The Oxford Comment

Black History Month celebrates the achievements of a globally marginalized community still fighting for equal representation and opportunity in all areas of life. This includes education.

In 1954, the United States’ Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional for American public schools in “Brown v. Board of Education.” While this ruling has been celebrated as a pivotal victory for civil rights, it has not endured without challenge.

On today’s episode, we spoke with Zoë Burkholder, author of An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North and Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954, and Nina M. Yancy, author of the upcoming How the Color Line Bends: The Geography of White Prejudice in Modern America, examining issues around education, integration, and segregation through their scholarship. In particular, we discussed segregation in northern schools and a recent case study from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Learn more about Zoe Burkholder and An African American Dilemma here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/an-african-american-dilemma-9780190605131 and Color in the Classroom here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/color-in-the-classroom-9780190209322
Learn more about Nina M. Yancy and How the Color Line Bends here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-the-color-line-bends-9780197599433

Please check out Episode 69 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:
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The Oxford Comment Crew:
Executive Producer: Steven Filippi
Associate Producers: Christine Scalora and Meghan Schaffer
Host: Meghan Schaffer

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As we approach the end of 2021, we can look back at the previous two years of restrictions, lockdowns, COVID tests and vaccination lines, not to mention all the political strife… or we can look to the unknown, ahead to the new year. But let us pause for a moment and enjoy the now: a holiday season that should be livelier than last year’s. After all that’s gone on, we could use some old-fashioned holiday cheer.

On today’s episode, in the spirit of the holiday season, we spoke with Editor-in-chief David Wondrich and Associate Editor Noah Rothbaum of The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails to talk about their book, the growth of cocktail culture, and some of their favorite holiday drinks from around the world. Then, to speak on Christmas traditions, we revisited our interview with Gerry Bowler, the author of Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday, from an Oxford Comment of Christmas Past.

Learn more about David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum and The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-companion-to-spirits-and-cocktails-9780199311132
Learn more about Gerry Bowler and Christmas in the Crosshairs here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/christmas-in-the-crosshairs-9780190499006

Please check out Episode 68 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:
– Apple Podcasts: oxford.ly/2RuYMPa
– Google Podcasts: oxford.ly/38UpF5h
– Spotify: oxford.ly/2JLNTTO
– Stitcher: oxford.ly/2R0fVNZ
– Youtube: oxford.ly/2YY4iMT

The Oxford Comment Crew:
Executive Producer: Steven Filippi
Associate Producers: Erin Cox and Tom Woollard
Host: Tom Wollard

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

The effects of COVID-19 reach far beyond mortality, triggering widespread economic and sociopolitical consequences. It is unsurprising to learn, after everything that has transpired in the past two years, that COVID-19 has also had a detrimental effect on our mental health. Recent studies in the US and UK have shown a huge increase in the number of adults who have experienced symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder over pre-pandemic figures.

On today’s episode, we spoke with Professor Seamas Donnelly, editor of QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, and Dr. John C. Markowitz, author of In the Aftermath of the Pandemic: Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD, to explore the factors behind these figures, COVID-19’s impact on our mental health, and where we go from here.

Learn more about Seamas Donnelly and QJM here: https://academic.oup.com/qjmed

Please check out Episode 67 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

Open research means faster, more equitable access to cutting edge findings, driving disciplines forward, and introducing transparency into the research process. As the world’s largest university press publisher of open access content, Oxford University Press believes a more open world should work for everyone.

Over the past few years, the movement has grown to encompass other aspects of the research journey, from data sets to peer review, and open research has grown up as an umbrella term of experimentation with opening up in all of these areas. So what is the impact of opening research?

For today’s episode of the Oxford Comment, posted during International Open Access Week, we spoke with Dr Tara Spires Jones, Editor in Chief of Brain Communications, Professor Ugo Panizza, Editor in Chief of Oxford Open Economics, Professor Marcus Munafo, Editor in Chief of Nicotine and Tobacco Research, and Adam Leary, Senior Publisher in OUP’s Open Access Publishing team, who offered their perspectives on the impact of opening research.

Learn more about Tara Spires-Jones and Brain Communications here: https://academic.oup.com/braincomms

Please check out Episode 66 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

What do you think of when you hear the term “public debt?” If you’re familiar with the phrase, you might think about elected officials debating budgets and how to pay for goods and services. Or maybe it’s a vague concept you don’t fully understand.

