Shallow and quickly outdated Christian worship practices have left many searching for something with deeper roots. Many churches have rediscovered the importance of the sacraments, particularly the Lord's Supper. The number of churches that are observing more frequent communion continues to grow. What's lacking is guidance from the past on this iss…

“Almost every storyline we’re familiar with suggests that we should banish [darkness] as quickly as possible—because darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that nourishes lives, including our own.” According to Dark Sky International, 99% of people in the US live under the influence of skyglow. With each artific…

The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such things have made the larger picture challenging to assemble. Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England (Cambridge University Press, 2025) by Dr. Martha Bayless illuminates the merrier aspects o…

Lemai never forgets the humiliation of her teachers and the burning of books during the Cultural Revolution. She uses her position as a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai to find books, has one friend she can trust, and is tormented by her older brother. After being involved in the violence of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, she lose…

Everyday items found at the sites of atrocities possess a striking emotional force. Victims’ garments, broken glasses, wallets, shoes, and other such personal property that are recovered from places of death including concentration camps, mass graves, and prisons have become staples of memorial museums, exhibited to the public as material testimony…

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr Amy McHugh, an Academic Facilitator at the National Centre for Cultural Competence at the University of Sydney. Dr McHugh’s research focuses on the roles of technology and motivation in the continuous pursuit of cultural competence, and she facilitates workshops for both staff and students at the University of Sydney on t…

In this episode, Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with David Gordon White, a distinguished indologist and scholar of Tantra. Our conversation focuses on David’s most recent project tracing the transregional histories of spirits, gods, demons, and their associated rituals across Eurasia. Along the way, we dive into an intellectual conversation about do…

From award-winning poet Catherine Owen, a collection of poems about one woman’s journey from BC to a new life in Alberta, where she buys an old house and creates a new meaning of home. NBN host Hollay Ghadery and Catherine enjoy a lively conversation about poetry, community, and this new collection of poems. In search of stability and rootedness, i…

Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what socio-cultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshal…

For centuries before its "rebirth" as a spoken language, Hebrew writing was like a magical ship in a bottle that gradually changed design but never voyaged out into the world. Isolated, the ancient Hebrew ship was torpid because the language of the Bible was inadequate to represent modern life in Europe. Early modern speakers of Yiddish and German …

The author of Siddur from Its Sources has combed through the history of the Jewish prayer book to identify when each prayer was added. The results are presented with captivating visuals, including a digitally enhanced presentation of the first known manuscript for each prayer, some dating back thousands of years! There is intimate access to the sou…

On this episode, rural sociologist Dr. Irna Hofman explores how Tajikistan’s cotton fields illuminate shifting power dynamics in Central Asia, historically and in the present. She discusses how the Soviet Union once showcased cotton production to visiting delegations—particularly from Muslim-majority countries—as evidence of its development model. …

After the murder of George Floyd, the United States had the largest protests in the nation’s history. Other public and private responses included corporations, organizations, and communities making policies, issuing statements, and engaging in conversations. Some political science departments issued statements. My guests today are three political s…

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her co-authored book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Published in 2020, this book remains highly relevant for understanding American political beh…

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Eleni Kalantidou, Assistant Professor at the Queensland College of Art and Design, about the volume of essays, Design/Repair: Place, Practice, and Community (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), which Eleni co-edited with Abby Mellick Lopes, Alison Gill, Guy Keulemans, and Niklavs Rubenis. The volume examines bot…

The Library of Mistakes is a library located in Edinburgh, Scotland dedicated to financial and economic history. Russell Napier, the founder and keeper of the library is a professor at The Edinburgh Business School and investment manager. In this wide-ranging discussion, Russell discusses his work as a practitioner and a scholar of financial crises…

Dr. Karyne Messina, host of this series, and Dr. Felecia Powell-Williams, the co-host, talked about what happens when people can’t listen. They discussed events that occurred at the Annual Conference of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) that took place in San Francisco earlier this month and the half time show at Super Bowl 59. Dr. Pow…

This book is available open access here. The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazviita Chirimuuta argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the human brain to build models for their research purposes mislead us about how the brain actually works. The key issue, instead, i…

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we've been experiencing a revolution in the past few years, as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly common part of everyday life. Powerful AI tools are now integrated into our work, our schools, our creative industries, and our experiences of dating and companionship. This is a disorientating experience, one t…

Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically, the tale of Cage’s experience in that space has echoed through history, affecting our understanding of silence, sound, and the self. But what do we really know about what happened there? And what coul…

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming P…

Every Western since Stagecoach seems to have been touted as “about the western.” To what degree is that true for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, George Roy Hill’s 1969 contribution to the genre? Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about how the film wonderfully reminds its viewers why they love westerns as it also offers its more hip viewers a…

In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients. From this early example of tattooing as work, in Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024) Dr. Jami…

In the bustling heart of New York City, a young medical student’s life is tragically cut short, though her heart continues to beat, holding the promise of life for another. Detective Kirk Miner is called to the scene and quickly uncovers a chilling conspiracy involving organ donations and high-stakes crime. As the investigation unfolds, Miner reali…

The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the first comprehensive study of criminal speech in eighteenth-century New England, traces how the criminalization, prosecution, and punishment of speech offenses in Massachusetts helped to establish and le…

Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail (Cambridge UP, 2023) demonstrates that a major part of the answer lies in the transformation of its state. It shows how Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to…

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, including a heavily funded international population control campaign led by Planned Parenthood Federation …