New Books Network

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New Books Network episodes

July 04 Tyler Girard, "Financial Inclusion: How an Idea Became a Global Agenda" (Stanford UP, 2026)
The
number of people in the world with a bank account or money service
provider increased by 2 billion over the past decade. This phenomenon
reflects what Dr. Tyler Girard calls the global financial inclusion
agenda. This agenda emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and
quickly became a prominent feature of global economic governance. 
The
core idea of financial inclusion is that all individuals and businesses
should have access to and use formal financial services, including bank
accounts, payment services, credit, and insurance. Today, the
widespread ability to digitally store and transfer money has impacted
every aspect of our lives. What explains the emergence and evolution of
the global financial inclusion agenda? And what does the politics of
the agenda tell us about the impacts of new technologies on global politics and how ideas become global agendas? 
Drawing
on an original collection of primary documents and interviews with
elites from Ghana, the United Kingdom, the United States, and
Switzerland, Financial Inclusion: How an Idea Became a Global Agenda (Stanford University Press, 2026) traces the global financial inclusion
agenda over time and interrogates its adaptation in specific contexts
and issue areas. Through the concept of participatory ambiguity, Dr.
Girard offers a novel explanation of the agenda that advances important
debates in international relations and international political economy
on the distribution of power and authority in global governance.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
40 min
July 04 Sadiah Qureshi, "Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction" (Penguin, 2025)
Anyone
alive today is among a tiny fraction of the once living: over 90% of
species that ever existed are now extinct. How did we come to think of
ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish forever, or
as capable of pushing our planet to the verge of a sixth mass
extinction?
Extinction, Professor Sadiah Qureshi shows us, is a surprisingly modern concept—and a phenomenon that’s
not as natural as we might think. In Europe until the late eighteenth
century, species were considered perfect and unchanging creations of
God. Then in the age of revolutions, scientists gathered enough fossil
evidence to determine
that mammoth bones, for example, were not just large elephants but a
lost species that once roamed the Earth alongside ancient humans.
Extinction went from being regarded as theologically dangerous to
pervasive, and even inevitable.
Yet Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Penguin, 2025) shows us that extinction is more than a scientific idea; it’s
a political choice that has led to devasting consequences. Europeans
and Americans quickly used the notion that extinction was a natural
process to justify persecution and genocide, predicting that nations
from Newfoundland’s Beothuk to Aboriginal Australians were doomed to die
out from imperial expansion.
Exploring the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire, Vanished
weaves together pioneering original research and breath-taking
storytelling to show us extinction is both an evolutionary process and a
human act: one which illuminates our past, and may alter our future.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
40 min
July 04 Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026),
Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life,
an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical
avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw
their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a
type of creative material and a central component
to their avant-garde practice. These artists abandoned traditional
forms of artmaking and venues of art viewing, instead aspiring to
integrate art with everyday life, creating an “art of living.”
Considering
Tristan Tzara’s performances of Dadaist identity, Sonia Delaunay’s
simultaneous fashions and self-branding, and the collective endeavor to
open and operate the Surrealist Research Bureau, Silveri offers a new
narrative about how the artists of interwar Paris developed experiential
life practices that resisted dominant forms of “lifestyle” and
normative discourses surrounding gender, ethnicity, and office work.
This book argues that ethical questions of “How should I live?” and “How
should I relate to others?” were as important to the avant-garde as
politics, and that aspirations to change the world played out in daily
practices of self-making.
Hannah Freed-Thall is Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at NYU. She is the author, most recently, of Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons.
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59 min
July 04 L. L. Madrid, "My Lips, Her Voice" (Creature Publishing, 2025)
L.L. Madrid's My Lips, Her Voice (Creature Publishing, 2025) takes place in Copper City, a town who's bloody history is steeped in ghost stories and whispers of serial killers, but three girls have caught the attention of something far more sinister.
A grandmother tormented by visions tried to warn the town, but no one listened. Now, a haunted inheritance has passed to her granddaughters, Audrey and Mara. When Mara’s body is discovered in the old mine, Audrey fears her grandmother’s premonition is manifesting.
The nightmare begins as Mara’s spirit returns—lurking under Audrey’s skin, hellbent on vengeance and desperate to rekindle things with her former girlfriend, Zadie. Willing to hijack Audrey’s body to get what she wants, Mara drags them both into a deadly pursuit.
When another girl in town goes missing, Audrey, Mara, and Zadie know the killer has struck again. In a fight to solve Mara’s death and uncover the mystery of disappearances in Copper City, the girls soon find themselves at war with each other. How do you survive long enough to hunt a murderer on the loose if the person inside you might kill you first?
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36 min
July 04 Gajendran Ayyathurai, "Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores
Tamil Buddhism in modern India, focusing on its emergence
as a response to caste-based oppression during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Central to this movement was Pandit Iyothee
Thass (1845–1914), a pioneering intellectual who reinterpreted India’s
Buddhist past to challenge brahminical dominance. Thass reasoned that it
was because many Indians followed Buddhist cultural and material
traditions in ancient times, that they were oppressed as untouchables
and lower castes by self-privileging-caste groups, such as brahmins.
