In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

There is something intuitive about the idea that when we believe, we ought to follow our evidence. This entails that beliefs that are the products of garden varieties of irrationality, such as delusion, confabulation, false memory, and excessive optimism, are for that reason epistemically derelict. Many philosophers would go so far as to say that people ought not to hold such beliefs; some would go further and say that it’s our duty to challenge those who hold beliefs of this kind.However, in The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs (Oxford University Press, 2020), Lisa Bortolotti argues that the full story about irrational beliefs is far more complicated and philosophically interesting. She identifies circumstances under which irrational beliefs are nonetheless beneficial, and thus, as she says, “epistemically innocent.”

Every year nine million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis, every day over 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, and every thirty seconds malaria kills a child. For most of the world, critical medications that treat these deadly diseases are scarce, costly, and growing obsolete, as access to first-line drugs remains out of reach and resistance rates rise. Rather than focusing research and development on creating affordable medicines for these deadly global diseases, pharmaceutical companies instead invest in commercially lucrative products for more affluent customers.Nicole Hassoun argues that everyone has a human right to health and to access to essential medicines, and she proposes the Global Health Impact (global-health-impact.org/new) system as a means to guarantee those rights. Her proposal directly addresses the pharmaceutical industry's role: it rates pharmaceutical companies based on their medicines' impact on improving global health, rewarding highly-rated medicines with a Global Health Impact label.Global Health Impact: Expanding Access to Essential Medicines (Oxford University Press, 2020) has three parts. The first makes the case for a human right to health and specifically access to essential medicines. Hassoun defends the argument against recent criticism of these proposed rights. The second section develops the Global Health Impact proposal in detail. The final section explores the proposal's potential applications and effects, considering the empirical evidence that supports it and comparing it to similar ethical labels. Through a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach to creating new labeling, investment, and licensing strategies, Global Health Impact demands an unwavering commitment to global justice and corporate responsibility.Nicole Hassoun is Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University and Visiting Scholar at Cornell University.Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.

Buddhism has always been a world religion, but its popularity in the West really dates only from the late nineteenth century, when much of the Buddhist world was subject to European colonial rule. Of all those Westerners who became interested in, and sought to promote Buddhism at this time, perhaps no-one is more unusual and interesting than U Dhammaloka, an Irishman who “went native” and became a Buddhist monk in British Burma at the turn of the twentieth century. U Dhammaloka is now the subject of a fascinating new book, The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020) cowritten by Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking. Beyond the story of this intrepid Irishman, this book is also a social history of British Burma at the height of European imperialism. But what is distinctive about this social history is its focus on white, working-class Europeans in the highly cosmopolitan colonial states at this time. Some of them, and U Dhammaloka was one, shared political sympathies with the Asian subjects of these colonial states.

In this week episode of “New Books in History,” we’ll discuss Gender and the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2017) with editors Sue Grayzel and Tammy Proctor, focusing on ideas about how to teach using their edited collection.The centenary of the First World War from 2014 to 2018 offered an opportunity to reflect upon the role of gender history in shaping our understanding of this pivotal international event. From the moment of its outbreak, the gendered experiences of the war have been seen by contemporary observers and postwar commentators and scholars as being especially significant for shaping how the war can and must be understood.The negotiation regarding concepts of gender by women and men across vast reaches of the globe characterizes this modern, instrumental conflict. Over the past twenty-five years, as the scholarship on gender and this war has grown, there has never been a forum such as the one presented here that placed so many of the varying threads of this complex historiography into conversation with one another in a manner that is at once accessible and provocative.Given the vast literature on the war itself, scholarship on gender provides students as well as scholars with a chance to think not only about the subject of the war but also the methodological implications of how historians have approached it. While many studies have addressed the national or transnational narrative of women in the war, none address both femininity and masculinity, and the experiences of both women and men across the same geographic scope as the studies presented in this volume.Susan R. Grayzel is Professor of History at Utah State University, where she researches and teaches the history of modern Europe, gender, and the world wars.Tammy M. Proctor is Distinguished Professor of History and Department Head at Utah State University.Julia M. Gossard is Assistant Professor of History at Utah State University where she teaches early modern and modern European history. Her book, Young Subjects, is forthcoming with McGill-Queen’s University Press.

