Best The Modern Classrooms Project Podcasts (2025)

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Episode 258: Student Perspective (HS) 58:02

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16h ago58:02

58:02

Zach is joined by three of his students, Hansi, Ian, and Kennedy, to talk about their experiences in his class, both when they had his class in Middle School and, currently, in 10th and 11th grades. Show Notes Radiohead Ezra Weisz Miraculous Ladybug Zach's tracker template DCI's student podcast, The Lair (check back here after 12/10/2025 to hear Ha…

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Claire Parnell, "Inequalities of Platform Publishing: The Promise and Peril of Self-Publishing in the Digital Book Era" (U Massachusetts Press, 2025 44:39

20h ago44:39

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The average reader need not go far in a bookstore before, knowingly or not, they encounter authors who started their careers by self-publishing prior to achieving commercial success. Examples include Margaret Atwood, Andy Weir, Colleen Hoover, Anna Todd, E. L. James, Scarlett St. Clair, and many more. Such stories of self-made writers are compellin…

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J.D. Sargan, "Trans Histories of the Medieval Book: An Experiment in Bibliography" (Arc Humanities Press, 2025) 58:04

20h ago58:04

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Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the communities that make them. For most of western history queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people were excluded from such communities. Premodern trans experiences went largely unreported and re…

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Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025) 1:09:35

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I’m excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2019); Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Cut Time: An Edu…

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Michal A. Piegzik, "Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway" (Naval Institute Press, 2025) 53:34

20h ago53:34

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Driven by extensive Japanese primary sources, Gamble in the Coral Sea: Japan's Offensive, the Carrier Battle, and the Road to Midway (Naval Institute Press, 2025) offers an operational analysis of the first clash of aircraft carriers at the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea from the Japanese perspective, including leadership, tactics, and errors that…

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Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 1:03:38

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Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy (U Georgia Press, 2025) by Dr. Beau Cleland recenters our understanding of the Civil War by framing it as a hemispheric affair, deeply influenced by the actions of a network of private parties and minor officials in the Confederacy and Britis…

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José Blanco F. and Raúl J. Vázquez-López, "Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 1:00:14

19h ago1:00:14

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Analyzing dress, costume, and fashion in Puerto Rico, Dress, Fashion, and National Identity in Puerto Rico: Taínos to Beauty Queens (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. José Blanco F. & Raúl J. Vázquez-López utilizes case studies that explore national identity and nation formation as well as past and current practices in Puerto Rican visual culture. As the la…

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Gregory S. Wilson, "Poison Powder: The Kepone Disaster in Virginia and Its Legacy" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:09:48

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In 1975 workers at Life Science Products, a small makeshift pesticide factory in Hopewell, Virginia, became ill after exposure to Kepone, the brand name for the pesticide chlordecone. They made the poison under contract for a much larger Hopewell company, Allied Chemical. Life Science workers had been breathing in the dust for more than a year. Ing…

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Dylan Taylor-Lehman, "Going Rackless: Chicago’s Amateur Pool Players and the Quest for Glory in the Biggest Tournament in the World" (3 Fields Books, 2025) 36:33

20h ago36:33

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Playing every angle for a shot at the big time, Chicagoans venture to area pool halls to perfect their games and navigate league play for a shot at the APA World Pool Championships in Las Vegas. In Going Rackless: Chicago’s Amateur Pool Players and the Quest for Glory in the Biggest Tournament in the World (3 Fields Books, 2025) Dylan Taylor-Lehman…

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The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies 53:00

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This week on Democracy Dialogues, co-hosts Rachel Beatty Riedl and Esam Boraey speak with Susan C. Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. Drawing from her book The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies (P…

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Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024) 1:04:36

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Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization (Routledge, 2024)n discusses the place of creative village policy in the revitalization of rural Japan, highlighting how rural Japan is moving from a state of regional extinction…

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The Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, "The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 50:31

2d ago50:31

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The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice (Rutgers UP, 2025) brings together essays that examine reproductive health through historical research and personal experience. Featuring both new and classic pieces from the Nursing Clio blog, leading historians of reproductive health, librarians, archivists, public health profes…

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Andrew Fadyen-Ketchum, "Fight or Flight" (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2023) 57:11

2d ago57:11

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Andrew Fadyen-Ketchum about his poetry collection, Fight or Flight (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2023). Fight or Flight artifacts the trauma of McFadyen-Ketchum's divorce and the journey he took across the wilds of America (living in a tent on the California coast, getting intentionally lost in the…

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Philip Janzen, "An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean" (Duke UP, 2025) 55:50

