Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION: Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2023). Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond by Holly Case (Princeton University Press, 2018) Civilizations have faced challenges and debated how to manage them probably as long as civilization has existed. In our era we talk about these challenges as issues, or crises when perceived as more urgent. In the nineteenth century, what we now call issues or problems tended to be spoken of as questions. In this sprawling conversation, ranging from nineteenth-century “trolls” to the scalability of democracy in a various media ecosystems, Leslie Butler and Holly Case talk not only about the 19th-century questions that have captivated them as scholars, but also how, where, by whom, and to what ends these questions were discussed. When did posing questions serve to bring rationality and even-handedness to debates and when was it a rhetorical strategy intended to steer towards a particular end? Butler's analysis of the “Woman Question” in America's pursuit of “consistent democracy” distinguished between public opinion and published opinion while Case implicates the internationalization of the public sphere in the emergence of an “Age of Questions.” Have a listen as these erudite scholars contemplate the ways historians might navigate between the Scylla of cynicism and Charybdis of overly earnest naiveté in analyzing the past as well as in our current moment. Leslie Butler is a Professor of History at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. She is an American intellectual and cultural historian, with an emphasis on the nineteenth century. Holly Case is a historian of modern Europe at Brown University in Providence, RI. Her work focuses on the relationship between foreign policy, social policy, science, and literature in the European state system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands. Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In Lost Souls, Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs.American enthusiasm for funding the refugee organizations taking care of DPs quickly waned after the war. It was only after DPs were redefined—from “victims of war and Nazism” to “victims of Communism”—in 1947 that a solution was found: the United States would pay for the mass resettlement of DPs in America, Australia, and other countries outside Europe. The Soviet Union protested this “theft” of its citizens. But it was a coup for the United States. The choice of DPs to live a free life in the West, and the West's welcome of them, became an important theme in America's Cold War propaganda battle with the Soviet Union. A compelling story of the early Cold War, Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War (Princeton UP, 2024)is also a rare chronicle of a refugee crisis that was solved.

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Dr. Garland invites readers to put themselves in the sandals of ancient peoples and to imagine their mental state moment by moment as they sought—in ways that turn out to be remarkably similar to ours—to assist the dead on their journey to the next world and to understand life's greatest mystery.What to Expect When You're Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? What's the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgement—and where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlife—and can they eat, drink, and have sex? And what can the living do to stay on good terms with the nonliving?Filled with intriguing stories and frequent humor, What to Expect When You're Dead will be a morbidly delicious treat for every reader alive. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, about her recent book, Slouch: Postural Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024). Slouch examines the history of conceptions of “bad posture” as they arose over the course of the 20th century. The book is a beautiful example of taking a perhaps seemingly small topic and showing how it connects to many, both surprising and well-known, themes in history. The pair also discuss a few of the potential projects Linker may be turning to next, all of which sound fascinating.

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawing on the latest science to explain why the binary view of the sexes is fundamentally flawed—and why having XX or XY chromosomes isn't as conclusive as some would have us believe. In this lively and provocative book, leading biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes begins by tracing the origin and evolution of sex, describing the many ways in the animal kingdom of being female, male, or both. Turning to humans, he presents compelling evidence from the fossil and archaeological record that attests to the diversity of our ancestors' sexual bonds, gender roles, and family and community structures, and shows how the same holds true in the lived experiences of people today. Fuentes tackles hot-button debates around sports and medicine, explaining why we can acknowledge that females and males are not the same while also embracing a biocultural reality where none of us fits neatly into only one of two categories. Bringing clarity and reason to a contentious issue, Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary (Princeton University Press, 2025) shares a scientist's perspective on why a binary view of sex and gender is not only misguided but harmful, and why there are multitudes of ways of being human. Agustín Fuentes is professor of anthropology at Princeton University. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