For today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we spoke with In Defense of Public Debt co-author Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jonathan D. Ostry, Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund, about misconceptions of public debt, how the role of public debt has changed throughout history, and how pandemics such as COVID-19 can affect inequality and the role of public debt in these situations

Learn more about In Defense of Public Debt by Barry Eichengreen, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves, and Kris James Mitchener here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-defense-of-public-debt-9780197577899

Please check out Episode 65 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

We’re all familiar with the phrase “words have power”—but in a political and cultural climate where we become more aware of the power that money, influence, and privilege have every day—how do people wield the power of words?

On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we spoke with philosopher Myisha Cherry and poet Carmen Bugan to talk about how they see their disciplines addressing the questions of language, oppression, and resistance, and exactly what tools the arts and humanities provide to address injustice.

Learn more about The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle by Myisha Cherry here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-case-for-rage-9780197557341

Please check out Episode 64 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we focused on human consciousness and how studying the neurological basis for human cognition can lead not only to better health but a better understanding of human culture, language, and society as well.

We are joined today by Dr. John Parrington, author of the newly published book Mind Shift: How Culture Transformed the Human Brain, and Professor Anil Seth, Editor-in-Chief of the Open Access journal Neuroscience of Consciousness­, to learn more about the study of human consciousness and how it can help us to understand autism spectrum disorders, mental illnesses, and neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis, the focus of this year’s World Brain Day (July 22).

Learn more about Mind Shift: How Culture Transformed the Human Brain and John Parrington here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mind-shift-9780198801634

Please check out Episode 63 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press

June is National Ocean Month in the United States, and earlier this month, the whole world observed World Oceans Day, a day that has been celebrated since 2008 with a different theme each year. The theme for 2021 was “Life and Livelihoods.”

Covering 71% of the earth’s surface, the ocean is home to a vast array of life—an estimated 2.2 million species—and provides livelihoods for 40 million people in the fishing industry. But many scientists warn that the health of our oceans is in decline, threatening these species and the humans who depend on them.

The threats to our oceans’ health are multifold, and include deep-sea mining, offshore drilling, and ocean acidification. On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we are joined by biological oceanographer Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and contributor to Natural Capital and Exploitation of the Deep Ocean, and Ray Hilborn, a professor at the University of Washington and co-author of Ocean Recovery: A Sustainable Future for Global Fisheries? We tapped into their expertise to better understand the threats posed by overfishing, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

Learn more about Natural Capital and Exploitation of the Deep Ocean and Lisa Levin here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/natural-capital-and-exploitation-of-the-deep-ocean-9780198841661

Please check out Episode 62 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

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In January, Oxford University Press announced its support for SHAPE, a new collective name for the humanities, arts, and social sciences and an equivalent term to STEM. SHAPE stands for Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy and aims to underline the value that these disciplines bring to society. Over the last year or so, huge attention has—rightly—been placed on scientific and technological advancement but does that mean we’re overlooking the contribution of SHAPE in finding solutions to global issues?

Today’s episode of The Oxford Comment brings together two leading voices from SHAPE and STEM disciplines to discuss how we might achieve greater balance between sciences and the arts. In the episode, Dr Kathryn Murphy, a Fellow in English Literature at Oriel College at the University of Oxford and the co-editor of On Essays, and Professor Tom McLeish, inaugural Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York and the author of The Poetry and Music of Science, discuss the origins of the SHAPE/STEM divide and what might be done to address it.

Learn more about On Essays and Kathryn Murphy here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/on-essays-9780198707868

Please check out Episode 61 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

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© Oxford University Press

The academic fields of both environmental history and future studies originated in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s during the rise of the mainstream environmental movement. On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we are joined by environmental historian Erin Stewart Mauldin, author Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South, and Jennifer Gidley, the past president of the World Futures Studies and author of The Future: A Very Short Introduction, to learn more about how these two areas of study look at our relationship with the environment and how these valuable perspectives can engage, and inform, our environmental understanding.

Learn more about Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South and Erin Stewart Mauldin here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unredeemed-land-9780190865177

Please check out Episode 60 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors:

The Oxford Comment Crew:

Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

© Oxford University Press