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★★★★☆
4.4
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159 reviews
This podcast has
844 episodes
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New Books
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Date created
2011/11/02
Latest episode
2026/10/15
Average duration
46 min.
Release period
1 days

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Shanghai: The Story of China's Most Dynamic City with Michael Dillon (Yale UP, 2026)
2026/10/15
The Bund's grand facades and the leafy streets of the former French Concession are usually read as monuments to Western enterprise in China. But those buildings were raised by Chinese labor, and the concessions that defined old Shanghai could not have run without the Chinese who served, traded, and lived inside them. In Shanghai: The Story of China's Most Dynamic City (Yale University Press: 2026), Michael Dillon sets out to tell the city's story from the Chinese side. Michael's new book follows the city from a small fishing town on the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze, through the Opium War and the treaty ports, the foreign concessions, the Japanese occupation, and the Communist takeover, to its place today as the most representative city of China's forward-looking, economy-driven modernization. Drawing on Chinese-language sources, Michael argues that Shanghai's history has been told for too long through Western eyes. Michael joins the show today to talk about Shanghai's long rivalry with Beijing, the 1927 Shanghai Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, and Deng Xiaoping's later admission that leaving Shanghai out of the first special economic zones was a mistake. Michael Dillon is professor of history and an affiliate of King’s College London’s Lau China Institute. An expert on modern Chinese history, politics, and society, he is the author of numerous books, including We Need to Talk About Xi, a history of modern China, and biographies of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Shanghai. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo with Timothy Thurston (U Washington Press, 2025)
2026/10/15
The podcast covers the book Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (U Washington Press, 2025), which is about satirical speech traditons from Amdo region of Tibet and the role of zurza in Tibetan cultural production and modernity. Tune in to find out more about satire, languages, cultures of what's funny and why. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany with Michelle Lynn Kahn and Lauren Stokes (Cornell UP, 2026)
2026/10/15
Racism and Antiracism in Divided Germany (Cornell UP, 2026) addresses how racism expresses itself and what it means to be antiracist by tracing the history of racism and antiracist activism in East, West, and unified Germany. As far-right extremism surges in Germany today, Germans from across the political spectrum are increasingly grappling with the presence of racism in a country that is still coming to terms with its Nazi past. However, these public discussions are not always historically informed, and racism in Germany is often dismissed as a fringe phenomenon rather than part of mainstream society The contributions in this volume juxtapose the experiences of multiple racialized groups to collectively show how racism, rightwing extremism, and antiforeigner violence have long been embedded in the center of both East and West German society. Germany's unification in the 1990s produced a deadly collision of two distinct yet overlapping cultures of racism that persists today. The volume also highlights Germany's long overlooked history of antiracist activism, providing historical lessons on how to combat racism today. Contributors: Rita Chin, Christopher Ewing, Sheer Ganor, Daniela Gress, Christopher A. Molnar, Paige Newhouse, Jannis Panagiotidis, Hans-Christian Petersen, Patrice G. Poutrus, Thomas Prennig, Bill Sharman, Brian Van Wyck, Johanna M. Wetzel Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Guests: Michelle Lynn Kahn (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond and author of Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Lauren Stokes (she/her) is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University and author of Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford University Press, 2022) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream with Dixie Dillon Lane (Eerdmans, 2026)
2026/10/15
