Ajay, Raphaële, and Rebecca look back on 2018 in cultural objects: what artifacts from the catastrophe of history lingered with them and which will they be salvaging for the coming year? Conversation ranges from poetry and theory to music, film, games, and other sensory pleasures, broadly conceived.

In this shortcast, Ajay, Audrey, Mark, Raphaële, and Rebecca talk about the feel of the winter holiday season, sweet and sour, bitter and bright, ritual and revulsion.

The 2008 financial crisis shook to the core not only the global economy, but also prevailing myths about the efficiency of markets, the possibility of endless profits and growth, and the inviolability of capitalism. In The Fall that Wasn’t: a Decade Since the Financial Crisis, documentarian Astra Taylor and journalist Sarah Jaffe join BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Raphaële Chappe for a wide-ranging panel discussion of the causes and contexts of the crash, as well as its lasting, overwhelming consequences for policy, politics, and culture. In addition to retracing the blow-by-blow of events, panelists discuss neoliberalism and capitalism, austerity, accountability, political and aesthetic repercussions, and the nature of crisis itself. 

(Apologies for drops in audio at 47 minutes and 1:24 minutes. Please see the embedded video of the Verso event on the BISR site, which partially addresses the gaps)

In the twenty-seventh episode of the Podcast for Social Research,BISR faculty Adriana Garriga-Lopez, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, and Alyssa Battistoni attempt to untangle the interlocking forces that rendered Puerto Rico fatally vulnerable to the double punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. One year later, Puerto Rico remains a site of social and ecological catastrophe, an “unnatural” disaster of infrastructural decay, economic austerity, and political subjugation. What, in theory and practice, is Puerto Rico’s relation to the United States? What impact has colonization, neoliberalization, and financialization had on Puerto Rico’s social, economic, and political condition? What is the state of the island 11 months after landfall? How do ordinary Puerto Ricans cope, and what can be done?

In our second Podcast for Social Research Shortcast, BISR's Suzanne Schneider, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Raphaele Chappe, Mark DeLucas, and Michael Stevenson discuss the odd appeal, and internal contradictions, of HGTV. What sort of ideal does HGTV project, and why, today, is it attractive? Why are domestic spaces now seen as sites of potential perfectibility, of entrepreneurial derring-do? What distinguishes HGTV from "This Old House"? Why, in shows about settling down, do the participants seem as if they come from, and end up in, no place?

The twenty-sixth episode of the podcast for social research is a live recording of a discussion on Suzanne Schneider’s new book Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine, hosted by New York Society Library. BISR’s Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Anthony Alessandrini, and Suzanne Schneider discuss whether religion is source of political stability, social continuity or an agent of radical change and how should we understand religion and secularism when we talk about political and historical matters such as partition and nationalism? Suzanne talks about her book that takes mandate period Palestine as a case study under the British administration to study the relationship of religion, education, state and politics. Panelists ask how in light of these considerations should we attempt to create a clear boundary between religious and political.

In our first Podcast for Social Research Shortcast, BISR's Rebecca Ariel Porte, Raphaele Chappe, Mark DeLucas, Suzanne Schneider, and Ajay Singh Chaudhary watch the trailer for the movie Mary Shelley and consider the life of Mary Shelley, the Romantic intellectual milieu, and filmic representations of genius. Are intellectual bio-pics always undone by self-seriousness? Is campiness the key to representing genius and creativity?

The twenty-fifth episode of the Podcast for Social Research is a live recording of "Borders, Migration, and Crisis," a critical and wide-ranging conversation on migration and the present-day immigration crisis: its roots, form, and legal and physical structure, the political, legal, economic, and geographical contexts for migration,  and alternatives to the status quo. The event, which took place on July 8th, 2018, featured Nestor Rodriguez (UT Austin, Department of Sociology), Sarah Lopez (UT Austin, School of Architecture, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice), Eduardo Canales (Executive Director of the South Texas Human Rights Center), Ana Vidina Hernández (UT Austin, Social Work), and BISR’s Ajay Singh Chaudhary, took place on Friday, July 6th at the Black Star Co-op in Austin and was made possible by BISR in partnership with the Consulate General of Mexico in Austin, Jolt Texas, and Union Communications Services, and in solidarity with Jolt’s "Art Caravan for Children to Brownsville."

In the twenty-fourth episode of the Podcast for Social Research, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Rebecca Ariel Porte, Nathan Shields, and Jude Webre discuss the relationship between music and criticism and the what it means to talk intelligibly about popular genres ranging from jazz to pop to prog rock. Departing from Adorno’s “Perennial Fashion—Jazz” and recent work by the critic Kelefa Sanneh, this roundtable considers the following questions: What does it mean to do music criticism in a world of constantly mutating genres, sounds, forms, and vocabularies? What does it mean to listen to music as a critic, an enthusiast, a performer, or a composer? How does taste really work? And how do conversations about music shape our social worlds?

Episode twenty-three of the podcast is a live recording hosted by Caveat Space. Just Before Trump delivered his first State of the Union, guests Sarah Jaffe (the Nation Institute) and Kazembe Balagun (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung) and BISR’s Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Patrick Blanchfield, Samantha Hill, and Kali Handelman took to the Caveat stage to discuss the state of the country and our politics as they actually are. What has changed and what hasn’t in the past year? In the era of the 24-hour news cycle, what stands out as significant, exceptional, or exemplary? What is the state of our union? Participants present a picture of the past year and the present moment through the stories, moments, and issues that stand out to them. Q & A follows.