Episodes

  • Marshall Poe on the New Books Network, Technology, and the Future of Academic Communication

    Marshall Poe on the New Books Network, Technology, and the Future of Academic Communication
    Jan 27 2025
    Peoples and Things host, Lee Vinsel, is joined by guest host and Peoples & Things producer, Joe Forte, Media Projects Manager with Virginia Tech Publishing, in interviewing Marshall Poe, the founder and editor of the New Books Network, the largest academic podcasting platform in the world. The trio discuss how the New Books Network came to be; how digital technologies open up new tools for academic work; changing media landscapes, including the recent bursting of a podcasting bubble; and the future of academic communication and publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 20 mins
  • Spacing Out with Dallas Taylor of 20,000 HZ

    Spacing Out with Dallas Taylor of 20,000 HZ
    Jan 27 2025
    Today we talk to Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I like to think our show sounds pretty good, but Twenty Thousand Hertz is next-level audio production, some of the very best in the podcasting business. And Dallas prides himself on making a podcast for absolutely everyone. As he told me, he tries to make a show that’s just as mainstream and approachable as a true crime show. We start off with a chat about Dallas’s background in music, how he entered the world of sound design, what inspired him to start the podcast, and how he was discovered by Roman Mars of the legendary design podcast 99% Invisible. Then we jump into the nuts and bolts of how he and his team make Twenty Thousand Hertz. Dallas was kind enough to share the stems for my favorite episode, titled “Space,” so we will do a Song Exploder-like anatomy of that episode before listening to the full episode in the second half of the show. Today’s show was edited by Craig Eley with additional help from Ravi Krishnaswami. Our Production Coordinator and transcriber is Jason Meggyesy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    50 mins
  • Taylor N. Carlson, "Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Taylor N. Carlson, "Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Jan 26 2025
    Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, in Through the Grapevine: Socially Transmitted Information and Distorted Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2024) Dr. Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    53 mins
  • Multilingual Crisis Communication

    Multilingual Crisis Communication
    Jan 21 2025
    In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Jia Li, Professor of Applied Sociolinguistics at Yunnan University, China. Tazin and Jia discuss crisis communication in a linguistically diverse world and a new book co-edited by Dr. Jia Li and Dr. Jie Zhang called Multilingual Crisis Communication: Insights from China (Routledge, 2024) that gives us insights into the lived experiences of linguistic minorities affected during the Covid-19 pandemic. Multilingual Crisis Communication is the first book to explore the lived experiences of linguistic minorities in crisis-affected settings in the Global South, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. China has been selected as a case of inquiry for multilingual crisis communication because of its high level of linguistic diversity. Taking up critical sociopolitical approaches, this book conceptualizes multilingual crisis communication from three dimensions: identifying communication barriers, engaging communication repertoires, and empowering communication justice. Comprising eight main chapters, along with an introduction and an epilogue, this edited book is divided into three parts in terms of the demographic and social conditions of linguistic minorities, as indigenous, migrant, and those with communicative disabilities. This book brings together a range of critical perspectives of sociolinguistic scholars, language teachers, and public health workers. Each team of authors includes at least one member of the research community with many years of field work experience, and some of them belong to ethnic minorities. These studies can generate new insights for enhancing the accessibility and effectiveness of multilingual crisis communication. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of multilingualism, intercultural communication, translation and interpreting studies, and public health policy. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    48 mins
  • Listening in the Afterlife of Data

