Best Conversations w/ Unc Podcasts (2025)

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Michael W. Twitty, "Recipes from the American South" (Phaidon Press, 2025) 41:56

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4d ago41:56

41:56

The views expressed by the guest are their own and do not reflect those of the New Books Network or its hosts. This episode contains some content that listeners may find controversial. A home cook's guide to one of America's most diverse - and delicious - cuisines, from James Beard Award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty 'Our …

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Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021) 1:05:50

6d ago1:05:50

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In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coast of Africa employed a wide range of medical and spiritual strategies to treat all kinds of diseases. In the sixteenth century, the arrival of European traders and colonists initiated an exchange of he…

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Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024) 1:04:12

8d ago1:04:12

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Southern History Remixed: On Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race (UP Florida, 2024) spotlights the key role of popular music in the shaping of the United States South from the late nineteenth century to the era of rock ’n’ roll in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. While musical activities are often sidelined in historical narratives of the region, Micha…

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Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "Fighting with the Past: How Seventeenth-Century History Shaped the American Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025) 55:48

13d ago55:48

55:48

Civil War Americans, like people today, used the past to understand and traverse their turbulent present. As Dr. Aaron Sheehan-Dean reveals in this fascinating work of comparative intellectual history, nineteenth-century Americans were especially conversant with narratives of the English Civil Wars of the 1600s. Northerners and Southerners alike dr…

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Claire Whitlinger, "Between Remembrance and Repair: Commemorating Racial Violence in Philadelphia, Mississippi" (UNC Press, 2020) 35:35

15d ago35:35

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Few places are more notorious for civil rights–era violence than Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” murders. Yet in a striking turn of events, Philadelphia has become a beacon in Mississippi’s racial reckoning in the decades since. In Between Remembrance and Repair: Commemorating Racial Violence in Philadelphia, M…

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The STA Podcast featuring Dr. Alicia Hash 23:58

26d ago23:58

23:58

Welcome back to The School Turnaround Podcast. This week features Dr. Alicia Hash, keynote speaker of The School Turnaround National Conference 2025. Ladies and gentlemen, educators, and change-makers, welcome to the School Turnaround Podcast – the transformative space where we delve into the heart of urban education, seeking solutions and sharing …

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Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025) 1:07:26

1M ago1:07:26

1:07:26

This is a very special episode of the New Books Network, as the editor of Conversations with Kiese Laymon (UP of Mississippi, 2025), Dr. Constance Bailey, discusses the process of selecting, compiling, and publishing the volume with the subject himself, award-winning author, Kiese Laymon. Conversations with Kiese Laymon provides an in-depth look at…

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Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” 1:14:33

2M ago1:14:33

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Tonight marks the final episode of Season 1 of Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT”. Episode 34. The closer. The finale. The moment where everything we’ve been building up to comes full circle. Big Unc is leaving nothing behind. This is as raw as it gets. The message tonight? You have to believe in yourself first before you can believe me. Season 1 h…

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Philis Barragán-Goetz, "Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas" (U Texas Press, 2020) 52:04

2M ago52:04

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Debates about Ethnic Studies in K-12 and Higher Education have highlighted the importance of culturally inclusive pedagogy in schools. Despite discussions about Ethnic Studies, there is a more extended history of Mexican-origin people pushing for culturally responsive education. In Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a…

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Uzma Quraishi, "Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War" (UNC Press, 2020) 1:10:04

2M ago1:10:04

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In Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press), Uzma Quraishi (Sam Houston State University) follows the Cold War-era journeys of South Asian international students from U.S. Information Service reading rooms in India and Pakistan, to the halls of the Universit…

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Marlee S. Bunch, "Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era" 1:04:21

2M ago1:04:21

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In Unlearning the Hush: Oral Histories of Black Female Educators in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Era (University of Illinois Press, 2025), Dr. Marlee Bunch shared her research on Black female educators in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era and discussed how their experiences and wisdom continue to inform contemporary teaching practices and …