At the turn of the common era, the Jewish communities of Roman Palestine saw the organization of a small group of literate Jewish men who devoted their lives to the interpretation and teaching of their sacred ancestral texts. In How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2025), Krista Dalton shows that these early rabbis were not an insular specialist group but embedded in a landscape of Jewish piety. Drawing on the writings of rabbis in Roman Palestine from the second through fifth centuries CE, Dalton illuminates the significance of social relationships in the production of rabbinic expertise. She traces the social interactions—everyday instances of mutual exchange, from dinner parties to tithes and patronages—that fostered the perception of rabbis as experts. Dalton shows how the knowledge derived from the rabbis' technical skills was validated and recognized by others. Rabbis socialized and noshed with neighbors and offered advice and legal favors to friends. In exchange for their expert judgments, they received invitations, donations, appointments, and recognition. She argues that their status as Torah experts did not arise by virtue of being scholars but from their ability to persuade others that their mobilization of Jewish cultural resources was beneficial. Dalton describes the relational processes that made rabbinic expertise possible as well as the accompanying tensions; social interactions shaped the rabbis' domain of knowledge while also imposing expectations of reciprocity that had to be managed. Dalton's authoritative analysis demonstrates that a focus on friendship and exchange provides a fuller understanding of how rabbis claimed and defended their distinct expertise. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Krista Dalton is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College and an editor-in-chief at Ancient Jew Review Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston

Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves (Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine. Drawing on illuminating interviews with leading scientists from around the globe as well as his own pioneering research on monarch butterflies, de Roode demonstrates how animals of all kinds--from ants to apes, from bees to bears, and from cats to caterpillars--use various forms of medicine to treat their own ailments and those of their relatives. We meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms, sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites, and bees that incorporate sticky resin into their hives to combat pathogens. De Roode asks whether these astonishing behaviors are learned or innate and explains why, now more than ever, we need to apply the lessons from medicating animals--it can pave the way for healthier livestock, more sustainable habitats for wild pollinators, and a host of other benefits. Doctors by Nature takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs. Jaap de Roode is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, where he is director of the Infectious Diseases across Scales Training Program, which trains graduate students in interdisciplinary science to study and control infectious disease. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture (Princeton UP, 2024) is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs.Examining the huge importance to the Greeks of religion, mythology, the Homeric epics, tragic and comic drama, philosophy, and the city-state, the book offers shifting perspectives on an extraordinary and astonishingly creative people. Century after century, in one medium after another, the Greeks addressed big questions, many of which are still very much with us, from whether gods exist and what happens after we die to what political system is best and how we can know what is real. Yet for all their virtues, Greek men set themselves apart from women and foreigners and profited from the unpaid labor of enslaved workers, and the book also looks at the mixed legacy of the ancient Greeks today.The result is a rich, wide-ranging, and compelling history of a fascinating and profoundly influential culture in all its complexity—and the myriad ways, good and bad, it continues to shape us today.

Alibaba. Tencent. JD. Pinduoduo. Run down the list of China's most valuable companies and you'll find, for the most part, that they're all e-commerce companies—or at least facilitate e-commerce. The sector created giants: Alibaba grew from just 5.5 billion renminbi of revenue in 2010 to 280 billion last year. But how did Chinese e-commerce firms shut out their foreign competition? How did they build trust in the system? Lizhi Liu answers these questions in her latest book, From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton University Press: 2024), where she also studies whether the “Taobao villages” really worked, and how we should think about the “crackdown” on China's tech sector in 2020 and 2021. Lizhi Liu is assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of From Click to Boom. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime's perception of itself. Although satire has always been a primary literature of state affairs, and although it has always been used to intervene in ongoing discussions about political theory and practice, there has been no attempt to examine this fascinating and unusual literature across the full chronological horizon. In State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Dan Sperrin provides the first ever longue durée history of political satire in British literature. He traces satire's many extended and discontinuous trajectories through time while also chronicling some of the most inflamed and challenging political contexts within which it has been written.Dr. Sperrin begins by describing the Roman foundations and substructures of British satire, paying particularly close attention to the core Roman canon: Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. He then proceeds chronologically, populating the branches of satire's family tree with such figures as Chaucer, Jonson, Dryden, Swift, Pope, and Dickens, as well as a whole series of writers who are now largely forgotten. Satire, Dr. Sperrin shows, can be a literature of explicit statements and overt provocation—but it can also be notoriously indirect, oblique, suggestive, and covert, complicated by an author's anonymity or pseudonymity. Dr. Sperrin meticulously analyses the references to transient political events that may mystify the contemporary reader. He also presents vivid and intriguing pen portraits of the satirists themselves along the way. Dr. Sperrin argues that if satire is to be contended with and reflected upon in all its provocative complexity—and if it is to be seen as anything more than a literature of political vandalism—then we must explore the full depth and intrigue of its past. This book offers a new starting point for our intellectual and imaginative contact with an important and fascinating kind of literature. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of Madison's Notes, Michael McConnell examines the gap between the Founders' vision of a limited presidency and today's expansive executive power. Drawing on his book The President Who Would Not Be King (Princeton University Press, 2022), we discuss how the Constitution's safeguards against monarchical authority have eroded over the past century—and what steps might restore balance to our system of government. From war powers to administrative overreach, the conversation tackles the urgent question: How did we get here, and what can be done? Michael McConnell is a renowned constitutional scholar, Stanford Law professor, and former federal judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. A leading voice on originalism and separation of powers, his work bridges historical intent and modern legal debates, making him the perfect guide for this critical discussion. Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

