Princeton Alumni Weekly Podcasts

PAW’s Book Club returns with author Michael Lewis, Class of ’82, answering alumni questions about “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” his recent book about Sam Bankman-Fried, a deeply peculiar financial mogul who very quickly built a cryptocurrency empire only to have it implode far faster just a few years later. When we spoke with Lewis earlier this week, Bankman-Fried was awaiting sentencing for fraud and money laundering, of which he was found guilty back in the fall. (He received a 25-year prison sentence on March 28). But in 2021, when Lewis first met him, he was a massive star in the unregulated new wild west of cryptocurrency and he had big plans to use billions of dollars to change the world. Lewis was granted remarkable access to FTX, Alameda Research and Sam himself, and when, as they say, the stuff hit the fan, he was right in the thick of it, watching. PAW Book Club is proud to be sponsored by the Princeton University Store. Missed this read? Join us for the next one, Bianca Bo

The 2024 Ivy League Basketball Tournament tips off March 15 at Columbia’s Levien Gymnasium, and Princeton is seeded No. 1 on the men’s and women’s sides after both Tiger teams won regular-season championships. In advance of the big weekend in New York, PAW spoke with head coaches Carla Berube and Mitch Henderson ’98 about their paths in coaching, their goals for a player’s four-year experience, and some of the challenges and perks of the job.

After speaking on the PAWcast with three students about mental health at Princeton, PAW invited columnist Jess Deutsch ’91 and director of Counseling and Psychological Services Calvin Chin to add their perspective on the issue. Addressing points the students raised, they discussed the pressure Princeton students feel to achieve, what services the University offers and what messages it tries to project, and what alumni can do to help.

Welcome to the first podcast from PAW’s new Book Club, where Princeton alumni read a book together and send PAW their questions for the author. We received some terrific questions for our very first author, Jennifer Weiner, Class of ’91, about her latest novel, “The Breakaway.” Jennifer is a prolific writer and frequent topper of bestseller lists. “The Breakaway” hit shelves this summer, and it impressed us at PAW by pulling readers breezily into a story about a bicycling trip led by protagonist Abby Stern, and then layering in thought-provoking and, frankly, controversial themes. PAW Book Club is proud to be sponsored by the Princeton University Store. Missed this read? Join us for the next one, Michael Lewis ’82’s latest book, “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon.” Sign up at bit.ly/paw-book-club.

Concerns have been rising about student mental health on college campuses over the past few years — including at Princeton. To examine this issue, PAW asked three students who have been leaders and mentors in this area to discuss what’s going on: Chioma Ugwonali ’24, Isaac Lunar ’24, and Issa Mudashiru ’25. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discussed why Princeton students feel intense pressure to achieve, what mental health resources the University makes available to them, and why they could take better care of themselves, but too often don’t. “Taking care of your mental-emotional well-being is not seen as valued on this campus,“ Ugwonali said, ”and … in our culture, in our society at large.”

Jeff Burt ’66, Jim Hitch ’71, and Peter Pettibone ’61 might know a bit more about Russia than the average Princetonian. All three headed up the Soviet and Russian practices of the international law firms where they were partners: Arnold & Porter, Baker & McKenzie, and Hogan Lovells, respectively. On Sept. 20, the same day that Ukraine President Volodymr Zelensky addressed the United Nations, they discussed their thoughts on the war with fellow alumni at a Tiger Talks ’66 event, and shared an important message: The threat of nuclear war is very real. On the latest PAWcast, the three shared their thoughts on the conflict, Putin’s rationale, the role of NATO, how it could be affected by the recent violence in Israel and Gaza — and just how far this war could go.

Today I am very pleased to tell you: I have good news. Morality is not actually declining in our country or anywhere else. The widespread belief that morality is declining is an illusion. That’s the conclusion Adam Mastroianni ’14 reached in a study recently published in the journal Nature. With Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert *85, Mastroianni found it just isn’t true that people overall are less kind, honest, and respectful than they used to be. So why do we believe it? On the PAWcast, Mastroianni explained the psychological effects behind this phenomenon, and the danger we flirt with when we allow this belief to take hold.

Bob Surace ’90 is heading into his 13th season as Princeton’s head football coach, but his history with the Tigers goes back much further. On the PAWcast, he spoke about his time as an All-Ivy center for Princeton and what experiences like coaching in the NFL taught him about the game and the players. He also gave his thoughts on two hot-button issues in college football today — the transfer portal and players’ newfound ability to sell their name, image, and likeness.

In 1960, the lives of three men born to immigrant families during the Great Depression collided. A doctor helped a prisoner get paroled, and then that prisoner shot and killed a police officer. Many years later, journalist Lisa Belkin, Princeton Class of 1982, heard this story from the doctor, who had recently become her stepfather, and she had a question: How? How did one of these men become the cop, one the killer, and one the doctor? To find out, she traced the families of all three men back through four generations — through births and marriages, wars, historical events and major cultural shifts that shaped the lives of Americans in the 20th century. Then she wrote it all down and titled her new book “Genealogy of a Murder.” In it, she writes, “We have less power over who we are now than we believe, and much more power over the future than we think.”

Princeton University’s valedictorian for the Class of 2023 is Aleksa Milojević, a mathematics major from Belgrade, Serbia, who has focused on combinatorics while at Princeton and has already written three papers. In addition to earning 16 A pluses at Princeton, he has been a recipient of the Freshman First Honor Prize, the Class of 1939 Scholar Prize, and the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence — twice. Milojević spoke with PAW about his Princeton experience, about solving math problems no one has solved before, and about the many friendships he’ll bring with him after graduation, with classmates from around the world.

