Everything is Ideology: a Cultural Studies Podcast
Everything is Ideology: A Cultural Studies Podcast is a collection of interviews hosted by Dr. Lee Caplan, featuring conversations with scholars, writers, and thinkers whose recent work contributes to the broad and interdisciplinary field of Cultural Studies. Each episode centers on a newly published article, book, or research project, using it as a starting point to explore larger questions about power, ideology, culture, and everyday life.
Episodes
"On the Urgency of Radical Palestinian Epistemology" With Amanda Batarseh
Buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyPatreon.com/everythingisideology Shownotes: Today I’m joined by Amanda Batarseh, an assistant professor of literature whose teaching and research span Palestinian literature, Arabic literature, Arab American and diasporic literature, Indigenous Studies, Mediterranean Studies, and comparative literature.Our conversation centers on Batarseh’s work on radical Pale
Amílcar Cabral, Ghassan Kanafani, and the Weapon of Theory w/ Zeyad el Nabolsy
Buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyShow notes: What does it mean to pursue liberation without romanticizing the past? Can modern science, historical materialism, and even ideas associated with European modernity become tools of anti-colonial struggle? And what might the thought of Amílcar Cabral have in common with the Palestinian intellectual Ghassan Kanafani?Joining me today is Zeyad El Nabols
"Gramsci's Bones: Reclaiming the Material Life of the Subaltern" with Mauro Puddu and Saskia Kroonenberg
https://buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyShow notes: Antonio Gramsci is often remembered through a single image: the imprisoned intellectual, the theorist of hegemony, the author of the Prison Notebooks. His concepts have traveled across disciplines—from political theory and cultural studies to education, media, and postcolonial thought. Yet in becoming an icon, Gramsci has also been flattened
"The Sound of Attica: Archie Shepp, Black Music, and Resistance" with Christopher R. Rogers
Show Notes: Today we're exploring the relationship between music, memory, abolition, and Black political thought through the lens of Christopher R. Rogers' essay, "How to Sample and Stretch a Prison Break: A Prelude to the Attica Blues." Using Archie Shepp's Attica Blues as a point of departure, the essay asks what it means to write in the spirit of Black music—not simply to analyze it, but to thi
"The UWI Campus as Caribbean Music Laboratory" with Andrew Martin
Show notes: Universities often present themselves as neutral institutions devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. But what counts as knowledge? Who decides which ways of learning are legitimate? And why have certain forms of education—particularly those rooted in community, oral tradition, and collective practice—so often been excluded from the academy in favor of European models of expertise?Today,
Fanon and Glissant on Breaking with the Colonial Past with David Ventura
Show notes: In this episode, I'm joined by David Ventura, Associate Res earcher at Newcastle University, whose work engages the Black Radical Tradition, colonial temporality, and practices of refusal. We discuss his recent article, "History and Histories: Fanon and Glissant on Breaking with the Colonial Past," which revisits an enduring question within decolonial thought: What relationship should
Western Civilization in Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism with Zeyad el Nabolsy
Patreon.com/everythingisideologyBuymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyShow Notes: In this episode of I sit down with philosopher Zeyad el Nabolsy to discuss his article, "The Concept of Western Civilization in Black Marxism: Cedric Robinson as an Ethnophilosopher." Together, we explore one of the most influential and debated texts in Black Studies and political theory: Cedric Robinson's Black Marx
“Fueling Masculinity: How Ads for Plant-Based Burgers and Electric Trucks Reinforce Gender Norms and Resist Sustainable Imaginaries" with Emily Contois
patreon.com/everythingisideology buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideology.Show notes: In this episode, I sit down with Emily Contois to discuss her recently published article, “Fueling Masculinity: How Ads for Plant-Based Burgers and Electric Trucks Reinforce Gender Norms and Resist Sustainable Imaginaries.” We explore the politics of food, masculinity, consumer culture, and advertising.Drawing on he
“Intergenerational trauma and complex implication in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King (2019)” With Noreen Kane
Show Notes: When we think about colonialism, countries like Britain, France, and Spain often come immediately to mind. Italy, by contrast, is frequently imagined through a different set of narratives—art, culture, food, and, perhaps most significantly, a national mythology that has long obscured the realities of its colonial past.In this episode, we're joined by scholar Noreen Kane to discuss her
“On Taylor Swift and Broken Glass: Confessional Pop, Psychological Intimacy, and Two-Way Authentication,” with Max Blansjaar and Jacob Kingsbury Downs
Show notes: I’m joined by Max Blansjaar and Jacob Kingsbury Downs for a wide-ranging conversation on their article, “On Taylor Swift and Broken Glass: Confessional Pop, Psychological Intimacy, and Two-Way Authentication,” we explore why honesty has become such a central aesthetic category in popular music and what it means when listeners begin to understand themselves through artists they consume.
