What’s a difficult pleasure? In this episode of the Podcast for Social Research, a sequel to our episode on guilty pleasures, Raphaële Chappe, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Mark DeLucas, Rebecca Ariel Porte, Michael Stevenson, and Cora Walters continue to work on the tangled problem of what to do with art objects you find aesthetically compelling but politically or morally conflicted. Case studies range from Wagner to Shakespeare, Céline, Bertolucci, Morrissey, Woody Allen, Sofia Coppola, and Lana del Rey. You can download by right-clicking here and clicking “save as,” or look us up on iTunes. This episode of the Podcast for Social Research was edited by Nechama Winston. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider supporting our Patreon page.

American capitalism is frequently contrasted with its European other—namely, the social democratic model that seems, to American eyes, more equitable and less crisis-prone. Yet, according to sociologist Oliver Nachtwey, all is not well in social-democratic Germany, Europe’s largest economy, where stagnant social mobility has led to social fragmentation and a revived nationalist right-wing. In the 35th episode of the Podcast for Social Research, Nachtwey joins BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary for an extended discussion of contemporary capitalism, social democracy, the neoliberal turn, the rise of the right, and alternatives to the status quo. What, if anything, differentiates Western European capitalism from its American variant—and why, if it was once in some sense more equitable, are Western European societies and institutions currently in crisis? How did neoliberalism make itself felt in Germany? What remains of the social democratic compact? Can Western Europe be re-stabilized—and under what conditions?

In this episode of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR Core Faculty members Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Suzanne Schneider, and Rebecca Ariel Porte mull the case of the guilty pleasure: what does this phrase mean? What kinds of pleasures (if any) qualify as guilty? What are alternative models for thinking about our conflicted pleasures in cultural objects? How to rule on the defendant pleasure: guilty, not guilty, or a plea of no contest? Case studies range from country music to games, teen dramas, science fiction, and Romantic poetry. 

What is the price of fracking? In the 33rd episode of the Podcast for Social Research, Eliza Griswold, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, joins BISR's Ajay Singh Chaudhary for a wide-ranging conversation about fracking (what it is and what it does), energy politics, rural economies, corporate and regulatory collusion, resistance, and the economics of ecological sustainability. Is increased natural-gas extraction economically necessary—or even desirable? What role do governmental agencies play? In rural communities, why do landowners sign fracking leases, and who ultimately benefits? Can an energy-based economy be both productive and ecologically sustainable—or is some alternative necessary to mitigate the very worst effects of climate change?

In this thirty-second episode of the Podcast for Social Research Core Faculty Member Rebecca Ariel Porte delivers an address for the two-hundredth anniversary of Keats's Odes of 1819, originally recorded as a live broadcast for Montez Press Radio. This lecture considers how to read and what it means to be reading these strange poetic artifacts now--and, too, what it means to be on, to, with, for, and against the Romantic forms of poetry that go under the name of "ode." What is an ode and why write or read one? What are the effects of an ode, its tremors in time, its odicy? What are the odd reverberations of Keats's odicies and their objects--psyche, indolence, melancholy, nightingale, urn, autumn--after two centuries of wear and tear?

In the thirty-first episode of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at the 2019 Night of Philosophy and Ideas (February 2nd - February 3rd, 7 p.m. - 7 a.m.), an all-night marathon of intellectual life co-sponsored by Brooklyn Public Library and the French Embassy, BISR faculty Suzanne Schneider, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, and Rebecca Ariel Porte deliver a series of talks on the theme of the evening, "Facing the Present. Suzy explores the linkages between the contemporary right wing and Islamic jihad; Ajay theorizes  “The Long Now” of life during climate change; Rebecca contemplates the puzzle of naming and envisioning possible worlds like and yet unlike our own. What senses of past, present, and future animate acts of terror or a nihilist orientation to the world? How, as political subjects, do we register the devastations of the anthropocene, already so powerfully present to so many? Why do we attach to distant, radiant, indifferent objects and what does their allure have to do with the difficult arrangements of the given world? 

Ajay, Raphaële, and Rebecca look back on 2018 in cultural objects: what artifacts from the catastrophe of history lingered with them and which will they be salvaging for the coming year? Conversation ranges from poetry and theory to music, film, games, and other sensory pleasures, broadly conceived.

In this shortcast, Ajay, Audrey, Mark, Raphaële, and Rebecca talk about the feel of the winter holiday season, sweet and sour, bitter and bright, ritual and revulsion.

The 2008 financial crisis shook to the core not only the global economy, but also prevailing myths about the efficiency of markets, the possibility of endless profits and growth, and the inviolability of capitalism. In The Fall that Wasn’t: a Decade Since the Financial Crisis, documentarian Astra Taylor and journalist Sarah Jaffe join BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Raphaële Chappe for a wide-ranging panel discussion of the causes and contexts of the crash, as well as its lasting, overwhelming consequences for policy, politics, and culture. In addition to retracing the blow-by-blow of events, panelists discuss neoliberalism and capitalism, austerity, accountability, political and aesthetic repercussions, and the nature of crisis itself.  (Apologies for drops in audio at 47 minutes and 1:24 minutes. Please see the embedded video of the Verso event on the BISR site, which partially addresses the gaps)