Best M. R. Wilson Podcasts (2025)

1
Peter Boxall, "The Possibility of Literature: The Novel and the Politics of Form" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:11:35

9m ago1:11:35

1:11:35

The Possibility of Literature: The Novel and the Politics of Form (Cambridge University Press, 2024) is a collection of Peter Boxall's essays over twenty years, the earliest from 1996. These essays cover a vast timespan, from the 17th century to contemporary times; a multiplicity of authors ranging from canonical, such as Cervantes, to underappreci…

1
Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 49:39

9m ago49:39

49:39

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusi…

1
Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3) 40:45

3m ago40:45

40:45

In the third podcast of this series, “Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds,” host Dr. Karyne Messina, psychologist, psychoanalyst and author talked about the problems that can emerge in Erik Erikson’s Identity versus Identity Diffusion stage of development along with Dr. Harry Gill, a psychiatrist who has a PhD in neuroscience. The two…

1
Stephanie M. Pridgeon, "Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas" (U Toronto Press, 2025) 57:12

3m ago57:12

57:12

In Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas (U Toronto Press, 2025), Stephanie M. Pridgeon explores cultural depictions of Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity within a comparative, inter-American framework. The dynamics of Jewishness interacting with other racial categories differ si…

1
Peter Wien, "Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East" (Routledge, 2017) 49:11

3m ago49:11

49:11

Arab nationalism has been one of the dominant ideologies in the Middle East and North Africa since the early twentieth century. However, a clear definition of Arab nationalism, even as a subject of scholarly inquiry, does not yet exist. Peter Wien’s Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (Routledge, 2017) sh…

1
Xian Wang, "Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs" (U Michigan Press, 2025) 1:03:06

11h ago1:03:06

1:03:06

Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (U Michigan Press, 2025) takes readers on a journey through the lives and legacies of Chinese female revolutionary martyrs, revealing how their sacrifices have been remembered, commemorated, and manipulated throughout history. This innovative book blends h…

1
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024) 56:51

5h ago56:51

56:51

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London. Officials d…

1
Emine Ö Evered, "Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity" (U Texas Press, 2024) 56:25

3m ago56:25

56:25

Historian Emine Ö. Evered’s Prohibition in Turkey: Alcohol and the Politics of Identity (University of Texas Press, 2024) investigates the history of alcohol, its consumption, and its proscription as a means to better understand events and agendas of the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican eras. Through a comprehensive examination of archival…

1
Janet Sherfund, "Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me" (Worth, 2024) 48:42

11h ago48:42

48:42

Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience displacement and rupture from their mother and that trauma can impact an individual for a lifetime. Adoption can lead to feelings of loss and grief not just for the adoptee, but for the biolog…

1
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker 55:37

5m ago55:37

55:37

Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker editor Katharine S. White. White helped build the magazine’s prestigious legacy and transform the 20th century literary landscape for women. In the sum…

1
The Anxious Generation: A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt 57:13

3m ago57:13

57:13

In this episode of Madison's Notes, Jonathan Haidt, renowned social psychologist and author, dives deep into the impact of digital saturation on today's youth, drawing insights from his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Allen Lane, 2024). The discussion explores how gr…

1
Lori A. Flores, "Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19" (UNC Press, 2025) 1:19:45

1d ago1:19:45

1:19:45

Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with Latinx people, including the largely underpaid and migrant workers who harvest, process, cook, and sell this desirable food. In Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War I…

1
Kathryn Taylor, "Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice" (U Delaware Press, 2023) 43:33

1d ago43:33

43:33

Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice (University of Delaware Press, 2023) explores how Renaissance Venetians sought to make sense of human difference in a period characterized by increasing global contact and a rapid acceleration of the circulation of information. Venice was at the center of both these developments. The boo…

1
Janna Brooke Wallack, "Naked Girl" (2024) 27:30

1h ago27:30

27:30

After their mother dies, Jackson Jones is too busy selling drugs and bedding young women to pay attention to his two motherless children. Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha grow up in a Miami Beach mansion without schools, doctors, or attention. It’s the 1980s and their dad uses the mansion, with its dock on the water, as a base for his drug …

