Best DC Public Library Podcasts (2025)

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Professor Todd Eberly on “Interesting Times” in MD Politics 35:38

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2d ago35:38

35:38

As Maryland heads into a challenging budget year and an election cycle legislative session, Professor Todd Eberly of St. Mary’s College of Maryland joins the Conduit Street Podcast to unpack the forces shaping the state’s political and economic landscape. Kevin Kinnally and Michael Sanderson talk with Prof. Eberly about the ripple effects of federa…

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Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 54:44

2d ago54:44

54:44

The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the project of transitional justice, designed to put the 'Never Again' promise into practice, makes communities that ought to benefit from it anxious about potential repetition of conflict. Governing the P…

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Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025) 52:01

2d ago52:01

52:01

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings. In a country where it is rare under an authoritarian government, residents supported or opposed the redevelopment by mobilizing and organizing into local alliances. They were often shocked by the…

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Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023) 43:20

3d ago43:20

43:20

The City and the Hospital (Chicago 2023) focuses on an urban paradox: American hospitals are imagined as sites of healing and care, and yet the people who live and work in nearby neighborhoods have some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. One part urban sociology and one part policy analysis, this book reports insights from a collaborative …

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A Conversation with Sean OBrien 10:47

4d ago10:47

10:47

How does a White House speechwriter turn into a writer for kids? How do you become a Washington speech writer to begin with? We speak to Sean O'Brien, former speechwriter to then-Vice President Joe Biden. Kitty Felde is host.By Kitty Felde

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Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis, "Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:06:12

4d ago1:06:12

1:06:12

Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regimes transitioned to democracies, and it seemed that authoritarianism as a political model was fading. But as recent events have shown, things have clearly changed. In Dictating the Agenda: The Authorit…

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Matt Houlbrook, "Songs of Seven Dials: An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London" (Manchester UP, 2025) 53:22

5d ago53:22

53:22

How has central London changed in the last 100 years? In Songs of Seven Dials An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London (Manchester UP, 2025), Matt Houlbrook, a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham, tells the story of a part of London that was the site for major contests over urban development, race, and the future of t…

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Theresa Delgadillo, "Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 55:52

5d ago55:52

55:52

Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas (U Michigan Press, 2024) offers a new lens for examining diaspora and borderlands texts and performances that considers the inseparability of race, ethnicity, and gender in imagining and enacting social change. Theresa Delgadillo crosses interdisciplinary and canonical borders to in…

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Stephen Murphy, "Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2024) 55:48

6d ago55:48

55:48

This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy, build on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys to reveal the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic…

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Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022) 1:03:40

7d ago1:03:40

1:03:40

In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive cap…

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Michael McCulloch, "Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit" (Temple UP, 2023) 56:25

7d ago56:25

56:25

The dream of the modern worker’s house emerged in early twentieth-century America as wage earners gained access to new, larger, and better-equipped dwellings. Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit (Temple UP, 2023) is a cogent history of the houses those workers dreamed of and labored for. Dr. Michael…

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Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:23:31

8d ago1:23:31

1:23:31

Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The apparent failures of liberal thinking are a starting point for an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others. Wh…

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Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023) 36:55

9d ago36:55

36:55

Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated, The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe explores the many ways in which medieval surgeons, doctors, monks, and artists understood and depicted human anatomy. Taylor McCall refutes the common misconcep…

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Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 50:17

10d ago50:17

50:17

Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However,…

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White House Clubhouse by Sean OBrien 27:24

11d ago27:24

27:24

Former White House speechwriter Sean O'Brien takes us inside the building to a secret passageway to the past in his mystery "White House Clubhouse." Readers from Oak View Elementary School in Fairfax, Virginia discuss how Theodore Roosevelt's mantras are still relevant to them today. Actress Elizabeth Logun is celebrity reader. Kitty Felde is host.…

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Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, "Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen’s Chicago" (MIT Press, 2024) 39:36

11d ago39:36

39:36

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never ha…

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Lauren E. M. Everett, "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing" (Temple UP, 2025) 49:42

11d ago49:42

49:42

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Dr. Lauren Everett’s Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica’s Rent-Controlled Housing (Temple UP, 2025) shows how rent control impacts the lives of the renters themselves. Dr. Everett interviews residents about…

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Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022) 58:05

13d ago58:05

58:05

Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism. Sebastian Truskolaski argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is arguably the central challenge of modern philosophy: how to picture a world…

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Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023) 59:34

13d ago59:34

59:34

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They ar…

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Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025) 39:40

14d ago39:40

39:40

Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Africa to the factories and shipyards of the UK – and tells the story of …

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Ilan Kelman, "Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries" (UCL Press, 2022) 42:16

14d ago42:16

42:16

Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022) edited by Ilan Kelman Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is …

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Adam Jones, "Sites of Genocide" (Routledge, 2022) 1:11:41

14d ago1:11:41

1:11:41

Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's been influential in drawing attention to the intersection of gender and mass violence. And he's particpated in the emergence of attention to genocides of indigenous peoples over the past decade. Sites of …

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Housing in 2026: Counties Come to the Table With Solutions 41:01

16d ago41:01

41:01

Housing will take center stage in the 2026 legislative session, and counties are ready. This week, Kevin Kinnally, Michael Sanderson, and Dom Butchko walk through MACo's major legislative initiative, the BAMBY Act (Build Affordably in My Backyard). Together they trace the recent history of housing policy in Maryland, unpack the 2025 session, and ou…

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Ana Patricia Rodríguez, "Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area" (University of Arizona Press, 2025) 33:03

