Best Andrew M. Ho Podcasts (2025)

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Yasmin Moll, "The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:03:07

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1d ago1:03:07

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The New Preachers of Egypt—so named because of their novel preaching styles, which incorporate everything from melodrama to music to self-help—came to prominence on the world's first Islamic television channel on the cusp of the Arab Spring uprisings. They promoted an innovative and inclusive Islamic piety that millions of young middle-class viewer…

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Yes, And/Yes, Andor (with guests Jack Lowden, Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Mohammed & Orlando Bloom) 1:44:41

3d ago1:44:41

1:44:41

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees Chris Hewitt sit down in person with Deep Cover stars, Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Nick Mohammed, to talk about their experiences playing improvisers who go undercover as fake cops;[1:00:00 - 1:15:52 approx] and on Zoom with Tornado and Slow Horses star, Jack Lowden. [26:15 - 39:20 approx] …

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Kyle MacLachlan And Mark Frost On Twin Peaks And David Lynch: An Empire Podcast Interview Special 58:00

4d ago58:00

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Here's a damn fine special episode of the Empire Podcast for you to enjoy. We're in the grip of Twin Peaks fever all over again — the seminal David Lynch/Mark Frost TV show is being celebrated this Sunday (June 15th) at the BFI Southbank in London with a special 35mm print screening of the show's pilot, and if that weren't enough, every single epis…

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Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025) 1:04:22

8d ago1:04:22

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Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual and political work of a figure some may assume has been exhausted: Karl Marx. Following on from his earlier landmark study Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Socie…

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An Award-Losing Podcast (with guests Jai Courtney, Ian McShane, Dean DeBlois) 1:57:01

10d ago1:57:01

1:57:01

This week's episode of the freshly award-losing Empire Podcast sees the podteam lick their wounds after a demoralising defeat in the Best Podcast (Consumer) category at the BSMEs earlier in the week. How do they do this? By talking about movies, of course, as they discuss the week's news (a load of trailers, and a potential new James Cameron movie)…

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Tamar R. Shirinian, "Survival of a Perverse Nation: Morality and Queer Possibility in Armenia" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:10:40

10d ago1:10:40

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Tamar Shirinian is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her new book, Survival of a Perverse Nation: Morality and Queer Possibility in Armenia (Duke UP, 2024), studies the relationships between gender, sexuality, nationalism, political-economy, and social reproduction and how these are experienced,…

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Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025) 53:49

13d ago53:49

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A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Earl…

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Andrew Smith, "First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan" (Jonathan Ball, 2022) 1:18:34

13d ago1:18:34

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First people communities are the early groups of hunter gatherers, herders, and the oldest human lineages of Africa, some migrating from as far as East Africa to settle across southern Africa, in countries like Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. In First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan, archaeologist Andrew Smith, who has excavated at some…

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Wade Eastwood On The Stunts Of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning: An Empire Podcast Interview Special 41:20

14d ago41:20

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Whether it's Tom Cruise risking his neck underwater, or above ground while clinging to the wing of a biplane, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is filled with stunts that might just turn your hair white. That's if you don't lose it completely. That's just one of the side effects discussed in this Empire Podcast interview special, as the fil…

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Agustín Fuentes, "Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary" (Princeton UP, 2025) 45:11

14d ago45:11

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Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawing on the latest science to explain why the binary view…

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

15d ago1:03:37

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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…

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Lina Pinto-García, "Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 1:04:34

16d ago1:04:34

1:04:34

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between war and disease, focusing on Colombian armed conflict and the skin disease known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is transmitted through the bite of female sandflies. The most common manifestatio…

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Starting In The Middle (with guests Jesse Armstrong, Tim Key, Tom Basden & Carey Mulligan) 1:53:44

17d ago1:53:44

1:53:44

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees the podteam — Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, James Dyer and Alex Godfrey — get to grips with the definition of in media res, as they discuss some of their favourite films that throw you right into the action. Elsewhere, they talk about the week's movie news, pay tribute to Empire's founding editor Barry M…

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Maya Mayblin "Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians" (Fordham UP, 2024) 1:23:46

17d ago1:23:46

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A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements, Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians (Fordham UP, 2024) explores the complex intersection of democracy, patriarchy, and religiosity in Brazil. For over a hundred years, Catholic priests hav…

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Dmitri N. Shalin, "Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination" (Routledge, 2024) 2:44:13

21d ago2:44:13

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We have long lacked a biography of Erving Goffman. Partly this can be explained by Goffman’s direction for his papers not to be opened to researchers after his death. This meant those who may wish to write Goffman’s biography had a lack of material to draw upon. Dmirti Shalin, author of Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Im…

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Greta Lynn Uehling, "Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) 53:32

22d ago53:32

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In Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025), anthropologist Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling illuminates the untold stories of Russia’s occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing the traumas of colonization, foreign occupation, and population displacement. Drawing upon extensive …

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Camilla Annerfeldt, "Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 30:22

