Shows
Faithful PoliticsWalls of the Mind: Anand Pandian on Belonging and DivisionHave a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comWhy do everyday Americans feel more divided than ever—despite living side by side?Anthropologist Anand Pandian joins Faithful Politics to explore the literal and metaphorical walls shaping American life. Drawing from his new book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down, Pandian reflects on how gated communities, armored SUVs, and isolated media bubbles reinforce our moral divisions and political tribalism. From border walls to suburban surveillance, th...
2025-08-231h 06
The Politics GuysThe Everyday Walls of American LifeMike talks with Anand Pandian, a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He's the author of Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down, which they discuss on this episode..
Topics Mike & Anand cover include:
how distance feeds conspiratorial thinking
the rise of “fortress homes”
the decline of front porches
why American vehicles are so enormous
“White Body Armor”
the walls of the mind
mutual aid and caretaking
Anand Pandian on X
The Po...
2025-08-131h 02
New Books in AnthropologyAnand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ru...
2025-08-0352 min
New Books in American StudiesAnand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ru...
2025-08-0352 min
New Books in SociologyAnand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ru...
2025-08-0352 min
New Books NetworkAnand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ru...
2025-08-0352 min
New Books in Asian American StudiesAnand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025)In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ru...
2025-08-0352 min
MiddayIn 'Something Between Us,' a guide to overcoming the walls between AmericansWhat can bridge the widening divisions in America today? How can society foster a greater sense of belonging among different communities?
Dr. Anand Pandian seeks answers to those questions in his new book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down, where he invites us to explore the areas of our lives that create greater separations and barriers.
Pandian is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and President of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. He will discuss the book at The Ivy Bookshop on August 21.
2025-07-2948 min
Premium Ad-Free: Straight White American JesusAn Anthropologist on the Everyday Walls of American Life - And How to Tear Them DownSubscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Brad Onishi sits down with Dr. Anand Pandian, author of Something Between Us, to explore the everyday “walls” that divide Americans—from SUVs and suburbs to video doorbells and noise-canceling headphones. Drawing on James Baldwin’s influence, Pandian reveals how our built environments and habits foster suspicion, loneliness, and disconnection. They exacertabe the ruthlessness of our political age.
Onishi and Pandian discuss how activism, like the “Aun...
2025-07-2852 minStraight White American JesusAn Anthropologist on the Everyday Walls of American Life - And How to Tear Them DownSubscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Brad Onishi sits down with Dr. Anand Pandian, author of Something Between Us, to explore the everyday “walls” that divide Americans—from SUVs and suburbs to video doorbells and noise-canceling headphones. Drawing on James Baldwin’s influence, Pandian reveals how our built environments and habits foster suspicion, loneliness, and disconnection. They exacertabe the ruthlessness of our political age.
Onishi and Pandian discuss how activism, like the “Aun...
2025-07-2852 min
Keen On AmericaBreaking Down America's Everyday Walls: From Swimming Pools and SUVs to White Lives Matter RalliesFrom suburban swimming pools and SUVs to White Lives Matter rallies, the Johns Hopkins anthropologist Anand Pandian has been exploring the everyday walls of American life. In his new book, Something Between Us, Pandian travels across the United States in his search to both climb and overcome these walls. What he finds is a nation tragically at war with itself. Through intimate portraits of communities divided by race, class, and ideology, Pandian reveals how ordinary public spaces have become literal battlegrounds for identity and belonging. From gated suburban neighborhoods in Florida to online echo chambers...
2025-07-0945 min
The ExcerptSPECIAL | Can shared public spaces bridge the American divide?Walls. We all navigate them whether they be the walls throughout our homes, neighborhoods, and the places we choose to frequent, or the internal walls that allow us to maintain our distance from others. To what extent is divisiveness baked into our infrastructure, politic, and psyche? Anand Pandian, Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, joins USA TODAY’s The Excerpt to discuss his new book “Something Between Us.” In it, he explores the walls that divide us as a nation. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.
2025-07-0213 min
Uncomfy: Sticking with Moments That Challenge UsThe Walls Between Us: Can We Truly Understand Each Other? – Anand PandianWhy do we build walls—emotional, social, ideological—and what would it take to break them down? In this thought-provoking episode of Uncomfy, anthropologist Anand Pandian joins host Julie Rose to explore the infrastructure of discomfort in America.
Drawing from his new book, “Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down,” Pandian recounts stories from his journey across America, including attending a Trump victory rally as a liberal, or choosing to reconnect with a conservative childhood friend. These experiences reveal how fear and familiarity shape our comfort zones and what happens when we choose t...
2025-06-2521 min
Late Night Live - Separate stories podcastHow the US got so dividedAn anthropologist set out to talk to his fellow Americans, to try and understand why so many fear people who are different to them. Guest: Anand Pandian, author of ‘Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down’ (Stanford University Press) Producers: Ann Arnold and Jack Schmidt
2025-06-0526 minNew Books in American StudiesChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-05-0836 min
New Books in Economic and Business HistoryChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-05-0636 minNew Books in SociologyChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-05-0436 min
New Books in Urban StudiesChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-04-3035 minNew Books in AnthropologyChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-04-3036 min
New Books in Environmental StudiesChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-04-3036 min
The University of Chicago Press PodcastChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-04-3035 min
New Books In Public HealthChloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city and the uncertainties that linger in their wake. Writing from the community of Curtis Bay, where two hundred years of technocratic hubris have carried lethal costs, Ahmann also follows local efforts to realize a good future after industry and the rifts competing visions opened between neighbors....
