In episode 87 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, BISR's Rebecca Ariel Porte and Dilettante Army Editor-in-Chief Sara Clugage sat down with Kyla Wazana Tompkins to discuss her latest book, Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot. The conversation touches on, among other things: food and the early history of the War on Drugs, the racialization of sugar, jelly and cocaine, food as a means for diagnosing entrenched political problems, and how plantation capitalism—and later, industrial capitalism—altered the sensory quality of everyday life. Along the way, they ask: what are the political uses of disgust? How have coffee, rum and sugar production transformed human experience? And—with Sylvia Wynter—how do we reconcile the immateriality of ideology with the materiality of the body?

The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini.

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In episode 71 of the Podcast for Social Research's Practical Criticism series, Rebecca Ariel Porte plays Neko Case's "Curse of the I-5 Corridor" (off the 2018 album Hell-On) for Ajay Singh Chaudhary. Their conversation ranges from convention to the sound of disillusionment to lyrical density, meta-musical gesture, vocal quality, and how you can tell if and when something is beyond saving.

In episode 15 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and Joseph explore vampires in media, across genre and time! Welcoming back Joseph after a few episodes away, the episode kicks off with a games roundtable on Monster Hunter: Wilds (Capcom, 2025) and Pentiment (Obsidian, 2022), among other things. Then the group quickly dives into all things vampire. From Capital to Castelvania, the conversation analyzes the psychosexual, political economic, Orientalist, literary, genre, social, and even epidemiological metaphors, allegories, and tropes that haunt vampire stories and have made the figure of the vampire of such perennial—if shifting—fascination. How have vampire stories changed over time? Why do vampire stories shift and blur genre and valence? Why is the vampire such a perennial stand-in, across so many fields, often at the same time? Objects in consideration include: Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872), Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897), Interview with the Vampire (novel: Anne Rice, 1976; TV adaptation: Rolin Jones, 2022-present; film: Neil Jordan, 1994), The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches (Anne Rice), Nosferatu (F.W. Munrau, 1922), Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, 1997-2003), Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami, 1997), Castlevania (anime, Warren Ellis, 1997-2021), Castlevania: Nocturne (anime, Clive Bradley, 2023-present), True Blood (TV series, Alan Ball, 2008-2014), The Twilight Saga (films 2008-2012, based on the novels by Stephanie Meyer), Midnight Mass, What We Do In The Shadows, and many more! Discover how the erotic, the economic, the exotic and even the epidemic all collide in the tragedies, comedies, horrors, nightmares, and fantasies that prove the vampire is a potent if changing symbol for fears, desires, and delirium.

In episode 86 of the Podcast for Social Research, live-recorded at BISR Central, BISR's Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Danya Glabau sat down with fellow faculty Nafis Hasan to celebrate the launch of his new book, Metastasis: The Rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and the Horizons of Care. Nafis kicks off the discussion with a briefing on the successful cultivation of cancer cures for mice, but not humans, fundamental failures at the clinical level, the rise of cancer as a household name, and the blockbuster drug moving for $500,000 a shot. The three then discuss the primacy placed, among researchers, on genetic mutations above environmental causes, the notion of "financial toxicity," and what it means to critique medical research at a moment of widespread cuts to public health institutions. Key questions arise along the way: why—despite the allocation of so many resources—are we not winning the war on cancer? Why has an entire political economy developed around genetic mutations, at the expense of public health campaigns—a more proven mitigator of cancer-related deaths? Why is capitalism so embedded in efforts to defeat cancer, and is there any alternative?

Note: The Novartis drug with a half-million dollar price tag mentioned at the top of the podcast is Kymriah, not Keytruda.

The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini.

Learn more about upcoming courses on our website.

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In this shortcast edition of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR's Rebecca Ariel Porte, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, and Isi Litke discuss David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001). Conversation ranges over what it means for a thing to be "Lynchian," what it means for a thing to be surreal, why Mulholland Drive isn't easily reducible to pat explanation—and why that's a good thing, and the inextricability, modeled in the film, of dream life and ordinary reality. How, in film and life, do fantasy and reality merge? Why is Lynch particularly interested in Hollywood, that great dream factory? How does Lynchian melodrama, rubbing shoulders with Lynchian menace, give viewers the permission to feel things we otherwise deny ourselves in ordinary, waking life? What makes Lynch the premier poet of broken promises and shattered dreams?

In episode no. 70 of Practical Criticism, Ajay surprises Rebecca with Roy Hargrove and the RH Factor's "Out of Town," off the 2003 record Hard Groove. The discussion includes a dive deep into jazz-hip-hop experiments, varieties and suspicions of musical fusion, caesuras and polyharmonies, the dissonant and the antiphonal, "open-eared moonlighting," and hybridity without history.

Practical Criticism is produced by Ryan Lentini.

