Best The Scholars Circle Interviews Podcasts (2025)

1
Scholars’ Circle – Texas Re-districting ; Grandmother’s of Argentine’s disappeared – August 10, 2025 58:00

16h ago58:00

58:00

First, will Donald Trump’s and the republican party’s efforts to redraw electoral maps give them a permanent majority? [ dur: 24mins. ] Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The Uni…

1
Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025) 1:40:37

2h ago1:40:37

1:40:37

For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his numerous books and essays cover a lot of territory, much of his work is united by an interest in commitment, particularly when it comes to radical politics. What does it mean to commit ones life to a r…

1
Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025) 43:35

2h ago43:35

43:35

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswand…

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

15h 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
Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025) 28:58

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

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

2d 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
Stephanie McCurry, "Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the Civil War" (Harvard UP, 2019) 1:12:50

2d 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
Alan McPherson, "Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice" (UNC Press, 2019) 1:08:42

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

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

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

2d 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
David D. Hall, "The Puritans: A Transatlantic History" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:18:36

2d ago1:18:36

1:18:36

This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical new light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, David D. Hall provides a multifaceted account of a cult…

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
Robert Fitzgerald, "Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan: The Lyrical Lashing of an American Presidency" (UNC Press, 2025) 1:05:43

3d ago1:05:43

1:05:43

Few politicians produced the musical reaction that Ronald Reagan did. His California-branded conservatism inspired countless young people to pick up guitars and thrash out their political angst. Punk bands across the United States took aim at the man, his presidency, and the idea of America he was selling to voters nationwide. Small yet vibrant sce…

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

3d 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
Kit W. Myers, "The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States"(U California Press, 2025) 1:17:50

4d ago1:17:50

1:17:50

This episode features Dr. Kit W. Myers, associate professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, discussing his book The Violence of Love: Race, Family and Adoption in the United States, which was published by the University of California Press in January 2025. The Violence of Love challenges the …

1
Teacher by Teacher: The People Who Change Our Lives 51:08

4d ago51:08

51:08

Teacher By Teacher traces the journey of the tenth U.S. Secretary of Education and is a deeply personal love letter to all the teachers in our lives. The story of John B. King Jr.’s inspiring path to President Obama’s Cabinet begins the day that his mother died. He insisted on going to school that day, knowing he would find comfort in his classroom…

1
Russell Shorto, “Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom” (Norton, 2017) 1:03:24

5d ago1:03:24

1:03:24

Russell Shorto‘s Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom (Norton, 2017) is a history of many revolutions, kaleidoscopic turns through six individual lives. There is Cornplanter, a leader of the Seneca Indians; George Germain, who led the British war strategy during the Revolution; Margaret Moncrieffe Coghlan, the daughter of a British major; t…

1
Neil Roberts, “A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass” (UP of Kentucky, 2018) 1:18:25

5d ago1:18:25

1:18:25

The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ birth. It can hardly be said that scholars have neglected Douglass; indeed, he is one of the most written-about figures in American history. But not all aspects of Douglass’ thought have received their due. One such blank spot in what might be called “Douglass Studies” concerns his po…

1
Zack Cooper, "Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries" (Yale UP, 2025) 40:18

5d ago40:18

40:18

An ambitious look at how the twentieth century's great powers devised their military strategies and what their implications mean for military competition between the United States and China. How will the United States and China evolve militarily in the years ahead? Many experts believe the answer to this question is largely unknowable. But Zack Coo…

1
Timothy W. Kneeland, "Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA" (Syracuse UP, 2021) 1:15:17

6d ago1:15:17

1:15:17

Join me for an insightful and timely conversation with historian Timothy Kneeland about his book Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA (Syracuse University Press, 2021). This book masterfully bridges the gap between academic research and real-world policy implications. Hear from the author himself as he reflects on …

1
Episode 2507: Amy Hackenberg - student units coordination and teacher decentering 45:03

4d ago45:03

45:03

Amy Hackenberg from Indiana University discusses two articles from the Journal of Mathematical Behavior--"Middle school students at three stages of units coordination learn to make same speeds" (Vol. 72, 2023) and "Decentering to support responsive teaching for middle school students" (Vol. 77, 2025), both co-authored with Aydeniz-Temizer and Borow…

1
Scholars’ Circle – Corporation of Public Broadcasting funding cuts – August 3, 2025 58:01

7d ago58:01

58:01

Congress has now clawed back the funding it had allocated for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. What does this mean for the future of publicly funded broadcasting in the USA? How will it affect news, public affairs and other vital information delivery? We will explore the role of public broadcasting in a democracy. What role does money play a…

1
César Brioso, "Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) 42:49

7d ago42:49

42:49

Today we are joined by César Brioso, author of the book Last Seasons in Havana: The Castro Revolution and the End of Professional Baseball In Cuba (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Blending the love for baseball fans in Cuba had during the 1950s with the political upheaval that led to Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, Brioso weaves a fascin…

1
Giles Tremlett, "The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 53:27

7d ago53:27

53:27

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, tens of thousands of young men and women from across the world flocked there to fight against the Nationalist uprising. Though their history has been told before, Giles Tremlett’s The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury, 2021) draws upon previously unavailable mat…

