Best Smart Circle International Podcasts (2025)

1
Karin Roginer Hofmeister, "Remembering Suffering and Resistance: Memory Politics and the Serbian Orthodox Church" (CEU Press, 2024) 1:05:53

1h ago1:05:53

1:05:53

Remembering Suffering and Resistance investigates the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in shaping memory politics in Serbia following the fall of Slobodan Milošević. It argues that in periods of societal instability, religious institutions mobilise their memory potential to reaffirm their public relevance. The study analyses the Church’s mnemoni…

1
Kenneth Jones, "African American Males and Video Games: How Gaming Technology Can Motivate and Enhance Learning" (Myers Education, 2025) 20:01

1h ago20:01

20:01

African American males are confronted with formidable barriers in their pursuit of quality education, resulting in stark disparities in academic performance, economic opportunities, and social outcomes. Despite numerous educational initiatives striving for parity, African American males persistently bear the brunt of the highest rates of suspension…

1
Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025) 28:58

9h ago28:58

28:58

Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) argues that diversity and racial integration efforts are not sufficient to address educational inequality. New York City schools are among the most segregated in the nation. Yet over seven decades after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, New Yorke…

1
Ahmad Shokr, "Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025) 38:29

16h ago38:29

38:29

Harvests of Liberation offers a critical reinterpretation of Egypt’s path to decolonization through the lens of its most important export crop: cotton. In this richly detailed and methodologically innovative work, historian Ahmad Shokr shifts the focus from nationalist rhetoric and elite politics to the material infrastructures, commodity chains, a…

1
Guidance about the Transgender Question 1:05:23

9h ago1:05:23

1:05:23

The authors and editors of a new edited volume, Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice: A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counselors, and Ministerial Leaders, represent a tremendous knowledge and experience in theology, philosophy, history, and social politics, and apply it to help us sort how to think about and talk about the recent wave of transgend…

1
Daniel I. Block, "Hearing the Gospel According to Moses: Chapters 24-34" (Inspirata, 2024) 31:44

1h ago31:44

31:44

For renowned scholar Daniel Block, Deuteronomy is the “Gospel according to Moses.” In his farewell addresses, Moses calls God’s people to remember divine grace in salvation and their covenant relationship with him, as well as his revelation of a way of blessing in a lost world. Tune in as we speak with Daniel Block about the third and final volume …

1
Frances Egan, "Deflating Mental Representation" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:02:21

9h ago1:02:21

1:02:21

The human mind has the curious, even mysterious, ability to generate thoughts about things with which we are not in causal contact, such as when we think about yesterday’s tennis final, or Aristotle, or unicorns. Naturalizing mental content has usually meant explaining how this is possible in terms that eliminate the mystery while retaining commitm…

1
Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022) 1:55:57

1h ago1:55:57

1:55:57

The African Union's threat to lead African states' mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court in 2008 marked just one of many encounters that demonstrate African leaders' growing confidence and activism in international relations. Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa explore the myriad ways in which the continent’s diplomatic engagement and …

1
Terri Diane Halperin, “The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016) 58:16

15h ago58:16

58:16

In The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Terri Diane Halperin has provided a political history of the 1790s and explained the origins of one of the most contentious free speech events in American history. The Alien and Seditions Acts, which were actually four laws enacted in 1798, dram…

1
Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021) 47:09

1d ago47:09

47:09

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into exile following his 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war. As attention pivoted to Mao Zedong’s communist experiment, Chiang was relegated to the dustbin of history. In Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Sha…

1
Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021) 59:54

6h ago59:54

59:54

Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? (MIT Press, 2021), Paul Thagard l…

1
Stephanie McCurry, "Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War" (Harvard UP, 2019) 1:12:50

1d ago1:12:50

1:12:50

In Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War (Harvard UP, 2019), the award-winning author of Confederate Reckoning challenges the idea that women are outside of war, through a trio of dramatic stories revealing women's transformative role in the American Civil War. We think of war as a man's world, but women have always played active roles …

1
Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020) 48:40

1d ago48:40

48:40

As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2020), Manuel Barcia offers a striking rendition of the diseases that swept through the illegal slave trade Atlantic World. In fact, Barcia argues that the h…

1
Benjamin J. Segal, "Kohelet's Pursuit of Truth: A New Reading of Ecclesiastes" (Gefen, 2016) 37:14

1d ago37:14

37:14

The Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes—full of poetry and enigmatic imagery, these are among the most challenging books of the Bible to understand. Well take heart, because we have some help coming your way! Tune in as we speak with Rabbi Benjamin Segal about his Gefen publications on the Ketuvim. We’ll talk with Rabbi Segal about his transl…

1
Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021) 42:39

2h ago42:39

42:39

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment. The country's history is also, however, brimming with social movements that have condemned such restrictions as violations of fundamental American liberties. This fierce conflict is one of the defin…

1
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 53:56

1d ago53:56

53:56

In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping. This concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeepin…