John McPhee has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1965 and has written more than thirty acclaimed books that began on the magazine's pages. But few readers know or fully appreciate the true breadth of his writing. Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee (Princeton University Press, 2025) leads readers through McPhee's vast published work, documenting much rarely seen or connected with McPhee, including remarkable early writing for Time magazine published without his name. In chronicling McPhee's career where he broke ground applying devices long associated with fiction to the literature of fact, Noel Rubinton gives insights into McPhee's techniques, choice of subjects, and research methods, shedding light on how McPhee turns complicated subjects like geology into compelling stories. Beyond detailing more than seventy years of McPhee's writing, Rubinton recounts McPhee's half century as a Princeton University writing professor, a little known part of his legacy. McPhee inspired generations of students who wrote hundreds of books of their own, also catalogued here. With an incisive foreword by New Yorker staff writer and former McPhee student Peter Hessler, Looking for a Story also includes extensive annotated listings of articles about McPhee, reviews of his books, and interviews, readings, and speeches. Whether you are already an admirer of McPhee or new to his writings, this book provides an invaluable road map to his rich body of work. Noel Rubinton is a journalist and strategic communications consultant whose writing has appeared in leading publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good. Though taxpaying is often portrayed as dull and technical, exposure to collective rituals, civic education, propaganda, and protest transforms the practice for many Americans into either a sacred rite of citizenship or a profane threat to what they hold dear. These sacred and profane meanings can apply to the act of taxpaying itself or to the specific uses of tax dollars. Despite intense disagreement about these meanings, politically diverse Americans engaged in both taxpaying and tax resistance valorize the individual taxpayer and “my tax dollars.”Braunstein explores the profound implications of this meaning making for tax consent, the legitimacy of the tax system, and citizens' broader understandings of their political relationships. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein's innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane. Interviewee: Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press, 2025) 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, Dr. Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news. Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Dr. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news.By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people's lives. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization (Princeton UP, 2024) shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history. Martin Thomas is professor of imperial history and director of the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict at the University of Exeter. A fellow of the Leverhulme Trust and the Independent Social Research Foundation, he is the author of Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940; Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire; and other books. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

An enthralling tour of the world's rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life.  Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the world's rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity. Taking readers on a captivating journey of discovery, Lorna Gibb explores the histories of languages under threat or already extinct as well as those in resurgence, shedding light on their origins, development, and distinctive voices. She travels the globe—from Australia and Finland to India, the Canary Islands, Namibia, Scotland, and Paraguay—showing how these languages are not mere words and syntax but keepers of diverse worldviews, sites of ethnic conflict, and a means for finding surprising commonalities. Readers learn the basics of how various language systems work—with vowels and consonants, whistles and clicks, tonal inflections, or hand signs—and how this kaleidoscope of self-expression carries vital information about our planet, indigenous cultures and tradition, and the history and evolution of humankind. Rare Tongues is essential reading for anyone concerned about the preservation of endangered languages and an eloquent and disarmingly personal meditation on why the world's linguistic heritage is so fundamental to our shared experience—and why its loss should worry us all. Lorna Gibb is associate professor of creative writing and linguistics at the University of Stirling. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. In Doctors by Nature (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine. Drawing on illuminating interviews with leading scientists from around the globe as well as his own pioneering research on monarch butterflies, Dr. de Roode demonstrates how animals of all kinds—from ants to apes, from bees to bears, and from cats to caterpillars—use various forms of medicine to treat their own ailments and those of their relatives. We meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms, sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites, and bees that incorporate sticky resin into their hives to combat pathogens.  Dr. De Roode asks whether these astonishing behaviors are learned or innate and explains why, now more than ever, we need to apply the lessons from medicating animals—it can pave the way for healthier livestock, more sustainable habitats for wild pollinators, and a host of other benefits. Doctors by Nature takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs. Our guest is: Dr. Jaap de Roode, who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, where he is director of the Infectious Diseases across Scales Training Program, which trains graduate students in interdisciplinary science to study and control infectious disease. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of Changing Oceans The Killer Whale Journals Just Like Family: How Companion Animals Joined the Household Bugs: A Day in the Life Endless Forms: The Surprising World of Wasps The Well-Gardened Mind and The Science Showing Why Time in Nature is Good For You Women in Shark Sciences Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press, 2024) provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. In this eye-opening book, Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. Providing an in-depth account of radical nationalist communities and networks that are taking root across Europe, she shows how the simultaneous orientation of these groups toward the local and the transnational is a key to their success. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. Required reading for anthropologists and anyone concerned about the resurgence of far-right militancy today, Living Right sheds necessary light on the forces that have made the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people one of the most alarming trends of our time. Agnieszka Pasieka is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Montreal. * This episode is part of a special collaboration between the New Books Network and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, a section of the American Anthropological Association. Together, we're highlighting exciting new work in Europeanist anthropology—featuring authors from across the field, including winners of the William A. Douglass Book Prize and contributors to the European Anthropology in Translation series published by Berghahn Books.

In the UK's fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poorly paid, minimally trained staff to do so. In Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control (Princeton UP, 2024), Mary Bosworth offers the first empirically grounded, scholarly analysis of the British detention and deportation system. Drawing on four years of extensive ethnographic research, Bosworth examines what keeps the system in place and whether it might be effectively challenged. Told by a senior manager that “this is a logistics business,” Bosworth documents how the public and private sectors have built a supply chain in which people's humanity is transformed both symbolically and tangibly through administrative processes and bureaucracy into monetized, measurable units. Like all logistics, the system has failure built into it. The contract does not seek to eradicate risk but rather to manage it, determining responsibility and apportioning a financial value to such “failures” as delay, escape, aborted flight or death in custody. Front-line workers and managers depoliticise and normalise their efforts by casting their duties in familiar bureaucratic terms, with targets, “service level agreements” and “key performance indicators.” Focusing on first-hand accounts from workers and lengthy observation and document analysis, Bosworth explores the impact of border logistics in order to ask what it would take to build inclusive infrastructures rather than those designed to exclude. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies.

A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner traveled to Fort Laramie to document the federal government's treaty negotiations with the Lakota and other tribes of the northern plains. Gardner, known for his iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his visceral pictures of the Confederate dead at Antietam, posed six federal peace commissioners with a young Native girl wrapped in a blanket. The hand-labeled prints carefully name each of the men, but the girl is never identified.  As The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West (Princeton University Press, 2025) goes in search of her, it draws readers into the entangled lives of the photographer and his subjects. Martha A. Sandweiss paints a riveting portrait of the turbulent age of Reconstruction and westward expansion. She follows Gardner from his birthplace in Scotland to the American frontier, as his dreams of a utopian future across the Atlantic fall to pieces. She recounts the lives of William S. Harney, a slave-owning Union general who earned the Lakota name “Woman Killer,” and Samuel F. Tappan, an abolitionist who led the investigation into the Sand Creek massacre. And she identifies Sophie Mousseau, the girl in Gardner's photograph, whose life swerved in unexpected directions as American settlers pushed into Indian Country and the federal government confined Native peoples to reservations. Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, The Girl in the Middle reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War. Martha A. Sandweiss is professor emerita of history at Princeton University, where she is founding director of the Princeton & Slavery Project. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Today I'm speaking with Asad L. Asad, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life (Princeton UP, 2023). A highly relevant book, Engage and Evade documents the interactions between undocumented people and the agents and institutions of government. One might expect undocumented people to avoid the IRS, but as Asad demonstrates, many engage with government institutions in the hopes that positive interactions and compliance might help their immigration cases down the road. Published in 2023, immigration policy and treatment of undocumented people by the government has shifted dramatically in a short time. I'm grateful today to be able to speak with Asad about this thoughtful book.

