Princeton UP Ideas Podcast Archives

Joshua Specht – Property Values

The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner

Interview with Joshua Specht about his book Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner. traces how land ownership became central to American independence, shifting from widespread prosperity to property appreciation. Discusses colonial land speculation, Native American displacement, and the frontier’s closing. Explores Henry George’s critique of land monopoly and visions from Bryan and Addams. The New Deal’s mortgage reforms created an “ownership society”, yet propagated exclusion through redlining and tax limitations like Proposition 13. Homeowners’ associations privatised governance. The 2008 financial crisis exposed financialisation flaws, where individual blame obscured systemic issues. Advocates for regional housing policies and greater density.

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Arthur der Weduwen – The Last Invasion of England

1688 and the Dutch Armada

Interview with Arthur der Weduwen about his book The Last Invasion of England: 1688 and the Dutch Armada. Discusses the Dutch invasion of England in 1688, led by William of Orange, which strategically exploited James II’s pro-Catholic policies and France’s aggressive expansion. The massive 400-ship Armada, involving 30,000 personnel, secured England as an ally against Louis XIV. Explains how this militarily successful intervention was deliberately re-framed as a ‘Glorious Revolution’ – an English act of self-liberation – to diminish foreign involvement and promote a national narrative.

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Douglas H. Erwin – The Origins of the New

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 6 April 2026 | 0h 46m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Douglas E. Erwin about his book The Origins of the New: Novelty and Innovation in the History of Life, Culture, and Technology. Traces how thinkers from Darwin’s time to the present day have sought to discover the driving mechanisms of evolutionary novelty. Makes the case for separating novelty from innovation, showing that novelty involves the emergence of unique characteristics, while innovation concerns the success of those characteristics over time. Outlines a unifying conceptual framework for these dynamics, demonstrating how they have shaped everything from the evolution of avian feathers and flight to the creation of human language and advances in digital computing.

One of more than 75 episodes on evolution.

Carl Benedikt Frey – How Progress Ends

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 19 November 2025 | 0h 54m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Carl Benedikt Frey about his book How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations. Argues that progress should not be taken for granted and depends on institutional and political constraints. Historically, decentralized systems (like 19C U.S.) fostered innovation, while centralized ones (like the Soviet Union) excelled at catchup but failed at exploration. Notes that both the U.S. and China show signs of stagnation. Harnessing the potential of AI requires renewed focus on competition and decentralization, as exploration demands varied technological bets.

See also other episodes with Carl Benedikt Frey.

Hélène Landemore – OpenDemocracy

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 18 November 2025 | 1h 06m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Hélène Landemore about her book Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Argues that existing electoral democracies are fundamentally oligarchic, systematically producing policy outcomes that favor the wealthy over ordinary citizens. Advocates for Open Democracy, a restructured representative system using random selection (sortition) to send ordinary people to centers of power, citing precedents like Iceland’s constitutional process and France’s Citizens Convention on Climate.

See also the How to Fix Democracy episode with David van Reybrouck about his book Against Elections.

Mark Vellend – Everything Evolves

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 27 September 2025 | 1h 05m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Mark Vellend about his book Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More Than We Think, from Proteins to Politics. Describes how all observable phenomena in the universe can be understood through two sciences: the first is physics; the second is the science of evolvable systems. Discussses how this Second Science unifies biology and culture and how evolution gives rise to everything from viruses and giraffes to nation-states, technology, and us. Discusses how the idea of evolution had precedents in areas such as language and economics long before it was made famous by Darwin, and how only by freeing ourselves of the notion that the study of evolution must start with biology can we appreciate the true breadth of evolutionary processes.

David Edmonds on Death in a Shallow Pond

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 1 September 2025 | 0h 53m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with David Edmonds about his book Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need. Discusses Peter Singer and his shallow pond thought experiment that argued for helping starving strangers in the Third World, the Effective Altruism movement, and Singer’s critics.

David Woodman on The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast | 2 September 2025 | 0h 39m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with David Woodman about his book The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom. Discusses Æthelstan’s pivotal role in the creation of England, the challenges of early medieval historiography, and the geopolitical landscape of 10th-century Britain and Europe.