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Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” 52:19

2M ago52:19

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Tonight on Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” Broke people carry more responsibility than the ones who got it together… because when you got less, you can’t afford to move sloppy. Every choice is survival.Some people want chances… others wait for the opportunity to stab you in the back. Know the difference before you call everybody “friend.”They sa…

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Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals" (U Illinois Press, 2022) 39:23

2M ago39:23

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The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artist…

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Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Norton, 2025) 1:12:40

2M ago1:12:40

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the stirring autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive, detailing her harrowing escape from enslavement, seven years hiding in an attic crawl space, and the racism she faced in freedom. Forgotten for decades after its original, 19th century publication, Jacobs’ story was so harrowing and so brav…

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Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore, "Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers" (UP of Kentucky, 2024) 42:20

2M ago42:20

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Matthew Sparks and Oliva Sizemore join Jana Byars for a fun, chilling, and thoughtful discussion about about Haint Country: Dark Tales from the Hills and Hollers (University Press of Kentucky, 2024). The hills of the Appalachia region hold secrets—dark, deep, varied, and mysterious. These secrets are often told in the form of eerie, thrilling, and …

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

3M ago1:12:50

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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 …

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

3M ago1:02:14

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

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Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” 1:08:50

3M ago1:08:50

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TONIGHT on Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” This wasn’t just a show… this was a straight-up life check. "God is for those who believe in God… but God not for everybody. And it don’t matter. Because life? Life was built to not give a fuck." That’s how Big Unc opened it. And it only got heavier from there. "I’m not giving y’all free game… I paid fo…

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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

3M ago49:46

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

3M ago1:34:56

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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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LIVE on Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” 1:45:01

3M ago1:45:01

1:45:01

MONDAY NIGHT IT’S GOIN’ UP LIVE on Conversations with Big Unc “UNCUT” we got a special guest comin' straight outta Baltimore… none other than the weed blog king himself, the one and only @HEMPLOVER2.0 Mr. DANKIN AND DASHIN HEMSELF... You might know him from his raw and unapologetic DANKIN BLOGS YouTube channel, or catchin’ heat on Rumble under DANK…

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Charlotte Bentley, "New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859" (U of Chicago Press, 2022) 47:39

3M ago47:39

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Jazz is the music that many people associate with New Orleans. But before there was jazz in New Orleans there was opera. It was the only city in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century with a resident opera company that produced the latest European works. In New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 (U…

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Conversations with Big Unc 'UNCUT' 1:28:48

3M ago1:28:48

1:28:48

ToNIGHT on “UNCUT” Conversations with Big Unc This ain’t just another episode. This is a mirror. A confession. A legacy. Big Unc sits down alone to finally tell the story. No one else could tell but him. If you read "MY Story. MY Life. MY Point of View: The True Story of Big" You got a piece of it. But this right here? This is the unfiltered, uncut…

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Ahmad Greene-Hayes, "Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans" (U of Chicago Press, 2025) 1:01:38

3M ago1:01:38

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A rethinking of African American religious history that focuses on the development and evolution of Africana spiritual traditions in Jim Crow New Orleans. When Zora Neale Hurston traveled to New Orleans, she encountered a religious underworld, a beautiful anarchy of spiritual life. In Underworld Work, Ahmad Greene-Hayes follows Hurston on a journey…

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Conversations with Big Unc "UNCUT" 1:03:12

3M ago1:03:12

1:03:12

TONIGHT on Conversations with Big Unc "UNCUT"This one is for the ones who keep waiting…Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for a sign. Waiting until they “have it all together.”Big Unc is asking the question most people run from What are you doing with TODAY?Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Not the dream.Today.Because what you choose to do right now …

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Jeremy Black, "The Civil War" (Saint Augustine's Press, 2025) 29:13

3M ago29:13

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The American Civil War may have been more consequential to American history (and its global supremacy) than its Revolutionary War and participation in all other world wars. The influence of this war is not just reduced to the victory of the north and its economic infrastructure, but the fact of Union success ushered in the notion of 'what it means …

