PODCAST

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

New Books Network

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

arts books

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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

59:34

Bryan Caplan's Case Against Education

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/06

Today I’m speaking with economist Bryan Caplan about education and bullshit, with a particular focus on his book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money (Princeton University Press, 2018).In our modern economy, possessing a college degree feels like a necessity for professional advancement. The age of good jobs for college dropouts is largely gone as more people spend more time in the classroom, writing papers, taking tests, and, of course, goofing off

70:51

Moulie Vidas, "The Rise of Talmud" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/02

The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sages also took on extensive commentary on another kind of text: the sages' own teachings. Focusing on the first collection attesting to this branch of scholarship, the oft-neglected Talmud Yerushalmi, The Rise of Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2025) argues that this new project presented a wide-ranging transformation of the sages' scholarly practice

27:15

Allison Carnegie and Richard Clark, "Global...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/03/02

Populist leaders around the world increasingly reject international organizations, decrying them as constraints on state power and rallying followers against the “global elite” who run them. These institutions—painstakingly built through decades of negotiation and multilateral cooperation—are often seen as passive bystanders, unable or unwilling to push back. In Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave (Princeton UP, 2026) Allison Carnegie and Richard

57:40

Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication,...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/27

In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international antiquities market. Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics (Princeton University Press, 2026) tells the story of how traditional craft skills of the Islamic world, often thought to have died out with the advent of industrialization, were redirected toward a thriving new market in the colonial era: the fabrication and

47:11

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, "Man Up: The New Misogyny and...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/27

The revelatory and urgent story of how an explosion of misogyny is driving a surge of mass and far-right violence throughout the West--from an internationally recognized extremism expert and media commentatorWhat two things do most mass shooters, terrorists, or violent extremists have in common? Most of us know the first: they are almost always men or boys. But the second? They are almost always virulent misogynists, homophobes, or transphobes--even if they are also motivated by racism,

48:49

Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/24

Dr. Hanna Pickard has written a revolutionary new paradigm for understanding addiction. Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? Why don’t they quit out of self-concern? Why does the rat in the experiment, alone in a cage, press the lever again and again for cocaine—to the point of death? In this pathbreaking book What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction (Princeton UP, 2026), Johns Hopkins University professor Pickard proposes a new

55:38

Jamila Michener and Mallory E. Sorelle, "Uncivil...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/22

Each year, as many as 250 million Americans face civil legal problems like eviction, debt collection, and substandard housing. These problems are disproportionately shouldered by racially and economically marginalized people, particularly women of color. Civil courts and legal aid organizations are supposed to protect their rights, yet more than 90 percent of low-income people receive inadequate or no legal assistance. Instead, access to justice is reserved for those who can afford its high price

48:04

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/19

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation. Drawing on an eclectic array of original data,

43:15

Laura K. Field, "Furious Minds: The Making of the...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/12

Political Theorist Laura Field has written an insightful and detailed exploration of the people and the ideas that have shaped the second Trump Administration (and some contributed, as well, to the first Trump Administration.) While Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (Princeton UP, 2025) is about quite a few scholars and academics, it is written like a propulsive page-turner of a book. And Field takes us through all the of the ins and outs of the individuals who have pursued a path to

57:42

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/10

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: that the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, as Joshua Clark Davis shows, activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing outside department

60:49

Nina Bandelj, "Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/05

Parents are exhausted. When did raising children become such all-consuming, never-ending, incredibly expensive, and emotionally absorbing effort? In this eye-opening book, Nina Bandelj explains how we got to this point--how we turned children into financial and emotional investments and child-rearing into laborious work. At the turn of the twentieth century, children went from being economically useful, often working to support families, to being seen by their parents as vulnerable and emotionally

79:36

Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings:...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/03

Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures. Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage (Princeton UP, 2025) traces the

34:12

Arnoud S. Q. Visser, "On Pedantry: A Cultural History...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/02/02

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All (Princeton University Press, 2025) offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western

41:38

Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/29

Today, much of the Middle East is “Arab”—an identity that now extends across North Africa and up through the Near East to Syria. Yet how did this region become Arab? How did this identity spread? Was it due to migration, or conquest? Historian Yossef Rapoport, in his book Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East (Princeton UP, 2025), makes a different argument: That the region’s medieval peasants adopted the Arab identity in response to shifting political power,

60:11

Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach, "A Woman Is...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/29

In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. In their book, A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe (Princeton UP, 2025), Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach marshal a dazzling array of previously untapped archival

32:10

163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/29

As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans.They tackle a question at least as old as Sarah Bernhardt: who or what makes a star? Rather than crediting star making to the culture industry, to fans, or to star themselves, Sharon makes the case that all three forces together

50:49

Steve Ramirez, "How to Change a Memory: One...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/19

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones. In How to Change a Memory, Ramirez draws on his own memories--of friendship, family, loss, and recovery--to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited, and even constructed from nothing.A future in which we can change our memories of

52:20

Reena Goldthree, "Democracy’s Foot Soldiers: World...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/16

Following the outbreak of World War I, tens of thousands of men from the British Caribbean volunteered as soldiers to fight on behalf of the British Empire. Despite living far from the bloody battlefields of Europe, these men enlisted for a variety of reasons—to affirm their masculine honor, pursue economic mobility, or enhance their standing as colonial subjects. Democracy’s Foot Soldiers: World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean (Princeton UP, 2025) by Dr. Reena Goldthree

51:13

Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism...

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast ·

2026/01/08

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Old World. What they saw was a racially stratified country that reflected not the ideals of a modern republic but rather the remnants of feudalism. American Dark Age reveals how defenders of racial hierarchy embraced America’s resemblance to medieval Europe and tells the stories of the abolitionists who exposed it as a glaring blemish on the national

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