Pundits, scholars, and the general public alike have argued that conspiratorial thinking is the greatest threat to liberal democracy. In Conspiracy: The History of a Political Obsession (Harvard UP, 2026), Dr. Nicolas Guilhot, however, challenges us to see conspiracy theories as a sign of the public’s desperation in light of liberal democracy’s failures. Conspiracism is widespread across the political spectrum, as citizens struggle with their disenfranchisement. How are we to imagine the future at the purported “end of history”? And how might this impasse make us susceptible to hallucinations and paranoia?

Conspiracy shows that narratives of conspiracy historically gain popularity when politics ceases to offer hope and apocalyptic thinking becomes a last refuge. Taking the reader from Karl Popper’s coining of the term “conspiracy theory” in 1948 through the essential commentary of Hannah Arendt, Alexandre Koyré, Richard Hofstadter, and others, Dr. Guilhot reveals how the fear of conspiracies has always operated against a backdrop of antagonism between the powerful and the many, the rich and the poor, the oligarchy and the masses. Today’s fear of a grand plot is no exception.

Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Dr. Guilhot shows that society’s focus on truth and falsehood masks how conspiracy theories feed on the dysfunctions of liberal democracies that no longer offer credible pathways toward a better future. Conspiracy theories offer a ready-made explanation for the feeling that one lacks agency and freedom. Rather than the cause of the current crisis, they are one of its consequences.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe, sustainable environments. The good news is, around the country, red states and blue states are taking up the charge. In California, state agencies are partnering with disadvantaged communities to measure air quality, reduce pollution, and advance environmental justice. In Texas, a state law requires every school to cut down on the use of dangerous pesticides, helping to keep kids safe. In New York, a network of clinics trains medical professionals in occupational health and children’s environmental health, ensuring that patients receive excellent care and specialists are ready to advocate for protective policies. The success of these programs is not haphazard; instead, effective approaches share key elements, including state-university-industry partnerships, collaboration across government agencies, and strong environmental health education. In A Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health (Island Press, 2025), Susan Kaplan highlights examples of groundbreaking state environmental health policies, exploring what has worked, what needs improvement, and how other areas of the country can build on these advances. Further, she shows how public health advocates can push forward new protections, creating safer environments for the next generation. Ultimately, Kaplan argues, we need a coordinated federal and state response to environmental health threats. Until then, innovative policy solutions can go a long way to improve the nation’s wellbeing, one state at a time.

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When American fascists suddenly goose-stepped down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new European import. It was not. It didn’t come from abroad. Nor was it new or radical. The seed of American fascism was planted by elite southern planters who insisted that slavery need not be addressed in the Constitution because it would soon die out on its own.

In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915 (Bloomsbury, 2026), Joseph Kelly chronicles fascism’s deep roots in the antebellum South; its codification under Jim Crow; and, then, after the Spanish American War, its ascendency in the form of Anglo-Saxon nationalism, proposing that the nation belongs to a master-race-the original lie of American fascism. Dr. Kelly’s gripping book reminds us that the monied elite have always exceled at deploying disinformation to bias and inflame the masses, and that there have always been courageous patriots helping us to fight our way out of darkness toward the light.

Guest: Dr. Kelly is a professor of literature and history at the college of Charleston. He is the author of Marooned, The Biggest Lie, and America’s Longest Siege.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast and newsletter. She works as a writing coach and developmental editor for academics.

Listeners may also be interested in:

• Paper Heroines
• No Common Ground
• Thy Will Be Done
• Preparing for War
• Understanding Disinformation
• Campus Monuments
• What Might Be
• The Social Constructions of Race
• Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom
• Belonging

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Discover the untold story of why homeschooling moved from the margins to the mainstream of American education. In this groundbreaking study Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2026), historian Dixie Dillon Lane traces the rise of homeschooling in the United States, from the modern movement's beginnings in the 1950s as a fringe activity to its current status as a widely accepted educational choice. Through compelling nationwide data and vivid case studies from Los Angeles County, Lane uncovers a powerful truth: homeschooling taps into long-held American beliefs in local control and parental rights that have shaped our nation's schools for generations. Writing in an engaging, accessible style, Lane demonstrates how homeschooling's rise reflects Americans' response to the increasing centralization of public education. As public schools have shifted toward consolidation and away from local oversight, parents have rediscovered their voice, choosing homeschooling as an innovative way to renew parental influence in education. Unlike most authors writing on this topic, Lane writes as both a credentialed historian and an experienced homeschooling parent. As such, she offers an honest, balanced view that acknowledges the homeschooling movement's challenges as well as its strengths. Skipping School will be of interest to parents, historians, educators, policymakers, and anyone seeking a fuller understanding of American education.

Dixie Dillon Lane holds a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame and is a homeschooling mother of four (who writes at The Bad Homeschool Moms substack). She serves as an associate editor of Hearth & Field and a contributing editor of Front Porch Republic.

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In this episode, I spoke with Jacob Ware, co-author, with Bruce Hoffman, of God, Guns and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, published in 2024 by Columbia University Press, and winner of the 2025 Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize.

