Bedrosian Bookclub Podcast

An interview with author of The Address Book, Deirdre Mask.

The Address Book is a broad look at the invention and proliferation of the address. Relatively new, addresses were first a way for royals to count their subjects. Today, addresses can reflect our identity, our history, our race, and our access to opportunity. With the postal service in jeopardy, and the world in disarray, settle in for an interview with a beguiling author.

Explore the many ways a simple address can change lives, cities, and the future.

Follow Mask on Twitter: @Deirdre_Mask

Follow Orlando on Twitter: @AnthonyWOrlando

Read along with us! For September, we're reading The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

The Address Book is a dive into the deep waters of the meaning of addresses, often with tangents into the weird and interesting lives of people throughout history.

Beginning with some of the first addressing projects in Europe, we get the sense that something as simple as a number and street name can mean more than we could possibly imagine.

🎧 Host Aubrey Hicks is joined by Faith McKinney, Olivia Olson, and Anthony Orlando.

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It is the story of New York City: the story of its history, its people, the land, the place, and the layers that build to become something greater than the sum of its parts. Join us as we discuss the novel and the current political moment, the hope of the progressive, and the hope of the collective.

Host Aubrey Hicks is joined by Caroline Bhalla, Juan De Lara, and Olivia Olson.

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An interview with author of Care: Stories, Christopher Records. (Follow Records on Twitter: @cdrecords001)

Care: Stories is the fiction debut by USC Price alum, Christopher Records. Records aims to show "ordinary queer people living ordinary lives in an ordinary place." The ordinary place in question is the Inland Empire, which depending on who is defining the area is as vast as Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The vastness of the place adds a sense of "stagnation and loneliness and cruelty," for the characters in the stories.

Explore the ways in which place and care and humanness intersect in these short stories.

Read along with us! For July, we're reading The City We Became by N. K. Jemison.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

Our host, Dr. Lisa Schweitzer, chose Sofía Segovia's The Murmur of Bees (translated by Simon Bruni) in August of 2019. It seemed like it would be a good sprawling family saga to read the next summer.

Come June 2020, the choice would be prescient. The novel is, indeed, a sprawling family saga ... one set in the midst of the Mexican Revolution and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

It is the story of a family and their land as the world changes around them. It is a story of grief, of love, of family.

Host Dr. Schweitzer is joined by Caroline Bhalla, Olivia Olson, and Donnajean Ward.

This podcast has spoilers.

For links and more, check out the showpage.

An 18 year old Mohammad Darwish cries out, "We want freedom!"

A revolution begins in the city of Rastan, Syria. April 1st, 2011.

For many years, journalist Rania Abouzeid spends time near or inside Syria to interview the Syrian people through the many years of internal (with added external) conflict in the country. No Turning Back is the story of the civil war in Syria told through the eyes of the Syrians Abouzeid interviews, an accounting of their lives from 2011-2016.

Listen as host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Ehsan Zaffar, David Sloane, and Aubrey Hicks discuss this vital reporting.

Another bonus episode!

Host Lisa discusses the book Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968 by Center Director, Jeffery Jenkins and Boris Heersink (Fordham).

Heersink and Jenkins examine how National Convention politics allowed the South to remain important to the Republican Party after Reconstruction. They trace how Republican organizations in the South changed from biracial coalitions to mostly all-white ones over time. They explore how the 'whitening' of the Republican Party affected its vote totals in the South. Once states passed Jim Crow laws essentially to disenfranchise black voters, the Republican Party in the South performed better electorally the whiter it became. These results are important for understanding how the GOP emerged as a competitive, and ultimately dominant, electoral party in the late-twentieth century South.

Read along with us! We're reading The Murmur of Bees by by Sofía Segovia (Translated by Simon Bruni) for June.

For more information, see the showpage.

Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

We spent #EarthDay2020 talking about environmental justice. We spoke about an intriguing new book by UCDavis Prof. Julie Sze. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing the results of persistent injustices, as the virus affecting marginalized communities harder, with more dire consequences. What must we learn from environmental justice struggles in order to form a more perfect union?

Listen as host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Jovanna Rosen, Madi Swayne, Jaime Lopez, and Olivia Olson to discuss Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger by Julie Sze.

Can a groundswell of feminist activism threaten an authoritarian patriarchal regime?

Author, Leta Hong Fincher looks at this question through the study of women in China. In Betraying Big Brother, Fincher examines the current feminist movement in China. Following the "feminist five," the reader is exposed to the history of the changing roles of women in the country, as well as the current activist movement fueled first through connections built online through the movement to the streets of cities in China.

Our discussion covers the book, thoughts on racism during the COVID-19 pandemic (at the beginning stages here in the U.S.) as well as the role of government in women's lives.

Host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Olivia Olson, David Sloane, and Aubrey Hicks for this episode!

For more information, check out the showpage.

Tamim Ansary brings 1500 years of history to life in Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. Destiny Disrupted gives readers a broad overview of history of the middle world, beginning with the time of Mohammed and the birth of Islam through almost the present day.

Host Aubrey Hicks is joined by Olivia Olson, David Sloane, and Ehsan Zaffar on this episode!

For links and more, visit our showpage.