Discover the untold story of why homeschooling moved from the margins to the mainstream of American education. In this groundbreaking study Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2026), historian Dixie Dillon Lane traces the rise of homeschooling in the United States, from the modern movement's beginnings in the 1950s as a fringe activity to its current status as a widely accepted educational choice. Through compelling nationwide data and vivid case studies from Los Angeles County, Lane uncovers a powerful truth: homeschooling taps into long-held American beliefs in local control and parental rights that have shaped our nation's schools for generations. Writing in an engaging, accessible style, Lane demonstrates how homeschooling's rise reflects Americans' response to the increasing centralization of public education. As public schools have shifted toward consolidation and away from local oversight, parents have rediscovered their voice, choosing homeschooling as an innovative way to renew parental influence in education. Unlike most authors writing on this topic, Lane writes as both a credentialed historian and an experienced homeschooling parent. As such, she offers an honest, balanced view that acknowledges the homeschooling movement's challenges as well as its strengths. Skipping School will be of interest to parents, historians, educators, policymakers, and anyone seeking a fuller understanding of American education. Dixie Dillon Lane holds a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame and is a homeschooling mother of four (who writes at The Bad Homeschool Moms substack). She serves as an associate editor of Hearth & Field and a contributing editor of Front Porch Republic. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
An Alaṅkāra Reader: Classical Indian Poetics with Yigal Bronner (Columbia UP, 2026)
2026/10/15
Classical Indian poetics prized the skillful use of alaṅkāras, or “ornaments”—literary figures of speech. Across more than a millennium, Sanskrit writers developed and elaborated an account of literary embellishment that is perhaps the world’s most complex and long-standing theory of figuration. Yet it remains the least studied of India’s major classical systems of thought.An Alaṅkāra Reader (Columbia University Press, 2026) is a groundbreaking panoramic overview of this tradition, presenting extensive and accessible translations of key works that span its history, from the sixth to eighteenth century CE. These texts vividly show how Indian theorists analyzed simile, metaphor, allegory, and dozens of other figures that are distinctive to their world. Yigal Bronner’s commentary makes Sanskrit concepts of ornamentation approachable while placing them in historical context. He provides a new account of the history of Sanskrit poetics, showing how it underwent successive waves of theoretical revolutions and emerged as a prestigious field that attracted a variety of scholars in the early modern era.Featuring many previously untranslated texts, An Alaṅkāra Reader is an essential resource for the study of classical Indian thought, the intellectual history of South Asia, and comparative literature. It reveals the depth and nuance of Sanskrit’s “science of ornaments” for anyone interested in poetic theory, figuration, and aesthetics across world traditions. Yigal Bronner is a Sanskritist whose areas of interest include literature, literary theory, and South Asian intellectual history more generally. He worked on this volume while teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and now teaches in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. His books include Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration (2010) and A Lasting Vision: Dandin's Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (2023). Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Radioland with Matt Cahill (Buckrider Books, 2022)
2026/10/15
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Matt Cahill about Radioland, his mesmerizing 2022 literary thriller where music, fame and magic wind together in an eerie mystery. There are whispers about murders on the scene in Toronto, from bartenders, hairdressers and others who trade in rumours. When the bodies are found they are altered in disturbing ways. No one knows who the killer could be. Perhaps it is Kris, a troubled musician who has just reached a level of fame only to have his life collapse around him. Perhaps it is Jill, a sensitive with a dangerous magic that calls strangers to her. As Kris struggles to deal with a childhood experience of sexual abuse he finds a strange advertisement on a hydro pole. By answering it he begins texting Jill, another lost soul reaching out for connection. In bits and pieces, they share their stories, discovering truths about themselves and the people surrounding them, until they must face the danger that is stalking them both. Matt Cahill is the author of two published novels and several published short stories and essays. His debut novel, The Society of Experience, was picked as a must-read by Harper’s Bazaar magazine and was longlisted for the Sunburst Award. His short stories have appeared online and in print in Canada and the United Kingdom. His essay, On Madness Within Imagination, was selected for The Best Canadian Essays 2017. His second novel, Radioland, was released in 2022 and was a finalist for the Foreward INDIES. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
2026/10/15
