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New Books Network episodes

July 06Meditation Sickness and the Dangers of Buddhist Practice with Pierce Salguero
Pierce Salguero joins us to discuss his new co-edited volume, Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice. While modern mindfulness frames meditation purely as a wellness tool, the Buddhist tradition has long recognized its inherent psychological and physical risks. We explore multi-tradition historical texts, the anatomy of practice crises, and the ethical responsibility of teachers and app developers to provide something along the lines of informed consent.
Key Discussion Points & Timeline
Contrasting modern wellness marketing with historical accounts of meditative danger; the book provides a sourcebook for Dharma teachers, clinicians, and serious practitioners.
Multi-Tradition Mapping throughout covers Pali, medieval Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan sources, many of which we touch on.

Traditional sources diagnose destabilization and even offer a range of physical, energetic, and lifestyle remedies to mediate crisis: whether they would be a good fit for today’s practitioner is another matter.
Challenging the modern claim that adverse effects only happen to the unprepared or mentally fragile.

Classical lineages show that severe physical ailments and mental destabilization can happen randomly, even to advanced practitioners.
The hidden risks of unmonitored, commercialized meditation apps.

Why creators have an ethical duty to move past treating meditation as a risk-free panacea and offer clear safety guardrails.
How different cultures draw the line between a spiritual breakthrough and clinical pathology.

The ongoing project of integrating traditional remedies with modern psychology and neuroscience.
Links & Resources Mentioned
The Book: Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice.

Guest Website: here (Includes the book's introduction).
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1 hr 26 min
July 05 Nyck Walsh, "Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy: An Anti-Oppressive Model for Whole Person Care" (Norton, 2026)
A new paradigm that honors the wisdom and wholeness of neurodivergent clients. Focusing on autism and what is medically known as ADHD, neurodivergent author Nyck Walsh takes readers on an anti-oppressive, intersectional journey into a new standard of care for neurodivergent clients and their therapists. Whether new to or well-versed in the neurodiversity paradigm, readers will learn how to best support their neurodivergent clients in a way that prioritizes their well-being, honors their self-expertise, encourages their anti-ableist embodiment, and celebrates their joy. Bridging the theoretical with the practical, Walsh’s model offers a tangible framework that can be applied on its own or in tandem with other modalities. Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy (Norton, 2026) is an intimate and engaging guide to providing accessible, liberatory, whole-person care that will benefit clients and therapists of all neurotypes.
Nyck Walsh, MA, LPC, (he/they) brings a whole person, anti-oppressive, intersectional, somatic lens to working with Autistic and KCS/VAST (what is commonly known as ADHD) folx. An Autistic and VAST counselor, Nyck is the director of Nyck Walsh Counseling & Training Center and creator of the Neurodivergent Somatics model. He curates reparative experiences for late identified Autistic and VAST folx to connect with their innate wisdom, dismantle ableism, be supported in their challenges, and unpack their lives through their unidentified and misunderstood Neurodivergent (ND) experience. His counselor education programs have created an international following, and both ND and neurotypical counselors alike report feeling deeply validated by his approach.
Registration for Public Programs event with Nyck at CIIS on July 16.
waHelena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in the Somatic Psychology program. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).
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1 hr 1 min
July 05 Hayagreeva Rao and Henrich R Greve, "Ctrl+Alt+Doubt: Decoding the Language of Online Conspiracy Talk" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Ctrl+Alt+Doubt: Decoding the Language of Online Conspiracy Talk (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a new way to understand why conspiracy theories grow and persist. Rather than treating them as cognitive errors, psychological pathologies, or products of echo chambers, Rao and Greve analyze conspiracy theories as linguistic constructions, that is as stories built from recognizable semantic patterns. Drawing on cases from COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, Rao and Greve show that conspiracy theorizing is a form of bricolage. People tinker with cultural fragments to craft explanations that reduce uncertainty and threat. New conspiracy beliefs are most likely to take hold when they are linguistically close to beliefs people already hold. The book traces how conspiracy theories spread through superspreaders, fear-laden language, bots, and shared hashtags, revealing conspiracy theorizing as a form of proto-coordination that generates community, amplifies outrage, and enables collective sensemaking among opponents of social movements.
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1 hr 8 min
July 05 Paul Osterman, "Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment" (Harvard UP, 2026)
A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of
hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are
excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders.
Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly
reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and
protections that have traditionally come with employee status,
businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as
interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an
original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment (Harvard University Press, 2026) reveals
the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational
hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses.
Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable
workers: contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal
category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are
employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by
their firm—left without job security, skill training, or opportunities
for promotion. Many low-wage service workers toil in marginal jobs, but
so do white-collar professionals such as adjunct university faculty and
staff attorneys at law firms. When the three categories are added up,
they account for more than 35 percent of the American workforce.
Not all disposable workers object to their arrangements. But most
contractors and marginal employees would prefer standard employment, and
there is a significant cost to their current status. In response, Disposable Workers
offers a range of policy recommendations, including mechanisms to
prevent over-reliance on contracting and freelancing as well as reforms
to improve job quality for part-timers and marginal employees. As the
deconstruction of employment affects more and more workers, the
importance of such measures will only grow.
Paul Osterman is Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Management
at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His numerous books include Good Jobs America, Who Will Care for Us? (Russell Sage, 2011); and The Truth about Middle Managers (Harvard Business School Press, 2009), Who Will Care For Us: Long Term Care and the Long Term Workforce (Russell Sage,2017), Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America (Beacon Press, 2003); Securing Prosperity: The American Labor Market: How It Has Changed and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 1999), and Working In America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market (MIT Press, 2001).
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55 min
July 05Molly Crabapple, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund" (Random House, 2026)
Molly
Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish
Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern
Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly
anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an
imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first
popular history of the Bund, Crabapple re-creates their extraordinary
world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious
rebels, clandestine revolutionaries
and lovers on the barricades. The Bundists live deeply within this
violent, volatile, and somehow hopeful period, as their stories
interweave with the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust. The Bund’s
rise and fall raises the vital question: What can we learn from a
movement that, for all its toughness, imagination, and moral clarity,
was largely destroyed?
Highlights include:
Crabapple’s personal connection to the Bund through her great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort;