Thus, Thass challenged brahminism/casteism
in India by reconstructing and mobilizing a reading public about the
casteless Buddhist history of Indians who were prone to caste
oppression. His writings, petitions, and archives reveal the
castelessness of Tamil Buddhists and their commitment to
a radical political transformation in modern India. Key aspects of the
Tamil Buddhist movement include public mobilization for caste-free
societies, self-representation of oppressed communities, economic
redistribution through affirmative action, and a feminist critique of
caste and patriarchy. Through interdisciplinary methods drawn
from Critical Caste Studies, this monograph uncovers the intellectual
history of Tamil Buddhism and its radical call for vernacular
emancipation. It highlights how Indigenous, Tamil/Indian communities
used Buddhist foundations to resist caste and envision a modern,
casteless future.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 37 min
July 04 Carrie LeVan, "Neighborhoods Matter: How Place and People Affect Political Participation" (NYU Press, 2026)
Participation in official governmental institutions and activities
has declined dramatically. Americans are less inclined to express trust
in, or cooperate with, political leaders and each other to address
society's most pressing problems. In Neighborhoods Matter: How Place and People Affect Political Participation (NYU
Press, 2026), Carrie LeVan explores this growing crisis in civic
engagement, arguing that where we live—and the people who live around
us—may be to blame.
Drawing on national surveys, census data, and spatial analysis, LeVan demonstrates how neighborhood design can dramatically impact political participation, including people's desire and ability to vote in local, state, and national elections. She argues that the suburbs, which isolate residents, require driving, and are zoned for single-use, do not provide an effective infrastructure for civic engagement. However, cities, which are often designed to be walkable, more interactive, and are zoned for mixed-use, provide a supportive environment where people and politics can thrive.
Ultimately, LeVan underscores how neighborhoods that support interaction, competition, collective action—and even conflict—can support greater civic engagement and political participation. Neighborhoods Matter highlights the connection between politics, people, and place, calling for good suburban and urban design that can support a vibrant and engaging civic life.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 2 min
July 04 How “They” See “Us” with editor Madeleine Schwartz
The remarkable political ascent of Donald J. Trump and his sustained grip on a certain segment of American society have given fresh life to a question as old as Tocqueville’s visit to Jacksonian America a century ago: How do foreigners regard America, Americans and the American experiment? I explore this question in a conversation with Madeline Schwartz, founder and editor in chief of The Dial, an online publication. She wrote the Introduction to a collection of essays featuring work commissioned by The Dial, the new book titled How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump (The New Press, 2026). We discuss perspectives from Italy, Argentina and South Africa, among other places
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
40 min
July 03 Joseph Turow, "The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
A respected voice on technology shows how seemingly simple ads help dismantle democracy and public discourse.
Whether
you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media,
something is following you: ads. Their creators seem to know your income
bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in
clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use
predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push
them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and
isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital
marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets,
tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening
the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this
urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here,
and how to change direction.The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age (University
of Chicago Press, 2026) shatters common beliefs about advertising
history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s
AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about
personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive
social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality.
Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest
technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial
intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go
with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and
more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored
entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground
necessary for a functioning democracy.
A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
1 hr 8 min
July 03 Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio and Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research.
In the third panel, Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne discussed the relationship between podcasting and science. Carruth is a professor at Princeton’s Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. At Princeton, she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads Blue Lab, an environmental media and storytelling studio. Her research and teaching areas include climate storytelling, environmental art and narrative, contemporary food movements and the evolving relationships between technology and environmentalism in American culture. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food.
Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her research is focused on performance, documentation, the perception of authority in voice, labor and production in audio and podcasting. Horne was producer for Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, a 13-episode investigative podcast that told the story of shocking misconduct at a Virginia state crime lab. Admissible won the Gold Award for Best Documentary at the Signal Awards; an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the Public Media Award NETA for Best Podcast. Horne was an executive producer at Audible and an executive producer for WNYC’s Radiolab.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
55 min
July 03 Bjørn Berge, "Smell: The Tale of a Fading Sense" (Reaktion Books, 2026)
The
sense of smell is often linked to the dark, the antisocial, the
primitive—the very opposite of modernity and progress. Today we live
in an almost odorless world, where everything is reduced to images. Yet
smell plays a vital role in how we relate to others and our
surroundings, forming our experiences and our memories. Tracing a
history of smell from the first ancient cities, through medieval plagues
and the Industrial Revolution to the present day, Smell: The Tale of a Fading Sense (Reaktion,
2026) is a tribute to the sense of smell in all its beauty and disgust.
Along the way, Bjørn Berge introduces us to twenty iconic scents—from
blood and soil to the ocean—and invites readers to reflect on and
reawaken their senses.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
36 min