For the past quarter century journalist and non-fiction writer Alan Weisman has traveled the globe to write about the existential crises that now imperil the planet.  In The World Without Us (2007), which became a New York Times bestseller, he kills off humanity in the opening pages to help us imagine what would become of our environmental impact after we’re gone.  In Count Down: Our Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth (2013), he chronicles the causes and responses to the population explosion that is pushing the planet to the brink.  Lastly, in Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future (2025) he showcases the extraordinary people rising to meet the challenges that threaten our survival.  A conversation with Alan Weisman, through the lens of memory and forgetting, next on the November 4th episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.  

Most cases of intimate partner violence are never made and the stories never told.  Joy Neumeyer did both.  The victim of an abusive relationship while a graduate student at Berkeley, Joy succeeded in having her former boyfriend and fellow graduate student expelled through the Title IX process.  Equality important, she gained recognition for the truth of the physical and emotional harm she suffered.  Through the lens of her training as a historian of the Soviet Union, Joy finds parallels with her own experience with women in both the Soviet and American past.  She explains the history and challenges of the Title IX process which is at once under assault and a vital support for victims of intimate partner violence.  A conversation with Joy Neumeyer, author of A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence and the Stories We Don’t Tell, on this episode of Realms of Memory.  

Weaving together her own survivor story with her doctoral research on the Russian past, Joy Neumeyer offers a personal and historical account of intimate partner violence.  How do we fall victim to abusive relationships?  What makes it so difficult to break free?  Why are these stories so often silenced?  Find out how Joy sought recourse through the Title IX process at the University of California, Berkeley and the rights and protections women have gained since the 1960s.  A conversation with Joy Neumeyer about her book, A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’ t Tell, next on the October 21st special episode of the Realms of Memory podcast

As the host of the hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor, Joel Waldman spends his days airing commentary on the nation’s most heartbreaking and horrific crime stories.  Yet Joel grew up knowing very little about how his own mother Karmela, or Karm as he affectionately calls her, survived the Holocaust while her father and grandfather were gassed at Auschwitz.  Joel’s book, based on interviews with his mother, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with My Mom: A Holocaust Survivor, Therapist and My Podcast-Cast Co-Host, is by no means limited to the subject of the Holocaust.  Filled with warmth, love and humor, Joel shares Karm’s thoughts on subjects ranging from marriage to money.  But throughout, the book raises important questions about why we sometimes choose to bury the past and whether this is ever truly possible. 

When do we choose to suppress the past not just as a coping mechanism but to protect our loved ones?  Can refusing to dwell on the past and fixing our sites on the future be understood as a conscious and deliberate choice to reject the label of the victim and to adopt an optimistic outlook on life?  A conversation with Joel Waldman about his book, Surviving the Survivor: A Brutally Honest Conversation about Life (& Death) with My Mom: A Holocaust Survivor, Therapist and My Podcast-Cast Co-Host and his hit true crime podcast, Surviving the Survivor: Best Guests in True Crime.  Next on the October 7th episode of Realm of Memory. 

Objects recovered from sites of mass atrocities have a special significance today.  This is because we live in what University College Dublin Professor Lea David labels as a human rights memorialization culture.  Central to this culture is the conviction that we should face difficult histories, we should remember human rights abuses, and victims should be the focus of our memorization efforts.  Objects from sites of mass atrocities are deployed by an array of new memorial museums to pull on the emotional heartstrings of visitors to identify with this new human rights memorialization agenda. In her book, A Victim’s Shoe, a Broken Watch and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights, Lea David explains how shoes are now the most potent example of what she describes as desire objects.  Transcending the confines of the museum, shoes have become powerful memory containers and rallying symbols for diverse movements that often have nothing to do with the human rights memorialization agenda.

A broken wristwatch, battered glasses or a tattered wallet, how can ordinary objects discovered at sites of mass atrocities become powerfully moving?  University College Dublin Professor Lea David calls them desire objects because they take on new and ever changing meanings from their discovery to their use in courtrooms and museums.  The most emotionally charged of all of these objects are shoes.  Now almost mandatory memory pieces for Holocaust museums, shoes have migrated to the wider public sphere helping to mobilize diverse groups around causes ranging from climate change to the war in Gaza.  A conversation with Lea David from University College Dublin about her book, A Victim’s Shoe, a Broken Watch and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights.  Next on the September 2nd episode of Realms of Memory.  

There are limits to our ability to cope with traumatic events.  When we are unable to mourn, process, and come to terms with the past we run the risk of suffering from sociocultural trauma.  This is what Tony Robben argues afflicts the people of Argentina.  Utrecht University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Tony Robben explains how repeated forms of betrayal of trust are the root cause of sociocultural trauma in Argentina.  As a result Argentina is splintered into competing memory communities and ever shifting frameworks for narrating the past.  Explaining the memory rollercoaster in Argentina is the subject of Tony Robben’s book Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning and Accountability. 

The number of disappeared from the years of dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) is still unknown.  What is clear is the lingering trauma.  Anthropologist Tony Robben has spent his career studying the repercussions of this era.  Robben argues that the inability to mourn the dead and the military’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the past has splintered Argentina into competing memory communities. A conversation with Tony Robben about his book, Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning and Accountability, next on the August 5th episode of Realm of Memory.  