1
Benjamin Francis-Fallon, "The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History" (Harvard UP, 2019) 53:47

7d ago53:47

53:47

While media pundits continually speculate over the future leanings of the so-called “Latino vote,” Benjamin Francis-Fallon historicizes how Latinos were imagined into a national electoral constituency in his new book The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History (Harvard University Press, 2019). Francis-Fallon, Assistant Professor of History at Western Ca…

1
Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025) 34:00

8d ago34:00

34:00

hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Art, Culture and Global Relations, examines the history of cultural relatio…

1
Anand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025) 52:22

8d ago52:22

52:22

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different soc…

1
Dan Reiter, "Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 43:57

8d ago43:57

43:57

How do states advance their national security interests? Conventional wisdom holds that states must court the risk of catastrophic war by “tying their hands” to credibly protect their interests. Dan Reiter overturns this perspective with the compelling argument that states craft flexible foreign policies to avoid unwanted wars. Through a comprehens…

1
Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025) 34:00

9d ago34:00

34:00

hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Art, Culture and Global Relations, examines the history of cultural relatio…

1
Bradley Morgan, "Frank Zappa's America" (LSU Press, 2025) 48:11

9d ago48:11

48:11

From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with a blend of genres in innovative and unheard-of ways. Not only did his exploratory styles challenge the expectations of what popular music could sound like, …

1
Linda Gordon, "Seven Social Movements That Changed America" (LIveright, 2025) 58:33

9d ago58:33

58:33

How do social movements arise, wield power, and bring about meaningful change? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these and other salient questions in this “visionary, cautionary, timely, and utterly necessary book” (Nicole Eustace), narrating how some of America’s most influential twentieth-century social movements transformed the nation. …

1
Yuki Kato, "Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:07:12

10d ago1:07:12

1:07:12

Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita…

1
Anthony Michael Petro, "Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:19:52

10d ago1:19:52

1:19:52

In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of feminist and queer art, blasting it as sacrilegious or pornographic--and sometimes both. On the bully pulpits of television and talk radio, as well as in the halls of Congress, conservatives…

1
Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019) 1:00:54

10d ago1:00:54

1:00:54

In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between space—from “shatter zone” to borderland. Far from the centers of authority of contending empires, the North African and Southern Iberian coast was a place…

1
Religion in the Lands That Became America 1:08:08

11d ago1:08:08

1:08:08

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begin…

1
Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025) 49:46

12d ago49:46

49:46

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Black press provided a blueprint to help Black Americans transition from slavery and find opportunities to advance and define African American citizenship. Among the vanguard of the Black press was Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, founder and editor of The Liberator newspaper. His Los Angeles-based newspaper champi…

1
Daniel Morales, "Between Here and There: The Political Economy of Transnational Mexican Migration, 1900-1942" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:00:46

12d ago1:00:46

1:00:46

Between Here and There is the first history of the creation of modern US-Mexico migration patterns narrated from multiple geographic and institutional sites. This book analyzes the interplay between the US and Mexican governments, civic organizations, and migrants on both sides of the border and offers a revisionist and comprehensive view of Mexica…

1
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "Classicism and Other Phobias" (Princeton UP, 2025) 50:52

12d ago50:52

50:52

Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black life and asks whether a different kind of classicism—one of insurgence, fugitivity, and emancipation—is possible. Engaging with the work of Sylvia Wynter and other trailblazers in Black stud…

1
Scholars’ Circle – Private Military Corporations and State responsibilities – July 27, 2025 58:00

13d ago58:00

58:00

Private Military Corporations have become a growing element of the warfighting landscape. States have historically had a monopoly on the use of military force. But private corporations challenge this monopoly. How much do they increase the lethality and likelihood of war? How much can private corporations be regulated? And what are the challenges t…

1
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023) 1:34:56

13d ago1:34:56

1:34:56

More than a century and a half after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, historians are still searching for exactly when the U.S. Civil War ended. Was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared “the i…

1
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023) 1:34:56

13d ago1:34:56

1:34:56

More than a century and a half after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, historians are still searching for exactly when the U.S. Civil War ended. Was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed Juneteenth the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared “the i…

1
Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:05:09

14d ago1:05:09

1:05:09

The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise of Black political control in the 1970s. Wildcat of the Streets documents how the “community policing” approach of Mayor Coleman Young (1974–1993)—including neighborhood police stations, affirmative ac…

1
Mark R. Rank, "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong about Poverty" (Oxford UP, 2021) 40:03

16d ago40:03

40:03

Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all …

1
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018) 1:11:02

16d ago1:11:02

1:11:02

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de Gaulle was without a doubt, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon Bonaparte. Why so? In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troop…

1
Teo Ballvé, "The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia" (Cornell UP, 2020) 41:58

16d ago41:58

41:58

In The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia (Cornell UP, 2020), Teo Ballvé challenges the notion that in Urabá, Colombia, the cause of the region's violent history and unruly contemporary condition is the absence of the state. Although he takes this locally oft-repeated claim seriously, he demonstrates that Urabá is more than a…

1
Osita Nwanevu, "The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding" (Random House, 2025) 30:04

17d ago30:04

30:04

Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic attitudes across the political spectrum, journalist Osita Nwanevu has spent the Trump era examining the very meaning of democracy in search of answers to questions many have asked in the wake of the 202…

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