New Books in Education

In Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Bold Type Books, 2021), Sarah Jaffe argues that modern culture encourages workers to see their jobs as a “labor of love.” This idea tells people that passion and dedication should motivate them more than pay or working conditions. Jaffe shows that this belief often allows employers to justify low wages, long hours, and poor treatment. Through stories of workers across many fields, such as teachers, domestic workers, nonprofit employees, artists, athletes, and tech workers, the book demonstrates how devotion to work is used to normalize exploitation. Jaffe calls for a reevaluation of the relationship between work, identity, and personal fulfillment, suggesting that workers should organize collectively and demand fair compensation and conditions instead of relying on passion alone. Sarah Jaffe is a journalist and labor reporter who writes about work, inequality, and social movements. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Jaffe has long reported on labor struggles and worker organizing, including movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 campaign. She is also the author of Necessary Trouble and most recently From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in A World on Fire. She is co-host of the labor podcast Belabored. Her writing focuses on how economic systems shape everyday life and workers’ experiences. My co-producer on this episode is Kelly Knight, a graduate student in the MA program in Communication at Oakland University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

How do you advance your career when AI is rewriting the rules of success? As AI and automation revolutionize the global workforce, professionals everywhere are asking the same urgent question: How can I stay relevant in the age of AI? Artificial Death of a Career: A Tale of Professional Obsolescence and Reinvention (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2025) blends storytelling and strategy to explore the human side of technological disruption. When Shey Sinope's world collapses under the weight of the AI revolution, his personal fight to adapt becomes a roadmap for every professional determined to stay valuable, visible, and future-ready. Award-winning authors, Drs. Schuster and Oxley, combine their behavioural science expertise with decades of experience as HR leaders and advisors to entrepreneurs and start-ups around the world, all delivered with their trademark wry sense of humour. Inside, you'll discover how to: Stay relevant in the age of AI by mastering adaptability and continuous learning Reinvent your career before technology or automation forces the change Build a leadership mindset for the AI revolution and beyond Recognize early signs of professional obsolescence-and counter them fast Develop resilience and confidence that withstand economic and technological shifts Transform your work identity from outdated to indispensable Career and professional life advice rooted in authenticity, respect, and inclusion-championing a world where being true to yourself is the foundation for realizing your fullest potential. Equal parts insightful and entertaining, this book helps readers future-proof their skills, reimagine success, and thrive through change rather than fear it. The future of work isn't coming-it's here. Learn how to adapt, evolve, and lead in the age of AI. Your career reinvention starts now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This episode features a conversation with Ravikant Kisana, Dean of the School of Liberal Education and Languages at Galgotias University in India, about his book Meet the Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything. We discussed the term “savarna” and how his personal experiences as a student and professor in liberal institutions led him to write the book, the performativity and insularity of upper castes, the importance of endogamy to caste social reproduction, and how to understand the recent shift from claims to castelessness to overt assertions of caste pride. Guest Ravikant Kisana, Dean, School of Liberal Education and Languages, Galgotias University, India References: B.R. Ambedkar, “Castes in India” Babasaheb: an honorific for B.R. Ambedkar meaning “respected father.” IIMs: Indian Institutes of Management Mayawati: first Dalit woman chief minister of India who served in the state of Uttar Pradesh as the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party. BSP: Bahujan Samaj Party founded in 1984 and focused on representing the interests of Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and religious minorities. OBC parties: see above Veds/Vedas: ancient Sanskrit scriptures Kayasth: scribal and administrative caste originating in Maharashtra, Bengal, and Odisha. Marwari: mercantile caste originating in the Marwar region of Rajasthan. Baniya: mercantile caste originating in the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Baniya and Marwari are overlapping categories. Jat: agricultural caste originating in the regions of Sindh and Punjab. Noida: a city in the National Capital Region that falls within the state of Uttar Pradesh Congress: Indian National Congress, one of India’s main national political parties founded in 1885. MGNREGA: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 is an Indian labor law guaranteeing at least 100 days of paid, unskilled manual work per financial year to rural households. Read the transcript here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In this third, and final, panel, Robert Boynton moderates a conversation which asks, “Can podcasts save the university?” In it, Joy Connolly, Barry Lam, and Dr. Aurora Hutchinson discuss what role podcasts might play in the university’s system of hiring, promotion and tenure. Robert S. Boynton is the director of the Literary Reportage program, and associate director of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is author of The Invitation Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea’ s Abduction Project, and The New New Journalism. Joy Connolly is president of the American Council of Learned Societies and a scholar of ancient Roman political thought and literature. At ACLS, she has led initiatives such as Doctoral Futures to broaden the scope and reach of humanistic inquiry. She is the author of The State of Speech and The Life of Roman Republicanism, and is completing a new book called All the World’ s Pasts. Professor Barry Lam earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton, taught at Vassar, and recently moved to UC Riverside. He is the host and executive producer of Hi-Phi Nation, a story-driven podcast about philosophy, at Slate magazine. He is also an Associate Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation, which promotes excellence in philosophy and public philosophy. Dr Lauren Arora Hutchinson, previously a BBC journalist, is an award-winning audio storyteller, an academic, and the inaugural director of the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab, a studio and incubator for world class stories at the intersection of science, ethics, medicine and public health, at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Lauren’s immersive audio work has premiered at IDFA and the Venice Film Festival. She has a PhD in History of Science with a focus on Oral History, and was a Wellcome Trust Imperial Media Fellow. She is the host of the signal award winning podcast playing god? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Given the sometimes extraordinary politicization of culture, it is surprising that Sesame Street has gained acceptance and legitimacy in more than fifty countries. Sesame Street's global success raises two questions. First, how does a US icon like Sesame Street spread around the world, gaining acceptance as a local cultural product? Second, how does the nonprofit that created it, Sesame Workshop, and its partners around the world navigate cultural differences, manage conflicts, and construct shared collective representations to create Sesame Street programs that resonate with local audiences? In Sesame Street Around the World: Culture, Politics, and Transnational Organizational Partnerships (Oxford UP, 2025), Dr. Tamara Kay answers these questions using data from seven years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork and 200 in-depth interviews with Sesame Workshop staff and international partners-including their real-time interactions-from seventeen countries within four regions around the world. Dr. Kay argues that Sesame Workshop's secret is its engagement in coproduction, meaning it works with partners as a transnational team to create local Sesame Street programs together. Through coproduction, Sesame Workshop and its partners create new collective identities by constructing value to align their interests and exchanging complex cultural knowledge to both customize and build alliances. She traces the successive processes of coproduction, beginning with the imagination of the cultural product, to its disassembly, reconstitution, and dissemination. Coproduction privileges the creation of new knowledge that emerges from transnational interaction, and uses that new knowledge to create a hybrid cultural product. The Sesame Street case grapples with and illuminates culture in transnational interaction, providing insight into a range of other transnational organizational partnerships and different kinds of hybrid cultural products. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Are jobs fair? In The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay after College (U Chicago Press, 2023), Jessi Streib, an associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University, uncovers the remarkable story of the way luck shapes the hiring process for a key strata of business jobs in America. Offering a thesis that is initially counterintuitive but clearly argued, empirically grounded, and ultimately compelling, the book introduces the idea of ‘luckocracy’. ‘Luckocracy’ underpins the functioning of important parts of the graduate labour market, and equalises what would otherwise be significant class differences between college graduates. Rich with details, as well as offering a broad new perspective on education and the labour market, the book is essential reading across the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in understanding work, fairness, and the importance of luck. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education