Best David Allen Thomas Jr Podcasts (2025)

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Maya Arad, "Happy New Years" (New Vessel Press, 2025) 22:01

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9m ago22:01

22:01

In Happy New Years (New Vessel Press, 2025), after finishing her teaching degree, Leah emigrates to the U.S. for a teaching position that she thinks of as temporary. She ends up staying for 5 decades. She keeps up with her old classmates in an annual new year’s letter that outlines mostly her triumphs, with brief allusions to her losses, her failur…

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Eric Lee, "The August Uprising, 1924: The Georgian Anti-Soviet Revolt and the Birth of Democratic Socialism" (McFarland, 2025) 1:12:39

9m ago1:12:39

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For three years following the Russian Revolution, the small South Caucasian country of Georgia was a democracy, but Stalin later ordered the Red Army to invade and to bring the country back under Russian rule. Communist attacks on political opponents, trade unions, cooperatives, and even the church sparked resistance, and an armed uprising broke ou…

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Hilary Allen, "Fintech Dystopia: A Summer Beach Read about Silicon Valley Ruining Things" (2025) 52:13

9m ago52:13

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Silicon Valley wants to disrupt finance, and it might just succeed. In FinTech Dystopia, professor Hilary Allen offers an accessible, irreverent, and occasionally furious account of how tech elites are quietly taking over the financial system and making it worse in the process. Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of conversations…

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Joseph P. Viteritti, "Radical Dreamers: Race, Choice, and the Failure of American Education" (Oxford UP, 2025) 41:54

9m ago41:54

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Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education and demands to desegregate public schools, race and class remain the most reliable predictors of educational achievement in America. In attempting to address this divide, many school reformers have championed school choice: solutions like charter schools, vouchers, and other innovations designed to bu…

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Phillips Payson O'Brien, "War and Power: Who Wins Wars--And Why" (PublicAffairs, 2025) 33:48

9m ago33:48

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A bold, revisionist study of modern warfare, showing that military victory is rooted not in large armies and decisive battles, but in the full spectrum of economic, political, and social power. For nearly two centuries, international relations have been premised on the idea of the "Great Powers." As the thinking went, these mighty states--the Europ…

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Robert de la Chevrotiere, "Tall Is Her Body" (Kensington, 2025) 1:05:45

9m ago1:05:45

1:05:45

In this NBN episode, Hollay Ghadery speaks with Robert de la Chevrotiere about his novel, Tall is Her Body (Kensington, 2025). Readers of Black Cake and Family Lore will be captivated by this sweeping, multicultural family story of keen observation and the supernatural in which one man’s journey to wholeness—both emotionally and physically—is shape…

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Eduardo Mercado III, "Why Whales Sing" (JHU Press, 2025) 1:05:37

9m ago1:05:37

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With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing continuously for ten hours or more, changing the unique songs they sing every year. In Why Whales Sing (JHU Press, 2025), bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding…

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Judith L. Pearson, "Radical Sisters: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2025) 1:01:56

9m ago1:01:56

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There was a time when women's health was marginalized. There was a time when breast cancer wasn't discussed. There was a time when October wasn't pink. But three women--Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder--refused to be silenced. Their courage ignited a movement that forever changed the way society addresses breast cancer. When th…

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Dag Nikolaus Hasse, "What Is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought" (Amsterdam UP, 2025) 1:07:04

9m ago1:07:04

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It is common to define Europe by its democratic, scientific, religious, and cultural traditions. But in What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought (Amsterdam UP, 2025), Dag Nikolaus Hasse argues that the search for Europe's essence has taken a troubling turn. He shows that many traditional ideas about Europe are cultural…

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Lars Cornelissen, "Neoliberalism and Race" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:17:23

9m ago1:17:23

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In Neoliberalism and Race (Stanford UP, 2025) Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neoliberal ideology. Using the methods of intellectual history and drawing on insights from critical race studies, Cornelissen explores the various racial constructs that structure neoliberal ideology, some of which…

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Mackenzie Dern eyes long title reign, Zachary Reese on short-notice win, UFC Fight Night: Bonfim vs. Brown recap 53:51

3h ago53:51

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Jim Norton and Matt Serra kick off UFC 322 fight week with a pair of recent winners — UFC strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern and rising middleweight Zachary Reese. First, Mackenzie joins the show fresh off winning UFC gold to discuss the emotion of celebrating with her daughter cageside, her evolution under coach Jason Parillo, and her readiness f…

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Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025) 1:14:11

1d ago1:14:11

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How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the mechanisms by which ancient people came to have knowledge—not of the world and its myriad processes but about something more intimate, namely the individuals they encountered in close quarters, those the…

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The Beast 29:18

1d ago29:18

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Have you ever felt that you keep making the same mistakes or that you have fallen into a pattern that could be Exhibit A as proof of reincarnation? The Beast (2023) uses all kinds of world-building and three different timelines to explore these ideas–and does so while faithfully adapting a 1903 story by Henry James. It’s the kind of film in which o…

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How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse 1:10:28

