Princeton Alumni Weekly Podcasts

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 since its introduction in the ’70s, and what will come next if a final state ratifies it.

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 the Fourth Amendment to the issue of discriminatory policing.

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 out of professional necessity, not for purely financial reasons. She also discusses what’s changed (and what hasn’t) in how we think about gender roles and how, paradoxically, high levels of education may tend to limit one’s professional choices. For a transcript of this podcast, visit https://paw.princeton.edu/podcast/pawcast-sociologist-danielle-lindemann-02-commuter-spouses

(Photo: Cyndi Shattuck Photography)

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 very much as though I was using what I knew as a student of literature in the therapy room — and the reverse as well.” Her latest novel, The Peacock Feast (Sarah Crichton Books), was published in February.

Author photo © Sigrid Estrada; for a transcript of this interview, visit https://paw.princeton.edu/podcast/pawcast-author-lisa-gornick-77-writing-life-and-her-background-psychotherapist

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 longer.

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 me, about all of this research now on the power of positive mindset, is that there’s something you can do,” Sanderson says.

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.