How the Bund built a vibrant youth counterculture amid harsh anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe;

The significance of “Hereness” to the Bund’s politics and how it
distinguished the group from Zionist groups advocating the colonization
of Palestine;

A discussion of “theory-pilled nerds” and how Crabapple’s activism and
journalism since Occupy Wall Street shaped her insights into the inner
life of the Bund;

The future of anti-Zionism in the context of Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestine.
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun
(with Marwan Hisham), which was longlisted for a National Book Award.
She was a 2020 New America Fellow and her reportage is the winner of the
Bernhard Labor Journalism Award, and has been published in The New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker,
and elsewhere. Her animations have won two Emmys and an Edward R.
Murrow Award. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of
Modern Art.
Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.
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1 hr
July 05 Annakeara Stinson, "Nerve Damage: A Novel" (Knopf, 2026)
Annakeara Stinson's Nerve Damage: A Novel (Knopf,
2026) is a riotous revenge novel about a woman’s quest to escape her
stalker ex-boyfriend—by stalking him herself. Clarice’s breakup with
P.T. began the usual way—she discovered he was cheating. Then came the
constant texts, the nonstop emails from burner accounts, countless phone
calls from dozens of different numbers. He showed up outside her
apartment and her office. He sent her flowers and poems, and, perhaps
most sinister of all, a link to the music video for Dido's “White Flag.”
Relief arrived only when Clarice finally obtained a restraining order
and one-way ticket from New York to L.A. Just as the restraining order
expires—and three years to the day since she left him—Clarice spots a
man who looks suspiciously like P.T. at a nightclub. Could it be him?
Her best friend thinks she’s imagining things. Her therapist wants her
to focus on healing her inner child. Her mother is busy planning her
wedding to her fourth husband. A psychic medium can reveal only that
P.T.’s energy is too volatile to locate on the spiritual plane. As
painful memories resurface, Clarice is convinced her ex has returned to
ruin her life. But with scant evidence to prove it, she takes
increasingly unhinged steps to uncover the truth, ultimately leading to a
place where paranoia and reality begin to blur. A profane and poignant
debut novel, Nerve Damage is a different kind of survivor narrative,
about how far one woman will go to wrest back control of her life in a
world determined to send her spiraling.
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36 min
July 05 Matthew Del Papa and Andy Taylor, "Supercanucks: An Anthology of Canadian Small-Town Superheroes" (Latitude 46, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Matthew D. Del Papa, one of the editors of SuperCanucks: An Anthology of Canadian Small-Town Superheroes (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2026). SuperCanucks features eleven stories that explore the usual superhero tropes while shining a spotlight on the unique corners of Canada. Not your typical big city superhero, but those who live in and around Canada’s more often overlooked locales—isolated small towns and rural outposts. These heroes battle unique Canadian dangers, including government bureaucracy and the overreaching neighbours in the south.
About the Editors:
Matthew D. Del Papa spent every Tuesday of his youth crisscrossing his hometown of Capreol in search of newly arrived comic books. He wore superhero-themed Underoos to a truly worrying age and still has his Batman (and Robin) lunchbox, backpack, and wristwatch. A graduate of Laurentian University, Matthew is a writer, editor, and self-publisher, and has released ten titles to some modest local acclaim. He joined the Sudbury Writers’ Guild in 2009 and his writing has appeared in Spooky Sudbury, Nothing Without Us Too, Mighty, and the forthcoming Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline. His first book, a collection of humorous essays titled Jerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going to Die, was released in 2023 through Latitude 46 Publishing.
