American Purpose's Bookstack
The books and ideas podcast from American Purpose.
We found 10 episodes of American Purpose's Bookstack with the tag “politics”.
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Episode 138: Seth D. Kaplan on America’s Fragile Neighborhoods
April 19th, 2024 | 31 mins 35 secs
books, history, politics
In surveying dysfunction across America, the question arises: Is the source of the trouble at the local or the national level? Seth D. Kaplan has shifted his analytical gaze from fragile nations abroad to examine the fragility of his home country. He believes America’s problems from health to politics are downstream of individuals becoming increasingly disconnected, neighborhood by neighborhood. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time.
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Episode 137: Leah Hunt-Hendrix on the Power of Solidarity
April 17th, 2024 | 27 mins 3 secs
books, history, politics
Solidarity has been at the root of social change throughout history, bringing people together across their differences to challenge injustice within societies. In their new book, Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor examine the sociological concept that is at the heart of social transformation. Hunt-Hendrix joins host Richard Aldous to share her thoughts on both the concept and the social movements with which it is intimately linked.
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Episode 136: Paul Starobin on the Russian Exiles
March 22nd, 2024 | 29 mins 13 secs
books, history, politics
There are now over a million Russians living in exile, spurred on by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Unable to safely oppose their own government at home, they often find themselves subject to harassment and disdain as immigrants. In his new book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia, Paul Starobin joins host Richard Aldous for a look at the hopes and dreams of those Russians living abroad, and to explain why he thinks more and more of them will “take up the gun.”
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Episode 135: Ian Buruma on the Relevance of Spinoza
March 14th, 2024 | 26 mins 33 secs
books, history, politics
Rejected in official circles in his day and embraced in modern times by a motley array of admirers, Spinoza was in many ways ahead of his time. His commitment to truth, universal principles, and freedom lie at the heart of Western liberal thinking. As those ideas come under attack on both the left and the right, Spinoza’s philosophical thinking is as relevant as ever. Ian Buruma joins Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.
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Episode 134: Maria Popova on Ukraine and Russia’s Diverging Paths
February 29th, 2024 | 27 mins 48 secs
books, history, politics
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia not only embarked on very different political paths at home, but they viewed the future of their relationship in starkly divergent terms. In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, authors Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel show how Russia’s determination to control an independent Ukraine only pushed it further away. Popova joins host Richard Aldous to discuss how the varying cultural and political realities in the two countries ultimately led to today’s geopolitical clash.
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Episode 133: Lorraine Daston on the History of Scientific Collaboration
February 23rd, 2024 | 28 mins 40 secs
books, history, politics
Large threats to the well-being of humankind such as the pandemic and climate change have cemented the notion that scientists across the globe naturally work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems. In Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate, historian of science Lorraine Daston traces the trajectory of such cooperation, noting that along the way scientists have as often been competitors as collaborators. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the history of “the scientific community.”
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Episode 132: David Reynolds on Winston Churchill
February 15th, 2024 | 34 mins 55 secs
books, history, politics
Amidst all the positive and negative ink dedicated to Winston Churchill, Cambridge emeritus professor of international history David Reynolds offers a new dimension. He places the leader for whom history was determined by “great men” among the other greats who both inspired and enervated him. Reynolds joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his latest book, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.
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Episode 131: Joshua Green on the Populism of the Democratic Party
February 8th, 2024 | 34 mins 4 secs
books, history, politics
The remarkable shift in the economic ideas at the heart of the Democratic Party—from the embrace of neoliberalism in the ’90s to the left-wing populism that Joe Biden accommodates today—traces its origins to the 2008 financial crisis. Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders and AOC after her, put the economic frustrations of ordinary Americans at the heart of her policies, making fashionable a populism of the left that was not unlike Donald Trump’s brand of it on the right. Journalist Joshua Green joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the rise of those who helped reorient the Democratic Party as told in his new book, The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics.
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Episode 130: Azam Ahmed on Mexico’s Violent Cartels
February 1st, 2024 | 28 mins 53 secs
books, history, politics
For tens of thousands of people, living in Mexico today means living in a country where criminal violence begets state-sponsored violence, and where law and justice have so failed ordinary citizens that they often take matters into their own hands. In his new book Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance, Azam Ahmed chronicles the tale of a mother whose desperation led her to do just that. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss those who live at the mercy of the drug cartels.
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Episode 129: Raymond Arsenault on John Lewis
January 24th, 2024 | 28 mins 32 secs
books, history, politics
Freedom Rider and Congressman John Lewis was widely viewed as a saint no less than a civil rights icon. How to capture the full humanity of such a legendary figure, whose life was intertwined with some of America’s lowest lows and highest highs? Civil rights historian Raymond Arsenault does just that in his new biography, John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the man he believes to be “one of the most extraordinary people in American history.”