In The Brain from Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019), György Buzsáki contrasts what he terms the ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ perspectives on neuroscientific theory and research methodology. The ‘outside-in’ approach, which he sees as dominating thinking in the field at present and in most of recent history, conceptualizes the brain as a passive, information-absorbing, coding device. The ‘inside-out’ perspective, which Buzsáki seeks to develop and advocate, sees the brain rather as a device sculpted exquisitely by evolution for the generation and control of action and behaviour. The Brain from Inside Out is a candid and provocative monograph from one of the world’s most respected scientists, full of fascinating insights into the history and future of the science of the mind.Dr György Buzsáki is Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at New York University.Dr. John Griffiths (@neurodidact) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, and Head of Whole Brain Modelling at the CAMH Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics. His research group (grifflab.com) works at the intersection of computational neuroscience and neuroimaging, building simulations of human brain activity aimed at improving the understanding and treatment of neuropsychiatric and neurological illness.

The moorlands of Gascony are often considered one of the most dramatic examples of top-down rural modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. From an area of open moors, they were transformed in one generation into the largest man-made forest in Europe.Body and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914 (Oxford University Press) explores how these changes were experienced and negotiated by the people who lived there, drawing on the immense ethnographic archive of Felix Arnaudin (1844-1921).The study places the songs, stories, and everyday speech that Arnaudin collected, as well as the photographs he took, in the everyday lives of agricultural workers and artisans. It argues that the changes are were understood as a gradual revolution in bodily experiences, as men and women forged new working habits, new sexual relations, and new ways of conceiving of their own bodies.Rather than merely presenting a story of top-down reform, this is an account of the flexibility and creativity of the cultural traditions of the working population. William G. Pooley tells the story of the folklorist Arnaudin and the men and women whose cultural traditions he recorded, then uncovers the work carried out by Arnaudin to explore everyday speech about the body, stories of werewolves and shapeshifters, tales of animal cunning and exploitation, and songs about love and courtship.The volume focuses on the lives of a handful of the most talented storytellers and singers Arnaudin encountered, showing how their cultural choices reflect wider patterns of behaviour in the region, and across rural Europe. William G. Pooley, Lecturer in Modern European History, University of Bristol is a historian of France in the long nineteenth century, interested in popular and folk cultures.Rachel Hopkin PhD is a UK born, US based folklorist and radio produce.

How did the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns affect other elections in 2016? How did the use of gender stereotypes and insulting references to women in the presidential campaign influence the way House and Senate candidates campaigned?The 2016 American elections forced scholars and candidates to reassess the role that gender plays in elections. In Trumping Politics as Usual: Masculinity, Misogyny, and the 2016 Elections (Oxford UP, 2019), Robert G. Boatright and Valerie Sperling (professors of political science, Clark University) focus on how gender norms are used to frame – both positively and negatively – the people who run for office. The book interrogates gender and sexism in campaigns (the “gender issue”) and what happens when the media, electorate, and candidates expect to have a clear winner and loser(the “loser” issue). Boatright and Sperling distinguish between the top of the ticket and down ballot elections to tell a story about the impact of the 2016 presidential race on competitive congressional races. They demonstrate how Donald Trump’s candidacy radically altered the nature of the congressional campaigns by making competitive races more consequential for both parties and changing the issues of contention – towards sexism and misogyny – in many congressional races.It is unusual to see a collaboration of this kind – a comparativist who specializes in Russian politics and wrote an award winning book on political legitimacy in Russia (Sperling) and an Americanist usually focused on campaign finance reform and congressional redistricting (Boatright). The book is a tribute to how crossing disciplinary boundaries in political science yields a more compelling and nuanced qualitative and quantitative analysis – one that is more relevant to contemporary politics.The podcast was recorded the day after Democrat Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate. Sperling and Boatright discuss how stereotyping has already affected the 2020 race. Their trenchant analysis of the code already being deployed by the Trump campaign against Harris in terms of both gender and race should not be missed.Both authors are veterans of the New Books Network and you can hear their earlier interviews with Heath Brown (Boatright, The Deregulatory Moment?) and Amanda Jeanne Swain (Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin).Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (July 2020). Email her comments at sliebell@sju.edu or tweet to @SusanLiebell.

