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96 Lorraine Daston Rules the World (EF, JP)
Historian of science Lorraine Daston‘s wonderful new book, Rules: A Short History of What We Live By is just out from Princeton University Press. Daston’s earlier pathbreaking works include Against...
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97* Lorraine Daston Books In Dark Times (JP)
Our Books in Dark Times series offered John this 2021 chance to speak with Lorraine Daston of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her list of publications outstrips our capacity to...
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98 Horton’s Cosmic Zoom Room (EF, JP)
Today we welcome Zachary Horton, Associate Professor of Literature and director of the Vibrant Media Lab at University of Pittsburgh; game designer, filmmaker and camera designer. Out of all these...
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99* Gael McGill Visualizes Data (JP)
What’s a picture worth? How about the picture that allows scientists to grasp what’s actually going on in a cell–or on the spiky outside of an invading virus? Gael McGill, Director of Molecular...
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100 Nuclear Ghosts: Ryo Morimoto (EF, JP)
John and Elizabeth explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His new book Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima’s Grey Zone is...
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101* Chris Walley on Deindustrialization (EF, JP)
On a blustery fall morning back in 2019, RTB welcomed Christine Walley, anthropologist and author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. In the early 1980s Chris’s father, along...
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102 Sassan Tabatabai: poetry, observation, and form (EF, JP)
“For me, there is something so solid and comforting in stone” says Sassan Tabatabai in our conversation, and in his poem “Firestones” the words roll, weigh and satisfyingly click together....
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103* Elizabeth Bradfield in Dark Times (JP)
For the RtB Books in Dark Times series back in 2021, John spoke with Elizabeth Bradfied, editor of Broadsided Press, poet, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer. Her...
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104 Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada: Journalistic Collaboration (JP)
Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of concussion trauma, League of Denial. This...
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105* David Plotz: Books in Dark Times (JP)
Aside from being John’s (younger, suaver and beardier) brother, what has the inimitable David Plotz done lately? Only hosted “The Slate Political Gabfest“, written two books (“The Genius Factory” and...
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106 Musical Collaboration: Francisco del Pino (JP)
Francisco del Pino is a widely celebrated composer from Buenos Aires, and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. John fell in love with his music (during his own...
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107* Electro-Library with Jared Green (EF, JP)
Way back in 2019, Elizabeth and John were already thinking about collaboration. Here they speak with Jared Green and explore The Electro-Library, a podcast he co-created. Elizabeth, Jared and John...
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108* Desan on Making Money (Recall This Buck )
Our Recall this Buck series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. We...
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109* Recall This Buck with Thomas Piketty (JP, Adaner)
Is Thomas Piketty the world’s most famous economic historian ? A superstar enemy of plutocratic capitalism who wrote a pathbreaking bestseller, Capital in the 21st Century? Or simply a debonair and...
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110* Novel Dialogue: Joshua Cohen (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
In this episode (originally aired by our partner Novel Dialogue) John and his Brandeis colleague Eugene Sheppard speak with Joshua Cohen about The Netanyahus. Is the 2021 novel a Pulitzer-winning...
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111* Samuel R Delany, Nevèrÿon and beyond (JP)
. John Plotz talked with Samuel Delany, living legend of science fiction and fantasy back in 2019. You probably know him best for breakthrough novels like Dhalgren and Trouble on Triton, which went...
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112 Earthsea, and other realms: Ursula Le Guin as social inactivist (EF, JP,...
To mark the publication of John’s book Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea (My Reading), with Oxford University Press, John and Elizabeth take to the airways to share their love of Le Guin’s “speculative...
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113* David Cunningham, January 6th and Asymmetrical Policing (JP, EF)
Recall This Book first heard from the sociologist of American racism David Cunningham in Episode 36 Policing and White Power. Less than a week after the horrors of January 6th, 2021, he came back for...
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114 John Guillory Professes Criticism (JP, Nick Dames)
John Guillory (NYU English author of the pathbreaking Cultural Capital) visits RTB to discuss Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (2022, Chicago). He speaks with John...
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115* Sanjay Krishnan on V. S. Naipaul: To make the Deformation the Formation...
“My subject was not my inward self, but…the worlds within me.” John spoke in 2020 with Sanjay Krishnan, Boston University English professor and Conrad scholar. The topic? His marvelous new book about...
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