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Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, "Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests" (West Virginia UP, 2023) 1:08:24

4M ago1:08:24

1:08:24

2023 Weatherford Award Finalist, Nonfiction How can the craft of musical instrument making help reconnect people to place and reenchant work in Appalachia? How does the sonic search for musical tone change relationships with trees and forests? Following three craftspeople in the mountain forests of Appalachia through their processes of making instr…

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Julia Brock, "Closed Seasons: The Transformation of Hunting in the Modern South" (UNC Press, 2025) 51:23

4M ago51:23

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In a unique and personal exploration of the game and fish laws in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi from the Progressive Era to the 1930s, Julia Brock offers an innovative history of hunting in the New South. The implementation of conservation laws made significant strides in protecting endangered wildlife species, but it also disrupted traditional…

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John Bardes, "The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930" (UNC Press, 2024) 46:57

4M ago46:57

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The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930 (UNC Press, 2024) reveals that Americans often assume that slave societies had little use for prisons and police because slaveholders only ever inflicted violence directly or through overseers. Mustering tens of thousands of previously overlooked arrest and pr…

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Bryan D. Jones, The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History" (Oxford UP, 2025) 58:29

4M ago58:29

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The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mind…

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Kathryn L. Beasley, "The Proof Is in the Dough: Rural Southern Women, Extension, and Making Money" (University of Georgia Press, 2025) 1:11:22

4M ago1:11:22

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The Proof Is in the Dough: Rural Southern Women, Extension, and Making Money (University of Georgia Press, 2025) examines how rural white and African American women in Alabama and Florida used the Cooperative Extension Service's home demonstration programming between 1914 and 1929 as a means to earn extra income. Kathryn L. Beasley explores an area…

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Conversations with Big Unc "UNCUT" 58:43

4M ago58:43

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Tonight on Conversations with Big Unc "UNCUT", we are running this one back due to last weeks interruption. Big Unc back to talk about the test everybody thinks they’re taking… But here’s the truth: Life ain’t testing you — it’s teaching you. And life don’t care if you pass or not. It just keeps handing out lessons. So the real question is, what ha…

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CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG UNC " UNCUT " 44:11

5M ago44:11

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🎙️ TONIGHT on Conversations with Big Unc "UNCUT" Every Monday night around 6:30 PM, come get this work. Big Unc says: “There’s life... and then there’s YOUR life.” Life will hit you with storms you never saw coming. You can’t control what happens in life, the losses, the detours, the delays. But YOUR life? That’s different. That’s where your power …

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Victoria Bynum, "Deep Roots, Broken Branches: A History and Memoir" (UP of Mississippi, 2025) 53:56

5M ago53:56

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Historian Victoria Bynum turns now to her own history in this multigenerational American saga spanning from 1840 to 1979. Through meticulous historical research, personal letters, diaries, and the unpublished memoir of Mary Daniel Huckenpoehler, the author’s maternal grandmother, Bynum examines five generations within the broader context of the nat…

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Frank X Walker, "Load in Nine Times: Poems" (Liveright, 2024) 1:21:30

5M ago1:21:30

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For decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers—including his own ancestors—who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation. Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reco…

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Conversations with Big Unc: UNCUT 57:17

5M ago57:17

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TONIGHT at 6:30 pm EST ON Conversations with Big Unc: UNCUT returns with a guest who brings experience, discipline, and real insight. My brother and friend Trevon Young @safewithtrevor joins me for a raw, unfiltered conversation about the realities of the security industry—what most people never see. Trevon has spent years on the front lines, worki…

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Carrie Helms Tippen, "Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks" (UP of Mississippi, 2025) 1:14:09

5M ago1:14:09

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The cookbook genre is highly conventional with an orientation toward celebration and success. From glossy photographs to heartwarming stories and adjective-rich ingredient lists, the cookbook tradition primes readers for pleasure. Yet the overarching narrative of the region is often one of pain, loss, privation, exploitation, poverty, and suffering…