23d ago30:22

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Camilla Annerfeldt joins to discuss Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome (Bloomsbury, 2025). This is the first book-length exploration of the clothes worn in early modern Rome and provides novel insights into the city of Rome during one of its most fascinating periods. It also challenges the notion – well-established in dress historical resea…

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Toine van Teeffelen, "The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir" (Wipf and Stock, 2024) 1:03:20

23d ago1:03:20

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The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on diary entries and interviews from 2000 to 2023, the Dutch author--an anthropologist and peace activist--chronicles the spontaneous reactions of his Palestinian children and wife navigating the challen…

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Christopher McQuarrie on The Final Reckoning, Benicio del Toro & Michael Cera on The Phoenician Scheme, Tony Gilroy on Andor s2 (spoilers), and Cannes You Dig It? 1:58:45

24d ago1:58:45

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This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees Chris Hewitt mark the release of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning by doing a non-spoiler, non-epic (less than 20 minutes!) chat with that film's director, the legendarily loquacious Christopher McQuarrie, [26:00 - 43:06 approx] and have a lovely natter with the stars of the new Wes Anderson fi…

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Michelle H. S. Ho, "Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies" (Duke UP, 2025) 41:28

24d ago41:28

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In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo renowned for the fandom and consumption of anime, manga, and games. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in josō and dansō cafe-and-bars, establishments wher…

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The Shameless Plug #3: Jurassic World Rebirth And Other Animals 39:22

25d ago39:22

39:22

The Shameless Plug — the show in which Chris Hewitt and Empire editor, Nick de Semlyen, sit down and talk you through the latest issue of Empire — is back for its third episode, folks. This one is dedicated to issue 441 of Empire (on sale now at all good, evil, and virtual newsagents), which features Jurassic World Rebirth on the cover, and Nick ta…

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Andrew Ofstehage, "Welcome to Soylandia: Transnational Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado" (Cornell UP, 2025) 46:19

27d ago46:19

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Following a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia: Transnational Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Ofstehage investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world. Seeking adventure and profit, the transplanted f…

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M. Myrta Leslie Santana, Transformismo: Performing Trans/Queer Cuba" (U Michigan Press, 2025) 58:47

27d ago58:47

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In Transformismo, M. Myrta Leslie Santana draws on years of embedded research within Cuban trans/queer communities to analyze how transformistas, or drag performers, understand their roles in the social transformation of the island. Once banned and censored in Cuba, transformismo, or drag performance, is now state-sponsored events. Transformismo su…

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Kai Shmushko, "Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics" (Leiden UP, 2024) 1:04:04

28d ago1:04:04

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In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in China. Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics (Leiden UP, 2024) is a qualitative study exploring manifestations of the massive revival …

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The Extraordinary Miss Flower: An Empire Podcast Interview Special 30:31

1M ago30:31

30:31

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's The Extraordinary Miss Flower is part-concert film, part-performance art piece inspired by the life of its subject, a woman called Geraldine Flower. When she passed away a few years ago, her daughter Zoe discovered a number of letters, written over the years by suitors of Geraldine's, which painted a picture of a wil…

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Rosamund Pike & Matthew Rhys, Final Destination Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, Superman and Spelling Bees 1:38:49

1M ago1:38:49

1:38:49

This week's episode of the BSME Awards-nominated Empire Podcast had better not be the episode that the BSME Awards judging panel listens to ahead of voting, or our nomination might be rescinded. Which is to say, chaos reigns as Chris Hewitt returns — eventually, after being waylaid by a McQ&A — to the hosting chair, and is joined by Helen O'Hara, J…

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Maron E. Greenleaf, "Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon" (Duke UP, 2024) 49:46

1M ago49:46

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Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living rainforest valuable in the Brazilian Amazon. Situated in the state of Acre, which continuously had to grapple with a complex positionality between frontier and periphery, Maron E. Greenleaf explor…

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Lily Gladstone & Kelly Marie Tran, Great Actor/Director Pairings, Tariffs and Teen Movies 1:39:12

1M ago1:39:12

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It's another cracking episode of the (freshly award-nominated) Empire Podcast this week, folks, as Helen O'Hara slips into the hosting chair and tries to wrestle James Dyer and Alex Godfrey into shape as they talk about changeable movie titles, great actor/director pairings, Alex's favourite teen movies, the week's movie news including Donald Trump…

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

1M ago1:14:22

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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…

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Deana Jovanović, "Staging the Promises: Everyday Future-Making in a Serbian Industrial Town" (Cornell UP, 2025) 1:23:24

1M ago1:23:24

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Built on the shifting grounds of post-Yugoslav transformation, Staging the Promises examines how the residents of Bor — a Serbian copper-mining town marked by both socialist prosperity and post-socialist decline — became spectators to the staged enactments of promised futures. Deana Jovanović traces how local authorities and the copper-processing c…

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Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025) 44:59

1M ago44:59

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Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Dr. Ipek A. Celik Rappas accounts the rising demand for original and affordable locations for screen projects due to the growth of streaming platforms. As a result, screen professionals are repeatedly t…