11h ago1:10:28

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Colleen Dunlavy, Emeritus Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, about her recent book, Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. Into a Manufacturing Powerhouse. Small, Medium, Large examines the crucial role that the U.S. federal government played in rationalizing and diffus…

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Concetta Principe, "Disorder" (Gordon Hill Press, 2024) 50:43

11h ago50:43

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Concetta Principe about her poetry collection, DIsorder (Gordon Hill Press, 2024). Disorder, the newest collection of poetry from Concetta Principe, explores the metaphorical relationship between the home and the mind, where a home should be place of sanctuary but can have its safe borders destab…

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In “Pluribus” An America Without Division, But At What Price? 27:56

1d ago27:56

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the first two episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. The show posits an extraordinary intervention in worldwide politics and culture producing a utopia (that is of course simultaneously a dystopia) of quiescent bliss. Is the show shaping up to be another hit for the showrunner, previously r…

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Wolfgang Wagner, "The Democratic Politics of Military Interventions" (Oxford UP, 2020) 37:32

1d ago37:32

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According to a widely shared notion, foreign affairs are exempted from democratic politics, i.e. party-political divisions are overcome-and should be overcome-for the sake of a common national interest. This book shows that this is not the case. Examining votes in the US Congress and several European parliaments, the book demonstrates that contesta…

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Two Decades On: The African Union, Power, and Africa’s Democratic Future 36:38

1d ago36:38

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When the African Union was founded in 2002, it promised to deliver a more united, prosperous, and people-centred continent. Two decades later, Africa’s political landscape tells a more complex story: one of ambition and frustration, democratic progress and reversal, renewed activism, and enduring inequality. How far has the AU come in shaping “The …

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Jason A. Higgins, "Prisoners After War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 1:02:26

1d ago1:02:26

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In Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration (University of Mass. Press, 2024), Dr. Jason Higgins examines the connections between the military and carceral system through the stories of those most knowledgeable about it: veterans who were incarcerated after their military service. Combining a thorough historical narrative with…

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Joseph Stiglitz, "The Origins of Inequality" (Oxford UP, 2025) 39:47

1d ago39:47

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Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peace Prize, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and more than fifty other universities, and elected not only to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Lett…

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Amie Thomasson, "Rethinking Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:03:17

1d ago1:03:17

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The word “metaphysics” conjures up thoughts of very hard questions about reality and deep, perhaps unresolvable, metaphysical mysteries. But is that the right way to think about the subject matter of metaphysics? According to Amie Thomasson, very clearly no. In her new book, Rethinking Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2025), Thomasson argues t…

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Nerina Rustomji, "The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins and Feminine Ideals" (Oxford UP, 2021) 49:28

2d ago49:28

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In her scintillating new book, The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals (Oxford UP, 2021), Nerina Rustomji presents a fascinating and multilayered intellectual and cultural history of the category of the “Houri” and the multiple ideological projects in which it has been inserted over time and space. Nimbly moving between a vast ra…

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Michelle Christine Smith, "Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021) 59:20

2d ago59:20

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Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age (Southern Illinois UP, 2021) focuses on three prominent yet understudied intentional communities—Brook Farm, Harmony Society, and the Oneida Community—who in response to industrialization experimented with radical social reform in the antebellum United States. Foremost amon…

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Thomas Fleischman, "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall" (U Washington Press, 2020) 1:00:29

2d ago1:00:29

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The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West Germany and the UK, while also suffering myriad unintended consequences of this centrally planned practice: manure…

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Al Posamentier, "Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians" (Prometheus, 2020) 56:37

2d ago56:37

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Today I talked to Alfred S. Posamentier, a co-author (with Christian Spreitzer) of Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians (Prometheus, 2020). This charming book is more than just mathematics, because mathematicians are not just makers of mathematics. They are human beings whose life stories are often not just entertaining, but…

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Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019) 1:41:53

2d ago1:41:53

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In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh. She explores the way these relations are changing due to climate ch…

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Clint Smith, "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America" (Little, Brown and Company, 2021) 1:27:27

2d ago1:27:27

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How do we narrate history, both the troubling past and what we chose to remember? Clint Smith sets out to wrestle with this question and its relationship to enslavement in his first nonfiction book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021). From Monticello plantation to Angola …

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Jorge Coronado, “Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950” (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) 46:19

2d ago46:19

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In Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Jorge Coronado, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, examines photography to further the argument that intellectuals grafted their own notions of indigeneity onto their subjects. He looks specifically at the Cuzco School o…

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Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021) 52:04

2d ago52:04

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As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of nationa…

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"Giving Yourself Pep Talks" 1:00:02

2d ago1:00:02

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"Giving Yourself Pep Talks" Dave ponders the concept of failure and gives himself a pep talk while gazing at the mountains. Music by Miles Knight. Host: David A Thomas Jr. Musical Guest: Miles Knight If you like what you hear, please consider making a donation to help support our original content and keep us on the air. Any amount is helpful and gr…

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Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025) 42:29

3d ago42:29

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Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, the Vietnam War brought the dangers of US imperialism and the global nature of antiracist struggle into sharp relief. Martha Biondi tells the story of one such group of activists who built an internatio…