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures.  Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, in Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life (Princeton University Press, 2025) Dr. Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers, many of whom have filled in the gaps of what can be known of Leonardo's life with claims to decode secrets, reveal mysteries of a vanished past, or discover lost masterpieces of spectacular value. In this original and provocative book, Dr. Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo's words and works, and the distinctive premodern world of artisans and thinkers from which he emerged. Far from being a solitary genius living ahead of his time, Leonardo inhabited a vibrant network of artistic, technological, and literary exchange. By investigating the politics and cultural tensions of the era as well as the most recent scholarship on Leonardo's contemporaries, workshop, and writings, Dr. Campbell places Leonardo back into the milieu that shaped him and was shaped by him. He shows that it is in the gaps and contradictions of what we know of Leonardo's life that a less familiar and far more historically significant figure appears. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy (Princeton University Press, 2025) traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet. Offering a comparative perspective on the history of American political economy, Dr. Kathleen Thelen shows how large-scale retailers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden faced a far less hospitable regulatory environment than companies in the United States, which enjoyed judicial forbearance and often active government support. As American companies grew in scale and scope, they assembled an ever-expanding political coalition that could be weaponized to head off regulatory efforts, leveraging their market strength to squeeze suppliers and workers and even engaging in outright rule breaking when they encountered resistance. Placing the rise of the Amazon economy in a broader comparative-historical context, Attention, Shoppers! reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper's paradise built on cheap labor and mass consumption. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

In Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought (Princeton UP, 2024), Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx's thinking was deeply informed by republicanism. Marx's relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism. One of Marx's principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power. Placing Marx's republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx's shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. First, Marx began his political life as a republican committed to a democratic republic in which citizens held active popular sovereignty. Second, he transitioned to communism, criticizing republicanism but incorporating the republican opposition to arbitrary power into his social critiques. He argued that although a democratic republic was not sufficient for emancipation, it was necessary for it. Third, spurred by the events of the Paris Commune of 1871, he came to view popular control in representation and public administration as essential to the realization of communism. Leipold shows how Marx positioned his republican communism to displace both antipolitical socialism and anticommunist republicanism. One of Marx's great contributions, Leipold suggests, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism. Bruno Leipold is a fellow in political theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the coeditor of Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Political rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumors about a stolen election and vote-rigging, there were other rumors that continued to spread even after they were thoroughly debunked, including doubts about 9/11 (an “inside job”) and the furor over President Obama's birthplace and birth certificate. If misinformation crowds out the truth, how can Americans communicate with one another about important issues? In Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It (Princeton UP, 2023), Adam Berinsky examines why political rumors exist and persist despite their unsubstantiated and refuted claims, who is most likely to believe them, and how to combat them. Drawing on original survey and experimental data, Berinsky shows that a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and vehement partisan attachment fuel belief in rumors. Yet the reach of rumors is wide, and Berinsky argues that in fighting misinformation, it is as important to target the undecided and the uncertain as it is the true believers. We're all vulnerable to misinformation, and public skepticism about the veracity of political facts is damaging to democracy. Moreover, in a world where most people simply don't pay attention to politics, political leaders are often guilty of disseminating false information—and failing to correct it when it is proven wrong. Berinsky suggests that we should focus on the messenger as much as the message of rumors. Just as important as how misinformation is debunked is who does the debunking. Adam J. Berinsky is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab. A specialist in the fields of political behavior and public opinion, he is the author of Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America (Princeton) and In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy. Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Dr. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis details the activities of apprentices and masters, the strategies of ambitious parents, the interventions of guilds and the decisions of town officials. He shows how the system of early modern apprenticeship contributed to the growth of cities, the movement of workers from farms to manufacturing and the spread of new technologies and productive knowledge. In this groundbreaking study, Dr. Wallis argues that apprenticeship succeeded precisely because it was a flexible institution which allowed apprentices to change their minds and exit contracts early. Apprenticeship provided a vital channel for training that families could trust and that was accessible to most young people, whatever their background. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Today I'm speaking with Ciara Greene, co-author with Gillian Murphy of the new book, Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember (Princeton UP, 2025). Ciara is associate professor in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin, where she leads the Attention and Memory Laboratory. The scientific study of human memory has become even more relevant in an age where we have every technology under the Sun to alleviate us of the need to remember. It makes sense that we worry about losing the ability to remember today, but even Socrates 2,500 years ago lamented that the recently invented technology of writing harmed people's ability to remember. Memory not only connects us with our past, but it instructs us in how we should behave, what we should believe, and underlies the patterns of our everyday thoughts. Memory Lane takes readers behind the most up-to-date scientific research on memory. How memory actually works versus how we think it works is a wide chasm, and Ciara and Gillian are excellent guides for bridging the gap. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Why does occupation reliably predict political leanings? What is social capitalism, and how does it span income classes? If social capitalists are sincerely committed to equality and “wokeness,” why do they simultaneously benefit from—and perpetuate—the very inequalities they denounce? Join us as we dive into Musa al-Gharbi's provocative new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite (Princeton University Press, 2024). We explore al-Gharbi's central argument: the disconnect between the stated values of the "symbolic capital elite" and the real-world consequences of their actions, despite their genuine intentions. Al-Gharbi draws parallels to past "great awakenings"—periods of profound cultural upheaval and shifting attitudes toward civil rights. We also examine whether defining "wokeness" is essential to his thesis, and al-Gharbi clarifies some of the most frequently misunderstood aspects of his work. Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. A columnist for The Guardian, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other major publications. Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily. Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Mary Anne Hunting and Dr. Kevin D. Murphy tells the stories of the resilient and resourceful women who surmounted barriers of sexism, racism, and classism to take on crucial roles in the establishment and growth of Modernism across the United States. Dr. Hunting and Dr. Murphy describe how the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Massachusetts evolved for the professional education of women between 1916 and 1942. While alumnae such as Eleanor Agnes Raymond, Victorine du Pont Homsey, and Sarah Pillsbury Harkness achieved some notoriety, others like Elizabeth-Ann Campbell Knapp and Louisa Vaughan Conrad have been largely absent from histories of Modernism. Dr. Hunting and Dr. Murphy describe how these innovative practitioners capitalized on social, educational, and professional ties to achieve success and used architecture to address social concerns, including how modernist ideas could engage with community and the environment. Some joined women-led architectural firms while others partnered with men or contributed to Modernism as retailers of household furnishings, writers and educators, photographers and designers, or fine artists. With stunning illustrations, Women Architects at Work offers new histories of recognized figures while recovering the stories of previously unsung women, all of whom contributed to the modernization of American architecture and design. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy (Princeton UP, 2024), economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power. This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call. Paul Seabright teaches economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, and until 2021 was director of the multidisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. His books include The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present and The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (both Princeton). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Peter Brown's fascinating Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton UP, 2014) chronicles the changing conceptions of wealth and treasure in late antiquity and the first centuries of Christianity. For our 2020 series in the rise of money (we also spoke to Thomas Piketty and Christine Desan) Brown related the emergence, in the 3rd and 4th century AD, of striking new ideas about charity and how to include the poor inside a religious community. Brown explains the importance of civic euergetism in the Greek and Roman worldview–i.e. benefaction and charity strictly confined to the good of the city. In early Christianity, this was replaced by compensatory almsgiving by the rich to benefit the lowly poor, or beggars. That notion of the rich being “less likely to enter heaven than a camel going through the eye of a needle”–that, says Brown, “was Jesus at its wildest.” Augustine even preached about almsgiving as “like a traveller's check” that let the rich bank up credit in heaven. But most crucial of all to Brown's argument about changed ideas of wealth is that Christianity initiated the world-transformational notion of corporate identity. Before Oxford, before the East India Company, before IBM, the “managerial Bishop” (Brown's brilliant coinage) is not wealthy in his own right, but is an agent of “impersonal continuity.”.Brown thinks Foucault got this kind of “pastoralism” in Church leaders partially right. But Foucault–“an old fashioned Catholic in many ways” Brown remarks slyly–underestimated the desire of the Christian community to designate a “consumer-driven” church hierarchy in which they can invest. Pressed on the question of resonance to our own day, Brown (as a “good semi-Durkheimian of the Mary Douglas variety”) stresses that “these are almost incommensurable societies.” And he does note an ominous Roman parallel in present-day “personalization of power”–understanding the odious Putin by reading Seneca. Nonetheless, Brown makes clear his enduring admiration for Late Antiquity–compared to classical Greece and perhaps to our own day–because of its “remarkable tolerance for anomaly.” Brown has that too, more power to him! Mentioned in the Episode Peter Brown, Body and Society (1968) Peter Brown,. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1968) Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (1981) Peter Brown, The Ransom of the Soul (2015) Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e-7e siè (Economic Poverty and Social Poverty) Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 AD and many other works available here ) Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 (on priests and the importance of the pastoral or shepherding metaphor) George Lakoff and Michael Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Listen and Read Here.

