The Improviser S Guide Network Podcasts

Jennifer Crewe talks about how translation became a key component of the Columbia University Press publishing program and how the press decides which books they want to translate. In addition, we go behind the scenes to understand the mechanics of a translation rights deal and how negotiations are conducted between academic publishers around the wo…

Museums everywhere have the potential to serve as agents of change—bringing people together, contributing to local communities, and changing people’s lives. So how can we, as individuals, radically expand the work of museums to live up to this potential? How can we more fiercely recognize the meaningful work that museums are doing to enact change a…

As we interact online we are creating new kinds of knowledge and community. How are these communities formed? How do we know whether to trust them as sources of information? In other words, should we believe Wikipedia? Should You Believe Wikipedia?: Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores what community is…

Monumental Names: Archival Aesthetics and the Conjuration of History in Moscow (Routledge, 2022) asks us to consider: what stands behind the propensity to remember victims of mass atrocities by their personal names? Grounded in ethnographic and archival research with Last Address and Memorial, one of the oldest independent archives of Soviet politi…

Why is writing a grant proposal so stressful? Are you supposed to just know how to do it? This episode explores: How to align your values and interests with a grant opportunity. Why most of us will end up needing a grant. Things you can learn from a grant proposal that succeeded, and from one that didn’t. What your grant reviewer really needs from …

We have usually relied on public intellectuals to provide facts, ideas, and cultural leadership--though not all have lived up to the ideal of “speaking truth to power.” Today, however, online networks and social media mean we are all public intellectuals, and we have new responsibilities that come with this role. Guests: Cornel West, professor at U…

Avi and Gita Manaktala discuss how researchers should approach the book publishing process, including determining whether research should be published as an article or book, how to make an impact on the acquisitions editors, the significance of the editorial process, and the importance and function of an 'author platform' to spread your book. Gita …

What if human intelligence is actually more of a liability than a gift? After all, the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it. At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence, yet human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sword. With our unique cognitive prowess comes severe consequences, incl…

Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (U California Press, 2022) is a guide to understanding and uncovering what is left unsaid—whether concealed or silenced, presupposed or excluded. Drawing on a variety of real-world examples, narrative criminologist Lois Presser out…

Hell on Earth: The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism is a new 10-part series from the creators of Hell of Presidents — one of Entertainment Weekly’s best podcasts of 2021 — and Chapo Trap House, the political podcast that they claim has made more people angrier than any other podcast. Hell on Earth tells the story of the Thirty Years…

Listen to this interview of Laura Lindenfeld, Executive Director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. We talk about how improvisation helps people communicate for real. Laura Lindenfeld : "I feel that communication as a field has often been thought of as communications, you know, more technical, less relational. But we at the Alan Ald…

Medieval manuscripts are our shared inheritance, and today they are more accessible than ever—thanks to digital copies online. Yet for all that widespread digitization has fundamentally transformed how we connect with the medieval past, we understand very little about what these digital objects really are. We rarely consider how they are made or wh…

This episode is a recording of a short paper presented by Kim and Saronik in the panel “Literary Criticism: New Platforms” organized by Anna Kornbluh at the 2023 Convention of the Modern Language Association. In the paper, they reflect on the nature of the voice in the humanities and the role of the humanities podcast inside and outside institution…

Listen to this interview of Gang Wang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We talk about using writing to research better. Gang Wang : "I personally view writing as a very useful process to polish my own thinking. For example, when my group are on a project, until we actually put th…

The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first century The Princeton Guide to Historical Research (Princeton UP, 2021) provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have de…

Professor Sarah Willen talks about her part in creating the Pandemic Journaling Project and how that has morphed into a series of visual exhibitions that emphasis how we all can work to create new histories, shape archives, and reclaim our own creativity and power. Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website. Follow us on Twitter @W…

"The Partially Examined Life" is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it." In this interview, I chat with PEL host, Wes Alwan, about creating one of the longest-running philosophy podcasts. Wes discusses the personal value he's gotten from participating in publically…

Christopher M. Palmer's book Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health (Benbella Books, 2022) will forever change the way we understand and treat mental health. If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life. We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illness…

What is the feeling of archival kismet? And how can we reimagine the format of academic conferences to better support scholars? This episode explores: The complex feelings of finding unexpected things in an archive. Why using conference presentations as openings for scholarly conversations is important. How Dr. Thompson founded an online conference…

A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far. Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri d…

Becoming the Writer You Already Are (Sage, 2022) helps scholars uncover their unique writing process and design a writing practice that fits how they work. Author Michelle R. Boyd introduces the Writing Metaphor as a reflective tool that can help you understand and overcome your writing fears: going from "stuck" to "unstuck" by drawing on skills yo…

The Remaking of Archival Values by Victoria Hoyle (Routledge, October 2022) posits that archival theory and practice are fields in flux, and that recent critical archival discourse that addresses neoliberalism, racism, and the legacies of colonialism and patriarchy represents a disruption not only to established principles but also to the values th…

Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what's left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems--the networks, t…

Listen to this interview of David Lindsay, emeritus professor of the University of Western Australia. We talk about his book Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words (CSIRO Publishing, 2020) and how your hypothesis can save the communication of your research. David Lindsay : "It's quite unfortunate that we're training our undergraduates in science th…

