Episodios

  • Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025)

    Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025)
    Apr 29 2025
    Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes, often unnecessarily. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology? In The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why (W.W. Norton, 2025), philosopher Jeff Sebo challenges us to include all potentially significant beings in our moral community, with transformative implications for our lives and societies. This book explores provocative case studies such as lawsuits over captive elephants and debates over factory-farmed insects, and compels us to consider future ethical quandaries, such as whether to send microbes to new planets, and whether to create virtual worlds filled with digital minds. Taking an expansive view of human responsibility, Sebo argues that building a positive future requires the shedding of human exceptionalism and radically rethinking our place in the world. Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. Kyle Johannsen is Sessional Faculty Member in the Department of Philosophy at Trent University. His most recent authored book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021). Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 5 m
  • Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

    Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
    Apr 28 2025
    Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this post-liberal climate, Russell Blackford asks whether liberalism is truly over. How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration (Bloomsbury, 2023) examines how Western liberal democracies became nations where traditional liberal principles of toleration (religious and otherwise), individual liberty and freedom of speech are frequently dismissed as outdated or twisted to support conservative policies. Blackford traces the lineage of liberalism from problems of toleration that emerged when Christianity triumphed in the late centuries of classical antiquity, with comparison to non-Western civilizations. The political and philosophical story culminates in the recent development – over the past 30 to 50 years – of post-liberal ideologies in the West. At each stage, Blackford discusses arguments for and against liberal principles, identifying why no argument to date has been totally successful in convincing opponents, while maintaining that liberalism's ideas and language are still worth saving. From campus wars over academic freedom to the Charlie Hebdo attack and the murder of Samuel Paty, this is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to understand the why, what and how of the post-liberal world. Russell Blackford is a philosopher, legal scholar, literary critic based at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of Freedom of Religion and the Secular State (2012), Humanity Enhanced (2014), The Mystery of Moral Authority (2016), and Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination (2017). In 2014, he was inducted as a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. 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. Twitter. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 21 m
  • Franck Billé, "Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity" (Duke UP, 2025)

    Franck Billé, "Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity" (Duke UP, 2025)
    Apr 27 2025
    In Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity (Duke UP, 2025), Franck Billé examines the conceptual link between the nation-state and the body, particularly the visceral and affective attachment to the state and the symbolic significance of its borders. Billé argues that corporeal analogies to the nation-state are not simply poetic or allegorical but reflect a genuine association of the individual body with the national outline—an identification greatly facilitated by the emergence of the national map. Billé charts the evolution of cartographic practices and the role that political maps have played in transforming notions of territorial sovereignty. He shows how states routinely and effectively mobilize corporeal narratives, such as framing territorial loss through metaphors of dismemberment and mutilation. Despite the current complexity of geopolitics and neoliberalism, Billé demonstrates that corporeality and bodily metaphors remain viscerally powerful because they offer a seemingly simple way to apprehend the abstract nature of the nation-state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    51 m
  • Mehrdad Alipour, "Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse" (Brill, 2024)

    Mehrdad Alipour, "Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse" (Brill, 2024)
    Apr 27 2025
    What does Islam, particularly Shīʿī Islam, really say about same-sex sexual relations? Can Islamic legal frameworks, rooted in centuries of jurisprudence, ever be used to imagine the possibility of an Islamically valid same-sex marriage? What terms and categories did pre-modern Islamic sources use to describe what we might now call “homosexuality,” and what is meant by the claim that “homosexuality,” as a form of identity, is a modern concept? Is the story of Lot in the Qur’an really about homosexuality? And crucially, what Islamic perspectives exist in response to the deeply homophobic statement “Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam,” published in May 2023 and endorsed by those who argue that Islam categorically rejects same-sex sexual relationships? In Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse (Brill, 2024), Mehrdad Alipour engages these urgent questions with intellectual rigor and legal precision. Alipour is a scholar of Iranian and Islamic studies whose work focuses on Islamic legal theory, Shi‘i thought, and the evolving discourse around sex, gender, and sexuality in both premodern and modern contexts. He earned his PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Exeter and received traditional training at the Seminary of Qom in Iran. He is currently based at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he leads the project Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Islamic Legal Tradition, exploring how intersex identities have been understood in Shi‘i legal texts from the 14th to early 20th centuries. Another publication of his, “Navigating Body Politics in Shiʿi Legal Tradition: Examining Sayyid Kāẓim al-Yazdī’s Account of Non-Binary Intersex,” is available online for free to all readers. Rather than offering a theological verdict or issuing new rulings in the book, Alipour turns to the internal tools of the Imāmī Shīʿī legal tradition—most notably, the method of ijtihād—to explore how scholars have historically interpreted and might yet reinterpret questions regarding sexual relations. Through a careful and brilliant analysis of Qur’anic verses, hadith traditions, legal principles, and rational argument, Alipour shows how the Shīʿī legal tradition contains interpretive possibilities that could speak to contemporary understandings of homosexuality as a consensual, identity-based, and egalitarian practice. As Alipour clarifies in our conversation, his study does not attempt to declare what Islamic law must say about same-sex relations, but rather to identify and expand the discursive spaces within which such a conversation can meaningfully take place. By using the very legal principles and interpretive strategies that have shaped Shīʿī jurisprudence across generations, he invites scholars and jurists to consider how Islamic legal thought might respond, faithfully and creatively, to modern realities. The book is a thoughtful and necessary contribution to ongoing debates on Islam, law, and sexual diversity. In our conversation today, Alipour walks us through the book’s key arguments and findings, highlights the significance of applying modern Imāmī ijtihādic principles to the question of same-sex relations, and outlines how core Islamic sources—the Qur’an, sunnah, reason (ʿaql), and consensus (ijmāʿ)—have been interpreted in relation to same-sex intimacy, with special attention to specific gaps in the story of Lot in the Qur’an. He also clarifies key premodern terms that are often cited by contemporary Muslim scholars as referring to homosexuality, unpacking their historical meanings and legal contexts. This here is my conversation with Mehrdad Alipour on his book, Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse (Brill, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 44 m
  • Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)

    Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)
    Apr 26 2025
    Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration. Why did these erstwhile foes end their schism and begin to make peace? In this riveting study, Udi Greenberg shows that ecumenism grew out of a shared desire to protect against perceived threats to Christian life. The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s (Harvard UP, 2025) overturns conventional wisdom about this revolutionary change by showing that the cause was not growing mutual tolerance but solidarity against the threats of socialism, feminism, and liberation movements. By working together Christians could defend their dominance in European life by maintaining and reinforcing the inequality inherent in Christian hierarchical order. Peacemaking between the confessions was accelerated by the rise of the Nazis, when Christian denominations debated their relations to each other and to nationalism, and was further pressed by the Cold War and decolonization, when Catholic and Protestant authorities formally declared each other "brethren in faith". Working together, Catholics and Protestants designed Europe's economic policies, regulated its sexual practices, and shaped postwar relationships with the Global South. This coalition of Christians has grown more cohesive over time as they leveraged their alliance to maintain influence across a politically fractured Europe. Related: Listen to the New Books Network interview with Udi Greenberg about The Weimar Century: German Emigres and the Ideological Foundation of the Cold War Author recommended reading: The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century by Dagmar Herzog Hosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 14 m
  • Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)

    Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)
    Apr 25 2025
    Christopher Harding’s The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millennia of Western encounters with Eastern culture, thought and religions. From Herodotus to Alan Watts, Harding profiles a range of engaging figures who have had a sometimes-overlooked impact on the way we in the West engage with and understand Asia. From the myths of antiquity through to the impact of the hippie movement, the book asks; ‘What is real? Who says? How should I live?’, and provides a wealth of historical analysis, anecdotal sketches and philosophical insight to explore how the Western and Eastern ways of thinking about these fundamental questions have intersected, conflicted with and complemented each other. Guest: Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian History at The University of Edinburgh. His previous books include The Japanese: A History in 20 Lives (2020) and Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present (2018). A frequent contributor to BBC Radio, he also writes the Illuminasia Substack. Host: Matt Fraser writes and podcasts for the Ill-Read Millennial. He lives in Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 10 m
  • Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)

    Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)
    Apr 24 2025
    In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words, and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books (Yale UP, 2022) explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated, revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more. Geoffrey Roberts is emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. A leading Soviet history expert, his many books include an award-winning biography of Zhukov, Stalin’s General, and the acclaimed Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    1 h y 21 m
  • Fernanda Gallo, "Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

    Fernanda Gallo, "Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
    Apr 23 2025
    Political Theorist Fernanda Gallo (Homerton College, University of Cambridge) has a fascinating new book, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900 (Cambridge UP, 2024), about how Georg Hegel’s philosophical thought made its way to Italy and how it was integrated into the various schools of thought within Italy. This is a fascinating exploration of the history of ideas, especially more recent thinking, tracing not only the ideas themselves, but the ways in which they were adapted by different theorists and cultural approaches. Gallo provides the reader with deep historical insights alongside the explication of complex theoretical understandings, noting how ideas travel across language, time, geography, and cultures. Gallo’s project here is to weave together history, politics, and ideas more fully to understand ideas in different spaces, providing a transnational perspective of Hegel’s thinking and how it evolved in other places, with other thinkers. Italy often finds itself the “forgotten stepchild” in political theory, even though it sits at the intersection of the global North and South, as well as the global East and global West, where ideas from different parts of the world intertwine with each other. The physical space where Italy is located provides this connectivity not only between geographical regions and ideas, but it is also where goods are exchanged alongside intellectual ideas. One of the key lines of interrogation in Hegel and Italian Political Thought is how Hegelian ideas were put into practice in different parts of Italy and what those ideas looked like in practice. For Italy, given the regional distinctions and the seven different states within the peninsula in the early 1800s, Hegel’s ideas contributed to a variety of paths towards nation and state building. Gallo examines the ways in which many of the Italian intellectuals during this period were also politicians involved in their respective states, and many of them looked towards Hegel’s considerations, mixing them with Italian culture, to rethink how Italy should be structured to function as a modern nation-state, or an array of states within the nation. Gallo and I have a great conversation about the interweaving of Hegel with Italian political thought. We also discuss the rise of the mafia in southern Italy during this period, and how this is connected to these broader ideas of the state’s monopoly on violence, issues of freedom and liberty, and how power and power vacuums contribute to the form of the state. This is a lively discussion of the history of ideas, the particular dimensions of Italy and Italian political thought and praxis, Hegel’s concepts that apply to the state, and what we can learn from how all of these components were woven together during the 19th century in the Mediterranean. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or find her at Bluesky @gorenlj.bsky.social. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
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    48 m
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