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What does sexual morality have to do with genocidal politics? In this episode of Faculty Spotlight, hosts Mark DeLucas and Lauren K. Wolfe sit down with Hannah Leffingwell—historian, queer theorist, musician, and novelist—to discuss the work of Dagmar Herzog, historian of sexuality whose celebrated book Sex After Fascism undid the myth that all Nazis were closeted homosexuals by exposing how it arose in the first place, and that long after the war had ended. Along the way, the three hash out: the uses and pitfalls of theory in the study of history, strategic misprisions of the past for political needs in the present, what sort of lens the history of sexuality can be for understanding mass political phenomena, and whether and how to invoke 20th-century fascisms to explain conservative reaction in the 21st. Tune in to discover why Nazism is not the past, how fascism was never anti-sex, why anti-queer and anti-trans animus have never been peripheral, why Trump can never be camp, and positive panegyrics for Chappell Roan and A Complete Unknown.

Faculty Spotlight is produced by Ryan Lentini.

Notes:

Dagmar Herzog, Sex After Fascism (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Dagmar Herzog, Cold War Freud (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Dagmar Herzog, The Question of Unworthy Life (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Dagmar Herzog, Sex in Crisis (Basic Books, 2008)

Sabrina Carpenter performing "Espresso" at the 2025 Grammys

Chappell Roan performing "Pink Pony Club" at the 2025 Grammys

Lesser Known Women (Hannah's band) on Spotify and Bandcamp

Lesser Known Women performing at Sunset Stoop on March 8th!

Learn more about upcoming courses on our website.

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In episode 85 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live on Facebook, BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Barnaby Raine, Abdaljawad Omar, and K. Soraya Batmanghelichi place the Gaza War ceasefire in the context of the conflict's broader development. Ajay kicks off the discussion with a recap of the events leading up to the ceasefire, after which each of the panelists brings their expertise to bear—Abdaljawad analyzing the dialectic of futility and resistance in Palestine, Soraya grappling with Iran's evolving geopolitical intentions, and Barnaby addressing the antisemitism panic in the Global North. The four then discuss: political developments within Israel and Palestine since October 7th, wider geopolitical reverberations, and Israel as a model for Trumpism and the global far right. An audience member's question brings the conversation to an urgent point of reflection: how can we, in the Global North, sustain attention towards Palestinian resistance in the era of social media and truncated news cycles?

0:26 - Ajay Singh Chaudhary introduction and context

11:35 - Abdaljawad Omar on futility and resistance in Palestine

33:05 - K. Soraya Batmanghelichi on the geopolitical consequences for Iran

46:23 - Barnaby Raine on the weaponization of antisemitism

1:05:12 - Trump and the protection of Western Civilization

1:11:20 - Developments within Israeli and Palestinian societies since October 7th

1:42:12 - Global paradigm shifts and geopolitical maneuvering

2:06:53 - Zionism, Trumpism, and the global far right

2:29:34 - Audience question and concluding remarks - how to sustain attention towards Palestine

The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini.

Check out the video version of this podcast on the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research YouTube Channel.

Follow Brooklyn Institute for Social Research on Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky

Learn more about our upcoming courses on our website.

Isi and Ajay kick off episode 14 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism by paying tribute to the late, great American auteur David Lynch. They discuss the pleasures of Lynch's oneiric style, his keen eye for American mass culture (and the horrors it conceals), and recent re-watches of Twin Peaks and Dune. The two then reprise episode 13's review of 2024 pop culture. Along the way, they discuss year-end film releases (Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, Ridley Scott's Gladiator II, Robert Eggers' Nosferatu, Gints Zilbalodis' Flow), HBO's The Penguin, and recent gaming highlights (Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess) and lowlights (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle). Closing out the episode are pre-2024 cultural revisits, including Barry Lyndon, the Infernal Affairs trilogy, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, The Case of the Golden Idol, Inside Man, and Koyaanisqatsi.

The podcast is produced by Ryan Lentini.

In episode 13 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi ruminate on a largely dismal year in pop culture. Kicking off with a discussion of unexpected developments in the world of health insurance, the conversation turns to a number of broad trends that characterized culture this year: AI, long production cycles, platforms—rather than cultural works—as objects of cathexis, IP art, and the use of IP as trans-media anchors. Along the way, they discuss social bandits, collective effervescence, Leiji Matsumoto's Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, the Criterion Closet truck, Sony's push into the television space, Jon Chu's Wicked, and 2024's revealing box office numbers. In the second half of the episode, Ajay and Isi discuss the year's highlights (Metaphor: ReFantazio [GoTY], Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Lies of P, Mati Diop's Dahomey, Shuchi Talati's Girls Will Be Girls, a performance of book 1 of The Odyssey by Joseph Medeiros, Edward Berger's Conclave, Todd Phillip's divisive Joker: Folie à Deux, the second season of AMC's Interview with the Vampire, and True Detective: Night Country) and lowlights (Denis Villeneuve's Dune 2, Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, and a whole lot of "just okay" television)—with more to come in a follow-up episode after the holidays!