New Books Network Podcast

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast October 1, 2023

Free Agents

How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

Kevin J. Mitchell

Hosted by Mark Klobas

Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of …

Geography September 26, 2023

Rendered Obsolete

Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling

Jamie L. Jones

Hosted by Stentor Danielson

Listen:

Through the mid-nineteenth century, the US whaling industry helped drive industrialization and urbanization, providing whale oil to lubricate and illuminate the country. The Pennsylvania petroleum boom of the 1860s brought …

American West September 26, 2023

Cow Talk

Work, Ecology, and Range Cattle Ranchers in the Postwar Mountain West

Michelle K. Berry

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann

Listen:

How did ranching become an identity? University of Arizona historian Michelle Berry explains in Cow Talk: Work, Ecology, and Western Ranchers in the Postwar Mountain West (U Oklahoma Press, 2023). During the …

Russian and Eurasian Studies September 9, 2023

Red Leviathan

The Secret History of Soviet Whaling

Ryan Tucker Jones

Hosted by Erika Monahan

The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near extinction by …

Folklore September 2, 2023

Women's Lore

4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi

Sarah Clegg

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Listen:

Creatures like Lilith, the seductive first wife of Adam, and mermaids, who lured sailors to their death, are familiar figures in the genre of monstrous temptresses who use their charms …

Environmental Studies August 20, 2023

Routledge Handbook of Rewilding

Sally Hawkins, Ian Convery, Steve Carver, and Rene Beyers

Hosted by Isobel Akerman

Routledge Handbook of Rewilding (Routledge, 2022) provides a comprehensive overview of the history, theory and current practices of ‘rewilding’. Rewilding offers a transformational paradigm shift in conservation thinking, and as …

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast August 15, 2023

Alien Worlds

How Insects Conquered the Earth, and Why Their Fate Will Determine Our Future

Steve Nicholls

Hosted by Mark Klobas

Listen:

Life on Earth depends on the busy activities of insects, but global populations of these teeming creatures are currently under threat, with grave consequences for us all. Steve Nicholls' book Alien …

World Affairs August 11, 2023

From the Pandemic to Utopia

The Future Begins Now

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Listen:

The coronavirus pandemic forces us to rethink our contemporaneity. It has brought to the surface dimensions of human fragility that partially contradict the euphoria and human hubris of the fourth …

High Theory August 7, 2023

Horses

Sillies Series

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu

Listen:

In our new summer series of “Sillies,” Saronik and Kim ask each other how simple things will achieve the grandiose task of saving the world. In this episode, Kim asks …

Animal Studies August 7, 2023

Nonhuman Humanitarians

Animal Interventions in Global Politics

Benjamin Meiches

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Listen:

Both critical and mainstream scholarly work on humanitarianism have largely been framed from anthropocentric perspectives highlighting humanity as the rationale for providing care to others. In Nonhuman Humanitarians: Animal Interventions …

Medieval History August 7, 2023

The Catch

An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries

Richard C. Hoffmann

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh

Listen:

The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive examination of European engagement with aquatic systems between c. 500 and 1500 CE. Using textual …

Animal Studies July 31, 2023

Your Robot Dog Will Die

Arin Greenwood

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

Listen:

Today I talked to Arin Greenwood about her new book Your Robot Dog Will Die (Soho, 2019). When a global genetic experiment goes awry and canines stop wagging their tails, mass …

Science July 13, 2023

How to Speak Whale

A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication

Tom Mustill

Hosted by Frances Sacks

Listen:

What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his …

The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones July 3, 2023

The Future of Oceans

A Discussion with Chris Armstrong

Chris Armstrong

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones

Listen:

Amidst all the talk of a green revolution what about the blue stuff? There are the seas that will wash over inhabited land, there’s the sea economy with fisherman and …

Academic Life June 29, 2023

The Killer Whale Journals

Our Love and Fear of Orcas

Hanne Strager

Hosted by Christina Gessler

Listen:

Like wolves, orcas have been loved and loathed throughout history. What created this complicated relationship between humans and whales? And have we changed our attitudes toward them and their habitat …

Animal Studies June 18, 2023

The Celluloid Specimen

Moving Image Research into Animal Life

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

Hosted by Callie Smith

Listen:

In The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (U of California Press, 2023), Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These …

Animal Studies June 15, 2023

Food, Justice, and Animals

Feeding the World Respectfully

Josh Milburn

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

Listen:

How would we eat if animals had rights? A standard assumption is that our food systems would be plant-based. But maybe we should reject this assumption. Indeed, this book argues …

Nomads, Past and Present May 22, 2023

Embracing Landscape

Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia

Selcen Küçüküstel

Hosted by Maggie Freeman

Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, Embracing Landscape: Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia (Berghahn Books, 2021), focuses …

Critical Theory May 5, 2023

What Comes After Entanglement?

Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion

Eva Haifa Giraud

Hosted by Catriona Gold

By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva …

Critical Theory April 27, 2023

Oil Beach

How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond

Christina Dunbar-Hester

Hosted by Dave O'Brien

How can we stop infrastructure from damaging the planet? In Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond (U Chicago Press, 2023), Christina Dunbar-Hester …