Research Rabbit Holes
Research Rabbit Holes is an interview podcast that explores a different topic each episode. Host Laura Herges invites a new guest to dive into subjects spanning literature, politics, and history. Each conversation takes listeners down a unique intellectual rabbit hole, revealing unexpected and unusual areas of knowledge. If you enjoy discovering fresh perspectives on niche subjects, this show offers something new every time.
Episodes
From Lincoln to Trump – the Transformation of the Republican Party and the Civil Rights Movement (Interview with Dr. Tim Galsworthy (Lincoln Bishop University))
How did we get here? In today’s episode, Dr. Tim Galsworthy (Lincoln Bishop University) and I are chatting about the Republican Party: How did the party of Abraham Lincoln become the party of Donald Trump? Tim’s book The Republican House Divided: Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, and the Transformation of the GOP takes us back to the 1960s and explores the connections between the civil rights moveme
Pain and creativity: How do people write about trauma? (Interview with Justina Šumilova (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute))
In 1994, French writer and philosopher Maurice Blanchot wrote about his near-death experience. But this traumatic event had happened 50 years before. How does Blanchot write about something that is impossible to describe? And how can creativity help people dealing with physical and emotional pain? My guest today is Justina Šumilova, who is doing her PhD on absence in Blanchot’s philosophy at the L
Native American Boarding Schools and Their Marching Bands (Interview with Vincent Veerbeek (University of Helsinki))
Did you know that thousands of Native American kids went to boarding schools that were designed to assimilate them into Anglo-American culture? My guest today is Vincent Veerbeek (University of Helsinki), who is writing his dissertation about the role of marching bands in these schools. Which role did music play in the U.S. government’s assimilation effort? What was life like for the kids at the b
How Volcano Tourism Helped Colonize Hawaii (Interview with Henri Keskinen (University of Turku))
Colonialism through tourism? In this episode, we talk about the kingdom of Hawaii, and how it was slowly turned into the 50th American state. My guest is Henri Keskinen (University of Turku), who writes his dissertation about the evolution of colonialism through American interest groups in Hawaii. Tune in if you want to learn more about volcanoes, political coups and weird gift shops. 00:00 - 03:5
Black Male Vulnerability in Fiction Written by African American Women (Interview with Tuula Kolehmainen (University of Turku))
Toni Morrison and Alice Walker are just two of many famous African American authors whose novels focus mostly on the experiences of black women. But how do they actually depict black men?My guest today is Dr. Tuula Kolehmainen (University of Turku), whose research explores how these writers depict the vulnerability of their male characters, as a way to resist common stereotypes, such as the macho
U.S. Prisons and the Loss of Institutional Trust (Interview with Henry E. James (University College London))
Today's episode is about crime and punishment: Why are 20% of all prisoners incarcerated in the United States, if only 5% of the world's population live there? Henry E. James (University College London) is writing his PhD thesis about the loss of institutional trust in America. In this episode, we talk about how people lost their belief in the government's ability to do the right things, about mas
We ❤️ Robots: Blade Runner, West World and Why We Feel Bad for Wall-E (Interview with Jiacheng Mo (Heidelberg University))
Are robots the better people? In his PhD project, Jiacheng Mo (Heidelberg University) analyzes artificial minds in anglophone literature. Today, we talk about whether robots dream of electric sheep (pun intended), empathy tests and the (non-)human mind.00:00 – 02:22 Introduction02:23 – 10:50 Why we have empathy with robots10:51 – 20:07 Frankenstein, Blade Runner and other literary artificial minds
When AI Revives the Dead: Grief, Capitalism and True Crime (Interview with Dr. Jenny Kidd & Dr. Bethan Jones (Cardiff University))
What if you could chat with someone who's no longer alive? It sounds dystopian, but several websites already offer their customers to create so-called deathbots - AI avatars of deceased people. I talked to Dr. Jenny Kidd and Dr. Bethan Jones (Cardiff University) about the ethics of digital afterlives, how AI could change our ways of grieving and our attitudes towards death in general, and how
Haunted by the Soviet Past: Trauma in Contemporary Russian Literature (Interview with Lara Righi (University of Verona))
In this episode, we’re looking at the other side of the Iron Curtain: we’re talking about Soviet trauma in the form of undead creatures that haunt contemporary Russian literature, about Soviet Westerns, and the question whether the USSR was a colonial empire. Lara Righi, PhD candidate at the University of Verona, talks with us about post-memory, the relationship between Russia and Belarus, and Gre
The US turns 250 - What Can We Expect? (Interview with Dr. Alexander "Xan" Karn (Colgate University))
It's time to party! 🎉 Next year, the US turns 250 years old. The celebration of the so-called "Semiquincentennial" has been in the planning phase for 9 years at this point - but we don't know what to expect, because what started under the Obama administration has slowly morphed into a MAGA project. Historian Dr. Alexander "Xan" Karn talks with us about how anniversaries
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