{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in Women's History","slug":"new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544","podcast_index_feed_id":4096544,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/NBN5185885598","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/8c1cce70-e7c0-11eb-b746-c7e42408e0c6/image/408fcda0603b5d9e2b5decf747722d4d.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":1866,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork","last_synced_at":"2026-07-20T16:17:46.820872+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544"},"episode":{"title":"Stephanie Coontz, \"For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage\" (Viking, 2026)","slug":"stephanie-coontz-for-better-and-worse-the-complicated-past-and-challenging-future-of-marriage-viking-2026","published_at":"2026-06-14T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544/stephanie-coontz-for-better-and-worse-the-complicated-past-and-challenging-future-of-marriage-viking-2026","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544","url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK9631568299.mp3","audio_url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK9631568299.mp3","summary":"Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the highest commitment they can imagine. Most Americans say they want to marry eventually, and couples who do marry have a lower chance of divorce than at any time since the 1970s. Increasingly, though, people tell pollsters they “have no idea” if they actually will end up married. And unlike in the past, young women are more uncertain than young men. In For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage (Viking, 2026), Stephanie Coontz—author of the “rich, provocative, and entertaining” book Marriage, A History—unravels the roots of such paradoxical trends. Examining five critical periods of historical transformation, she reveals how shifting romantic ideals, gender expectations, sexual mores, and cultural myths have bequeathed us a welter of contradictory beliefs, dysfunctional habits, and emotional earworms that make it hard to adjust our family relationships to the social and economic challenges of twenty-first-century life. Coontz demonstrates that today’s widespread nostalgia for a seemingly more stable past is an understandable reaction to heightened economic insecurity and eroding social solidarities. But trying to reproduce a largely imaginary golden age of marriage from the past simply locks us into a restricted future. Current public debates about marriage are dominated by two diametrically opposed groups. One argues that marriage is the only sure route to personal happiness and social stability; the other, that marriage is inherently oppressive. Coontz puts forward a radical middle ground, pointing to surprising new research on the personal changes and the policy innovati…","meta_description":"Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the highest c…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2773,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544/episodes/stephanie-coontz-for-better-and-worse-the-complicated-past-and-challenging-future-of-marriage-viking-2026/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544/stephanie-coontz-for-better-and-worse-the-complicated-past-and-challenging-future-of-marriage-viking-2026.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}