Best Stephanie Poe Podcasts (2024)

1
Allison J. Pugh, "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World" (Princeton UP, 2024) 31:00

5d ago31:00

31:00

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton UP, 2024) explor…

1
Stephanie Ternullo, "How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024) 54:18

10d ago54:18

54:18

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue to red. Cities that were once part of the traditional Democratic New Deal coalition began to vote Republican, providing crucial support for the electoral victories of Republican presidents from Reagan to…

1
Adam Goodman, "The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants" (Princeton UP, 2020) 1:07:09

18d ago1:07:09

1:07:09

Many of us know that immigrants have been deported from the United States for well over a century, but has anyone ever asked how? In The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020), author Adam Goodman brings together new archival evidence to write an expansive history of deportation from t…

1
Sarah Nooter, "How to Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality" (Princeton UP, 2024) 30:38

18d ago30:38

30:38

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness, wit, and insight. Sarah Nooter's How to Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality (Princeton UP, 2024) is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between …

1
Richard E. Ocejo, "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:00:40

18d ago1:00:40

1:00:40

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents. Sixty Miles Upr…

1
David S. Richeson, "Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2019) 54:24

23d ago54:24

54:24

David S. Richeson's book Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2019) is the fascinating story of the 2000 year quest to solve four of the most perplexing problems of antiquity: squaring the circle, duplicating the cube, trisecting the angle, and constructing regular …

1
Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld, "The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024) 59:14

1M ago59:14

59:14

The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the political history of American political parties, not so much as historical institutions with different constituents—though it does that—but as living and breathing entities that have, over the course of more than 200 years, been, at …

1
Raghuram G. Rajan and Rohit Lamba, "Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity" (Princeton UP, 2024) 31:28

1M ago31:28

31:28

The whole world has a stake in India's future, and that future hinges on whether India can develop its economy and deliver for its population--now the world's largest--while staying democratic. India's economy has overtaken the United Kingdom's to become the fifth-largest in the world, but it is still only one-fifth the size of China's, and India's…

1
Liliana Doganova, "Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:01:56

1M ago1:01:56

1:01:56

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Dr. Liliana Doganova’s book Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology (Princeton University Press, 2024) sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in…

1
Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:02:04

2M ago1:02:04

1:02:04

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange had been invented by Jews. In The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019…

1
Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024) 39:13

2M ago39:13

39:13

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and scien…

1
George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:07:33

2M ago1:07:33

1:07:33

The creation of the postwar welfare state in Great Britain did not represent the logical progression of governmental policy over a period of generations. As George R. Boyer details in The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain (Princeton University Press, 2019), it only emerged after decades of d…

1
Sheilagh Ogilvie, "The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:00:29

2M ago1:00:29

1:00:29

Guilds were prominent in medieval and early modern Europe, but their economic role has seldom been studied. In The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis (Princeton University Press, 2019), Sheilagh Ogilvie offers a wide-ranging examination of what guilds did and how they affected pre-modern economies. As Ogilvie explains, guilds were particularized…

1
Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:05:05

2M ago1:05:05

1:05:05

The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Graetz. In his book The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton UP, 2024), Graetz chronicles the movement from a fringe theory promoted by zealous outsiders using false eco…

1
Héctor Beltrán, "Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands" (Princeton UP, 2023) 29:42

2M ago29:42

29:42

In Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands (Princeton UP, 2023), Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the code worlds to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coup…

1
Guido Alfani, "As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West" (Princeton UP, 2023) 58:04

2M ago58:04

58:04

This provocative and interesting book has received considerable attention. Roaring reviews and interviews include The Financial Times (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Modem (Radio Switzerland Italian), Hufftington Post (Italy), El Diario (Spain), ABC (Australia), History Today (UK), The New Republic (USA), The New Yorker (USA), among others around the wor…

1
Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, "The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: The Complete English Translation" (Princeton UP, 2022) 1:43:16

2M ago1:43:16

1:43:16

The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the monumental Sanskrit epic of the life of Rama, ideal man and incarnation of the great god Visnu, has profoundly affected the literature, art, religions, and cultures of South and Southeast Asia from antiquity to the present. Filled with thrilling battles, flying monkeys, and ten-headed demons, the work, composed almost 3…

1
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, "Puerto Rico: A National History" (Princeton UP, 2024) 44:44

