Yale University Press Podcast

In this episode, Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, speaks with Yale University Press Director John Donatich, about how we can forestall the rising tide of suicides in the United States and worldwide, combing through the history of suicide to recover the most powerful arguments against the irretrievable act.

In this episode, Leo Damrosch, author of Jonathan Swift: His Life and World, speaks with Yale University Press Director John Donatich, about the story of Swift’s life anew, probing holes in the existing evidence to show how the public version of his life – the one accepted until recently – was deliberately misleading.

Jess Bravin, Supreme Court Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, has covered the Guantanamo Bay prison camp since its inception reports on the legal, political, and moral issues that have stood in the way of justice. The deplorable story is a chapter in the War on Terror that has never been fully told before. Here, Bravin speaks with Yale University Press Director John Donatich about his new book, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay.

Chris Gondek sits down with Michael Takiff to discuss his new book, A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him. Clinton’s legacy as President of the United States is still very much in the forefront of national media and minds of everyday Americans. Listen to Takiff speak about this oral biography, composed through more than 150 interviews with key figures such as Bob Dole, James Carville, and Tom Brokaw, and many others who can personally testify to the man behind the politics.

Chris Gondek interviews Paul Starr, professor of sociology at Princeton and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Starr’s newest book, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform is out now from Yale University Press; this interview covers the near century-long history and present health care challenges of American presidential administrations, including Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama, as well as reform policies enacted by then-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Chris Gondek speaks with (1) film critic Molly Haskell about Gone with the Wind – the book and the film – and the uncanny symbiosis of Margaret Mitchell, David Selznick, and Vivian Leigh, and (2) Joyce Lee Malcolm about the never-before-told story of a New England slave boy turned soldier caught up in the American Revolution.

Chris Gondek speaks with the President of the National Iranian American Council and 2010 Grawemeyer Award-winner for Ideas Improving World Order, Trita Parsi returns to the Yale Press Podcast to speak about his new book, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran. Parsi uncovers the full details of the diplomatic encounters between Washington and Tehran during Obama’s early presidency, then discusses whether diplomacy should be the foreign policy approach of choice for the U.S.

Prize-winning novelist Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salberger, a historian of ideas, blend storytelling, humor, and scholarship in this entertaining father-daughter conversation about the essential role of words and books throughout Jewish history.

Host Chris Gondek interviews Godfrey Hodgson about his new book, The Myth of American Exceptionalism and Eric Sundquist about his new book, King’s Dream.

In Episode 22, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) James Boyle about the range wars of the information age — today’s heated battles over intellectual property, and (2) Robert Poole about the remarkable story of the first photographs of Earth from space and the totally unexpected impact of those images.