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In An Unformed Map: Geographies of Belonging Between Africa and the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2025), Philip Janzen traces the intellectual trajectories of Caribbean people who joined the British and French colonial administrations in Africa between 1890 and 1930. Caribbean administrators grew up in colonial societies, saw themselves as British and French…

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Melanie McDonagh, "Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century" (Yale UP, 2025) 52:12

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The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism became an intellectual and spiritual fashion attracting more than half a million converts, including fascinating artists, writers, and thinkers…

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Gwyneth Mellinger, "Racializing Objectivity: How the White Southern Press Used Journalism Standards to Defend Jim Crow" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 24:46

2d ago24:46

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“When the civil rights movement began to challenge Jim Crow laws, the white southern press reframed the coverage of racism and segregation as a debate over journalism standards. Many white southern editors, for instance, designated Black Americans as “Negro” in news stories, claiming it was necessary for accuracy and “objectivity,” even as white su…

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Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh, "Journalism and Gender: Global Perspectives" (Routledge, 2025) 51:20

2d ago51:20

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In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh about her new book Journalism and Gender: Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2025). They discuss how gender continues to shape who produces the news, how stories are told, and whose voices are amplified or silenced in the global media landscape. Drawing on inter…

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Henry Rausch, "Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War" (Independently Published, 2024) 56:44

2d ago56:44

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In Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War (Independently Published, 2024), the author graduates from an elite university and enters the submarine service in the mid-1980s when rhetoric between the US and USSR threatens to turn the Cold War hot. He encounters an unforgiving world where submarines hunt each other …

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Ayoush Lazikani, "The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing" (Yale UP, 2025) 37:16

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When they gazed at the moon, medieval people around the globe saw an object that was at once powerful and fragile, distant and intimate—and sometimes all this at once. The moon could convey love, beauty, and gentleness; but it could also be about pain, hatred, and violence. In its circularity the moon was associated with fullness and fertility. Yet…

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Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025) 55:52

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What good is aesthetics in a time of ecological crisis? Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France (Northwestern UP, 2025) shows that philosophical aesthetics contains unheeded potentialities for challenging the ontological subjection of nature to the human subject. Drawing on deconstructive, ecologi…

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Éléna Choquette, "Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expansion" (UBC Press, 2024) 1:00:14

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In 1867, Canada was a small country flanking the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, but within a few years its claims to sovereignty spanned the continent. With Confederation had come the vaunting ambition to create an empire from sea to sea. How did Canada lay claim to so much land so quickly? Land and the Liberal Project: Canada’s Violent Expans…

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

3d ago54:44

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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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Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis, "Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022) 56:06

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Life is full of paradoxes. How can we each express our individuality while also being a team player? How do we balance work and life? How can we improve diversity while promoting opportunities for all? How can we manage the core business while innovating for the future? For many of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict…

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Grace Kessler Overbeke, "First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll" (NYU Press, 2024) 44:12

3d ago44:12

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Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all. First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll (NYU Press, 2024) tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics su…

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Adam Silverstein, "Haman" (Princeton UP, 2025) 37:32

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Haman, infamous as the antagonist in the book of Esther, appears as a villainous figure in virtually all varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this “biography” of Haman (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. Adam Silverstein traces the evolution of this villainous character from the ancient Near East to modern times, drawing on sources in a variety …

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Pluribus Episodes 4&5 Analysis: We Need a Little Space 51:41

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we analyze the fourth and fifth episodes of Vince Gilligan’s new series Pluribus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-networkBy New Books

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Shawkat M. Toorawa, "The Devotional Qur'an: Beloved Surahs and Verses" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:00:42

3d ago1:00:42

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The Devotional Qur'an: Beloved Surahs and Verses (Yale UP, 2025) is a beautifully curated and translated collection of the Qur'anic surahs and verses that are most cherished and memorized by Muslims the world over. Muslim devotional practices vary greatly over time and across regions, communities, and denominations, but they share core Qur'anic sur…

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

3d ago52:01

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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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Radio ReOrient 13.8: Anticolonial Legacies of Bandung, with Adnan Husain, Rabab Abdulhadi, and Salman Sayyid 1:39:40

3d ago1:39:40

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Adnan Husain (Queen's, Canada) is joined by Salman Sayyid (Leeds) and Rabab Abdulhadi (San Francisco State) in this episode to discuss the Bandung Conference of 1955 in the year of its seventieth anniversary. This conference brought together leaders of states that had only recently decolonised, and was an important moment of Global South solidarity…