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Jennifer Lynn Gross, "Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South" (LSU Press, 2025) 57:34

5M ago57:34

57:34

Historians have thoroughly documented the vast devastation of the Civil War. In the attention they have paid to aspects of that destruction, however, one of the most obvious ramifications appears routinely overlooked—Confederate widowhood. Dr. Jennifer Lynn Gross’s Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South (LSU Press, 2025) …

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No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice 53:43

6M ago53:43

53:43

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century—but they've never been as intense as th…

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Frederick Knight, "Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) 1:11:03

6M ago1:11:03

1:11:03

Would there have been a Frederick Douglass if it were not for Betsy Bailey, the grandmother who raised him? Would Harriet Jacobs have written her renowned autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, if her grandmother, a free black woman named Molly Horniblow, had not enabled Jacobs’ escape from slavery? In Black Elders: The Meaning of Ag…

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Lesley J. Gordon, "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 39:47

7M ago39:47

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Those who fought in the Civil War were expected to overcome their fear of injury or death as they charged into a hail of bullets. Soldiers could expect erupting artillery shells or Minié balls to maim or tear their bodies apart. The 11th New York Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas Infantry were no different. They charged into battle with high, perhaps…

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CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG UNC " UNCUT " 1:12:34

7M ago1:12:34

1:12:34

Tonight’s the night!!!! Live streaming around 6:30pm or 7pm Est... Conversations with Big Unc: "UNCUT" goes live! This ain’t your regular talk—"UNCUT" is as raw and real as it gets. Uncut is for everybody… but it ain’t for everyone. If you’re ready for truth with no filter, vibes with no cap, and wisdom straight from the source—tap in. Big Unc is s…

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Megan Hunt, "Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood's American South" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 47:29

7M ago47:29

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On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Megan Hunt joins us to talk about her recent book, Southern By the Grace of God, which was published in 2024 by the University of Georgia Press. Lke the media coverage of the civil rights era itself, Hollywood dramas have reinforced regional stereotypes of race, class, and gender to cleanse and redeem t…

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Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025) 1:09:13

7M ago1:09:13

1:09:13

One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how societies struggle to draw the line between war and peace. We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant’s headquarter…

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Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:02:57

7M ago1:02:57

1:02:57

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) is the first detailed account of Louisiana's unprecedented turn to mass incarceratio…

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CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG UNC "UNCT" 44:14

8M ago44:14

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RECAPE...... OF EP16 IT'S ABOUT TIME Conversations with Big Unc (Uncut)! This morning, we’re divied deep into monday night's show the power of TIME how it shapes your life, your opportunities, and your success. Timing is everything, whether it’s waiting for the right moment or recognizing when it’s time to move! Don’t miss this raw, unfiltered conv…

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CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG UNC " UNCUT " 58:42

8M ago58:42

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LIVE TONIGHT! EP15 IT'S ABOUT TIME Tune in LIVE every Monday around 6:30 PM – 7 PM EST for Conversations with Big Unc (Uncut)! Tonight, we’re diving deep into the power of TIME how it shapes your life, your opportunities, and your success. Timing is everything, whether it’s waiting for the right moment or recognizing when it’s time to move! Don’t m…

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"Steadfast Democrats" Five Years Later: A Conversation with Chryl N. Laird 1:04:26

8M ago1:04:26

1:04:26

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her co-authored book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Published in 2020, this book remains highly relevant for understanding American political beh…

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Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025) 1:04:40

8M ago1:04:40

1:04:40

Most US history textbooks contain a familiar map: shaded colors stretch across North America, clearly and neatly demarcating the extent of US expansion from 1776 thru the late nineteenth century. In The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limites of Manifest Destiny (UNC Press, 2025), University of Kansas distinguished historian Andrew…

Conversations W/ Unc Podcasts