For years, Bill Eville ’87 has been writing down his life in bits and pieces, publishing essays about parenthood, childhood memories, and yes, being a Princeton alum. Now he’s gone further and written a book, a memoir called Washed Ashore that’s filled with his thoughts about high school wrestling matches, marrying a minister who fought breast cancer, moving from New York City to Martha’s Vineyard, becoming a stay-at-home dad, and later the editor of the local newspaper. If all of this sounds ordinary, well, maybe it is. But in the hands of this writer a pattern emerges: Life’s unexpected turns can change you in extraordinary ways — if you let them.

Princeton University is positioning itself at the forefront of research that could help to throw the brakes on climate change, from its zero-carbon goals to the way it’s using the campus as a living laboratory. One person with a front row seat to all this is Forrest Meggers, a jointly appointed professor in Princeton’s architecture and engineering schools. He also directs Princeton’s C.H.A.O.S lab, which seeks to maximize the efficiency of heating and cooling systems. This month, as we celebrate Earth Day and PAW devotes its April issue to climate change, PAW asked Meggers for a tour through Princeton’s energy systems and a look at what’s coming next.

Majka Burhardt, Princeton Class of ’98, has always wanted more. More challenges, more achievement. It’s what pushed her to become one of the world’s top professional rock and ice climbers, chasing adventure around the world and eventually beginning to build her own conservation organization at a mountain in Africa. Then in 2015, she discovered she was pregnant with twins. That seismic change led her to question everything — her work, her relationship with her mother, her marriage, and what it meant to be not just a driven woman, but also herself. Through it all, she kept mountains of journals and notes, and now she’s published it all in a raw, confessional memoir, titled, as you might expect, “More.”

While he was a history student at Princeton, and editor of The Daily Princetonian, Jonathan Ort, Class of 2021, began researching the Firestone company. Yes, that Firestone; the one that once dominated the rubber and tire industry and the one that donated the $1 million to build Princeton’s world-class library in 1944. What he found was recently published in the Princeton & Slavery Project, which investigates Princeton’s historical involvement with slavery. This time, the forced labor wasn’t in America but Liberia where Firestone used a racist system of forced labor to run its massive rubber plantation. Ort spoke with PAW about the connections he found between this system of modern day-slavery and the Firestone family’s many donations to Princeton over five decades.

Only one creature, other than humans, substantially engineers the landscape around it: the beaver. Many millions of these furry dam builders once busily trapped water in ponds across North America, keeping the landscape lush and fertile, until colonists in the 1600s discovered the lucrative fur trade. In her new book, titled “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America,” Leila Philip ’86, an English and environmental studies professor at the College of the Holy Cross, who lives near a beaver pond in Connecticut, traces the Native Americans who viewed beavers as sacred, and the colonial capitalists who nearly drove the beaver to extinction. On the latest PAWcast, Philip spoke with PAW about how reintroduction efforts have brought the beaver back, along with hopes that they can help with ecological restoration and climate change.

What happens when a donor kidney becomes available to somebody who needs one? In the U.S., a hundred thousand people are waiting on lists, all with different ages, complications, and circumstances. How do you decide who gets it? In his new book, Voices in the Code, David Robinson ’04, a scholar and co-founder of the equity-focused NGO Upturn, takes a look at the algorithm used to match kidneys and patients, and on the latest PAWcast he discusses how it was developed. Algorithms are increasingly used for all kinds of decisions in public life, he says, making close examination of the ethics and morality within them ever more crucial.

Washington Post columnist Christine Emba ’10 has been watching the approach that young, single people are taking to sex these days, and it isn’t pretty. What’s more, often it’s bad. It’s bad sex, full of unwanted, unsatisfying encounters, influenced more by porn than pleasure, that women and men are nevertheless consenting to. Why? In her new book, titled ‘Rethinking Sex: A Provocation,’ Emba explains how our sexual culture arrived at this moment and suggests a way forward, a way to bring connection, empathy, and — dare I say love? — back into intimacy, a way to, perhaps, fulfill all of those promises that sex makes, but isn’t delivering.

Internships are a staple of the business world, and a step almost mandatory for young people entering many areas of the workforce. But how many are full of busywork? How many are unpaid? Rob Khoury, who founded and runs his own consulting company, Agile Rainmakers, wants internships to reach their true potential, as fulfilling experiences that mutually benefit both hosts and college students — including the Princeton alumni who host their alma mater’s current crop each summer. He spoke with PAW about the four books he’s writing, crammed with advice about how to thoughtfully design internships that really work.

Tom Szaky ’05 says everything we own eventually comes to the end of its lifespan, whether it’s a shirt you’ve worn for years or the cup from a coffee you bought this morning. Where does it all go? How much actually gets recycled? And with evidence mounting that all this waste is damaging our world, how can we throw on the brakes? Over the 20 years since he was a Princeton undergrad, Szaky has become an entrepreneur in the recycling world with his Trenton-based company TerraCycle, and a vocal advocate urging us to do better. He’s written multiple books, including Outsmart Waste, The Future of Packaging, and Make Garbage Great, and on the PAWcast he talked about whether we can get a grip on our out-of-control consumption — before the waste we produce consumes us.

Just a few days before graduating as valedictorian of Princeton’s Class of 2022, Natalia Orlovsky spoke with PAW about her love for both the sciences and humanities and her hopes for going into academia. As a student she worked in a bioengineering lab, served on the peer review board of the Princeton Undergraduate Research Journal, was an undergraduate course assistant, served on the board of Theatre Intime, and has been involved with the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Her advice to future students is to shrug off the feeling that there’s a prescribed arc to their experience, so they can “feel like they’re doing Princeton correctly, regardless of how they’re doing Princeton.”