Listen to this interview of David Lindsay, emeritus professor of the University of Western Australia. We talk about his book Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words (CSIRO Publishing, 2020) and how your hypothesis can save the communication of your research. David Lindsay : "It's quite unfortunate that we're training our undergraduates in science th…

For as long as humans have existed, we have struggled when a loved one dies. Poets and playwrights have written about the dark cloak of grief, the deep yearning, how devastating heartache feels. But until now, we have had little scientific perspective on this universal experience. In The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from L…

Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condition. Dealing with the colonial archive is not merely about stories of the past but also about the history of the present, and how it is interrupted by the past. — Irene Hilden, in conversation with New …

Why is it so difficult to adopt a more sustainable way of life, even when convinced of the urgency of the environmental crisis? If adopting new behaviors beneficial for the environment is so challenging at the individual level, no wonder it is even harder at the community or governmental levels. Seeing individual and collective behaviors not changi…

Scholarship is frequently imagined as a solitary pursuit, done mostly in archives or with books. This CHI Salon will feature scholars pursuing alternatives to this model and who regularly publish scholarship that emerges out of community activism, who co-write or co-edit books, and who actively seek out and create new models of authorship and resea…

The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India (MIT Press, 2022), written by Janaki Srinivasan and published by MIT Press in October 2022, examines how the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender, and the implications of this for development. Informatio…

The NBN would not exist but for the work of university presses. So every year we celebrate the efforts of our colleagues at UPs during "University Press Week," which happens to be November 14 to 18. This year I talked to Charles Watkinson, director of the University of Michigan Press and president of the Association of University Presses. We discus…

Saronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discu…

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History (Wits UP, 2022) is an exploration of particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s early history. It gathers recent ideas about archives and asks the question: “How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?” Historians use a wid…

You’re going to an academic conference—and maybe even presenting a project! Whether you are going virtually or in person, for the first time or the tenth, presenting or just attending, you want to feel prepared. Are you? This podcast episode explores: Why we need to go to academic conferences. Why it can be difficult to navigate them. How can you g…

A taken-for-granted miracle occurs in doctors’ offices across the world every single day. With only a stethoscope and an inflatable cuff, a physician can check your blood pressure to predict your risk of future heart problems. These tools give you the chance to take proactive steps to reduce this risk if needed. Why don’t we have similar tools for …

Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what's left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems--the networks, t…

Listen to this interview of Barbara Sarnecka, Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine. We talk about putting your mind in print. She is the author of The Writing Workshop: Write More, Write Better, Be Happier in Academia. Barbara Sarnecka : "The more q…

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain (Mariner Books, 2020), Feldman reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You’ll learn where brains came from, how they’re struct…

Rebel Book Club is an online and in-person book club. Each month, over 1,000 people get together to discuss a non-fiction book, occasionally with the author as a participant. For new members, use code: REBELREADER Ben Keene is an entrepreneur, author, and food journalist. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @cal…

On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton UP, 2020) is a look at the extraordinary ways the brain turns thoughts into actions—and how this shapes our everyday lives. Why is it hard to text and drive at the same time? How do you resist eating that extra piece of cake? Why does staring at a tax form feel mentally exhausting? Why can your chi…

Is there a strategy to communicating your research online? This episode explores: What an academic communications strategist does. Why having a strategy to your online presence is important. Common misperceptions about communicating online. Lessons learned from an academic communications strategist. The benefits and challenges to being an academic …

How do metrics and quantification shape social science? In The Quantified Scholar: How Research Evaluations Transformed the British Social Sciences (Columbia UP, 2022), Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, an Associate Professor in sociology at the University of California, San Diego, explores this question using a case study of British academia. The book comb…

Listen to this interview of Sarah Huffman (Assistant Director of the Center for Communication Excellence) and Elena Cotos (Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the English Department and Director of the Center for Communication Excellence) and Kimberly Becker, (Lecturer in English) — all three at Iowa State University. We talk about how to…

Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “surface” of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In the Th…

Entering the world of psychedelic drugs can be challenging, and many aren't sure where to start. As research continues to expand and legalization looms on the horizon for psychedelics like psilocybin, you may need a guide to navigate what psychedelics are, how they work, and their potential benefits and risks. The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical …

The hardest part of research isn't answering a question. It's knowing what to do before you know what your question is. Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (University of Chicago Press, 2022) tackles the two challenges every researcher faces with every new project: How do I find a compelling proble…

Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns (MIT Press, 2022), comparative neurobiologist Georg Striedter examines how biomedical researchers have used animal species and in vitr…

Listen to this interview of John Measey, Researcher at the Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. We talk about the needs of early-career researchers and also about our need for early-career researchers. John Measey : "What we really need to know is what a scientific journal is for and what we want it to be for. So, we …

Listen to this interview of John Measey, Researcher at the Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. We talk about the needs of early-career researchers and also about our need for early-career researchers. John Measey : "What we really need to know is what a scientific journal is for and what we want it to be for. So, we …

The Journal of Black Religious Thought advances critical scholarship in the fields of Religious Studies – with special attention to Black religious studies, which includes and intersects, but not limited to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, New Testament, Intertestamental, Quran, theology, history, ethics, practical theology, religion-science, philos…