Stephen J. A. Ward discusses his book Objectively Engaged Journalism: An Ethic with Chris Richardson. Ward is an internationally recognized author, media ethicist and historian of ideas whose research is on the ethics of global, digital media, the rise of extreme media, and its impact on democracy. He is professor emeritus and Distinguished Lecturer on Ethics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. He has written and edited 10 books on media ethics, including the award-winning Radical Media Ethics and The Invention of Journalism Ethics. He is editor-in-chief of The Handbook of Global Media Ethics featuring chapters by over 80 media scholars and journalists around the world. A former war reporter, he is founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, co-founder of the UBC School of Journalism in Vancouver, and former director of the Turnbull Media Center at the University of Oregon in Portland.  He has won the President’s Award for lifetime contribution to journalism from the Canadian Association of Journalists. 

Scott Newstok discusses his book How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from A Renaissance Education with Chris Richardson. Newstok is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. Newstok is the author of Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb (Palgrave, 2009) and How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Princeton, 2020); and editor of Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare (Parlor Press, 2007), Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Perforance (Palgrave, 2010, with Ayanna Thompson), and Paradise Lost: A Primer, written by his late mentor Michael Cavanagh (Catholic University of America Press, 2020).

Anna F. Peppard discusses her book Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy and the Superhero with Chris Richardson. Peppard is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow in the department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University. She’s published widely on representations of race, gender, and sexuality within a variety of popular media genres and forms, including action-adventure television, superhero comics, professional wrestling, and sports culture. She’s currently working on a monograph about the iconic 1960s spy-fi TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and writing entirely too much X-Men fanfiction. She co-hosts the podcast Three Panel Contrast (a monthly discussion of comics classics), and The Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! Podcast (a weekly discussion of the classic Marvel comics series Excalibur).   

Jonathan Cohn discusses his book The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture with Chris Richardson. Cohn is an assistant professor of digital cultures and head of the digital humanities program at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on digital culture and history, critical algorithmic studies, film and media, postfeminist and postracial discourses…and television. With Dr. Jennifer Porst, he is co-editing Very Special Episodes: Event Television and Social Change (Rutgers, forthcoming) on the history of how the television industry has confronted traumatic events and cultural change. In the meantime, he is thinking a lot about what differences might exist between algorithmic and AI culture, and the experiences of incoherence endemic to our current moment. In an effort to make our relationship with AI more collaborative, ethical and egalitarian, he is also creating a program to help humanities scholars co-write and research with AI.  

Sorcha Ní Fhlainn discusses her book Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture with Chris Richardson. Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. She is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019). She has published widely on socio-cultural history, subjectivity and postmodernism in Film Studies, American studies, Horror studies, and Popular Culture. Previous books include Clive Barker: Dark imaginer (Manchester UP, 2017), and The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland, 2010), and articles in Adaptation (Oxford UP), and Horror Studies (Intellect). She is currently leading a research project and writing a monograph on the popular culture of the 1980s.

Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter discuss their book Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream with Chris Richardson. Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies and the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse. His first book, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?, was published in 2013 and he recently co-edited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech published with Zed. His new book Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, is now out with Verso.

Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of East London. His research is on the far-right with a focus on racism, mainstreaming and violence. He is co-editor of Discourses and Practices of Terrorism: Interrogating Terror (Routledge 2010), Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism (Routledge 2018) and Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (Routledge 2020), and co-author with Aurelien Mondon, of Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream (Verso 2020). He has also published in the journals Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities and Sociological Research Online, and been interviewed by NBC, BBC, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, Vice and Wired. He currently an associate editor of Identities and co-editor of the Manchester University Press (MUP) book series Racism, Resistance and Social Change.

Chris Richardson discusses his book Batman and the Joker: Contested Sexuality in Popular Culture with Diana Richards. Richardson is (usually) the host of This Is Not A Pipe podcast. He is also Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication Studies Department and Program Coordinator for Popular Culture at Young Harris College.

He grew up in Toronto, ON, where he studied Journalism and Cultural Studies before earning his PhD in Media Studies from Western University. He has previously published Habitus of the Hood (2012), Covering Canadian Crime (2017), and Violence in American Society: An Encyclopedia of Trends, Problems and Perspectives (2020). He is now a recluse living in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his partner and their adopted dogs.

Diana Richards is a Trans Woman who has enjoyed the privilege of living full-time in her preferred gender since January of 2020. She is also a life-long reader and collector of comic books. In 2017, she donated her collection of some 8,000 books--many dating back to when she first bought them in the early 1960s and 70s--to Young Harris College. It is from this connection that she and Chris became friends, and she is thrilled to have had this conversation with him and now to share it with others...Excelsior!

Hadar Aviram discusses her book Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole with Chris Richardson. Aviram is the Thomas Miller Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. She holds law and criminology degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley, where she studied as a Fulbright Fellow and a Regents Intern. Professor Aviram specializes in criminal justice and civil rights from a socio-legal perspective. She is the author of Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment (UC Press, 2015), and the coeditor of The Legal Process and the Promise of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2019.)

Professor Aviram has published on domestic violence, behavioral perspectives on policing, prosecutorial and defense behavior, unconventional family units, public trust in the police, correctional policy, criminal justice budget policy, and the history of female crime and punishment. She served as President of the Western Society of Criminology and as a Trustee of the Law and Society Association and is currently the book review editor of the Law & Society Review. One of the leading voices in California and nationwide against mass incarceration, Professor Aviram is a frequent media commentator on politics, immigration, criminal justice policy, civil rights, the Trump Administration, and the Mueller Report. Most recently, Professor Aviram has been deeply involved in the struggle to provide relief to California's prison population, which is being ravaged by COVID-19. Her popular blog covers crime and punishment in California.

Robert K Elder discusses his book Hemingway in Comics with Chris Richardson. Elder is the Chief Digital Officer at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an award-winning author of 12 books and founder of Odd Hours Media. He also serves as a mentor at TechStars, 1871 Chicago and Northwestern University’s The Garage. Elder specializes in launching new products, expanding brands and developing corporate innovation strategies. Elder is also the founder of Odd Hours Media LLC, which consults and creates branding campaigns and TV production. In 2018, he also became a founding partner of Token. Agency, a consulting firm focused on emerging technology and blockchain projects. Elder is also the author or editor of several books, including 2018’s The Mixtape of My Life, a journal that guides users to write their autobiography through their music collection. His 2016 book, Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park, won a Gold Medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Jo Littler discusses her book Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility with Chris Richardson. Jo Littler is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Gender and Sexualities Research Centre at City, University of London, UK. Her work on in/equality and cultural politics is wide-ranging and includes Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility, Routledge (2018) Radical Consumption? (2008) and with Roshi Naidoo (2005) The Politics of Heritage: The legacies of ‘race’ (2005). She is a co-editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies and part of the editorial collective of Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture. She is currently working on a book of interviews with left feminist academics and, as part of ‘The Care Collective’, The Care Manifesto (Verso, 2020).