Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast cover art

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

By: New Books Network
Listen for free

About this listen

 Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.New Books Network Art Literary History & Criticism Science World
Episodes
  • Luke Gibson, "Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    Luke Gibson, "Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2025)
    Nov 20 2025
    This textbook offers a fresh approach to learning Sanskrit, the ancient language at the heart of South Asia’s vast religious, philosophical, and literary heritage. Designed for independent learners and classrooms alike, it provides a uniquely in-depth and immersive introduction to the language, exploring a rich selection of Sanskrit texts from the Buddhist tradition. Reading Sanskrit: A Complete Step-By-Step Introduction with Texts from the Buddhist Tradition (Columbia UP, 2025)draws from the Buddhist tradition’s vast Sanskrit corpus to present a thematically coherent collection of texts covering a wide range of literary genres, including narrative, philosophical, and poetic writings. This unique choice of source material provides an engaging approach to language learning, immersing the student in one of the major strands of South Asian spirituality and culture while highlighting Buddhism’s connection to other religious and literary traditions.
    Show More Show Less
    41 mins
  • Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025)
    Nov 1 2025
    From the United States to China and from Brazil to India, an authoritarian approach to news is spreading across the world. Increasingly, the media is no longer a check on power or a source of objective information but a means by which governments and leaders can propagate their versions of reality, however biased or false. In Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News (Columbia UP, 2025), Dr. Martin Moore and Dr. Thomas Colley show how states are battling to control and shape the news in order to entrench their power, evade scrutiny, and ensure that their political narratives are accepted. Combining in-depth analyses of seven countries with a compelling range of stories and characters from around the world, they demonstrate the unprecedented scale and scope of governments’ efforts to take control of the media. Dictating Reality details how Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia, Modi’s India, AMLO’s Mexico, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and Orban’s Hungary have all sought, in their different ways, to exploit news to manufacture alternative realities—and how their methods have taken hold in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other democracies. Combining keen analysis of contemporary world events with years of original research, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how authoritarian leaders use the media, why more and more people are living in different realities, and the ways democracy is under threat. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 1 min
  • Diane Ravitch, "An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    Diane Ravitch, "An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else" (Columbia UP, 2025)
    Oct 28 2025
    For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality. In An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else (Columbia UP, 2025) this passionate and timely memoir of her life’s work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual journey: her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.” Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a prominent commentator about education and politics. Her many books include Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2013); The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010); and The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (1974). Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and served on the national testing board during the Clinton administration. She is cofounder and president of the Network for Public Education
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 3 mins
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.