PODCAST

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

New Books Network

A series of interviews with authors of new books from Princeton University Press

arts books

All Episodes

55:07

Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/23

When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2026), Dr. Roland Betancourt tells the story of how the visionary engineers and designers at Disney transformed the technologies of the postwar assembly line into an entertainment experience unlike anything the world had ever seen.This

42:12

Yair Mintzker, "I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/23

The story behind the mythical figure of "the Wandering Jew" is one of the most fascinating tales in European history. In I, Wandering Jew, National Jewish Book Award-winning historian Yair Mintzker traces the tale back to its source, follows its many metamorphoses through five centuries, and relates it to the fraught present moment. According to a mysterious pamphlet published in 1602, the Wandering Jew was a real person, named Ahasversus, who was cursed by Jesus to eternal wandering after refusing

47:11

Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt:...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/23

Slavery was a key part of pre-modern Islamic society, spanning from soldiers to concubines. And one of the most revealing repositories of evidence we have for how slavery worked in practice comes from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of hundreds of thousands of discarded documents from a medieval synagogue in Cairo.Craig Perry examined these documents for his new book: Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History (Princeton University Press, 2026). The book dives into everyday documents, like wills

61:11

Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/17

Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant (Princeton UP, 2026) provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist and courtier navigating the learned and courtly circles of early modern

65:24

Daniel A. Bell, "Why Ancient Chinese Political...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/15

Daniel A. Bell joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future (Princeton UP, 2026). This isn't your standard, dusty history — it’s a series of modernized dialogues that grew out of Bell’s own classroom at the University of Hong Kong. In this episode, Daniel tells us about the time he spent as an academic Dean at Shandong University, and where he saw firsthand how ancient Legalist ideas about strict

59:45

Money Beyond Borders with Barry Eichengreen

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/13

Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar's prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of

53:28

Michael L. Satlow, "An Enchanted World: The Shared...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/13

In Late Antiquity (ca. 200–600 CE), the world was alive with unseen forces—divine agents who influenced every aspect of daily life. For most ordinary people, religion was not found in temples, synagogues, and churches, but in lived experience as they interacted with the supernatural in a world of uncertainty and danger. In An Enchanted World, Michael Satlow uncovers a shared spiritual landscape that stretched beyond the confines of Judaism, Christianity, and the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities

47:58

Douglas H. Erwin, "The Origins of the New: Novelty...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/06

The Origins of the New (Princeton University Press, 2026) presents a revolutionary approach to evolutionary success in all realms of life. In this groundbreaking book, Douglas Erwin takes readers on a dazzling excursion across science and history to explore how evolution generates new and enduring features in biology, culture, and technology.Erwin begins by tracing how thinkers from Darwin’s time to the present day have sought to discover the driving mechanisms of evolutionary novelty. He then lays

53:53

Priyanka Kumar, "Light Between Apple Trees:...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/06

As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit--especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree--and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple

50:38

Avner Greif et al., "Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/04/02

It’s one of the biggest questions in economic history: How did a richer, more advanced China fall behind Europe? Why was Europe the home of the Industrial Revolution, and not China? And what does that journey tell us about politics and culture?In Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000 (Princeton UP, 2025), Guido Tabellini, alongside his co-authors, argues that the answer comes from how European and Chinese organized cooperation—through corporations in

69:47

Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E....

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/31

The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and British imperial literary and intellectual history. In The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa (Princeton UP, 2026) Jeanne-Marie Jackson positions his career as an intriguing case study of anticolonial literature and politics. Jackson maps the contours of Casely Hayford’s thought through sustained attention to his written work

48:24

Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/27

Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century?A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories,

54:13

The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/26

Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them most. In The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America (Princeton UP, 2025), Melissa Burch sheds light on one of the most significant forces of social and economic marginalization of our time—discrimination on the basis of criminal records. Chronicling the daily

49:55

Stephen G. Brooks, "The Political Economy of...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/22

In his new book, The Political Economy of Security (Princeton University Press, 2026), Stephen Brooks provides a systematic empirical and theoretical examination of how economic factors influence security affairs. Empirically, he analyzes how various economic variables affect interstate war, terrorism, and civil war; in total, sixteen pathways are examined. Brooks shows that the relationship between economic factors and conflict is complex and multifaceted; discrete economic factors—such as

53:19

Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt:...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/21

What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Craig Perry to discuss his groundbreaking book Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History (Princeton UP, 2026). Drawing on the extraordinary archive of the Cairo Geniza, Perry reconstructs a hidden world of enslaved people, merchants, and households in medieval Egypt. These fragments—letters, contracts, and legal questions preserved for

58:24

H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/17

James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seamlessly between academia and politics. He was, among many other things, a cabinet minister and a popular ambassador, an expert on American politics and on Roman law, an advocate for the Armenian people and an architect of the League of Nations, a world traveller and a climber of Mount Ararat. In Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic

40:01

Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown, "Rural Versus...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/14

How the urban-rural divide drives partisan polarization Why have Americans living in different places come to experience politics as a battle between “us” and “them”? In Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy (Princeton UP, 2025) Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown argue that political polarization is not just about red states and blue states, or coastal elites who alienate those in fly-over country. Instead, polarization permeates every region and every state—and has become

61:38

Kim Bowes, "Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/12

The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent (Princeton UP, 2025) unearths another history, one of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labor. Focusing on the working majority, Kim Bowes tells the stories of people like the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokles. She reveals how the economic changes of the

48:23

Understanding Iran Under Attack: A Discussion with...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/12

Eleven days into the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, starting on Feb. 28, 2026, I speak with Vali Nasr, a renowned analyst of Iran. He’s the author of several books dealing with Iran, including most recently Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton University Press, 2025). Nasr was born in Tehran in 1960 and is currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In our talk, he discusses his surprise at the resilience the Iranian

50:55

What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/12

Mothers and fathers use their time differently, with women spending roughly twice as many hours on family labor as men. But what about the gendered differences in the ways women and men think? What’s on Her Mind examines the cognitive labor that families depend on, and reveals why this essential aspect of family life is disproportionately handled by women—even in couples that aspire to practice equality. While most accounts of household labor center on how people use their time, Dr. Allison Daminger

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