Best Paul J. Joseph Podcasts (2025)

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Anil Ananthaswamy, "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI" (Dutton, 2024) 1:09:21

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Machine learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumor is cancerous, or deciding if someone gets bail. They now influence developments and discoveries in chemistry, biology, and physics—the study of genomes, extrasolar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. And all this b…

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Daniel Morales, "Between Here and There: The Political Economy of Transnational Mexican Migration, 1900-1942" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:02:46

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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…

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Jeremy DeWaal, "Geographies of Renewal: Heimat and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:28

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The term “Heimat,” referring to a local sense of home and belonging, has been the subject of much scholarly and popular debate following the fall of the Third Reich. Countering the persistent myth that Heimat was a taboo and unusable term immediately after 1945, Geographies of Renewal uncovers overlooked efforts in the aftermath of the Second World…

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Scott Pearce, "Northern Wei (386-534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:16:11

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Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands of the Yellow River plains. Northern Wei was, in fact, the first of the so-called "conquest dynasties" complex states seen repeatedly in East Asian history in which Inner Asian peoples ruled parts of …

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

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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…

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Murad Idris, "War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought" (Oxford UP, 2019) 1:06:01

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Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term itself and the way that it has been considered and analyzed in western and Islamic political thought. War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Pr…

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Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) 1:12:00

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Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics of a society consumed by capital accumulation. The complexity and scope, as well as its voluminous incompleteness upon his death, have left many readers perplexed, looking for a ‘royal road’ to comprehens…

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Christa Kuljian, "Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race, and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 1:05:03

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When Christa Kuljian arrived on the Harvard College campus as a first-year student in the fall of 1980 with copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. magazine, she was concerned that the women's movement had peaked in the previous decade. She soon learned, however, that there was a long way to go in terms of achieving equality for women and that soci…

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Ankur Barua, "The Hindu Self and Its Muslim Neighbors: Contested Borderlines on Bengali Landscapes" (Lexington, 2022) 1:29:44

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In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that various patterns of amicability and antipathy have been generated towards Muslims over the last six hundred years and these patterns emerge at dynamic intersections between Hindu self-understan…

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

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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…

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400: The Legend of Belle Starr w/ Michael Wallis 1:12:09

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Myra Maybelle Shirley, better known as Belle Starr, was one of the most notorious female outlaws of the Old West (if you believe period newspapers, anyway). My guest, bestselling and award-winning author Michael Wallis, made it his mission to tell the true story of Belle Starr, and in the process dispels many of the myths that surround her. He shar…

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Alexander Douglas, "Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self" (Random House, 2025) 1:10:43

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In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers – ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard – he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth. Through their…

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Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 33:37

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Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, also called “Albina,” were a haven for and a hub of Black community life. But between 1990 and 2010, Albina changed dramatically—it became majority White. In We Belong Here, sociologi…

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Foluke Taylor, "Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room" (Norton, 2023) 1:06:33

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In 1977, The Combahee River Collective, a group of Black American feminists issued a statement communicating the harrowing following: “The psychological toll of being a Black woman…can never be underestimated. There is a low value placed on Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. We are dispossessed psychologically a…

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Jess Reia, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect, 2025) 35:40

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What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years, but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art, this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection, arch…

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Aline Nardo, "Evolutionary Theory and Education" (Brill, 2025) 1:08:16

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How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolutionary Thinking on Educational Theory and Philosophy’ (Brill, 2025) explores the considerable but under-appreciated influence of evolutionary ideas on educational theory and the philosophy of education. The…

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Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Random House, 2023) 1:37:56

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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…

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Benoit Berthelier and Immanuel Kim, "Hidden Heros: Anthology of North Korean FIction" (Anthem, 2025) 46:15

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Hidden Heroes (Anthem Press, 2025) offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories by renowned DPRK authors. Spanning from the 1980s to the present, these works explore the theme of the “hidden hero,” a popular moniker in the DPRK to describe the average citizen who navigates the com…

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Book Talk 67 : The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science 1:10:01

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What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to understand how science discovers the truth. At the current moment, when expertise is under attack and the idea of truth is contested from all sides, Strevens explains the remarkable success of science’s “…

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Religion in the Lands That Became America 1:10:08

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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…

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How I make vegan food sexy | from TED Talks Daily 20:06

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At the plant-based burger chain Slutty Vegan, Pinky Cole is flipping the script on vegan food with bold style. In conversation with host of "TED Radio Hour" Manoush Zomorodi, she shares the highs and lows of her entrepreneurial journey, from her roots in Baltimore to the grease fire that took her first storefront in Harlem. Learn more about the aut…

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Richard W. Harrison, "The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941–1992" (Casemate Academic, 2022) 1:46:21

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Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army during World War II and the Cold War. The war on the Eastern Front during 1941–45 was an immense struggle, running from the Barents Sea to the Caucasus M…

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Matthew V. Novenson, "Paul and Judaism at the End of History" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:03:09

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The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers have found, and continue to find, Paul's thought so radical, so Christian, even so anti-Jewish – despite the fact that it, too, is Jewish through and through. This paradox, and the question how we are to…

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Kurt D. Fausch, "A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters" (OSU Press, 2025) 35:28

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In A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters (OSU Press, 2025), Kurt Fausch draws on his experience as a stream ecologist, his interest in Indigenous cultures, and a thoughtful consideration of environmental ethics to explore human values surrounding freshwater ecosystems. Focusing on seven rivers across the globe—from the Salmo…

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Bulent Gokay and Lily Hamourtziadou, "Human Costs of War: 21st Century Human (In)Security from 2003 Iraq to 2022 Ukraine" (Routledge, 2024) 31:35

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Human Costs of War: 21st Century Human (In)Security from 2003 Iraq to 2022 Ukraine (Taylor & Francis, 2024) documents and analyses the direct and indirect toll that war takes on civilians and their livelihoods, taking a human security approach exploring personal, economic, political and community security in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine, in the co…

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Caroline Johnson Hodge, "The God of This House: Christian Domestic Cult Before Constantine" (Penn State UP, 2025) 1:06:45

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Christianity is often thought of as a tradition of belief, interpretation, teachings, and texts. However, a scholarly focus on ideas overlooks how early Christian doctrine interacted with social exchanges in lay spaces. Author Caroline Johnson Hodge fills this gap, shifting our attention from liturgical settings to religion as it was lived outside …

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Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018) 1:08:07

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When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will talk about the Bataan Death March. Younger people, coming of age in the 1990s, will mention the Rape of Nanking or the comfort women forced into service by the Japanese army. Occasionally, someone will men…

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Hanno Sauer, "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality " (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:13:03

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In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is just the latest step in the long evolution of good and evil and everything in between. What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hann…

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Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:07:09

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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…

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Jessica Ratcliff, "Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain's Second Scientific Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2025)) 1:29:51

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In the book Monopolizing Knowledge: The East India Company and Britain’s Second Scientific Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2025), author Jessica Ratcliff traces the changing practices of knowledge accumulation and management at the British East India Company, focusing on the Company’s library, museum, and colleges in Britain. Although these institutions …