17d ago33:03

33:03

For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community. In this episode, we sit down with Ana Patricia Rodríguez, author of Av…

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Ana Patricia Rodríguez, "Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area" (University of Arizona Press, 2025) 33:03

17d ago33:03

33:03

For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community. In this episode, we sit down with Ana Patricia Rodríguez, author of Av…

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Ana Patricia Rodríguez, "Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area" (University of Arizona Press, 2025) 33:03

17d ago33:03

33:03

For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community. In this episode, we sit down with Ana Patricia Rodríguez, author of Av…

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Favorite Books from You and the National Book Festival 10:42

18d ago10:42

10:42

If you've listened to the show before, you know that we ask everybody our favorite question: What's your favorite book and why. We ask it in classrooms, we ask it in libraries, and we ask if of YOU. A pair of twin brothers from Washington state picked up a phone and recorded their answers on the voice memo app of a smartphone and sent it to us. We …

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Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:07:57

18d ago1:07:57

1:07:57

An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein between 1927 and 1937. Centred on seven major film concepts, the book examines what it means for a work of art—particularly a film—to remain unfinished or unrealis…

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Henry H. Sapoznik, "The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City" (SUNY Press, 2025) 47:40

19d ago47:40

47:40

The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City (SUNY Press, 2025) by Henry H. Sapoznik explores a century of Yiddish popular culture in New York City. Sapoznik--the author of Klezmer! Jewish Music fro0m Old World to Our World and a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR's Yiddish Radio Project--tells his story through chapters on eating, archit…

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Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023) 1:02:09

22d ago1:02:09

1:02:09

In Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford UP, 2023), Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness cannot be represented in modernity's aesthetic regime, but is nevertheless foundational to every representation. Troubling the idea that the aesthetic is sheltered from the antiblack terror that lies just beyon…

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Cybersecurity, AI Bots & Public Records: What Counties Need to Know 29:44

23d ago29:44

29:44

In this week's episode of the Conduit Street Podcast, Karrington Anderson talks with Sarah Sample to break down the rapidly evolving world of Public Information Act (PIA) requests in Maryland and why counties are feeling the pressure. They talk through the effects of the rise of automated and anonymous AI-generated PIA requests, cybersecurity threa…

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Carolyn T. Adams et. al, "Greater Philadelphia: A New History for the Twenty-First Century" (Penn Press, 2025) 37:06

23d ago37:06

37:06

Informed by current scholarship and richly illustrated with full-color photographs and maps, Greater Philadelphia: A New History for the Twenty-First Century (Penn Press, 2025) brings to the public an up-to-date, diverse history of Philadelphia across its many dimensions. Volume 1 adopts "Greater Philadelphia" to indicate a regional scope, but not …

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A Conversation with Janet Macreery 6:23

25d ago6:23

6:23

We have a conversation with "A Little Wicked" author Janet Macreery about two kids of writers: plotters and pantsers. Kitty Felde is host.By Kitty Felde

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Ihnji Jon, "Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics" (Pluto Press, 2021) 43:07

29d ago43:07

43:07

Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city. Based on the a…

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Hot Takes: Shutdowns, SNAP, and the State of Countyland 36:20

30d ago36:20

36:20

This week on the Conduit Street Podcast, Kevin Kinnally, Michael Sanderson, and Karrington Anderson debut a new recurring segment – Conduit Street Podcast Hot Takes, where our hosts break down what’s “news” and what’s just… “noise” in Maryland policy and politics. In this episode, the trio tackles the ongoing federal government shutdown, exploring …

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Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022) 59:44

30d ago59:44

59:44

We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and neurologically by sub-personal mechanisms, as revealed by scientific and philosophical analyses. Under contemporary capitalism, as the gap between this self-image …

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NPR's Susan Stamberg live from the National Archive 41:03

1M ago41:03

41:03

We pay tribute to NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg as we reprise an episode taped before a live audience at the National Archives in 2017. Readers from the Girlfriends BookClub Baltimore discuss A Little Wicked by Janet Macreery with host Kitty Felde. Susan Stamberg is our celebrity reader. You can read a special tribute to Susan at our web…

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William J. Glover, "Reformatting Agrararian Life: Urban History from the Countryside in Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2025) 56:58

1M ago56:58

56:58

Reformatting Agrarian Life presents a stealth urban history from the countryside that foregrounds the mutual entanglements of agrarian and urban expertise. William J. Glover traces an essential genealogy for understanding how urbanism unexpectedly left the city in late colonial India and began to settle in agrarian space, exploring how two milieus …

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Mark L. Clifford, "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic" (Free Press, 2024) 1:29:57

1M ago1:29:57

1:29:57

The extraordinary life story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, a leading Hong Kong democracy activist fighting for freedom of speech who became China’s most famous political prisoner. Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was twelve years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled and often slep…

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Cynthia Paces, "Prague: The Heart of Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025) 46:05

1M ago46:05

46:05

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Cynthia Paces to talk about her new book, Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford UP, 2025). Prague is the first English-language book to trace the history of the city from the tenth century to the present. Cynthia discusses her personal connection to Prague, highlights key moments in …

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Elizabeth Currie, "Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio" (Reaktion, 2025) 37:51

1M ago37:51

37:51

In late sixteenth-century Rome, artists found inspiration in bustling streets and taverns, depicting soldiers, Romani fortune tellers, sex workers and servants among the city’s poorest inhabitants. Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Elizabeth Currie explores these hidden lives, uncovering how the stories o…