New Books Network

Belize is often described as a “pristine” ecotourism destination with a landscape that is “naturally” valuable. Yet for much of the twentieth century, British Honduras—as the country was known under colonial rule—was seen as lacking value, an unprofitable backwater. Valuing Nature at the Ends of the World: Natural Capital and Climate Disaster in Belize (Columbia UP, 2026) explores how Belize’s precarious coastal environment has become a site for a new kind of capitalist value production, in which landscapes and ecosystems derive worth from their vulnerability or looming destruction in the era of climate change.
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research, Dr. Patrick M. Gallagher offers a critical account of market-oriented conservation in the Caribbean that ranges across everyday coastal life, emergent ecological science, and climate policy spaces. He shows how the long material and social histories of racialized colonialism shape the making of technocratic tools for valuing nature. Gallagher traces how new forms of capitalist value emerge from the interaction among colonial pasts, contemporary conservation practices, and vivid scenarios of imminent climate change–driven disaster and loss. He also examines how people and policymakers in Belize imagine and create new ways of life in a changing environment. Ethnographically grounded and rich in theoretical insight, this book illuminates how the Anthropocene environment, newly visible and valuable at the moment of its presumed disappearance, came into being in Belize and around the world.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The old story in the academy was that as science and technology progressed, western society would grow more secular while the supernatural would disappear permanently from the public square. But nowadays re-enchantment is the new byword, from renewed public interest in traditional forms of religion to weirder phenomenon like ufology and psychedelics entering mainstream culture. However, the academy has been slow to catch up with this wider sea change.
So various scholars of religion have been putting forward new arguments for the legitimate study of the supernatural. One of these is Dale Allison, who is my guest today as we continue Season 6 to discuss modern religious experiences. Dale Allison is the Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the author of books such as The Resurrection of Jesus (2021) and Encountering Mystery (2022).
We look at numinous events of bliss and terror, responses to prayers, out-of-body & near-death experiences, angelic encounters, and visions of dead loved ones. Along the way, we also discuss William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, current research into psychedelics, George Harrison’s mysticism, David Hume’s borrowing from anti-Catholic arguments, Jesus Christ’s post-mortem appearances, and the emerging scholarship on supernatural phenomenon.
Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes. Please share and enjoy.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Imagine that you have just lost your job. You wonder: “Who or what can I depend on now?” The answer, it turns out, varies significantly depending on where you live. In Norway, a small European social democracy, you would almost certainly turn to the country’s comprehensive public welfare system. With a work history, you could be eligible for two years of unemployment benefits that replace upwards of 62% of your previous salary. Meanwhile, you would not be too worried about covering other major expenses: annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs are capped at a few hundred dollars, parents receive monthly payments per child, public education is tuition-free, and pensions are guaranteed. What would this experience teach you about government, work, taxes, and freedom?
In Down and Out in Utopia: Unemployment as Moral Education in Norway (U Toronto Press, 2026), anthropologist Dr. Kelly McKowen explains what happens to those without jobs in one of the world’s wealthiest and most egalitarian countries. Following the daily lives of a diverse group of unemployed individuals during the “oil crash” of the mid-2010s, he shows that being “down and out” in a social democracy offers people a unique moral education with lessons about the nature and value of the state, labor, welfare, and belonging.
Engaging, timely, and illuminating, Down and Out in Utopia makes the case that through social policy, we shape life’s hardships – and these hardships, in turn, shape us and how we view the world.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe, sustainable environments. The good news is, around the country, red states and blue states are taking up the charge. In California, state agencies are partnering with disadvantaged communities to measure air quality, reduce pollution, and advance environmental justice. In Texas, a state law requires every school to cut down on the use of dangerous pesticides, helping to keep kids safe. In New York, a network of clinics trains medical professionals in occupational health and children’s environmental health, ensuring that patients receive excellent care and specialists are ready to advocate for protective policies. The success of these programs is not haphazard; instead, effective approaches share key elements, including state-university-industry partnerships, collaboration across government agencies, and strong environmental health education. In A Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health (Island Press, 2025), Susan Kaplan highlights examples of groundbreaking state environmental health policies, exploring what has worked, what needs improvement, and how other areas of the country can build on these advances. Further, she shows how public health advocates can push forward new protections, creating safer environments for the next generation. Ultimately, Kaplan argues, we need a coordinated federal and state response to environmental health threats. Until then, innovative policy solutions can go a long way to improve the nation’s wellbeing, one state at a time.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the first pages of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois meditates on the question, "How does it feel to be a problem?"
In this profound response to that question, Zahi Zalloua endeavours to think through the shared Black and Palestinian experience of being racialized as a problem. Zalloua argues that today's anti-Blackness is not a lingering feature of a regrettable past that only occasionally manifests its ugly face. Rather, anti-Blackness permeates white civil society. Black being stands for the anti-human, its being is barred and degraded. And while Black being denotes criminality, Palestinian being denotes terrorism – a problematic being produced by Orientalism and used to legitimize oppression. Both the Black and Palestinian are framed as existential threats that undermine the very structures of white and Zionist dominance.

To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian (Bloomsbury, 2026) provides a searing critique of such assumptions, arguing that Blacks and Palestinians do exist as a problem, but a different problem than the one dictated by the petrifying white and settler gaze. They exist as a threat because the mechanisms of structural racism make them so. In order for racism to thrive, they must be othered in the profoundest sense. In asking how a politics can be constructed in the face of this hegemony, Zalloua constructs a model of solidarity that places Black lives and Palestinian liberation at the forefront of the anti-racist struggle
Zahi Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College, USA, and Editor of The Comparatist. His most recent publications include To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian, Fanon, Žižek and the Violence of Resistance, The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment; and Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.