New Books in Politics and Polemics

Feb 04 2025 1485 ep. 54 mins 821

New Books in Politics and Polemics Podcast artwork

Interviews with Authors of Politics and Polemics about their New Books

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Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

Feb 04 2025 59 mins

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberhaus tells the inside story of how t

Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Feb 04 2025 67 mins

Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a new political world. His impact on humanitarianism, the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of America is immense. Yet we give Julius Caesar all our attention. Why? What does this say about modern politics and political culture? This b

Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)

Feb 01 2025 65 mins

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being championed as forces for good and as solutions to the complex challenges of the aid sector. Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful (Polity, 2024) argues, however, that digital innovation engenders new forms of vi

Eugene Finkel, "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine" (Basic Books, 2024)

Jan 29 2025 36 mins

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign to divide and oppress Ukraine. In Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (Basic Books, 2024), political scientist Eugene Finkel uncovers these deep roots of the R

Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 28 2025 56 mins

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across the Western world. How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA (Oxford UP, 2024) shows how they have used their political power to reform economic and social policies in Continental Europe, Northern Eu

142* Greg Childs on Seditious Conspiracy (EF, JP)

Jan 23 2025 34 mins

What a difference four years makes. Back in February 2021, still struggling to understand what had just happened at the Capitol, John and Elizabeth spoke with Brandeis historian Greg Childs. He is an expert in Latin American political movements and public space; his Seditious Spaces: Race, Freedom, and the 1798 Conspiracy in Bahia, Brazil is imminently forthcoming from Cambridge UP

Andy Wightman, "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it" (Birlinn, 2025)

Jan 22 2025 57 mins

Who owns Scotland? How did they get it? What happened to all the common land in Scotland? Has the Scottish Parliament made any difference? Can we get our common good land back? In this updated edition of The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it (Birlinn, 2024), Andy Wightman updates the statistics of landownership in Scotland and explores how and why landowner

Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin. "Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum" (NYU Press, 2024)

Jan 20 2025 41 mins

How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence. Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerful testimony from women who have sought asylum in the United States because of severe assaults and death threats by intimate partners and/or gang members, Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum (NYU Press,

Brigid Schulte, "Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life" (Henry Holt, 2024)

Jan 20 2025 63 mins

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America's quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more m

August H. Nimtz and Kyle A. Edwards, "The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution" (Brill, 2024)

Jan 17 2025 102 mins

The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest and urgency to questions of racial oppression and emancipation. We’ve now had about a decade of activists fighting for the idea that Black Lives Matter which eventually culminated in the summer of 2020 with millions taking to the streets. The actual concrete victories have been more of a mixed bag, which leads us to the question: