Princeton Alumni Weekly Podcasts

PAW’s Allie Wenner sits down with William Pugh ’20, co-founder of the “Woke Wednesdays” podcast, a new student-produced show that gives Princeton students (and guests) a platform to discuss issues relating to race, social justice, gender, sexuality, and more. Pugh talks about what it means to be “woke,” why he thinks it’s important for young people to speak out about controversial topics, and why he really hopes that people disagree with some of things that are said on the show.

After giving birth to a son as an undergraduate, J.C. Alvarez ’77 stayed in school, juggling the work of a student, mom, and wife. “While it’s not a journey I would recommend for everyone,” she says, “I knew it was the right journey for me.” (Season 4, Episode 3)

Anthropology professor Carolyn Rouse discusses her research trip to interview Donald Trump supporters in rural California, her “Trumplandia” project, the reasons why she hasn’t watched cable TV news this year, and how listening can be “a radical act.”

When Hale Bradt ’52 began reading his late father’s letters from World War II, the words “just grabbed me, viscerally,” he says. After decades of research, including trips to the Pacific islands where his father served, Bradt wrote about how the war reshaped his family. (Season 4, Episode 2)

Mathematician Sasha Fradkin ’06 *11, co-author of the forthcoming book Funville Adventures, discusses the perks of teaching young children (“they’re not afraid of math”) and her tips for introducing higher-level concepts to elementary schoolers.

Valerie Bell ’77, the first black student and first woman to be voted class president at Princeton, recalls the sense of pride she felt when she led her classmates through FitzRandolph Gate at Commencement. (Season 4, Episode 1)

Last month, on the Greek island of Lesbos, when a smoke-filled riot broke out at a camp housing migrants seeking entry into Europe, the first journalists on the scene were Princeton undergraduates — students in a summer global journalism course taught by Joe Stephens, the Ferris Professor of Journalism in residence. Their work made headlines in the English-language version of Kathimerini, a leading Greek newspaper, and The New York Times international edition. We recently spoke with two of the students, Talya Nevins ’18 and Alice Maiden ’19, about the lessons they learned from the course. Stories from the seminar are available at commons.princeton.edu/globalreporting2017.

Samantha Walravens ’90, co-author of Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech (St. Martin’s Press), discusses how women are making their own opportunities in the supposedly male-dominated Silicon Valley in an interview with PAW associate editor Carrie Compton. This is the first in a new series of interviews with alumni and faculty.

Jack Goodman ’57, John Milton ’57, and two of their classmates traveled south for spring break in 1955 with an unusual goal: to interview Ernest Hemingway for The Daily Princetonian. (Season 3, Episode 14)

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Charlie Buttrey ’81 has never been one to take “no” for an answer. He ran for class president three times, finally winning in his third attempt. After all that door-to-door campaigning, he knew a little something about nearly everyone in the Class of ’81. (Season 3, Episode 13)