This week on Madison's Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton UP, 2025). The book examines the institutional failures during the pandemic, including the politicization of science, inconsistent messaging, and the disproportionate impacts of policies. We cover key questions: What did “following the science” mean before COVID-19? Macedo explains that science is inherently uncertain, but this nuance was often lost during the pandemic, leading to unrealistic expectations. He also highlights how poor communication about scientific uncertainty eroded public trust. The conversation addresses contradictory messaging about the origins of COVID-19, with public statements often differing from internal expert discussions. Macedo notes how this disconnect fueled skepticism. He also raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest among health officials and the dangers of concentrating decision-making power in a few unchecked individuals. Macedo discusses the politicization of masking, which overshadowed scientific evidence and deepened divisions. He advises individuals to seek reputable sources, embrace uncertainty, and remain critical of simplistic narratives. Finally, he stresses the importance of accountability, open debate, and a commitment to democratic values like tolerance and truth as essential for navigating future crises. This episode offers a concise yet powerful reflection on the lessons of the pandemic and the need for stronger, more transparent governance. Tune in for the full conversation. Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison's Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, about her co-authored book In COVID's Wake (Princeton UP, 2025). The book offers a comprehensive and candid political assessment of how institutions performed during the pandemic. It explores how governments, influenced by Wuhan's lockdown, deviated from existing pandemic plans, leading to policies that often favored the “laptop class” while leaving essential workers vulnerable. Extended school closures disproportionately affected less-privileged families, and the politicization of science marginalized dissent. Lee and her co-author, Stephen Macedo, argue that future crises must uphold the values of liberal democracy: tolerance, respect for evidence, and a commitment to truth. This discussion dives into key questions raised in the book, including the importance of conducting a post-mortem of the pandemic response. Lee highlighted how polarization in the two-party system complicates evaluations of what worked and what didn't. We also explored the role of states as “laboratories” for different responses and whether meaningful comparisons can be drawn between them. Lee reflected on why pre-existing pandemic plans were abandoned and how the pandemic strained the public's trust in media, policy advisors, and academic institutions. The ambiguity of desired policy outcomes, she noted, often hindered rational cost-benefit analysis, further complicating the response. Lee emphasized the value of embracing complexity and ambiguity in conversations about societal and political issues. By examining the pandemic's lessons, “In COVID's Wake” challenges readers to consider how we can better prepare for future crises while staying true to democratic principles. Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Today I'm speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her co-authored book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Published in 2020, this book remains highly relevant for understanding American political behavior. While Trump did make significant gains among black voters in 2024, particularly male voters, African American voters still overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. Chryl has appeared on the NBN in the past, so while we will discuss the book, we will also discuss it in the context of today. Chryl Laird is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

An astonishing variety of murals greet visitors to the temples and palaces of southern India. Beautiful in execution and extensive in scope, murals painted on walls and ceilings adorn the most important spaces of early modern religious and political performance. Scene by scene, histories of holy sites, portraits that incorporate historical figures into mythic landscapes, and Tamil and Telugu inscriptions that evoke the imagined topographies of devotional poetry unfold before the mobile spectator. Body, History, Myth reconceives the relationship between art and devotion in South India by describing how the extraordinary sensory experience of a viewing body in motion unfurls a sacred narrative exquisitely designed to teach, impress, and inspire. Anna Lise Seastrand offers new insights into the arts of early modern southern India, bringing to life one of the most culturally vibrant yet least understood periods in Indian art. She shows how temple visitors become active participants in the paintings through their somatic engagement with visual stories and devotional landscapes. Seastrand highlights the significance of textuality in early modern South Asia by examining the status of professional scribes and the prominence given to authorship of religious literature and art. Her insights are presented alongside new translations of the texts that accompany mural paintings. Featuring a wealth of stunning images published here for the first time, Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a multidimensional reading of temple art that fundamentally reframes the artistic, intellectual, religious, and political histories of early modern India.

Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted ChatGPT, they propitiated oracles. Before they fell in love with robot boyfriends, they ventured into the forest to marry nature spirits.  In his new book Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination (Princeton UP, 2025) Keane combines anthropology and philosophy to show us what is new and what is not in our current technological moment. Using a broad comparative perspective he shows us how shamans, hunters, priests, and doctors have long responded to the existential questions which drive our current technological obsessions: Where is the line between human and non-human? How do humans find meaning in our interactions with non-humans? By widening our intellectual imagination, Keane shows us how many of our current intellectual dilemmas about technology are not new -- and are far more deep than enduring than we might have previously suspected. Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the history of this idea and its pervasive influence over how we interpret world events and make sense of the human condition, from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations to the afflictions of the modern psyche. Taking readers from the time of Hippocrates to the unfolding crisis of global warming today, David Livingstone reveals how climate has been critically implicated in the politics of imperial control and race relations; been used to explain industrial development, market performance, and economic breakdown; and served as a bellwether for national character and cultural collapse. He examines how climate has been put forward as an explanation for warfare and civil conflict, and how it has been identified as a critical factor in bodily disorders and acute psychosis. A panoramic work of scholarship, The Empire of Climate maps the tangled histories of an idea that has haunted our collective imagination for centuries, shedding critical light on the notion that everything from the wealth of nations to the human mind itself is subject to climate's imperial rule. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies.

