Princeton Alumni Weekly Podcasts

Jennifer Howard ’85 has just released a book called “Clutter: An Untidy History.” Faced with the daunting task of cleaning out her elderly mother’s chaotic and jam-packed home, Howard began to ask herself: “Why is this scenario so common? And what drives our need to acquire and accumulate so many things? And what becomes of our belongings when we, or often our loved ones, finally dispose of them?”...

This month Bart Gellman ’82 discusses his work on the Edward Snowden disclosures, the subject of his new book, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State. Gellman discusses the drama that unfolded around receiving and publishing the news about the NSA’s unlawful surveillance of Americans, and weighs in on his opinion of Snowden and tips for how to keep your data safe.

Jordan Blashek is from the Class of 2009, and his co-author, Chris Haugh, is a UC, Berkley graduate; the pair met while in law school together at Yale. Blashek served for five years as an infantry officer with the United States Marines and is now part of a new company called Schmidt Futures, founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Class of 1976, which works on a wide array of public-interest pr...

In this Commencement episode of the PAWcast, valedictorian Nicholas Johnson ’20, an operations research and financial engineering concentrator, reflects on his time at Princeton. Johnson’s achievement is especially notable because he is the first black valedictorian in the University’s 274-year history. “It’s extremely overwhelming and a lot to take in, but also very empowering at the same time,”...

Most people in the developed world can control the amount of wildness in their daily lives by simply shutting the door and adjusting the thermostat. But the COVID-19 outbreak has reminded us that the uncertainty and discomfort of the biological world is never completely locked away. Limiting our interactions with the nature has consequences, according to professor and author Paul Wapner *91, inclu...

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to seize the globe in late March PAW revisited a podcast conversation from 2019 with Ashoka Mody, a visiting professor in international economic policy. In his book, EuroTragedy, Mody detailed the fragility of the European single currency. Now, amid global economic distress, he weighs on what the coming months will entail.

Adrienne Raphel ’10 speaks with PAW about her new book, Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them. Raphel explains the history of the crossword puzzle, the different stylistic flourishes of The New York Times’ crossword editors, and the puzzle world’s biggest quandary: gender disparity among crossword constructors.

The science is in and your friendships are not optional. Author and science writer Lydia Denworth ’88, author of the new book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond, explains how until very recently, there was very little scientific examination given to interpersonal relationships. But today, new studies are increasingly showing that friendship was e...

On this month’s PAWcast, Peter Yawitz ’80, author of the new book Flip Flops and Microwaved Fish: Navigating the Dos and Don’ts of Workplace Culture, gives advice on communicating with your coworkers, dressing the part in an office environment, and preparing for difficult conversations with your boss. He also has a few tips for managers who tend to be dismissive of the millennial mindset. (Februar...

PAW's Carrie Compton speaks with Ferris Professor of Journalism Kush Choudhury '00. Kush has extensive experience as a reporter in the United States and in India. After emigrating from Calcutta with his parents at age 12, he had always longed to return — and once he graduated from Princeton, he did just that. For a transcript of this interview, visit paw.princeton.edu/podcasts

Tyler Lussi ’17, a forward for Portland Thorns F.C. in the National Women’s Soccer League, broke the Princeton records for career goals and career points in her senior year. Since then, she’s been chasing new goals in pro soccer in a city that is deeply invested in its team. In an interview for the PAWcast, Lussi shares her ideas for getting more fans to buy into women’s soccer. This episode was r...

When President Dwight Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act in 1958, Charles "Pete" Conrad '53 was training as a U.S. Navy test pilot. Eleven years later, he’d become the third person to walk on the moon. Nov. 19 marks the 50th anniversary of Conrad’s moonwalk, part of the Apollo 12 mission, and to mark the occasion, PAWcast spoke with Jordan Bimm, a historian of science and pos...

The Equal Rights Amendment, which guarantees gender equality, is only one state away from being added to the United States Constitution, thanks to revived grassroots campaigns that took hold in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election. Linda Terry Coberly ’89, the chair of the ERA’s Legal Task Force, speaks with host Carrie Compton about the many hurdles that have prevented the ERA’s passage sin...

Asteroids and volcanoes and biotechnology — oh my! Bryan Walsh ’01 discusses his book, End Times, about the existential threats facing humanity. Walsh, a former foreign correspondent, reporter, and editor at Time, is editor of Medium’s science publication, OneZero.

In popular culture the car is seen as a symbol of freedom. But as Sarah Seo ’02 *16 writes, driving a car is also “the most policed aspect of everyday life.” Seo, a legal historian and the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, discusses the history of the automobile and its impact on the law and law enforcement in the United States, from a new interpretation of t...

Inspired in part by personal experience, sociologist Danielle Lindemann ’02 studied the growing phenomenon of “commuter spouses” — couples who choose to live apart to enable both partners to pursue their career goals. In an interview with PAW’s Carrie Compton, Lindemann explains that the couples she spoke with for her book, Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World, chose this lifestyle o...

In this Commencement episode of PAWcast, we talk with valedictorian Kate Reed ’19, a history major and Rhodes Scholar from Arnold, Md. Reed talks about her experiences teaching English as a second language in Trenton, digging into archival research in Mexico City, and wandering into a Princeton Preview course that eventually helped to shape her course of study.

On this month’s PAWcast, novelist Lisa Gornick ’77 discusses her new book, writing, and her former career as a psychotherapist in an interview with associate editor Carrie Compton. “As a therapist and then as a psychoanalyst, I was really trained to hear unconscious themes, to see the way that stories unfold, and to hear the way that emotion is concealed in language,” Gornick says. “And so, I felt...

History and Woodrow Wilson School professor Harold James — a leading academic and expert in European history and globalization — tells PAW’s Allie Wenner about the available options for the U.K. as it nears the April 12 Brexit deadline, how the issue of leaving the European Union was brought to the table to begin with, and why he doesn’t think Theresa May will be Britain’s prime minister for much...

Amherst College psychology professor Catherine Sanderson *97, the author of The Positive Shift: Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health, and Longevity, talks with PAW about the science of happiness and how our outlook can shape our reality. Even if positivity doesn’t come naturally to you, making small lifestyle changes can help to shift your mindset. “One of the most encouraging things, to...

Ge Wang *08 co-founded the mobile music company Smule, whose apps have reached more than 200 million users. Now he’s a professor at Stanford in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. In a conversation with PAW, he talks about music, computing, and his new book, Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime.

Visiting professor Ashoka Mody is the author of EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts, which unpacks the history and political motivations behind the European Union’s decision to employ a common currency, the euro. In a conversation with PAWcast’s Carrie Compton, Mody discusses the currency’s inherent flaws and its uncertain future — a topic that’s made headlines in recent days.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will *68, a noted conservative who advocated for voting out the GOP in the 2018 midterms, spoke with PAW about America’s current political climate, the dangers of recent federal spending policy, and why President Donald Trump is “intensely boring” — for a columnist, at least. Will recently was selected to deliver the Baccalaureate address for Princeton’s...

Nell Irvin Painter, a Princeton professor emerita of history, was 67 years old when she enrolled as an MFA student at the Rhode Island School of Design. During her second year there her book The History of White People was released and would become a New York Times bestseller. It was disorienting event, as she describes it. On one hand, there was the elation of receiving laudatory reviews, and on...

Two years after leaving Princeton to serve in the Army in Vietnam, Jim Marshall ’72 returned to a campus roiled in conflict. He says that he felt like “an oddity” of sorts — an undergraduate who had seen the war firsthand. Marshall would go on to law school, a career in politics that included four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, a visiting teaching appointment at Princeton, and a stint...