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Diana Graizbord, "Indicators of Democracy: The Politics and Promise of Evaluation Expertise in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2024) 52:44

1M ago52:44

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The spread of democracy across the Global South has taken many different forms, but certain features are consistent: implementing a system of elections and an overarching mission of serving the will and well-being of a country's citizens. But how do we hold politicians accountable for such a mission? How are we to understand the efficacy of the pol…

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Wyatt Russell, David Harbour & Hannah John-Kamen, Paul Feig, Ryan Coogler, And It’s Episode 666 1:57:55

2M ago1:57:55

1:57:55

It had to happen: the Empire podcast has finally gone to hell — quite literally in this case, as this particular show is episode 666. Perhaps appropriately, James is in the driving seat for this one, embracing this demonically anointed episode to bring you such thematically-relevant discussions as a Mount Rushmore of movie Satans and an off-topic d…

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Lian Sinclair, "Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations" (Manchester UP, 2024) 36:47

2M ago36:47

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Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? Why are there so many different global standards in mining? Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations (Manchester UP, 2024) develop…

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Tim Grady, "Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars" (Yale UP, 2025) 54:30

2M ago54:30

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In Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars (Yale University Press, 2025), Tim Grady recounts here a detailed history of the fate of combatants who died on enemy soil in England and Germany in World Wars I and II. The books draws on a rich archive of personal family experiences, and describes the often touching…

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Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 36:32

2M ago36:32

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Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city a…

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Maliha Safri et al., "Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation" (U of Minnesota Press, 2025) 1:06:18

2M ago1:06:18

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In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). This volume is part of the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds series. Solidarity economies, characterized by di…

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Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:07:52

2M ago1:07:52

1:07:52

After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in the early 2000s, Chinese policymakers came to see waste management as…

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Lorna Gibb, "Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages" (Princeton UP, 2025) 39:47

2M ago39:47

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An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the w…

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

2M ago54:38

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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…

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The Convergence Is Here (ft. Gareth Evans, Christian Gudegast, and Gavin O'Connor), And Mount Rushmoreapalooza 1:55:20

2M ago1:55:20

1:55:20

It was foretold by the Ancient Ones: The Convergence (or Gunvergence, if you will), the day on which three absolutely slamming action movies will be released at the same time in the UK (albeit on different formats), ushering in a new era of sweaty dad bods, car chases, and many scenes where people die in a hail of bullets. And that day is today, fo…

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The Shameless Plug #2 — The June Issue 31:57

2M ago31:57

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The Shameless Plug returns, folks, for a second glorious episode in which Chris Hewitt and Empire editor, Nick de Semlyen, sit down in the podbooth and tell you how (and why) the sausage is made. That sausage being the new issue of Empire, which is on sale now in all good, evil, and virtual newsagents. Our dynamic duo talk through the month's big c…

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Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:08:28

2M ago1:08:28

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CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In Th…

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Christof Lammer, "Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China" (Berghahn, 2024) 1:42:23

2M ago1:42:23

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On the podcast today I am joined by Christof Lammer, a social anthropologist based at the University of Klagenfurt and inherit fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin. Christof is joining me to talk about his new book, Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China published in Open Access by Berghahn Books in 2024. Th…

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Easter Guestapalooza (Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland, Ludwig Göransson, Osgood Perkins), Movie Musicals, And The Oscars' Latest Stunt 1:59:21

2M ago1:59:21

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This week's Empire Podcast (episode 664 if you're keeping score!) is more packed with goodness than your average Easter egg. Not only do Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, and Alex Godfrey get into a discussion about what exactly makes a musical a musical (along with an impromptu visit to a certain mountain), but they tackle the week's movie news, includi…

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Political Mythmaking in Nepal 33:12

2M ago33:12

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How and why do local political processes in rural Nepal become an arena for political mythmaking? And, how do political myths obscure their own historical construction, thereby making hierarchical power structures appear inevitable? In this episode we discuss these questions with Ankita Shrestha whose ethnographic explorations into these issues for…

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

2M ago46:29

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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…

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Sarah Saddler, "Performing Corporate Bodies: Multinational Theatre in Global India" (Routledge, 2025) 1:10:32

2M ago1:10:32

1:10:32

How do corporations use theater to reconcile the crises of late capitalism? In our latest interview on Ethnographic Marginalia, we speak with Dr. Sarah Saddler about her new book Performing Corporate Bodies (Routledge, 2024), where she describes how corporations have borrowed techniques from activist theater to manage their workers in India and bey…

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Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:05:34

2M ago1:05:34

1:05:34

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Through fieldwork in one of the “China malls” that has emerged along Johannesburg’s former mining belt, Huang identifies everyday relations of power and differen…

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Dána-Ain Davis and Christa Craven, "Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) 56:21

2M ago56:21

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How do we acquire knowledge about societies? Does how we acquire social knowledge shape what we know? How conscious must we be of our own experiences as we do our research? What does feminism add to our methods and modes of research? Now in its second edition, Feminist Ethnography: Thinking through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities (Rowm…