Shocking acts of terrorism have erupted from violent American far-right extremists in recent years, including the 2015 mass murder at a historic Black church in Charleston and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These incidents, however, are neither novel nor unprecedented. They are the latest flashpoints in a process that has been unfolding for decades, in which vast conspiracy theories and radical ideologies such as white supremacism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and hostility to government converge into a deadly threat to democracy. God, Guns, and Sedition offers the definitive account of the rise of far-right terrorism in the United States—and how to counter it.

Jacob Ware is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and at DeSales University. He is a recipient of the 2026 National Security and Counterterrorism Fellowship from the McCain Institute, and also currently serves as a Survivor Fellow at Everytown for Gun Safety. Jacob serves on the editorial boards for the academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown and an MA (Hons) in international relations and modern history from the University of St Andrews.

Chris Millington is Professor of Modern European History and lead of the Histories and Cultures of Conflict research group at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of eight books including Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe ((Manchester University Press, 2025), The Invention of Terrorism in France, 1904-1939 (Stanford University press, 2023), and France in the Second World War Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

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Kevin Galvin's Troubled Times: The Boston Courthouse Bombing Of 1976 (Brandeis UP, 2026), interweaves the stories of a revolutionary and a bombing victim to explore the roots and unintended consequences of political violence. 1976. The Vietnam War had ended, but radical political groups still operated clandestinely throughout the United States. Nowhere was the threat of civil unrest greater than in Boston. Racial tensions had been building since a federal judge ordered the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools, and civic leaders were counting on the pageantry of the nation's Bicentennial to boost both tourism and investment. In April, the Sam Melville-Jonathan Jackson Unit, prison reformers schooled in Marxism and angered by US interventions abroad, bombed the Suffolk County Courthouse, injuring twenty-two people. The site of the blast marked the spot where the lives of two men intersected: a mill town kid who'd been radicalized in Vietnam and prison, and an immigrant waiting in line because he needed to renew a cab license. Fifty years after the bombing shook the city, Troubled Times tells the story of lives changed by political violence at a time when the American experiment is again in crisis.

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Chicana Spiritual Activism: Making Change, Making Soul (U Arizona Press, 2026) explores the profound impact of spiritual activism within the Chicana feminist movement in Texas. It illuminates how a cohort of Texas Chicanas embraced spiritual activism in pursuit of social change during the movement and into the present day.

The book draws on an array of qualitative methodologies—including interviews, autoethnography, testimonio, pláticas, and archival analysis—to develop what the author formulates as “methodologies of the spirit.” Focusing on the lived experiences, histories, and spiritual activism of sixteen Chicanas/Tejanas, Sendejo shows how these trailblazing women confronted the enduring impacts and repercussions of colonial legacies in Texas through their involvement in movement initiatives such as electoral politics through Mujeres Por La Raza, the cultural arts movement, developing Chicana feminist thought, and the establishment of bilingual education and Chicana/o studies programs.

The activists highlighted in the book include well-known figures such as Santa Barraza, Norma E. Cantú, Rosie Castro, Martha P. Cotera, Inés Hernández-Ávila, and others. Through their work, these activists emerged as architects of their own healing and transformation. Simultaneously, they opened avenues for others to embark on similar journeys reshaping religious practices and unearthing and disseminating spiritual, feminist, and ancestral knowledges.

This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for The University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert, investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that forever changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

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The first full biography of the controversial and complex First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler--an unjustly scandalized New Yorker, the second wife to President John Tyler, and a savvy and consequential political figure in the age of the Civil War.

Myths, rumors, and gossip have long circulated around First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler. Commonly believed to be politically insignificant, most of our fascination with Tyler surrounds her reputation as a highly desired superficial flirt. This salacious mythos was based on her status in a politically influential New York family and the popular rumor that she posed for a sexually suggestive advertisement for a dry goods store in Manhattan.

Now, in the first full biography of Julia Tyler, Christopher J. Leahy and Sharon Williams Leahy correct such longstanding misconceptions about President John Tyler's second wife and establish her reputation as an influential political force. Presidentess: The Life of First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler (UP of Kansas, 2026) shows a presidential spouse who was more consequential than people realize and made a lasting contribution to the evolving role of first lady.

Leahy and Leahy present a compelling portrait of a determined woman who came to embrace her new Southern identity after marrying John Tyler, serving as a faithful defender of his views and values--including his decision to renounce the Union and join the Confederate government. In the aftermath of the Civil War, she orchestrated a public relations campaign to restore and protect her legacy as well as that of her late husband, the "traitor president." In her later years, she successfully lobbied Congress for a pension and reclaimed her status as a former first lady.

Presidentess casts a new light on Julia Gardiner Tyler's life and legacy, including new revelations about the scandalous "Rose of Long Island" advertisement, an exploration of the dark side of New York City's print culture, and Tyler's essential role as an unwitting character in the presidential election of 1844. Presidentess gives a fully developed portrait of Julia Tyler, illuminating this controversial first lady and this pivotal turning point in American history.

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