During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to introduce and establish the language of film music. In Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer (Oxford University Press, 2020), the first full biography of Steiner, author and filmmaker Steven C. Smith interweaves the dramatic incidents of Steiner's personal life with an accessible exploration of his composing methods and experiences, bringing to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art with some of the greatest film scores in cinema history.Stephen C. Smith is a film documentarian, with four Emmy nominations and 16 Telly Awards.Joel Tscherne is an adjunct history professor at Southern New Hampshire University and tweets @JoelTscherne.

In her new book, Contesting Conformity: Democracy and the Paradox of Political Belonging (Oxford University Press, 2020), political theorist Jennie C. Ikuta traces the idea of nonconformity and how this often-lauded idea can be a significant challenge for modern democracy, especially in the United States. The United States is often associated with the ideals of democracy, freedom, and individual liberty. These concepts are usually looped together, by citizens and theorists, and yet while we often consider individual liberty as a vital part of democracy, Ikuta’s analysis highlights the tension or danger for democracy from this individual liberty in the form of nonconformity.We often think of nonconformity as an asset, as a way of thinking or working that leads to creative outcomes, unexpected outcomes, unknowable outcomes. And Ikuta outlines how nonconformity is often approached in education, in business, even in culture and politics. But in examining this idealized position of nonconformity, especially in American society, Ikuta compels us to consider how this way of thinking and acting operates within a political system that is, by design, based on distinguishing the will of the people, and how that will guides policy, decisions, laws, and essentially the form of society. In thinking about American democracy, and modern democracy more broadly, Ikuta considers the foundational role of relational equality, where people see each other as political equals within society. Fundamentally, Contesting Conformity is asking about what conditions and restrictions are necessary on nonconformity within a democracy and how this interacts within the structure of relational equality. How is nonconformity compatible with democracy? For this question—which is the basis of the research, Ikuta turns to Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and Frederick Nietzsche, since each of these theorists discusses both nonconformity and democracy, though they do not come to the same conclusions. Tocqueville, Mill, and Nietzsche were worried about the role and impact of conformity in mass democracy, though each considers distinct dimensions about conformity and nonconformity in this context. Each thinker is trying to determine whether and how to constrain nonconformity – since the effort to limit or temper this aspect of individualism also comes up against the promise of freedom. Ikuta carefully explores each theorist on the question of nonconformity, examining not only their analysis of this concept in context, but also the recommended solution or means to manage nonconformity within democracy. Ultimately, Contesting Conformity concludes that nonconformity can be beneficial for democracy, but not without conditions or restrictions.Adam Liebell-McLean assisted with this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

What are the policy implications due to a fundamental distrust and dislike of “outsiders”?Today I talked to political scientist John R. Hibbing about his new book The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump’s Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era (Oxford UP, 2020)Hibbing teaches political science at the University of Nebraska and has been both a NATO fellow in Science and a Guggenheim Fellow. Media appearances have included Star Talk, The Hidden Brain, and The Daily Show.Topics covered in this episode include:• What are the biggest misconceptions, among the media and others, about Trump’s staunchest supporters?• In what ways are Trump’s fans different from the Republican party’s traditional base?• In a battle over the soul of whether America might be a democracy or an oligarchy in the future, where do securitarians land and what are the implications for the country?Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.