Feeling worn out by the work of resistance? How do you persevere? Today’s book is: Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day, by Kaitlin B. Curtice. In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Kaitlin Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one another through everyday practices, such as getting more in touch with our bodies, resting, and remembering our ancestors. She explores four "realms of resistance"—the personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integral—and shows how these realms overlap and why all are needed for our liberation. Readers will be empowered to seek wholeness in whatever spheres of influence they inhabit. Guest: Kaitlin B. Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, she writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. She writes online for On Being, SELF Magazine, and more. Her work has been featured on CBS and in USA Today. Her books include Native, Living Resistance, and Everything Is A Story. She writes The Liminality Journal. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: How We Show UpIndigenous D.C.We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black ResistanceWhat Might BeThe Diné ReaderNight of the Living RezA Calm and Normal HeartBecoming the Writer You Already AreThe Lost Journal of SacajeweaHow can mindfulness help?Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! This episode was originally published on May 11, 2023 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art with Katrin Kogman-Appel (Bodleian Library, 2023)
2026/10/15
Katrin Kogman-Appel is a professor of Medieval Jewish history with research focusing on book culture, readers, and reading practices in medieval Europe and beyond. In The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art (Bodleian Library, 2023) she discusses the text of the 24 canonized books of the Bible that is paired with David Kimchi's grammatical treatise “Sefer Miklol”. Katrin discussed the Kennecott Bible, a medieval Hebrew manuscript that contains unique illustrations and Masoretic text annotations. She explained that the manuscript draws inspiration from various sources including the Severa Bible and playing cards from the Rhineland and Netherlands, with some illustrations depicting animals in unusual positions and a political allegory involving hares, wolves, cats, and mice. Katrin described the Masoretic text as a lexical apparatus designed for precision in transmitting the canonical Hebrew text, and emphasized that the Bible served as a status symbol and public art piece for Jewish elites despite having no public art in synagogues.  A collection of reproduced images from the Kennicott Bible, a remarkable artifact from the Middle Ages. The Kennicott Bible is one of the most celebrated Hebrew Bibles that survives today, having delighted readers since its creation in 1476. Originating from La Coruña in northern Spain, it features lavish carpet pages, gold leaf silhouettes, and abundant marginal decorations. This extraordinary manuscript is a treasure trove of history, culture, devotion, art, and cross-cultural collaboration. This book features reproductions of the decorated pages of the stunning manuscript, accompanied by four chapters authored by experts in the fields of Bible study, book history, and medieval Jewish art. The authors discuss the Bible from several perspectives, explaining the Hebrew text of the Bible, the scribe who created the pages, the layout and paleography, and the illuminator who produced the Bible's decoration and its imagery. This volume also includes an analysis of the early medieval commentary on the Old Testament, the Masorah. Richly illustrated throughout, this beautiful book makes a treasure of Jewish art available for a new audience, alongside the latest scholarship on its origins, provenance, and creation.  Analyzing these ancient texts in historical context helps to enrich our understanding of the effects and reactions to historical and cultural events. Be sure to follow Jewish Tapestry for more on Jewish history and culture. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Instrument Must Not Matter with Christine Fischer Guy (Buckrider Books, 2026)
2026/10/15
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Christine Fischer Guy about her novel, The Instrument Must Not Matter (Wolsak & Wynn, 2026).  She sees the score for the Bach-Brahms in her mind’s eye, hears the indigo notes unfurl. In this sweeping coming-of-age novel gifted young classical pianist Lila Rys finds herself in New York City studying under famed teacher George Vrubel. The move from Toronto to the American city is terrifying, but Lila is determined to bring music back to the Rys family, where the story of her grandmother refusing to play Soviet music after their tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 is family lore. Accompanied by her brother, Lucas, who is studying at NYU, Lila struggles to navigate the classical musical world and become the successful performer she’s expected to be. But in New York she has a romantic encounter with a renegade pianist and everything she knows about herself is turned upside down, until her brother discovers dissident literature that holds the stories her grandmother had not passed on, and Lila learns how to set her love for her family, and her music, free. Christine Fischer Guy is a Toronto writer and journalist. She’s a 2024 VCCA fellow and is the author of The Umbrella Mender (Wolsak and Wynn 2014), a “terrifically entertaining read” that “keeps the reader interested partly because she avoids setting up stereotypical opposites.” Her second novel, The Instrument Must Not Matter, is a coming-of-age story about a classical pianist and arrives in spring 2026. Her short fiction has appeared in Canadian, American and British journals. She was awarded a National Magazine Award and contributes criticism and interviews to literary journals. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and is a 2026 Giller Prize finalist. Her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution with Jesse Wegman (Celadon Books, 2026)
