Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

Mar 06 2025 682 ep. 54 mins 1.1k

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast artwork

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

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Anna Lise Seastrand, "Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Mar 06 2025 44 mins

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

Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Mar 03 2025 58 mins

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) Ke

David N. Livingstone, "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Mar 02 2025 51 mins

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

Kecia Ali, "The Woman Question in Islamic Studies" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Feb 21 2025 85 mins

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 periph

Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024)

Feb 18 2025 82 mins

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 co

Shane Bobrycki, "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Feb 17 2025 73 mins

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

Patricia Owens, "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Feb 13 2025 68 mins

The academic field of international relations presents its own history as largely a project of elite white men. And yet women played a prominent role in the creation of this new cross-disciplinary field. In Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men (Princeton University Press, 2025), Professor Patricia Owens shows that, since its beginnings in the early twentieth centu

Richard Rorty, "What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics" (Princeton UP, 2023)

Feb 08 2025 62 mins

Today I talked to Chris Voparil about What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics (Princeton UP, 2023), a book of Richard Rorty's writings he co-edited with W. P. Malecki. Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a

Eric Cline, "After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Feb 07 2025 34 mins

At the end of Eric Cline's bestselling history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was l

Sophia Rosenfeld, "The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Feb 05 2025 35 mins

Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. At the same time, we have been warned by everybody from marketing gurus to psychologists about the negative consequences stemm