2025-04-3035 min
Academics WriteAnand PandianAnand Pandian talks about doing justice to what we write about, experimental modes of writing in ethnography, and how what we write about affects how we write.
2023-03-2732 min
Ethnographic Imagination BaselOn Possibility–with Anand PandianIn this episode, On Possibility, our guest Anand Pandian joins us virtually from Baltimore. Pandian's book, A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (published in 2019) explores the possible in relation to knowledge, politics, and experience, but also—specifically—in relation to mundane acts of reading, writing, teaching, and researching.
Guest: Anand Pandian is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to A Possible Anthropology, the book around which our conversation will focus today, he is author of Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India (2009); Ayya’s Accounts: A Ledger of Hope i...
2023-02-1332 min
Vir Vulnerabilis VirDeep Dive with Anand PandianIn this episode, Adam and Albert talk with Anand Pandian about his life and experience in the field of anthropology. We discuss his recent article in the Guardian called: Look around you. The way we live explains why we are increasingly polarized; along with some of his previous work. Join us in an stimulating chat about vulnerability, fear, and the society we live in.Be sure to follow us on Instagram at @virvulnerabilisvir @denimmindset @upstateguystyle @plastiphile
2022-02-161h 00
Talking CultureA Possible AnthropologyIn order to open Talking Culture's second season under the theme "possibility", Alejandra talks with Dr. Anand Pandian, author of A Possible Anthropology. They discuss the idea of getting lost in our ideas, reading, actions, and spaces as anthropologists and what that means or holds for the future of the discipline. They also dive into the struggles of trying to get lost and be imaginative in times of crisis, and even touch on the possibilities of podcasting itself!
2021-09-231h 06
Allegra LabA Possible Anthropology with Anand PandianAnand Pandian speaks to Allegra editor Ian M. Cook about his latest book A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times (Duke, 2019). Special guests Penelope Papailias and Laura Kunreuther send in their questions, generated from an 'experimental humanities' reading group they were both part of this last summer.
Music credit: The Barren Sea
Audio co-editing: Laura Isabel de los Reyes Walker-Beaven
Anand Pandian's university home page: https://anthropology.jhu.edu/directory/anand-pandian/
A Possible Anthropology: https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-possible-anthropology
Listen to Anand speak to Ian about Reel World here:
https://allegralaboratory.net/podcast-interview-round-up-may-august-new-books-in-anthropology/
Penelope Papailias: http://ha.uth.gr/index...
2020-12-101h 03
Polis Project Conversation Series5 Objects Podcast | Conversation with Dr. Anand PandianFor each episode of 5 Objects, we ask a guest to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performance, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices of objects have ranged from books by Edward Said, Steve Biko, and Assata Shakur, music from Notorious BIG, art by Ermias Ekube, the radio, and becoming a refugee after the Somali war. The choices then become the basis of a free-flowing conversation that discusses our guest’s life, their personal, political, and intellectual journeys and histories.
For this episode, Suchitr...
2020-12-091h 02
Research Bytes PodcastProf. Anand Pandian & Prof. Kaushik Basu - Infosys Prize - Episode 157In this episode, host Spoorthy Raman talks about Anthropology with Prof. Anand Pandian - Infosys Prize 2019 winner & Prof. Kaushik Basu, Jury, Infosys Prize. Music and Editing - Ramya Badrinath Additional Music - www.bensound.in Subscribe at researchmatters.substack.com
2020-01-1039 min
Conversations in AnthropologyEpisode #20: Rosalind Fredericks and Anand PandianIt's time for some reports from 'the field', thanks to a recent trip by Tim to the east coast of the USA. In this episode we have two conversations, the first with Rosalind Fredericks (NYU) and the second with Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins).
Rosalind is Associate Professor of Geography and Development Studies at New York University. Her research and teaching interests are centered on development, urbanism, and political ecology in Africa. In this episode, she discusses her new book 'Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal,' published recently by Duke University Press, as well as new research...
2019-05-081h 07
Cultures of Energy125 - Displacements Recap (w. Anand Pandian, Andrea Muehlebach & Marcel LaFlamme)This week’s podcast is devoted to discussing a prototype for making academic conferences less carbon intensive and more accessible to our colleagues outside the global North. Case in point is last month’s remarkably successful Displacements conference (https://displacements.jhu.edu) organized by the Society for Cultural Anthropology which broke all previous SCA records for contributions and participation because of its unique hybrid format of online screenings and in person gatherings at fifty sites across the world. Gathered together (13:18) to discuss how it all went down and what it meant are chief conference organizer Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins), oper...
2018-05-111h 16
New Books in FilmAnand Pandian, “Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation” (Duke UP, 2015)Do we live in a real world or a ‘reel world,’ in which life begins to feel like a film? In this wonderful ethnography of the Tamil film industry, Anand Pandian explores topics as grand, rich and timeless as those explored in film itself love, desire, rhythm, wonder as a... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
2016-06-2648 min