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Ziggy Hanaor, "Life (As We Know It)" (Cicada Books, 2025) 42:24

3d ago42:24

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Ziggy Hanaor is the director of Cicada Books, a boutique children’s publishing company. She has also written nine books including Fly Flies, Alex and Alex and The Pocket Chaotic, which have won awards and have been translated into over 20 languages. In our conversation we celebrate her new book about the history of the universe and us, entitled, Li…

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Yunxiang Gao, "Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2021) 56:08

3d ago56:08

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Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies during World War II an…

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Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo, "Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century" (Manchester UP, 2021) 55:01

3d ago55:01

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In her new book Madrid on the Move: Feeling Modern and Visually Aware in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester UP, 2021), Vanesa Rodríguez-Galindo explains how the modernization of this great city shaped and was shaped by print media and mass culture. A growing population, industrial immigration, mass connection with the wider world (making it both sm…

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Shoshana Walter, "Rehab: An American Scandal" (Simon and Schuster, 2025) 40:35

3d ago40:35

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In Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon and Schuster, 2025), Pulitzer finalist Shoshana Walter exposes the country’s failed response to the opioid crisis, and the malfeasance, corruption, and snake oil which blight the drug rehabilitation industry. Our country’s leaders all seem to agree: People who suffer from addiction need treatment. Today, more pe…

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Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 49:05

3d ago49:05

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In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how medical students become medical doctors. She ethnographically tracks their engagements with one another, interactions with patients, experience…

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

3d ago43:07

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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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Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019) 1:09:41

3d ago1:09:41

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Disease is a social issue and not just a medical one. This is the central tenet underlying The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (Utah State University Press 2019) by Andrea Kitta, Associate Professor in the English department at East Carolina University, examines the discourses and metaphors of contagion and contamination in ve…

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E. Alaverdov and M. W. Bari, "Cultural Heritage Protection and Restoration in Conflict and Post-Conflict Zones" (IGI Global, 2025) 38:18

3d ago38:18

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The protection and restoration of cultural heritage is essential, especially in conflict and post-conflict zones. Armed conflicts frequently result in the destruction or collateral damage of cultural landmarks, artifacts, and traditions. In post-conflict recovery, preserving cultural heritage is not only a matter of historical conservation but help…

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Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021) 48:04

3d ago48:04

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Today’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University Press, 2021). Jenny is Professor in both New York University’s English Department and the Gallatin School, and her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She …

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Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025) 46:45

4d ago46:45

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How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play in how we belong to places? Atmospheric Knowledge takes up these questions through detailed analyses of practices that generate atmospheres and in which knowledge emerges through visceral intermingling…

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Stephen Yuille ed., "The Works of John Cotton, Volumes 1-5" (Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2025) 45:00

4d ago45:00

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This episode features Dr. J. Stephen Yuille, Professor of Church History and Spiritual Formation at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Director of Puritan Publishing at Reformation Heritage Books. Yuille shares with the NBN about his new five-volume edition of The Works of John Cotton (Soli Deo Gloria, 2025). John Cotton (1585–1652) was …

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Marcus Chown, "A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage" (Apollo, 2025) 1:17:58

4d ago1:17:58

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What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: black holes. A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life. Unable to generate enough…

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13.4 - Zumretay Arkin 1:01:13

4d ago1:01:13

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In this episode, Chella Ward and Claudia Radiven were in conversation with Zumretay Arkin, discussing the Uyghur genocide in East Turkestan. Zumretay is Chair of the Women’s Committee at the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). The WUC is an international organization acting as an umbrella organization representing and advocating for Uyghurs around the wor…

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David T. Beito, "FDR: A New Political Life" (Open Universe, 2025) 32:24

4d ago32:24

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David Beito's new book brings to bear the latest historical scholarship to shed light on the life and achievements of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Professor Beito traces the irresistible political rise of Roosevelt, a scion of inherited wealth who never posed as a man of the people but was always perceived as a genial aristocrat. As well as eyebrow-r…

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Julie Fette, "Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature" (Routledge, 2025) 41:30

4d ago41:30

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Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (Routledge, 2025) investigates the gender representations that French children's literature transmits to readers today. Using an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, this book grounds its literary analysis in a sociohistorical examination of three key institutions – libraries, book…

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

4d ago59:44

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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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Naomi Baker, "Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century" (Reaktion Books, 2025) 50:34

4d ago50:34

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Naomi Bakes joins Jana Byars to talk about Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century (Reaktion Books, 2025), a book that explores the stories of early modern Protestant women, including Rose Thurgood, Anna Trapnel, and Jane Lead, who defied the religious authority of their age. Voices of Thunder illuminates the stories a…

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Celebrating University Press Week 2025 with President Dennis Lloyd 41:43

5d ago41:43

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Every year, NBN speaks with the president of AUPresses in anticipation of University Press Week. This year, press week will take place from November 10 through the 14th, with the theme: #TeamUP. To celebrate, I’m thrilled to have Dennis Lloyd, director of the University of Wisconsin Press, and president of the Association of University Presses, on …