Beginning with calls for never again, we’re living in an age where the duty to remember has become sacrosanct.  Memory has become a means of righting past wrongs, fostering trust and strengthening social cohesion.  But is it also possible to see memory as a destabilizing force, undercutting the prospects for peace and stability?  This is precisely what David Rieff argues in his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies.  Informed by a decades-long career as a journalist and writer covering conflict zones around the globe, Rieff contends that forgetting is often the best way to reduce harm and suffering.  Listen to my conversation with David Reiff and find out how forgetting can sometimes be the answer.  

When should we remember difficult and divisive histories?  After a career of covering conflicts around the globe, writer and political analyst David Reiff offers his thoughts on the question. In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies, Rieff posits that in some cases there is a consensus around the need to remember past crimes.  More often, however, there is no agreement.  The only way out of messy conflicts is to agree to forgive and forget.  Find out more about possibilities and perils of memory on the July 1st episode of Realms of Memory. 

The people on the borders have been forgotten and left out of the story of the partition of Ireland.  Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, the three lost counties of Ulster, are both a source of shame and embarrassment for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.  They are an unrecognized minority within the largely homogenized Catholic nation of Ireland.  They are also the abandoned kin of the people of the six counties of Ulster that comprise Northern Ireland.  Listen to University College Dublin Professor Edward Burke, author of Ulster’s Lost Counties: Paramilitarism and Loyalism since 1920, and find out why we can’t understand the story of the partition of Ireland without including the lost counties.  

Typically left out of the story of the partition of Ireland are the three lost counties of Ulster.  These are the counties of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan that were excluded from what became Northern Ireland despite their historic ties and shared stand against the creation of an independent Irish state.  If Dublin and Belfast failed to form closer ties, it is impossible to understand why without considering the lost counties.  If the Republic of Ireland struggled to come to terms with its own diversity, the history of the lost countries was a significant impediment.  Remembering the lost countries of Ulster with University College Dublin Professor Edward Burke, coming to the June 3rd episode of Realms of Memory.  

The memory of the Soviet triumph in World War II, or what is known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism today. Penn State Professor Katya Haskins argues that the propensity to remember the victory over Nazi Germany and to forget Stalin’s terror contributes to the Russian willingness to support the war in Ukraine. Steeped in the memory of the Great Patriotic War, Russians are inclined to believe Putin’s claims about foreign threats and the need for a “special military operation” in Ukraine. How the memory of the Great Patriotic War hinges appeals to family memory is the focus of Katya Haskins’ book and the subject of this episode–Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia.

The memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War, has become the centerpiece of Russian nationalism.  State driven politics of memory, however, cannot fully explain this development.  Duty bound to remember the unimaginable sacrifices of the World War II generation, Russian families are a receptive audience to patriotic messaging.  Products of a Soviet Culture with a long history of commemorating the war, Russian families are already imprinted with an understanding of the past that can be reinforced in the present.  Raised in the Soviet Union and a graduate of Moscow State University, Pennsylvania State University Professor Katya Haskins reveals how Russian families are integral to the ways in which the Great Patriotic War is remembered in Putin’s Russia.  A conversation with Katya Haskins about her book, Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia, next on the May 6th episode of Realms of Memory.

From Spain to the Baltic States Europe is littered with sites connected to the personal lives of former dictators.  Birthplaces, childhood homes, summer and winter residences, mausoleums and tombs these sites of dictators can be powerful poles of attraction for extremists, nostalgists, and dark tourists.  They can also offer opportunities to bolster democratic systems by educating citizens about difficult pasts. How have Europeans taken up the challenge of managing these memory sites?  What do these sites reveal about the politics of memory in Europe?  These are the questions Spanish historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas takes up in his book Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020.  A conservation with Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas about sites of dictators in this episode of Realms of Memory.  

Continental Europe is littered with the memory sites of past dictators.  From birthplaces to summer residences, these remains from Europe’s darkest chapters present serious challenges to the democratic present.  How do Europeans confront this past?  Find out from historian  Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, author of Sites of the Dictators: Memories of Authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020, on the April 1st episode of the Realms of Memory podcast. 

The National Rifle Association, known simply as the NRA, is often cast as a giant bogeyman for proponents of gun reform.  Fears about the NRA are largely based on a misreading and misunderstanding of the organization as a political lobby whose influence peddling in Washington is the chief impediment to sensible gun reform. Entirely off the radar is the true source of power and influence of the NRA, its ability to shape a dynamic American gun culture through the power of memory and storytelling. By using its substantial communications, education, and outreach resources the NRA tells memory laden, historically inspired stories that have had a profound impact on how American gun owners understand firearms and their desire to defend them.  A conversation with Noah Schwartz about his book On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling and the NRA on this episode of Realms of Memory.  

The National Rifle Association is often understood as a powerful political lobby able to influence politicians and shape legislation.  University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Noah Schwartz argues that the true power of the NRA is how it uses storytelling and memory.  Through its extensive cultural, educational, and communications resources, the stories and memories circulated by the NRA have much to do with how Americans understand guns and gun culture today.  A conversation with Noah Schwartz about his book On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling, and the NRA, next on the March 4th episode of Realms of Memory.

The 9/11 2001 attacks on America unleashed a surge of memorial work unmatched since the Civil War.  New York City became a magnet for billions of dollars of spending on the construction of a memorial, museum, and high profile projects such as One World Trade Centre and the Oculus.  What do these projects reveal about the nature, constraints, and abuses of 9/11 memory? To what extent have they helped or hindered American efforts to understand and to come to terms with the past?  For more, listen to my conversation with New York University Professor Marita Sturken about her book Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums and Architecture in the Post 9/11 Era.