New Books in Science, Technology, and...
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.
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2476
Michael Shermer, “Heavens on Earth: The Scienti...
For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, and though no one has ever returned from such a place to report what it is really like—or that it even exists—today science and technology are being used to tr...
53 min
2477
Howard I. Kushner, “On the Other Hand: Left Han...
In the early twentieth century, Robert Hertz, a French anthropologist, and Cesare Lombroso, the Italian criminologist, debated the causes and consequences of left-handedness. According to Lombroso, left-handed individuals were more likely to be crimina...
47 min
2478
James Delbourgo, “Collecting the World: The Lif...
James Delbourgo‘s new book Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Allen Lane, 2017) tells the fascinatingly complex and controversial story of Hans Sloane, the man whose collection and last will laid the foundation for the British...
90 min
2479
Andrew Keen, “How To Fix The Future” (Atlantic ...
As a historian I find myself constantly asking the question “Is that really new, or is it rather something that looks new but isn’t?” If you read the headlines, particularly those concerning the on going “Digital Revolution,
59 min
2480
Nick Montfort, “The Future” (MIT, 2017)
Popular culture provides many visions of the future. From The Jetsons to Futurama, Black Mirror to Minority Report, Western culture has predicted a future predicated on innovations in technology. In his new book for the MIT Essential Knowledge Series,
31 min
2481
Leo Coleman, “A Moral Technology: Electrificati...
We take electricity for granted. But the material grids and wires that bring light to homes and connect places are also objects of moral concern, political freedoms and national advancement, suggests Leo Coleman in his new book A Moral Technology: Elec...
51 min
2482
Thomas Mullaney, “The Chinese Typewriter: A His...
Tom Mullaney’s new book The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017) provides a fascinating first look at the development of modern Chinese information technology. Spanning 150 years from the origins of telegraphy in the early 1800s to the adven...
135 min
2483
Liss C. Werner, “Cybernetics: State of the Art”...
It’s no secret that we continue to live in the midst of digital revolution that continues to unfold in a rapidly accelerating fashion. Digital connectivity and the Internet of Things make possible not only Smart Homes, but Smart Cities.
74 min
2484
Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, “Jonas Salk: A Life” ...
Polio was a scourge that terrified generations of people throughout the United States and the rest of the world until Jonas Salk’s vaccine provided the first effective defense against it. In Jonas Salk: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2015),
57 min
2485
Chelsea Schelly, “Dwelling in Resistance: Livin...
Technology is a form of material culture and is a human activity. The way in which humans view technology is a social construction in which people use social processes of interpretation and negotiation. The mundane rituals that humans carry out when in...
32 min
2486
Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll, “Minitel: W...
When discussing Internet history, many within the United States believe the creation myth of an Internet born in Silicon Valley. But aspects of the Internet that we use for shopping, financial transactions, and social interactions, among other things,
56 min
2487
Jason Josephson-Storm, “The Myth of Disenchantm...
We tend to think of ourselves—our modern selves–as disenchanted. We have traded magic, myth, and spirits for science, reason, and logic. But this is false. Jason Josephson-Storm, in his exciting new book titled The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic,
63 min
2488
Alfie Bown, “The Playstation Dreamworld” (Polit...
How can Lacan help us to understand the subversive potential of video games? In The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017), Alfie Bown, Assistant Professor of Literature at HSMC, Hong Kong, explores this and many other questions of the modern condition....
42 min
2489
Zek Valkyrie, “Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We...
Zek Valkyrie teaches at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. His new book, Game Worlds Get Real: How Who We Are Online Became Who We Are Offline (Praeger, 2017), takes readers into the world of electronic games and the complex social relatio...
54 min
2490
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, “Personal Stereo” (Blooms...
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow‘s book, Personal Stereo (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) , which is part of the Object Lessons series, offers a compelling and expertly researched study of the Sony Walkman, taking into account the device’s controversial origin story,
33 min
2491
Andrew S. Tompkins, “Better Active than Radioac...
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in western Europe over the 1970s. Observers feared Germany was becoming “ungovernable” and France was moving toward “civil war.” The source of this discontent? Nuclear power. Not weapons.
54 min
2492
Michelle Murphy, “The Economization of Life” (D...
In The Economization of Life (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle Murphy pulls apart the late modern concept of “population” to show the lives this concept has produced and continues to produce, and, importantly,
40 min
2493
Douglas Hunter, “The Place of Stone: Dighton Ro...
In The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Douglas Hunter examines the history of meanings, affinities, and petroglyph studies of Dighton Rock.
49 min
2494
Michael Wintroub, “The Voyage of Thought: Navig...
If you are an enthusiast of The Cheese and the Worms (1976), The Great Cat Massacre (1984), or The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), then Michael Wintroub‘s The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge Across the Sixteenth-Century World (Cambridge Univers...
56 min
2495
Vincent J. Intondi, “African Americans Against ...
For the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015) tells the compelling story of those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament by connecting ...
30 min
2496
Brian Clegg, “Big Data: How the Information Rev...
Big Data: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives (Icon Books, 2017), by Brian Clegg, is a relatively short book about a subject that has emerged only recently, but is rapidly becoming a significant force in the evolution of society.
53 min
2497
Allison Perlman, “Public Interests: Media Advoc...
Since its infancy, television has played an important role in shaping U.S. values and the American sense of self. Social activists recognized this power immediately and, consequently, set about trying to influence television’s portrayal of those values...
50 min
2498
Iwan Rhys Morus, ed.,”The Oxford Illustrated Hi...
What is science? A seemingly profound, yet totally ridiculous question to try and answer. Yet, when Oxford University Press reached out to the brilliant scholar of Victorian science, Iwan Rhys Morris, they were tapping the right man for the job on the ...
57 min
2499
Nicholas C. Kawa, “Amazonia in the Anthropocene...
Widespread human alteration of the planet has led many scholars to claim that we have entered a new epoch in geological time: the Anthropocene, an age dominated by humanity. This ethnography is the first to directly engage the Anthropocene,
24 min
2500
Ron Edwards, “The Edge of Evolution: Animality,...
As I was reading Ron Edward’s fascinating and far-reaching new book, The Edge of Evolution: Animality, Inhumanity, and Doctor Moreau (Oxford University Press, 2016), I had a flashback. I must have been about seven.
55 min