2M ago44:44

44:44

Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to …

1
Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023) 54:39

2M ago54:39

54:39

Political Theorist Melvin L. Rogers has a deep and rich new book delving into the work of a host of different African American political thinkers. But this work is much more than an exploration of some of the writings by African American thinkers, it importantly tells the story of America. The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom i…

1
Grazia Ting Deng, "Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy" (Princeton UP, 2024) 41:23

2M ago41:23

41:23

Why and how local coffee bars in Italy--those distinctively Italian social and cultural spaces--have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas since the Great Recession of 2008? Italians regard espresso as a quintessentially Italian cultural product--so much so that Italy has applied to add Italian espresso to UNESCO's official list of intangib…

1
Eric Schwitzgebel, "The Weirdness of the World" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:02:20

2M ago1:02:20

1:02:20

"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader to a walk on the wilder side of philosophical speculation about the cosmos and consciousness. Is consciousness entirely a material phenomenon? How much credence should we have in the existence of a world…

1
Claudia de Rham, "The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity" (Princeton UP, 2024) 50:36

3M ago50:36

50:36

Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth's pull. And as a physicis…

1
Ya-Wen Lei, "The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China" (Princeton UP, 2023) 55:13

3M ago55:13

55:13

Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese state has increasingly shifted away from labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing to a process of socioeconomic development centered on science and technology. In The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023) Ya-Wen Lei traces the contours of this te…

1
Marc-William Palen, "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:09:17

3M ago1:09:17

1:09:17

A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The post-1945 international free-trade regime was established to foster a more integrated, prosperous, and peaceful world. As US Secretary of State Cordell Hu…

1
Beth Linker, "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2024) 30:05

3M ago30:05

30:05

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century's worth of nude "posture" photos of college students. In this riveting history, Beth Linker tells why these photos were only a small part of the incredible story of twentieth-century America's largely forgotten posture panic--a decades-long episode …

1
Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, "Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids" (Princeton UP, 2019) 59:00

3M ago59:00

59:00

Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, American and Chinese parents are increasingly authoritative and authoritarian, whereas Scandinavian parents tend to be more permissive. Why? Love, Money, and Parenting investigates how economic forces and gr…

1
Colin Elliott, "Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World" (Princeton UP, 2024) 50:47

3M ago50:47

50:47

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including R…

1
Myisha Cherry, "Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better" (Princeton UP, 2023) 42:52

3M ago42:52

42:52

From religion to popular culture, institutions and people have shaped how we conceive forgiveness. Myisha Cherry, associate professor of philosophy, argues that these understandings have been limiting or even narrow. Those ideas, in turn, have been harmful to society. In Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better (Princeton Uni…

1
Julie Kalman, "The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond" (Princeton UP, 2023) 48:06

3M ago48:06

48:06

On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish merchant families: the Bacris, and the Busnachs. It was an error of judgment: France blockaded Algiers, and later invaded, turning Algeria into a French colony. The unpaid debt has festered as a diplomatic iss…

1
Korey Garibaldi, "Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023) 1:14:23

3M ago1:14:23

1:14:23

In Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2023), Korey Garibaldi explores interracial collaborations in American commercial publishing—authors, agents, and publishers who forged partnerships across racial lines—from the 1910s to the 1960s. Garibaldi shows how aspiring and esta…

1
Verity Harding, "AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own" (Princeton UP, 2024) 31:16

4M ago31:16

31:16

Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI's power grows, so does the need to figure out what--and who--this technology is really for. AI Needs You argues that it is critical for society to take the lead in answering this urgent question and ensuring that AI fulfills its promise. Verity Harding draws inspir…

1
Thomas J. Barfield, "Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History" (Princeton UP, 2023) 49:44

4M ago49:44

49:44

Empires are one of the most common forms of political structure in history—yet no empire is alike. We have our “standard” view of empire: perhaps the Romans, or the China of the Qin and Han Dynasties—vast polities that cover numerous different people, knit together by strong institutions from a political center. But where do, say, the empires of th…

1
Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:11:49

4M ago1:11:49

1:11:49

"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsiders, and, in spite of other differences, they share fragments of a common ethic in their working life, and a kind of moral complicity." – Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict. There are many more exa…

1
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, "Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia" (Princeton UP, 2023) 1:13:23

4M ago1:13:23

1:13:23

How can territory and peoples be organized? After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia (Princeton UP, 2023), historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental project…

1
Richard L. Hasen, "A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2024) 28:07

4M ago28:07

28:07

Throughout history, too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to voting. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress's ability to do so. The time has come for voters t…

