Episodes

  • Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Jun 16 2025
    A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond, (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism.In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.You can download the supplementary materials here. Other works recommended by Brook Ziporyn in this Interview Mercedes Valmisa, All Things Act, Oxford UP. Jana S. Rošker, Chinese Philosophy in Transcultural Contexts, Bloomsbury Academics Gregory Scott Moss, Absolute Dialetheism, forthcoming. But for a taste of a similar argument in a book chapter format, please check here. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Whiat is Intelligence? Penguin Random House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    2 hrs and 8 mins
  • Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
    Jun 15 2025
    Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, but Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures. Yet his ideas are the most relevant today because of capitalism’s centrality to American life.In historian Andrew Hartman argues that even though Karl Marx never visited America, the country has been infused, shaped, and transformed by him. Since the beginning of the Civil War, Marx has been a specter in the American machine. During the Gilded Age, socialists read Marx as an antidote to the unchecked power of corporations. In the Great Depression, communists turned to Marx in hopes of transcending the destructive capitalist economy. The young activists of the 1960s were inspired by Marx as they gathered to protest an overseas war. Marx’s influence today is evident, too, as Americans have become increasingly attuned to issues of inequality, labor, and power.After decades of being pushed to the far-left corner of intellectual thought, Marx’s ideologies have crossed over into the mainstream and are more alive than ever. Working-class consciousness is on the rise, and, as Marx argued, the future of a capitalist society rests in the hands of the people who work at the point of production. A valuable resource for anyone interested in Marx’s influence on American political discourse, Karl Marx in America is a thought-provoking account of the past, present, and future of his philosophies in American society. Andrew Hartman is professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, published by the University of Chicago Press, and Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School. He is also the coeditor of American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Maraam A. Dwidar, "Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

    Maraam A. Dwidar, "Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
    Jun 13 2025
    A vital examination of how social and economic justice organizations overcome resource disadvantages and build political power. Why do some coalitions triumph while others fall short? In Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy, Maraam A. Dwidar documents the vital role of social and economic justice organizations in American politics and explores the process by which they strategically build partnerships to advance more effective and equitable advocacy. Using original data tracking the collaboration patterns of more than twenty thousand nationally active advocacy organizations, Dwidar evaluates the micro- and macro-level conditions surrounding these groups' successful efforts to collectively shape public policy. Power to the Partners reveals that while organizational advocates for social and economic justice are at a disadvantage in the American lobbying landscape--financially, tactically, and politically--coalition tactics can help ameliorate these disparities. By building and sustaining coalitions with structures and memberships that facilitate clarity, learning, and diverse perspectives, these advocates can successfully--and uniquely--make their mark on American public policy. Dwidar's work offers critical insights for scholars and practitioners alike--from groundbreaking academic findings to evidence-based lessons for political organizers. Maraam A. Dwidar an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    30 mins
  • Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

    Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
    Jun 2 2025
    HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things. It accelerated both trends. While pestilence and disease are generally considered the domain of biological sciences and medicine, social arrangements—and law in particular—are also crucial. Drawing on years of research in HIV clinics in the United States, Thailand, South Africa, and Uganda, Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Carol Heimer examines how growing norms of legalized accountability have altered the work of healthcare systems and how the effects of legalization vary across different national contexts. A key feature of legalism is universalistic language, but, in practice, rules are usually imported from richer countries (especially the United States) to poorer ones that have less adequate infrastructure and fewer resources with which to implement them. Challenging readers to reconsider the impulse to use law to organize and govern social life, Governing the Global Clinic poses difficult questions: When do rules solve problems, and when do they create new problems? When do rules become decoupled from ethics, and when do they lead to deeper moral commitments? When do rules reduce inequality? And when do they reflect, reproduce, and even amplify inequality? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    May 22 2025
    The first book to combine exquisite cartographical charts of the Moon with a thorough exploration of the Moon’s role in popular culture, science, and myth. President John F. Kennedy’s rousing “We will go to the Moon” speech in 1961 before the US Congress catalyzed the celebrated Apollo program, spurring the US Geological Survey’s scientists to map the Moon. Over the next eleven years a team of twenty-two, including a dozen illustrator-cartographers, created forty-four charts that forever changed the path of space exploration.For the first time, each of those beautifully hand-drawn, colorful charts is presented together in one stunning book. In Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter (U Chicago Press, 2024), National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell’s expert commentary accompanies each chart, along with the key geological characteristics and interpretations that were set out in the original Geologic Atlas of the Moon. Interwoven throughout the book are contributions from scholars devoted to studying the multifaceted significance of the Moon to humankind around the world. Traveling from the Stone Age to the present day, they explore a wide range of topics: the prehistoric lunar calendar; the role of the Moon in creation myths of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; the role of the Moon in astrology; the importance of the Moon in establishing an Earth-centered solar system; the association of the Moon with madness and the menstrual cycle; how the Moon governs the tides; and the use of the Moon in surrealist art.Combining a thoughtful retelling of the Moon’s cultural associations throughout history with the beautifully illustrated and scientifically accurate charting of its surface, Lunar is a stunning celebration of the Moon in all its guises. Gabriela Radulescu is a Guggenheim Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Gabriela holds a PhD in the history of science from the Technical University of Berlin. Her dissertation “A History of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI): Astronautics and Radio Astronomy Across the Iron Curtain (1956-1976)” examined the political origins and history of the scientific field known to this day as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

    Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
    May 16 2025
    Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (U Chicago Press, 2018), Nicole C. Nelson takes us inside an animal behavior genetics laboratory to examine how scientists create and manage the foundational knowledge of their field. Behavior genetics is a particularly challenging field for making a clear-cut case that mouse experiments work, because researchers believe that both the phenomena they are studying and the animal models they are using are complex. These assumptions of complexity change the nature of what laboratory work produces. Whereas historical and ethnographic studies traditionally portray the laboratory as a place where scientists control, simplify, and stabilize nature in the service of producing durable facts, the laboratory that emerges from Nelson's extensive interviews and fieldwork is a place where stable findings are always just out of reach. The ongoing work of managing precarious experimental systems means that researchers learn as much--if not more--about the impact of the environment on behavior as they do about genetics. Model Behavior offers a compelling portrait of life in a twenty-first-century laboratory, where partial, provisional answers to complex scientific questions are increasingly the norm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    29 mins
  • False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression

    False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression
    May 14 2025
    Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia. In this insightful conversation, Selgin unpacks the myths and realities of FDR’s New Deal through the lens of his book, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (University of Chicago Press, 2025). While the New Deal is often celebrated as a bold and successful response to the Great Depression, Selgin argues that many of its policies actually prolonged economic suffering—with unemployment remaining staggeringly high years later. Drawing on extensive historical and economic analysis, he separates the New Deal’s successes from its failures, examines the distinct roles of fiscal and monetary policy, and reveals the overlooked factor that truly ended the Great Depression (hint: it wasn’t just WWII). This episode challenges conventional narratives and offers crucial lessons for navigating future economic crises. Tune in for a nuanced discussion on why we must assess policy decisions carefully—learning from the past to build a more resilient future. Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr
  • Pollyanna Rhee, "Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    Pollyanna Rhee, "Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
    May 13 2025
    A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? In Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970 (U Chicago Press, 2025), Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city’s past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends. Pollyanna Rhee is assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and affiliate faculty in history, sustainable design, and theory and interpretive criticism. Twitter. Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    45 mins
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