2026/10/15
David N. Gellman interviews Jesse Wegman on The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution (Celadon Books, 2026). Jesse Wegman tells the story of James Wilson, a Founding Father whose bold vision shaped American democracy but whose legacy was lost to scandal. As a young lawyer, James Wilson made a celebrated case for American independence in an essay that inspired the famous words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He went on to write the first draft of the Constitution and, along with the more famous James Madison, played perhaps the essential role in its ultimate creation. Wilson believed that in a democracy, the people were the ultimate source of all power. He argued successfully for a strong central government and a powerful presidency and unsuccessfully for a president elected by popular vote and a Senate apportioned by population. He was recognized for his ideas and leadership. But only a decade after the Constitution was ratified, he died of malaria in the back room of a North Carolina tavern while hiding from his creditors. Instead of going down as one of the nation’s great political thinkers, Wilson was virtually written out of history. But in The Lost Founder, Wegman brings to life the most prescient of the earliest patriots and makes a convincing argument that scandal should not diminish the life and relevance of a brilliant, complicated man whose vision for his country could not be more relevant today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival with Sarah Brothers (U California Press, 2026)
2026/10/14
As overdose deaths continue to mount and debates rage over harm reduction, drug policy, and homelessness, Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival (U California Press, 2026) offers a crucial on-the-ground perspective pointing to a humane future. Finding a vein is difficult. As veins collapse and scar over, it becomes almost impossible. For millions of Americans who inject drugs and can’t do it alone, the solution is to find someone who can. Enter the “hit doctor.” Though uncredentialed, hit doctors develop expertise through necessity, providing injection assistance and addressing needs that dominant medical systems exclude or criminalize. They share the same conditions as the people they serve: sleeping in encampments and alleys, living in cramped single-room-occupancy hotels, suffering from untreated illness and trauma, and grieving friends who keep dying. Sarah Brothers spent more than seven years observing and interviewing hit doctors and their clients across San Francisco. Hit Doctors is an intimate portrait of the daily lives, relationships, and ethical worlds of people managing extraordinary hardship at a pivotal moment, when fentanyl arrived and thousands began dying annually. Brothers’s long-term ethnography yields critical insights. People seeking help strongly prefer women hit doctors, perceived as more careful and less likely to turn violent. But even as their expertise is valued, hit doctors are targets for abuse, and they suffer as the people they care for decline and die. That is the cost of trying to keep each other alive when formal systems of support have failed. Brothers joins host Emily Dufton to discuss the years of work behind her new book, the people she studied and the relationships she built with them.  Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability with Moritz A. Schramm (Cambridge UP, 2026)
2026/10/14
Social media giants like Meta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks. Drawing on exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis of Meta's Oversight Board and the EU's Digital Services Act, Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability (Cambridge UP, 2026) explores how these approaches blend European and American perspectives, bridging distinct legal traditions to address the challenges of platform governance. Analysis of content moderation practices and their implications uncovers a critical pattern in the evolution of governance for industries that will define the future, from digital platforms to emerging technologies. Combining public and private law in innovative ways, the book sheds light on bold governance experiments that will shape the digital world-for better or worse. This study offers crucial insights for understanding the next chapter of global governance in an increasingly interconnected and privatized world. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. Find Moritz here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Brass Band Story with Trevor Herbert (Yale UP, 2026)
2026/10/14
Brass bands have played a unique role in the cultural history of Britain. Amidst the industrial revolution, an increasingly urban population turned to music for mass entertainment. Brass bands became intimately associated with working men and spread across the country at breathtaking speed. At their height in the late Victorian era, there were thousands of them.  In The Brass Band Story (Yale University Press, 2026), Professor Trevor Herbert reveals the story of these bands, from their working-class origins and the enormous popularity of Victorian contests to their sophistication in modern times. It is a tale of the survival of tradition and the embrace of change. Victorian brass bands solidified communities and promoted shared local identities. As new modes of popular culture posed existential threats in the twentieth century, they reinvented themselves. The model British bands created is now replicated throughout the world.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-Year-Old Friend with Merilyn Simonds (Random House Canada, 2025)
2026/10/14
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Merilyn Simonds about her bestselling memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-Year-Old Friend (Penguin Random House Canada, 2025).  Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life. In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next? During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future. In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day. MERILYN SIMONDS is author of twenty books, most recently Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay, an innovative memoir/biography of Lawrence, an extraordinary self-trained ornithologist who became one of Canada’s greatest naturalists. Born in Winnipeg, Merilyn grew up in small-town Ontario and Brazil. She published her first book in 1979 at the age of 29, and since then her work has been anthologized and published internationally in eight countries. She writes in a wide variety of genres—personal essay, memoir, travel, literary fiction (such as the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice) and creative nonfiction, including The Convict Lover, which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction. In 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of The Convict Lover in Canada’s literary landscape. Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and is a 2026 Giller Prize finalist. Her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction with Jennifer Stark-Blumenthal (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
2026/10/14
Nationalism’s global resurgence has upended societies. With the rise of the Polish nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and American Jewry’s swift reaction to its law punishing people who allege Polish complicity in Holocaust crimes, both sides have revived old stereotypes. Stark-Blumenthal argues that American Jews’ disgust with Polish nationalism ought to be checked by America’s centuries-old embrace of white supremacy. Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction (Academic Studies Press, 2024) confronts both the anti-Polonism deeply embedded in the American Jewish community and Poland’s enduring relationship with antisemitism. Armed with two decades of research and in-depth interviews with scholars, community leaders, and laity in Poland and the U.S., Stark-Blumenthal dispels myths and considers new approaches to this relationship. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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4.4 out of 5
159 reviews
★★★★★
southerngul418 2026/06/27
Searching Black Memory
Dr. Raymond Williams did an excellent interview with author Sharron Wilkins Conrad!
★★★★★
bobOnGuitar 2025/12/28
Important historical analyses
Lisa Silverman is an historian whose books I want to explore, based on this interview. I’m not an academically-trained historian, but read and study a...
★★★★★
WeirdChick1469422689433890 2024/08/31
Love
fav was Wonderworks
★★★★★
orthoagnostic 2023/12/19
This pod has really varied and interesting content but
At times, I miss the far reaching, less socio-political subjects that were more common in years previous, but overall what a wonderful resource.
★★★★★
tall6677 2023/12/09
Great Podcast
You will never run out of episodes. This is a great contribution to intellectual history.
★★★★★
Ahmad from Dubai 2023/05/23
Informative as no other
This is my library, I got to it to keep up with new academic books, it saves time and introduce the listeners to the authors behind the books.
★★★★★
Jason E L. 2022/10/14
Everything Subject Under The Sun. And The Sun.
A collection of all the network's other channels, everything from neuroscience to history to religion. The result is a firehose of interviews with res...
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amp_gorky 2022/09/17
Great way to keep up with new books, naturally
I love this podcast and am very grateful for it. I have purchased so many books I have learned about through this podcast. I was thinking the other ...
★★★★★
PJ-H 2021/07/03
Wonderful podcast
I learn SO much from this
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dkd84 2019/05/10
Great content!
I’ve listened to several channels for a couple of years now, and I’ve learned a lot. As a busy academic, I appreciate the opportunity to hear about ne...
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