1
Despina Stratigakos, "Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway" (Princeton UP, 2020) 58:38

4M ago58:38

58:38

In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investigates the Nazi occupation of Norway. Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to ex…

1
Nicholas Dames, "The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century" (Princeton UP, 2023) 1:09:55

5M ago1:09:55

1:09:55

Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Dr. Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing how an ancient editorial technique became a universally recognized component of narrative art and a means to register the sensation of time. In The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twe…

1
Matthew D. Lassiter, "The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs" (Princeton UP, 2023) 59:36

5M ago59:36

59:36

Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority populations, an extension of the federal war on black street crime and the foundation for the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration as key characteristics of the U.S. in this period. But as the Nixon Whit…

1
Ismar Volić, "Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation" (Princeton UP, 2024) 39:40

5M ago39:40

39:40

What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What's the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a …

1
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023) 44:02

5M ago44:02

44:02

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim…

1
Cornelia Woll, "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Politics of Negotiated Justice in Global Markets" (Princeton UP, 2023) 43:09

5M ago43:09

43:09

Over the past decade, many of the world’s biggest companies have found themselves embroiled in legal disputes over corruption, fraud, environmental damage, tax evasion, or sanction violations. Corporations including Volkswagen, BP, and Credit Suisse have paid record-breaking fines. Many critics of globalisation and corporate impunity cheer this tur…

1
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023) 30:32

5M ago30:32

30:32

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, from people with disabilities to women's rights activists and LGBTQ coalitions. Increasingly since the 1980s, white, right-wing social movements, from family values coalitions to the alt-right, now claim…

1
John Quiggin, "Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly" (Princeton UP, 2019) 46:51

5M ago46:51

46:51

Trying to follow the key macroeconomic debates that are swirling around DC, CNBC, the WSJ and the NYT? If you are but don't want to go back to graduate school or re-open your college macroeconomics textbook, John Quiggin has a solution. His Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly (Princeton University Pres…

1
Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023) 39:16

6M ago39:16

39:16

Ming China in 1642 had suffered a series of disasters. Floods, and then drought had destroyed successive rice crops, sending the price of grain to astronomical levels. As one schoolteacher wrote: “There was no rice in the market to buy. Even if a dealer had grain, people passed by without asking the price. The rich were reduced to scrounging for be…

1
Gabriel Abend, "Words and Distinctions for the Common Good: Practical Reason in the Logic of Social Science" (Princeton UP, 2023) 29:58

6M ago29:58

29:58

How social scientists' disagreements about their key words and distinctions have been misconceived, and what to do about it Social scientists do research on a variety of topics--gender, capitalism, populism, and race and ethnicity, among others. They make descriptive and explanatory claims about empathy, intelligence, neoliberalism, and power. They…

1
Adam Mestyan, "Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2023) 47:41

6M ago47:41

47:41

In Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2023), Adam Mestyan (Duke University) argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism. Rather, they spurred from the process of “recycling empire.” Mestyan shows…

1
Yaron Eliav, "A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean" (Princeton UP, 2023) 1:20:20

6M ago1:20:20

1:20:20

Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterranean world, the baths drew people of all backgrounds. They were places suffused with nudity, sex, and magic. A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean (Princeton …

1
Katherine D. Van Schaik, "How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness" (Galen) (Princeton UP, 2024) 34:17

6M ago34:17

34:17

The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. A talented doctor, surgeon, writer, philosopher, teacher, pharmacologist, and inventor, Galen attended the court of Marcus Aurelius, living through outbreaks of plague (likely smallpox) that devastated the Roman Em…

1
How to Build a Career: A Discussion with Ben Wildavsky 51:13

6M ago51:13

51:13

On this episode of the Academic Life, we dive into the book The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections (Princeton UP, 2023) by Ben Wildavsky, which makes a persuasive case for building career success through broad education, targeted skills, and social capital. People today expect to hold many jobs over the course of …

1
Peter Brown, "Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History" (Princeton UP, 2023) 1:04:37

6M ago1:04:37

1:04:37

Over the past seven decades, Peter Brown has transformed our collective understanding of the late Roman Empire and the European Middle Ages alike, establishing Late Antiquity (ca. 250-800 CE) as a distinctive era of creative religious, social, and intellectual ferment. This was the time of the prophet Muhammad, of Augustine of Hippo, of Byzantium’s…

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