New Books Network Podcast

Medicine March 25, 2023

Photos from the Front Lines

A Year on the Streets of Alameda County

Derek Hanley

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Photos from the Front Lines follows medics from Falck Alameda County ambulance during one of the most tumultuous years in recent collective memory - 2020. From a global pandemic to demonstrations …

Art March 22, 2023

Visual Culture and the Forensic

Culture, Memory, Ethics

David Houston Jones

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez

The relationship between images and truth has a complicated history. In the Western tradition, the Kantian settlement on aesthetic judgment as detached from external interests gave rise to artistic production …

Critical Theory March 22, 2023

Imperfect Victims

Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

Leigh Goodmark

Hosted by Kendall Dinniene

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the stories of individual criminalized survivors of gender based violence to …

Policing, Incarceration, and Reform March 21, 2023

Injustice, Inc.

How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor

Daniel L. Hatcher

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems exploit America's history of racial and economic inequality to …

Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast March 20, 2023

Just as Deadly

The Psychology of Female Serial Killers

Marissa A. Harrison

Hosted by Mark Klobas

You've heard of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. But have you heard of Amy Archer-Gilligan? Or Belle Gunness? Or Nannie Doss? Women have committed some of the most disturbing …

Political Science March 16, 2023

The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America

Hernán Flom

Hosted by Lilly Goren

Political Scientist Hernán Flom has written a fascinating and nuanced analysis of how the criminal drug markets operate in Argentina and Brazil. Instead of tracking the path that illegal drugs …

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast March 1, 2023

The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover

How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism

Lerone A. Martin

Hosted by Mark Klobas

On a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Christian …

Academic Life February 28, 2023

Who Gets Believed?

When the Truth Isn't Enough

Dina Nayeri

Hosted by Christina Gessler

Why are people judged on whether or not they are compelling? Why isn’t telling the truth enough? What are people really listening for when others share their truths? And how …

Policing, Incarceration, and Reform February 23, 2023

The American Surveillance State

How the US Spies on Dissent

David H. Price

Hosted by Deniz Yonucu

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies …

Technology February 18, 2023

Pegasus

How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy (Henry Holt, 2023) is the inside story of a worldwide investigation, sparked by the leak which …

Human Rights February 18, 2023

The War in Court

Inside the Long Fight Against Torture

Lisa Hajjar

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture (University of California Press, 2022) by Dr. Lisa Hajjar examines how hundreds of lawyers mobilized to challenge the illegal treatment …

Latin American Studies January 31, 2023

The Enlightened Patrolman

Early Law Enforcement in Mexico City

Nicole von Germeten

Hosted by Ethan Fredrick

When late eighteenth-century New Spanish viceregal administrators installed public lamps in the streets of central Mexico City, they illuminated the bodies of Indigenous, Afro-descended, and plebeian Spanish urbanites. The urban …

Policing, Incarceration, and Reform January 18, 2023

The Healing Stage

Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation

Lisa Biggs

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Over the last five decades, Black women have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the global prison population, thanks to changes in policies that mandate incarceration for nonviolent offenses …

Jewish Studies January 16, 2023

The Prisoners of Breendonk

Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp

James M. Deem

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Fort Breendonk was built in the early 1900s to protect Antwerp, Belgium, from possible German invasion. Damaged at the start of World War I, it fell into disrepair . …

Human Rights January 16, 2023

Atmospheres of Violence

Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable

Eric A. Stanley

Hosted by Rine Vieth

Content note: This episode contains discussions of suicide, as well as allusions to graphic anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black violence Advances in LGBTQ rights in the recent past—marriage equality, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't …

Philosophy December 30, 2022

The Idea of Prison Abolition

Tommie Shelby

Hosted by Robert Talisse

By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper moral response to this? Can prisons …

American South December 23, 2022

The End of Public Execution

Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South

Michael Ayers Trotti

Hosted by Lane Davis

Michael Ayers Trotti's The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion and Punishment in the American South (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022) documents the complex religious and cultural textures of …

Jewish Studies December 20, 2022

Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag

Edited and Translated by Alex Lahav

Zvi Preigerzon

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Today I talked to Alex Lahav about his edition and translation Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag (Cherry Orchard Books, 2022). Zvi Preigerzon wrote memoirs about his time …

Literary Studies December 11, 2022

Words Is a Powerful Thing

Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail

Brian Daldorph

Hosted by Carmen Gomez-Galisteo

Brian Daldorph first entered the Douglas County Jail classroom in Lawrence, Kansas, to teach a writing class on Christmas Eve 2001. His last class at the jail for the foreseeable …

American Studies November 22, 2022

Tree Thieves

Crime and Survival in North America's Woods

Lyndsie Bourgon

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves: Crime And Survival In North America's Woods (Little, Brown Spark, 2022), Lyndsie …