Since 2018, the Key Conversations with Phi Beta Kappa podcast, hosted by Secretary Frederick Lawrence, has welcomed leading thinkers, visionaries, and artists. Many of the guests are Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars. On the podcast, each guest is asked to recommend books to help build listeners’ reading lists, both for those new to the subject matter and for those who are already familiar. Below are suggestions from the past year’s guests. Many of the guests are Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars. On the podcast, each guest is asked to recommend books to help build listeners’ reading lists, both for those new to the subject matter and for those who are already familiar. Below are suggestions from the past year’s guests. You can listen to Key Conversations with Phi Beta Kappa at www.pbk.org/key-conversationspbk.org/key-conversations.
Tammy L. Kernodle, University Distinguished Professor of Music, Miami University (September 8, 2025)
• Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.
• South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene by Samantha Ege
• Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll by Maureen Mahon
Martin Kern, Joanna and Greg Zeluck ’84 P13 P18 Professor of Chinese Literature, Princeton University (May 5, 2025)
• The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy
• The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature edited by Kang-I Sun Chang and Stephen Owen
• The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 1: Beginnings to AD 600 edited by Andrew Feldherr and Grant Hardy
Doug Emlen, Montana Regents Professor of Biology, University of Montana (March 3, 2025)
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer
• The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer by Athena Aktipis
Kristina Richardson, John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy and Professor of History and Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia (February 3, 2025)
• Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race by Rachel Schine
• Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos by Travis Zadeh
• A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900 by Rhiannon Stephens
Corey Robin, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center (December 2, 2024)
• The Years by Annie Ernaux
• Capital: Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx, translated by Paul Reitter, edited by Paul North and Paul Reitter
Kendra McSweeney, Professor of Geography, Ohio State University (November 4, 2024)
• Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright
• The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State by Lisa McGirr
Shawkat Toorawa, Professor of Arabic Literature, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Yale University (October 7, 2024)
• Night & Horses & the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature ed. by Robert Irwin
• Arabic Poems edited by Marlé Hammond
• A Physician on the Nile by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī
• Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text by Neal Robinson
Julia Clarke, John A. Wilson Professor in Vertebrate Paleontology in the Jackson School of Geosciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, University of Texas at Austin (September 9, 2024)
• Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
• Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs by Michael Novacek
• Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile
• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong