New Books Network

Fiona Haines, a criminology professor studying corporate crime and industrial disasters, and Tim Connor, a law lecturer focused on corporate social and environmental harms, discuss non-judicial remedies for human rights. They explore field-level power dynamics, ten case studies from India and Indonesia, and why mechanism design alone fails. Conversation highlights empirical methods and real-world struggles in supply chains and mining.

Justin Cammy, a Yiddish scholar and literary historian; Lara Lempert, curator who conserved the Vilna manuscripts; Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, translator and Lithuania’s culture minister. They discuss the 2017 discovery of Sutzkever’s Ten Poems manuscript. Short readings and translations appear. Conversations cover conservation, manuscript materiality, translation challenges, and the project’s collaborative, cross-cultural significance.

Thea Riofrancos, Associate Professor of Political Science and expert on climate politics and resource extraction. She discusses why lithium is vital for decarbonization and the geopolitical maps of where it is produced. She explores social and environmental harms in places like Chile, European onshoring conflicts, and how communities organize resistance. Conversations end with governance fixes and demand-reduction strategies.

Casey Walker, novelist (Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA; forthcoming Mexicali), discusses his story “Islands” set at a tense lake house and the fraught relationships among three orphaned brothers. He recounts the story’s decade-long evolution, editorial reshaping that uncovered key scenes, and teasers about his historical novel Mexicali set on the US–Mexico border.

Rishi Rajpopat, Research Assistant Professor and author of Panini’s Perfect Rule, studies Pāṇini’s Ashtadhyayi and Sanskrit grammar. He explains the decades-long puzzle of conflicting rules. He proposes a reinterpretation that reads “later” as right-hand in the word. He walks through concrete derivations and contrasts Pāṇini’s rule-based system with modern machine-learning approaches.

Hosts unpack season five's Mars-as-utopia politics and whether a Martian revolt is brewing. They debate alternate 2012 politics, including an Al Gore presidency. The discovery of possible life on Titan prompts Fermi Paradox and Great Filter talk. Rights, citizenship, and refugee-like 'craters' on Mars get scrutiny. The conversation probes production choices, pacing, and the show’s optimistic human-centered vision.

Dr. Terence Keel, UCLA scholar of human biology, society, and African-American studies, examines how death investigators and records obscure in-custody deaths. He discusses origins of the book, barriers to autopsy and records access, reading autopsies against the grain, families forcing accountability, and the scale and suppression of police-related deaths.

Ruth Mandujano López, historian and author of Steamships Across the Pacific, studies Mexico’s trans-Pacific maritime ties, 1867–1914. She discusses voyage-centered storytelling, archival detective work across ports, migration and policy shifts, scientific and commercial trips, and how steamship routes reshaped mobility and networks between Mexico, China, and Japan.

Suzanne Newcombe, a sociologist of religion researching healing and epistemic pluralism, and Karen O'Brien-Kop, a humanities scholar of lived religion, discuss how diverse ways of knowing shaped COVID responses. They explore marginal traditions from Pentecostal nursing to Siddha medicine and online anti-vax worlds. Conversations cover code-switching between biomedical and spiritual logics, transnational flows, and why everyday religious reasoning matters for public health.

Cedric de Leon, Professor of Sociology and former union organizer, explores Black political leadership in U.S. labor history. He highlights tensions and debates that shaped interracial labor solidarity. Topics include Harlem radicals, the March on Washington’s labor roots, the National Negro Congress, cultural mobilization, and the Memphis sanitation strike.