Andy W. Taylor grew up as a teen in the 1980s reading Alpha Flight comics and was excited to see Canadian superheroes represented for the first time. Andy was a reader and writer of speculative fiction from an early age thanks in no small part to his mother’s frequent trips to the public library with her kids. He’s a member of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild, a graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop and Playwright’s Junction workshop, and a member of CODEX writer’s forum. Originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Andy currently lives in Sudbury with his family. His fiction has appeared in On Spec Magazine, FictionVale, Polar Borealis, Sudbury Ink Anthology, and on the streets of Sudbury. He has a new poem and non-fiction piece coming out in 2024 in the anthology Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline.
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42 min
July 05 S. C. Bandreddi, "The Game of Oaths" (Candlewick Press, 2026)
S. C. Bandreddi's debut YA historical fantasy novel The Game of Oaths (Candlewick Press,
2026). It’s 1896. Beneath a hotel in the heart of Paris is the famed le
Cirque des Ombres, led by ringmaster and Enchanteur Jean-Pierre. But
behind the dazzling spectacles, the circus performers are bound by
magical contracts, also making them potential players in the annual Game
of Oaths, an underground bloodthirsty tournament watched by the wealthy
elite. Twelve will compete. Eleven will die.
Seventeen-year-old
trapeze artist Falan Sunkara is out for revenge. After her sister ended
up as one of the unlucky eleven last year, Falan wants nothing more than
to make Jean-Pierre pay for her death. When she’s chosen to compete in
this year’s tournament, Falan is not above playing dirty and forging
unlikely alliances. But to be the last one standing, she has to
determine whom to trust and whose motives to question. Vengeance on top
of survival is a dangerous gamble—and in games like this, the house
always wins.
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43 min
July 05 Martina Baradel, "21st Century Yakuza: Death of Japanese Organised Crime" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Once
dominant and institutionalised, the Yakuza, one of Japan's best known
criminal organisations, is now shrinking under the combined pressure of
legal exclusion, social stigmatisation, and market regulation. Their
membership has dropped from more than 80,000 in 2009 to fewer than
20,000 in 2025. Yet their disappearance is far from complete. Based on
extensive fieldwork with active and former members, police officers,
lawyers, and journalists, in 21st Century Yakuza: Death of Japanese Organised Crime
(Oxford University Press, 2026), Dr. Martina Baradel examines how these
organisations adapt to repression and explores what happens when a
mafia begins to die.
21st Century Yakuza
illuminates how Japan's model of regulatory saturation has dismantled
the Yakuza's organisational capacity but left behind governance vacuums
in markets the state struggles to control. This book demonstrates
how the Yakuza persist through symbolic and residual forms of authority
even as their formal power erodes, and how their decline has fragmented
the criminal underworld. It traces the transformation of the Yakuza
from territorially embedded brokers of governance to marginal actors in a
more decentralised criminal landscape, including the delegation of
trading activities to non-affiliated networks.
Through a sharp lens on criminal decline and adaptation, 21st Century Yakuza offers a compelling portrait of a fading underworld and the new forms of disorder emerging
in its wake. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the
shifting boundaries of law, authority, and illicit power in contemporary
Japan.
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.
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1 hr 6 min
July 04 Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish
characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Western—once
Hollywood's most popular genre—ever since the silent era, both onscreen
and offscreen, and some filmmakers have sought to infuse the genre with a
distinctly Jewish sensibility. In Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025), Friedmann
engages with larger themes of Jewish identity in popular film,
including depictions of race, ethnicity, and foreignness. He also
identifies similar concerns within the invention and creation of the
imaginary West writ large in American culture. The juxtapositions prove
to be both unexpected and intuitively understandable.
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1 hr 12 min