Strange, wondrous, and hopeful podcasts
Hallo, readers!
In today’s issue are: a note on the newsletter; my first podcast episode about Humans: A Monstrous History; podcast recommendations; and book tour news.
Newsletter platform update
This is the first newsletter from my new platform, Buttondown. If you subscribed/unsubscribed very recently, the change may not have gone through yet; hopefully I haven’t scrambled any changes. The easiest way to update your status is using this Buttondown email (or future emails), or my site:
https://buttondown.com/surekhadavies
I recorded a podcast episode!
A few months ago I recorded my first book podcast for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY. It went live this week! Check out my conversation with Allison Tyra on the Infinite Women podcast. We talk about everything from witches to women leaders and how the category of “monster” has often been entangled with ideas about women.
Heartwarming podcasts
Halloween is the evening of the uncanny, but uncanny things don’t always prompt fear and loathing. Strange things can be wondrous, too. Here are three podcasts that transport me on voyages through strangeness, leaving me feeling hope and wonder at the end. Perhaps they’ll have the same effect on you.
The Peculiar Book Club livestream YouTube show and podcast
This book club is PERFECT for spooky season and beyond: science, society, and history meet in author interviews with historian of medicine and murder mystery author Brandy Schillace and guest co-hosts. Guests have included Ed Yong (author of An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Senses Around Us), Lucy Jane Santos (author of Chain Reactions: A Hopeful History of Uranium), Megan Kate Nelson (author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America), and novelist Daniel Kraus (author of WHALEFALL, a thriller set inside a whale)
Tune in live on YouTube to ask the authors questions! There are also stop-motion animation credits, musical interludes, quizzes, and book-themed cocktails and mocktails.
If you’re interested in sci-fi, science, and society, this funny, profound, Hugo Award winning podcast is a great listen. Hosted by sci-fi author Charlie Jane Anders and science writer and sci-fi author Annalee Newitz, the show combines pop culture convos with calm but incisive analysis of contemporary science and tech. Charlie Jane and Annalee interview scientists and authors, too. I can’t think of a more hopeful way to keep an eye on parts of the modern world that too often feel ominous.
For a total book podcast nerd-out that will blanket you up in an imaginative cocoon, Between the Covers, hosted by David Naimon, is the way to go. Literary fiction, poetry, and sci-fi and fantasy reign here. David’s research for each episode is painstaking, and it shows. For spooky season, you might check out the Crafting With Ursula series within the show. Authors like Maria Dahvana Headley (who translated Beowulf a couple of years ago) and Kim Stanley Robinson (!) talk about their relationship to Ursula K. Le Guin and her body of work.
Upcoming book talks include:
New York City: January Jan 3-6, 2025 (American Historical Association conference).
Washington, DC: Tuesday March 4, 7pm, Politics & Prose Bookstore, Connecticut Ave, Tuesday
Pasadena, CA: Friday March 7, Huntington Library.
Northern California: March 10-14 (multiple venues).
Boston, MA: March 20-22, 2025 (Renaissance Society of America and Shakespeare Association of America joint conference).
New York City: Thursday April 9.
Philadelphia, PA: Thursday April 17, Science History Institute.
YouTube livestream: Thursday April 24, Peculiar Book Club.
London, UK: Sunday April 27 and Monday April 28.
You can also find me on www.surekhadavies.org,
BlueSky (@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social),
and Instagram/Threads (@surekhadavies).