1
Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019) 1:08:42

3h ago1:08:42

1:08:42

On September 21, 1976, a car bomb exploded in Washington DC, killing a former Chilean diplomat named Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. The assassination was a cruel and brazen attempt by the Chilean government to silence a critic of the Pinochet regime. And it proved to be a major strategic error––Pinochet himself used the …

1
Amy Moore, "The Baker's Dozen" (Sleeping Bear Press, 2025) 41:15

6h ago41:15

41:15

In our charming interview, Amy Moore celebrates two new picture books, The Bakers Dozen (illustrated by Andrea Stegmaier) published by Sleeping Bear Press in May. 2025, and Humpty's Great Fall (illustrated by Josh Cleland) published this month by Two Lions. Amy Moore has been writing since childhood. After earning a degree in Journalism from the Un…

1
Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018) 1:02:14

1d ago1:02:14

1:02:14

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how the region is stereotyped and misunderstood, particularly in films. In her book, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film(University of Georgia Press, 2018), Meredith McCarroll, Director of Writing …

1
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022) 1:04:55

6h ago1:04:55

1:04:55

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union. On their face, the mid-1950s …

1
Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015) 56:53

2d ago56:53

56:53

Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell. First, he decided, he’d better read some Freud. This started a life-long engagement with psychoanalysis and leftist politics, and his new book Political Freud: A History (Columbia Un…

1
Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025) 1:08:53

3d ago1:08:53

1:08:53

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable spe…

1
Nathan Wainstein, "Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne" (2025) 24:13

3d ago24:13

24:13

Grant Us Eyes is a book-length close reading of Bloodborne by literary critic Nathan Wainstein (LA Review of Books, Cartridge Lit, American Book Review). Grant Us Eyes situates the game’s oft-discussed difficulty in relation to a much longer tradition of difficult art – surrealist painting, the modernist novel, etc. Wainstein probes the difficulty …

1
Michael Geheran, "Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler" (Cornell UP, 2020) 1:13:02

3d ago1:13:02

1:13:02

What claims could Jewish veterans make on the Nazi state by virtue of their having fought for Germany? How often did Germans treat Jewish veterans differently from Jewish men without military experience during the Weimar and Nazi periods? How did perceptions of masculinity and of Germanness intersect to shape attitudes and behaviors of Jewish veter…

1
Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) 39:09

16h ago39:09

39:09

Behind the braided wigs, buckskins, and excess bronzer that typified the mid-century "filmic Indian" lies a far richer, deeper history of Indigenous labor, survival, and agency. This history takes center stage in historian Liza Black's new book, Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), which looks…

1
Yorai Linenberg, "Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity: American and British Prisoners of War During the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:27:54

3d ago1:27:54

1:27:54

This book explores the extraordinary story of Jewish POWs in German captivity during the Second World War - extraordinary because of the contrast between Germany's genocidal policy towards Jews on one hand, and its relatively non-discriminatory treatment of Jewish POWs from western countries on the other. The radicalisation of Germany's anti-Semiti…

1
Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018) 1:12:16

3d ago1:12:16

1:12:16

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one t…

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Smart Circle International Podcasts

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1
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1
Karin Roginer Hofmeister, "Remembering Suffering and Resistance: Memory Politics and the Serbian Orthodox Church" (CEU Press, 2024) 1:05:53

1
Kenneth Jones, "African American Males and Video Games: How Gaming Technology Can Motivate and Enhance Learning" (Myers Education, 2025) 20:01

1
Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025) 28:58

1
Ahmad Shokr, "Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025) 38:29

1
Guidance about the Transgender Question 1:05:23

1
Daniel I. Block, "Hearing the Gospel According to Moses: Chapters 24-34" (Inspirata, 2024) 31:44

1
Frances Egan, "Deflating Mental Representation" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:02:21

1
Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022) 1:55:57

1
Terri Diane Halperin, “The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016) 58:16

1
Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021) 47:09

1
Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021) 59:54

1
Stephanie McCurry, "Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War" (Harvard UP, 2019) 1:12:50

1
Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020) 48:40

1
Benjamin J. Segal, "Kohelet's Pursuit of Truth: A New Reading of Ecclesiastes" (Gefen, 2016) 37:14

1
Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021) 42:39

1
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 53:56

1
Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019) 1:08:42

1
Amy Moore, "The Baker's Dozen" (Sleeping Bear Press, 2025) 41:15

1
Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018) 1:02:14

1
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022) 1:04:55

1
Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015) 56:53

1
Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025) 1:08:53

1
Nathan Wainstein, "Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne" (2025) 24:13

1
Michael Geheran, "Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans under Hitler" (Cornell UP, 2020) 1:13:02

1
Liza Black, "Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) 39:09

1
Yorai Linenberg, "Jewish Soldiers in Nazi Captivity: American and British Prisoners of War During the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:27:54

1
Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018) 1:12:16

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