“Reparative Museology and Its Limits” with Colin Sterling
Show notes: In this episode speak with Colin Sterling about his article, “Reparative Museology and Its Limits.” We discuss the broader political, philosophical, and cultural questions surrounding museums, memory, and institutional critique. Drawing from critical heritage studies, museum studies, psychoanalysis, and environmental humanities, we discuss the growing “reparative turn” within museums a
“Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957” with Sarah Balakrishnan
Buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyPatreon.com/everythingisideology Show notes: We are joined once again by historian and writer Sarah Balakrishnan to discuss her article “Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957” the conversation explores a largely erased history of indigenous prison systems in the Gold Coast and the central role w
"False Friends? Quakers, fronts, and the rise of popular abolitionism" with Stuart Anderson-Davis
Patreon.com/everythingisideologyBuymeacoffee.com/everythingisideology Show Notes: In this episode, we’re diving into a history that feels uncannily familiar—one where media, persuasion, and strategic communication shape public opinion in ways that still resonate today. I’m joined by Stuart Anderson Davis, a doctoral researcher at Columbia University studying the history of deception and disinforma
"Uncovering Radical Histories: Anna Budu-Arthur’s Everyday Politics of Decolonization and Transnational Solidarity" with Bright Gyamfi
buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyShownotes: In today’s episode, we’re in conversation with Dr. Bright Gyamfi about a fascinating and necessary rethinking of decolonization, memory, and historical narrative. But rather than retelling familiar stories centered on nation-states or political elites, this conversation turns toward what has been overlooked—and often structurally erased.At the heart
“Cinemas on Fire: Walter Benjamin's Spielraum and the 1979 Revolution in Iran" with Ehsan Hanif
Patreon.com/everythingisideologyBuymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyInstagram.com/everythingisideology Music: "Building Nests in the Ruins" By nihilore creative commons music projectShownotes: Welcome back to Everything is Ideology, I’m your host Dr. Lee Caplan. Today were joined by Ehsan Hanif a PhD candidate at Cornell University whose work explores the intersections of architecture, oil, and p
“Rolling Stone Magazine: Co-opting the Counterculture” with Laura Sikes
If you like what we do please subscribe to the show at Patreon.com/everythingisideology or give a one time donation at buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyShow notes: Welcome back to Everything is Ideology. I’m your host Dr. Lee Caplan. I’m joined by Dr. Laura Sykes, and we will be discussing her recently published essay “Rolling Stone Magazine: Co-opting the Counterculture.” Today’s episode is r
“Writing with Emo Nostalgia: Toward Musical Mattering” with Steve Lamos
Show Notes: In today’s episode we dive into his recent work, “Writing with Emo Nostalgia Toward Musical Mattering” where we explore how nostalgia functions not just as a backward glance, but as a way of imagining alternative futures. We’ll talk about emo beyond its stereotypes—less as individual angst and more as a site of community, affect, and critical engagement. We’ll also unpack concepts like
"Train and its fugitive rhythms: rewriting empire, violence, and the politics of sound" with Dr. Rachmi Diyah Larasati
Biography: Dr. Rachmi Diyah Larasati of the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Is a passionate dance practitioner, innovative choreographer, and author of works such as The Dance that Makes You Vanish, she has explored aesthetics and narrative through numerous writings. As Professor of Transnationalism and Aesthetics at the University of Minnesota, she is also affiliated with Amer
“Colonizing Accra: Experiments in Storytelling" with Sarah Balakrishnan
Biography: Sarah Balakrishnan is a Canadian-Indian writer and scholar based in the Department of History at Duke University. Balakrishnan is the 2022 Narrative Prize winner, the winner of Narrative Magazine’s Best Under 30 writing contest, and a finalist for the Cecilia Joyce Johnson Award for Short Fiction from the Key West Literary Seminar. Since 2020, BalaKRISH NIN has served as a fiction edito
"A Practical Guide to the Silent Disco" with Max Blansjaar
Biography: Max Blansjaar is a musician and writer from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He holds a BA in Music from St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, where he was awarded the Gibbs Prize by the Faculty of Music in 2024. His work centres around cultural politics in popular music and the negotiation of social identities and relations through music and sound, with recent essays published in S
"Universalizing Capital, Foreclosing Necro-Imperialism, and Žižek’s Liberal Zionist Response to the Gaza Genocide” with Jamil Khader
Biography: Dr. Jamil Khader is a Palestinian-American scholar of English literature, literary theory, and cultural politics whose work explores how stories shape our understanding of power, identity, and justice. Across a career spanning institutions in the Middle East and the United States, he has cultivated a distinctive intellectual voice—bringing together Marxist critique, Lacanian psychoanaly
“Pan-Indianism and Authenti(city): Refusing Colonial Borders,” with Sydney Beckmann
Biography: Sydney Beckmann earned her PhD in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where she was a Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bolinski Fellow. Her research is interdisciplinary and intersects the areas of religion, race, and colonialism. She focuses on the legacy of colonial discourse and its effect on urban indigeneity particularly how government policies and rhe
"Black Geographies and Black Ecologies as Insurgent Ecocriticism" with Dr. Alex Moulton
Biography: Dr. Alex Moulton earned his PhD in Geography from Clark University, with a MS in Geography from East Carolina University and a BSc in Geography and Geology from the University of the West Indies, Mona. His research examines Black geographical epistemologies and history, ecological justice, community resource governance, landscape legacies of colonization, and political ecology of enviro
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