Andrea Gunraj, "Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present" (McClelland & Stewart, 2026)

Aditya Deshbandhu, "The 21st Century in 100 Games" (Routledge, 2024)

The 21st Century in 100 Games [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781032218236] (Routledge India, 2024) is an interactive public history of the contemporary world. It creates a ludological retelling of the 21st century through 100 games that were announced, launched and played from the turn of the century. Aditya Deshbandhu [https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/39401-aditya-deshbandhu] is Senior Lecturer of Communications, Digital Media Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK. A researcher of video game studies, new media, and the digital divide, he examines how people engage with digital artefacts and seeks to understand how these interactions shape everyday lives. As someone who actively examines digital acts of leisure, his research in the last decade has examined social media and streaming platforms alongside video games and digital cultures. He is also the author of Gaming Culture(s) in India: Digital Play in Everyday Life and also serves as an editor for this book series. Khadeeja Amenda [https://x.com/KhadeejaAmenda] is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Brexit Britain: 10 Years on from the Referendum

Anniversaries provide opportunities to take stock and reflect. It is now ten years since voters in the United Kingdom cast their ballots in a referendum on whether the UK should Leave or Remain in the European Union. The subsequent decade has seen much churn and change in British politics. Join Tim Haughton and guests Maria Sobolewska, Charlotte Galpin and Monika Brusenbauch Meislova for a discussion of the causes, process and consequences of that decision made on 23 June 2016. Maria Sobolewska [https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/maria.sobolewska/] is Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester. Among her many publications is the book, Brexitland [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/brexitland/667A60CB4C315A755792074E79B20FBA], co-written with Rob Ford, which won the 2022 WJM Mackenzie Prize for the best book published in political science. Monika Brusenbauch Meislova [https://www.muni.cz/en/people/110589-monika-brusenbauch-meislova] is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic. Monika has published extensively on many aspects of Brexit in a host of academic journals including Political Quarterly, British Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, European Security and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Charlotte Galpin [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/galpin-charlotte] is Associate Professor in German and European Politics at the University of Birmingham. She has published widely on these aspects of Brexit, including in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and Social Movement Studies. Tim Haughton [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/haughton-tim] is Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a Deputy Director of CEDAR at the University of Birmingham. He has published articles on David Cameron’s referendum pledge [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcms.12177] and a review article on Brexit, Ruling Divisions [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/ruling-divisions-the-politics-of-brexit/9E66014A6701C5989B7FF3ABC0F01E4C]. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation [https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/colleges/socsci/cedar/index.aspx] (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Transcript here [https://cdn.craft.cloud/44c3b6c3-3307-4a13-a091-f99416660f91/assets/Brexit-episode-transcript.docx#asset:459190@1] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment. Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology [https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814350942/] (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing stars—notably Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle—Jhingan situates the singing voice as a cinematic object with limitless possibilities of distribution and dispersal. She employs the perspectives of a diverse range of listeners across a vast media landscape to illustrate how the affective charge of the female playback voice, combined with developments in audio technology, has led to a gradual expansion of opportunities for women in film, popular music, and media and audio production. With nuanced exploration of the way the human voice becomes intertwined with devices such as the microphone, radio, cassettes, and digital technologies, Jhingan argues for the sonic excess of the female voice beyond the narrative and visual. The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema is an authoritative addition to the field of sound studies with implications for gender studies, performance studies, and cinema studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Understanding Themistocles: A Discussion with Author Michael Scott

Themistocles is one of the great personages of ancient Athens, known for his heroics in warfare as well as for his overweening and ultimately tragic ambitions. In Themistocles: The Rise and Fall of Athen’s Naval Mastermind  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780300256598](Yale UP, 2026), Michael Scott takes a distinctly human measure of this complex figure. As he tells me in our conversation, it would be wrong to see Themistocles, as some ancient scribes were disposed to, as the product of a fixed nature. Born and raised as an outsider in the status-obsessed world of Athens, he shaped his destiny through his own choices, some of them flawed. Scott is professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Joanna Stalnaker, "The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death" (Yale UP, 2025)

What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker turns our usual perspective on the Enlightenment on its head, bringing to light a set of works written at the end of the Old Regime and at the end of their authors’ lives. These works, all written before the French Revolution, cast a retrospective glance over the intellectual movement their authors participated in, and over the authors’ own lives and works. Stalnaker shows that the beauty of these works stems from their authors’ efforts to give literary form to the materiality and fragility of their dying bodies. As they reflected on writing as a means of reaching posterity, Enlightenment philosophers embraced the possibility that neither their names nor their writings would survive long beyond the decomposition of their bodies. They inscribed the silence and nothingness of death into their last works. Stalnaker’s book The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780300181340] (Yale UP, 2025) unsettles reigning interpretations of the Enlightenment as a precursor to our modernity and shows its protagonists at their moments of fragility and doubt, capturing their sense of an ending rather than the confidence in a glowing future so often attributed to them. Joanna Stalnaker is professor of French at Columbia University. She is the author of a prizewinning first book, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia. She lives in New York City. Morteza Hajizadeh [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here [https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]