In celebration of International Workers' Day having taken place on May 1st and Karl Marx having been born on May 5th, our theme for this month’s episode is labor.

In the spirit of the April Fool’s Day release date, this episode is themed around ‘humor,’ featuring conversations with Heidi Hakkarainen, author of Comical Modernity: Popular Humour and the Transformation of Urban Space in Late Nineteenth Century Vienna and Veronika Pehe, author of Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture. We’ll close today’s salon with a reading of a poem by Colin James, “The Betrothal of a Semi Compliant Therefore Semi Coherent, Narcissus,” previously published in Critical Survey.

This month’s theme, appropriately enough, is transmission. We consider transmission in its many forms, from television transcending boundaries between West and East Germany, to the passing on of Aboriginal ceremonies in Australia. History speaks to us through the words of an Irish poet, and we look towards the future with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

This episode is centered around the notion of ‘crisis,’ featuring moments of intensity that prompt change. We’ll be chatting with Karena Kalmbach, author of The Meanings of a Disaster: Chernobyl and Its Afterlives in Britain and France, Mark Schuller, editor of the Catastrophes in Context series, and Jean-Paul Gagnon, editor of the Berghahn Journal Democratic Theory.  We will also share instructions on how to enter for the chance to win a $100 gift card to Blackwell’s Bookstore, “an Oxford family bookshop.”  

On this episode, we are featuring Selcen Küçüküstel author of the forthcoming title EMBRACING LANDSCAPE: Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia, as well as Andrew Dawson and Simone Dennis, editors of this year’s special volume of the journal Anthropology in Action focusing on “Covid-19 and the Transformation of Intimacy.” And, in a special segment, a few of our colleagues share beloved holiday recipes and memories of family, friends, and food.

The study of youth transcends traditional disciplinary bounds. On this episode of Salon B, we discuss the reshaping of social relations among young males in post-Socialist Kyrgyzstan, the reinforcement of ideology through East German comic books, and how boyhood is represented in contemporary film.

Welcome to the first episode of Berghahn Books' new podcast! This episode, in recognition of its Halloween release date, is themed around bones, featuring bones both real and fabricated, as well as the bone-like structure of a now ghostly bridge. Our guests include Brian Hoggard, A.E. Garrison, and Marion McCready.