    Listening in the Afterlife of Data
    Jan 20 2025
    If you walk into David Cecchetto‘s classroom, you might find people wearing audio devices that simulate hearing with a thousand-foot wide head. Or gadgets that swap their ears so that the left ear hears what the right should and vice versa. David is a media theorist who draws on his background as an artist/musician, to create what he calls “engagements,” strange sonic experiments that help him—and his students—understand the nature of our computer-driven lives. In this episode, we feature an extended chat with David about his recent book, Listening in the Afterlife of Data (Duke University Press). It’s a book about the eternal impossibility of communication and the texture of that impossibility in our current computer-mediated age. David says we live in the afterlife of data, by which he means we know that our data-driven representations of the world don’t really capture the reality of our inner or outer lives, and we know that algorithms perpetuate injustices of all sorts—and yet, we still live our lives as if we do believe in the data. And this is where his engagements come in, the sonic experiments that confront the distortions and fallacies and textures of a data-driven life. David Cecchetto is Professor of Critical Digital Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, he’s President of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He wrote the book Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism (2013) and he’s co-authored and edited several others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 22 mins
  • Melissa B. Reynolds, "Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Melissa B. Reynolds, "Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Jan 17 2025
    What do you do when you feel an itchy throat coming on? You probably head online, first to search for your symptoms and then to evaluate the information you found — just as ordinary 15th and 16th century English people would have sifted through information in their almanacs, medical recipe collections, and astrological tracts. As Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print (U Chicago Press, 2024) shows, ordinary English readers learned to assess and evaluate information through ordinary, everyday interactions with inexpensive and practical books. By tracing the creation, proliferation, and reading of such 'practical books,' Melissa Reynolds explores changing attitudes towards medicine and science as well as how readers navigated uncertainty and the unknowable. Through its focus on the production of practical books, Reading Practice also charts changing attitudes towards books, first as manuscripts became less expensive and then as print became imbued with authority. Vivid and precise, Reading Practice should be read by those interested in the history of the book, the history of science, and anyone who has ever consulted Dr. Google (which, let's be honest, is probably everyone). In addition to centering the reading practices of ordinary people, Reading Practice also does a fabulous job explaining exactly what it looks like and takes to work with medieval manuscripts and early printed texts, making it perfect reading for graduate students and those heading into library research. Listeners should also check out the companion website, which contains bibliographic information about the manuscripts and prints used in the project, network analysis of the relationship between printers and book, and data visualizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 10 mins
  • Lily E. Hirsch, "Taking Funny Music Seriously" (Indiana UP, 2024)

    Lily E. Hirsch, "Taking Funny Music Seriously" (Indiana UP, 2024)
    Jan 17 2025
    Take funny music seriously! Though often dismissed as silly or derivative, funny music, Lily E. Hirsch argues, is incredibly creative and dynamic, serving multiple aims from the celebratory to the rebellious, the entertaining to the mentally uplifting. Music can be a rich site for humor, with so many opportunities that are ripe for a comedic left turn. Taking Funny Music Seriously (Indiana UP, 2024) includes original interviews with some of the best musical humorists, such as Tom Lehrer, "the J. D. Salinger of musical satire"; Peter Schickele, who performed as the invented composer P. D. Q. Bach, the supposed lost son of the great J. S. Bach; Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome of the funny music duo Garfunkel and Oates; comedic film composer Theodore Shapiro; Too Slim of the country group Riders in the Sky; and musical comedian Jessica McKenna, from the podcast Off Book, part of a long line of "funny girls." With their help, Taking Funny Music Seriously examines comedy from a variety of genres and musical contexts--from bad singing to rap, classical music to country, Broadway music to film music, and even love songs and songs about death. In its coverage of comedic musical media, Taking Funny Music Seriously is an accessible and lively look at funny music. It offers us a chance to appreciate more fully the joke in music and the benefits of getting that joke--especially in times of crisis--including comfort, catharsis, and connection. Lily E. Hirsch is a musicologist and author most recently of Can't Stop the Grrrls: Confronting Sexist Labels in Music from Ariana Grande to Yoko Ono; Weird Al: Seriously; and Insulting Music: A Lexicon of Insult in Music. Lily on Twitter and Bluesky. Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025). Bradley on Twitter and Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 1 min
  • Javaria Farooqui, "Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    Javaria Farooqui, "Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
    Jan 16 2025
    Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency (Bloomsbury, 2024) offers the first major study of English-speaking romance fandom in South Asia, providing a new reader-centric model that engages with romance readers as genre experts. Here, she investigates the popular Anglophone romance reading community in Pakistan and develops a model for analysing genre romance novels through the lens of the readers' perspective and preferences. Using focus-group interviews and close textual analysis, her book explores where and how readers access books of their choice, and explains why the detailed descriptions of dresses, food and spaces in historical romance novels of the Regency era exemplify good taste for this distinctive readership. Sitting at the intersection of literary studies, genre studies, and fan studies, this book considers the reception of Anglophone romance fiction by reading communities of colour. About the author: Javaria Farooqui is Assistant Professor of English and Literary Studies at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Pakistan. Dr. Farooqui’s research interests fall across multiple disciplines and topic areas in the humanities and social sciences, including fan studies, book history, women’s writing and histories, digital humanities, language acquisition, popular romance studies, and reader response studies. She has published research that explores the reception and materiality of texts, the ramifications of colonization and its aftermath on a nation’s literary culture, gender-based violence, and the problematic reception of Anglophone movies in Pakistan. Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the National University of Singapore and has been awarded the Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship, starting 2025. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, critical new media industry studies, disability studies, affect studies, gender studies, and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
    Show more Show less
    54 mins