In The Woman Question in Islamic Studies (Princeton UP, 2024), the Introduction of which is available at the publisher's website, Kecia Ali delves into the deeply entrenched ways sexism continues to shape the academic landscape of Islamic Studies. Despite the growing presence of women scholars in the field, Ali finds that women's work remains marginalized, relegated to the periphery while male-authored research is treated as more authoritative. Ali tackles this issue with a mix of sharp analysis and humor, showing how gender biases persist at every level of scholarship—from course syllabi to citations to job hiring practices to editorial decisions. Through a combination of broad surveys and focused analyses, she uncovers the patterns of exclusion that, to quote her, “beget exclusion.” The issue isn't simply of women not being cited or mentioned in indices and footnotes and bibliographies, but also of how women's scholarship is talked about compared to how men's scholarship is described, hyped, and promoted. Even male scholars who present themselves as gender-inclusive often overlook or fail to cite women's scholarship, which further highlights the deep-seated nature of this problem and of the pattern that Ali is exploring. The book doesn't just highlight the problem but also provides actionable strategies for transforming the field. Ali offers a practical "Beginner's Guide to Eradicating Sexism in Islamic Studies," addressing areas like peer reviewing, citation practices, curriculum design, invitation for lectures and talks. This guide provides scholars with tools to counteract the biases that limit women's visibility and contribution. With a keen eye on the wider academic context, Ali situates these issues not only within Islamic Studies but as part of broader patterns of gender inequality in disciplines across the academy – such as in Economics, in Political Science, in Philosophy, in the natural sciences, in Jewish Studies, in Religious Studies broadly. The Woman Question in Islamic Studies is both a compelling critique and a roadmap for change, urging scholars to recognize the ethical and intellectual importance of equitable citation and inclusion. In our conversation today, Ali identifies some of the main points of the book, explains how the book came about and what her methodology is; we also discuss why women aren't being cited and why their exclusion from scholarship matters, why women are more likely than men to be more equitable in their citation practices, and how the book has been received so far and how Ali hopes people will respond. Ali and Lolo Serrano have co-author an article examining gender bias across fifteen years of book reviews in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2006–2020), which has been published in the same journal (accessible here). The article concludes that reviewers of all gender consistently prioritize and celebrate men's scholarship at a disproportionate rate, and male reviewers are found to cite the works of male scholars at a significantly higher rate. This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, students, and others professionals in Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, Gender Studies, and related fields, as well as anyone interested in academic equity and the dynamics of citation practices. It is an essential read for those looking to understand the persistent gender disparities in academia and for educators, researchers, and policymakers seeking practical strategies for fostering a more inclusive and equitable scholarly environment. Moreover, anyone invested in challenging systemic sexism across disciplines, from the humanities to the social sciences, will find Ali's insights both compelling and transformative. And especially those who don't believe gender is relevant to their research, or who don't think there are enough women they can cite in their works, will find the book immensely useful.

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton UP, 2024), Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior retained its social importance even when crowds were scarce. Most historians have seen early medieval Europe as a world without crowds. In fact, Bobrycki argues, early medieval European sources are full of crowds—although perhaps not the sort historians have trained themselves to look for. Harvests, markets, festivals, religious rites, and political assemblies were among the gatherings used to regulate resources and demonstrate legitimacy. Indeed, the refusal to assemble and other forms of “slantwise” assembly became a weapon of the powerless. Bobrycki investigates what happened when demographic realities shifted, but culture, religion, and politics remained bound by the past. The history of crowds during the five hundred years between the age of circuses and the age of crusades, Bobrycki shows, tells an important story—one of systemic and scalar change in economic and social life and of reorganization in the world of ideas and norms. New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review Shane Bobrycki is assistant professor of history at the University of Iowa Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston