws: Retrospective and Prospective" (Brill/NIjhoff, 2023) 54:11

3M ago54:11

54:11

Though European administrative laws have gained global significance in the last few decades, research which provides both theoretical analysis and original empirical research has been scarce. The Common Core of European Administrative Laws Retrospective and Prospective (Brill/NIjhoff, 2023) an important account of the evolution of judicial review a…

1
Vuk Vuksanovic, "Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 43:58

3M ago43:58

43:58

Even before its rebirth as a nation in the 1990s, Serbia had acquired a reputation abroad as Russia’s stalwart Slavic ally in the Western Balkans. Yet, as Vuk Vuksanović argues in Serbia’s Balancing Act: Between Russia and the West (Bloomsbury, 2025), two centuries of history and the 25 years since the fall of Slobodan Milošević tell a more nuanced…

1
Fractured Alliances: Trump, Ukraine, and Europe's Security Dilemma 32:14

3M ago32:14

32:14

In this episode, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Estonian parliamentarian and defense expert Kalev Stoicescu about the recent tensions between the United States and Ukraine following a contentious meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky. Stoicescu critiques Trump's transactional diplomacy, emphasizing the critical role of alliances such …

1
Sabrina P. Ramet and Lavinia Stan, "East Central Europe Since 1989" (Routledge, 2025) 1:32:32

3M ago1:32:32

1:32:32

East Central Europe Since 1989 (Routledge, 2025) examines politics, economics, media, religious institutions, transitional justice, gender inequality, and literature, highlighting the overt functions, latent functions, and side effects associated with each sphere. Communism in East Central Europe had cracks from the beginning, as uprisings in East …

1
Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:35:02

3M ago1:35:02

1:35:02

Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail (Cambridge UP, 2023) demonstrates that a major part of the answer lies in the transformation of its state. It shows how Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to…

1
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023) 1:01:34

4M ago1:01:34

1:01:34

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They ar…

1
Jonathan Haslam, "Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War against Ukraine" (Harvard UP, 2025) 1:08:36

4M ago1:08:36

1:08:36

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 should not have taken the world by surprise. The attack escalated a war that began in 2014 with the Russian annexation of Crimea, but its origins are visible as far back as the aftermath of the Cold War, when newly independent Ukraine moved to the center of tense negotiations between Russia a…

1
Trump’s Second Term and Europe: Nationalism, NATO, and the Future of Transatlantic Relations 34:13

4M ago34:13

34:13

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, about the implications of Donald Trump’s second administration for Europe. The discussion explores how Trump’s approach to foreign policy—characterized by protectionism, nationalism, and disdain …

1
Enrico Ciappi, "Building Europe in New York: From the Munich Conference to the European Coal and Steel Community (1938-1952)" (Routledge, 2025) 48:14

5M ago48:14

48:14

Today’s European Union grew out of functional communities set up in the wake of world war in the 1950s. It would shock the new White House intake to learn that the wartime American political class lobbied hard for a postwar United States of Europe. The role of US officials in building Europe’s first community – one for the coal and steel industries…

1
Eugene Finkel, "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine" (Basic Books, 2024) 36:33

5M ago36:33

36:33

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign to divide and oppress Ukraine. In Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024), political scientist Eugene Finkel un…

1
Viktoriya Fedorchak, "The Russia-Ukraine War: Towards Resilient Fighting Power" (Routledge, 2024) 1:32:27

5M ago1:32:27

1:32:27

Viktoriya Fedorchak's The Russia-Ukraine War: Towards Resilient Fighting Power (Routledge, 2024) provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukraine war, using the concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides during the first year of the full-scale invasion. The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and c…

1
Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024) 56:44

5M ago56:44

56:44

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across the Western world. How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA (Oxford UP, 2024) shows how they have used their political power to reform economic and social policies …

1
Roland Erne et al., "Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:04:20

5M ago1:04:20

1:04:20

Year 2008 marked the introduction of a new economic governance regime in the European Union (EU) in response to the global financial crisis. Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency (Cambridge UP, 2024), authored by leading scholars in the field and also available open ac…

1
Christina L. Davis, "Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations" (Princeton UP, 2023) 48:16

5M ago48:16

48:16

Member selection is one of the defining elements of social organization, imposing categories on who we are and what we do. Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (Princeton UP, 2023) shows how international organizations are like social clubs, ones in which institutional rules and informal practices enable states to fa…

1
Frank Trentmann, "Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022" (Knopf, 2024) 57:40

5M ago57:40

57:40

Frank Trentmann’s Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 (Knopf, 2024) traces the moral concerns and clashes of a nation re-building, re-constituting, and re-imagining itself from the depths of World War II to Chancellor Scholz’s Zeitenwende (‘new era’). Key elements of modern German identity, including the memory of the Holocaust, the nature …

1
Isaac Stanley-Becker, "Europe Without Borders: A History" (Princeton UP, 2025) 45:14

5M ago45:14

45:14

Forty years ago, Schengen - a wine-making village at the tripoint border of Luxembourg, France, and Germany - made European history when diplomats from these countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands struck a deal to scale back their mutual border checks. "The event at Schengen went unnoticed by much of the European press," writes Isaac Stanley-Becke…

1
Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti, "Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:04:07

5M ago1:04:07

1:04:07

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic values? This question has become particularly pressing after the recent successes of right-wing populist leaders and parties across Europe, in the US, and beyond. Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the…

1
Victoria Harms, "The Making of Dissidents: Hungary’s Democratic Opposition and its Western Friends, 1973-1998" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024) 1:08:48

5M ago1:08:48

1:08:48

Before Hungary’s transition from communism to democracy, local dissidents and like-minded intellectuals, activists, and academics from the West influenced each other and inspired the fight for human rights and civil liberties in Eastern Europe. Hungarian dissidents provided Westerners with a new purpose and legitimized their public interventions in…

1
Gabriel Gavin, "Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh" (Hurst, 2025) 54:41

5M ago54:41

54:41

From the collapse of the Soviet Union until late 2023, Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting unrelenting hot and cold wars over Nagorno-Karabakh - a tiny 4,400-square-kilometre breakaway republic with a population under 150,000. That 30-year crisis ended within 24 hours in September 2023 when Azerbaijan attacked, Russian peacekeepers withdrew, and t…

1
Emily Marker, "Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era" (Cornell UP, 2022) 1:08:37

5M ago1:08:37

1:08:37

Thinking together the histories of European integration and African decolonization, Emily Marker's Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era (Cornell University Press, 2022) is a pathbreaking study of how the two continents continued to make another's histories in the years after the Second World War. Tracking the wa…

1
Eric Storm, "Nationalism: A World History" (Princeton UP, 2024) 50:41

6M ago50:41

50:41

The current rise of nationalism across the globe is a reminder that we are not, after all, living in a borderless world of virtual connectivity. In Nationalism: A World History (Princeton UP, 2024), historian Eric Storm sheds light on contemporary nationalist movements by exploring the global evolution of nationalism, beginning with the rise of the…

1
Kit Kowol, "Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill, and the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2024) 39:30

6M ago39:30

39:30

We think we know all there is to know about Britain's Second World War. We don't. This radical re-interpretation of British history and British Conservatism between 1939 and 1945 reveals the bold, at times utopian, plans British Conservatives drew up for Britain and the post-war world. From proposals for world government to a more united Empire via…

1
Transatlantic Tensions: Trump’s Return and Europe’s Far-Right Resurgence 41:03

6M ago41:03

41:03

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews journalist Mattia Ferraresi about the implications of a potential second Trump presidency for European politics. Ferraresi discusses how Trump’s rhetoric and policies, including his stance on NATO and trade, might influence transatlantic relations. The conversation explo…

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