1
Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023) 1:07:26

1h ago1:07:26

1:07:26

Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American college…

1
Elyse Durham, "Maya & Natasha" (Mariner Books, 2025) 33:36

1d ago33:36

33:36

As Nazi tanks roll toward Leningrad in August 1941, an unmarried nineteen-year-old ballerina gives birth to twin girls in the soon-to-be besieged city. Bereft of hope, the dancer—once a rising star at the Kirov—slashes her wrists, but her babies survive, rescued by the devoted friend who arrives just too late to save their mother. The friend, too, …

1
Vivian Kirkfield, "One Girl's Voice: How Lucy Stone Helped Change the Law of the Land" (Calkins Creek, 2025) 54:56

1d ago54:56

54:56

In this, our second interview I speak with award-winning children's author Vivian Kirkfield about her gorgeous, brand new picture book, One Girl's Voice: How Lucy Stone Helped Change the Law of the Land (Calkin's Creek, Feb. 2025, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon). We talk about the life and pioneering career of Lucy Stone, how the book came about, an…

1
Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024) 1:22:24

1d ago1:22:24

1:22:24

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government auster…

1
Trump, Anti-DEI and Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms 47:14

1h ago47:14

47:14

In this episode my co-host and I had planned to talk about how the new Trump administration could create unity in America. The episode title had been, “Starting with a Clean Slate: How the Trump administration could create unity in America.” By starting anew, without a political agenda, we intended to explore how a new sense of community and pride …

1
Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025) 28:52

1d ago28:52

28:52

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, this wasn’t always the case. Though for most of world history your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could fi…

1
Aidan McGarry, "Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:00:36

1h ago1:00:36

1:00:36

In Political Voice: Protest, Democracy, and Marginalised Groups (Oxford UP, 2024), Aidan McGarry examines the agency of marginalised people, emphasizing the processes through which different communities around the world articulate their political voices. McGarry develops an innovative concept of political voice around three elements: autonomy, repr…

1
Ray Brescia, "The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2025) 58:47

2d ago58:47

58:47

As Americans increasingly depend upon their phones, computers, and internet resources, their actions are less private than they believe. Data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell something, political actors who want to analyze behavior, and law enforcement who seek to monitor and limit actions. In The Private is Political: I…

1
Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech 1:24:52

1d ago1:24:52

1:24:52

British poet John Milton published one of the earliest and still tremendously important defenses of free speech for our modern world. From his famous pamphlet Areopagitca (1644) to Paradise Lost (1667), Milton participated in debates regarding censorship and the right of the public to access the inner workings of Parliamentary politics. I spoke wit…

1
Mary Frances Phillips, "Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins" (NYU Press, 2025) 38:49

2d ago38:49

38:49

In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party member, as well as a mother, widow, educator, poet, and former political prisoner. In 1969, the police arrested Ericka Huggins along with Bobby Seale and fellow Black Panther Party members, who were accuse…

1
Arthur Jan Keefer, "Proverbs 1-9 as an Introduction to the Book of Proverbs" (Bloomsbury, 2020) 25:45

1d ago25:45

25:45

How does Proverbs 1-9 function as a prologue or introduction to Proverbs 10-31? Arthur Keefer argues that Proverbs 1-9 teaches interpretive skills for explaining Proverbs 10-31 by instilling the competence required to understand this material. Join as we talk with Arthur Keefer about his book Proverbs 1-9 as an Introduction to the Book of Proverbs …

1
Carl Waitz, "Youth Mental Health Crises and the Broken Social Link: A Freudian-Lacanian Perspective" (Routledge, 2024) 1:18:51

2d ago1:18:51

1:18:51

Today I spoke to Dr. Carl Waitz about his new book Youth Mental Health Crises and the Broken Social Link: A Freudian-Lacanian Perspective (Routledge, 2024). “The kids are not ok” blurbs Patricia Gherovici in her endorsement of Dr. Waitz’ necessary new book. We know this. On the weekend we recorded this interview (February 9, 2025) the New York Time…

1
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023) 1:01:34

2d ago1:01:34

1:01:34

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They ar…

1
Samar Al-Bulushi, "War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:08:44

2d ago1:08:44

1:08:44

Since Kenya's invasion of Somalia in 2011, the Kenyan state has been engaged in direct combat with the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, conducting airstrikes in southern Somalia and deploying heavy-handed police tactics at home. As the hunt for suspects has expanded within Kenya, Kenyan Muslims have been subject to disappearances and extrajudicial…

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