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
Tara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCul...
Fueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, Warren Sturgis McCulloch is best known for his foundational contributions to cybernetics but led a career...
33 min
2477
Helen Anne Curry, “Evolution Made to Order: Pla...
Nowadays, it might seem perplexing for the founder of a seed company to express the intention to “shock Mother Nature,” or at least in bad taste. Yet, this was precisely the goal of agricultural innovators like David Burpee,
33 min
2478
Lisa Messeri, “Placing Outer Space: An Earthly ...
What kind of object is a planet? Lisa Messeri‘s new book asks and addressed this question in a fascinating ethnography that explores how scientific practices transform planets into places and helps us understand why that matters not just for how we und...
62 min
2479
J. C. McKeown, “A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Cu...
The back cover of J. C. McKeown‘s new book, A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2017), is adorned not with review quotes from contemporary scholars, but rather the discordant voices of the medical writers he excerpts.
47 min
2480
Tania Munz, “The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch ...
Tania Munz‘s new book is a dual biography: both of Austrian-born experimental physiologist Karl von Frisch, and of the honeybees he worked with as experimental, communicating creatures. The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybe...
61 min
2481
Democracy and Dialogue Online with Joshua Cohen
An interview with Joshua Cohen
35 min
2482
Grace Davie, “Poverty Knowledge in South Africa...
Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century earlier. In the new book, Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science,
59 min
2483
Donna Freitas, “The Happiness Effect: How Socia...
In The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (Oxford University Press, 2017), Donna Freitas investigates the darker side of social media use and explains how pressure to appear happy and successful onl...
22 min
2484
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnati...
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT, 2014),
56 min
2485
Rebecca Scales, “Radio and the Politics of Soun...
What did sound mean to French people as radio and other listening technologies began to proliferate in the early twentieth century? What was the nature and significance of French auditory culture in the years between the two world wars?
59 min
2486
Eugene Raikhel, “Governing Habits: Treating Alc...
Alcoholism is a strange thing. That it exists, no one seriously doubts. But it’s not entirely clear (diagnostically speaking) what it is, who has it, how they get it, or how to treat it. The answers to these questions depend, apparently,
57 min
2487
Democracy and Social Media with Michael Lynch
Social Media rewards snap judgments and blind conviction. Michael Lynch finds this troubling. is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Institute a University of Connecticut. His research concerns truth, public...
24 min
2488
Raz Chen-Morris, “Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s O...
Raz Chen-Morris‘s new book traces a significant and surprising notion through the work of Johannes Kepler: in order to account for real physical motions, one has to investigate artificially produced shadows and reflections.
60 min
2489
Colleen Derkatch, “Bounding Biomedicine: Eviden...
What makes for new science? What happens to the evidentiary basis of the medical profession when patients demand treatments beyond the range of their conception of human biology? Are the criteria of the sciences amenable to healing practices that are t...
62 min
2490
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britai...
How did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry by the 1970s? In Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge i...
28 min
2491
Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers, “Realizing th...
One of the most interesting, but largely overlooked silent films, is Haxan, written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Using documentary methods as well as reenactments, he presented a study of witchcraft hysteria,
69 min
2492
Susan E. Cayleff, “Nature’s Path: A History of ...
Susan Cayleff’s Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) offers a fascinating alternative to the development of allopathic orthodoxy in the twentieth-century United States.
55 min
2493
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco, “The Age of ...
The wish to transcend one’s mortality, and the anxiety associated with being unable to do so, are universal human experiences. People deal with these in their idiosyncratic ways, often by transgressing rules and boundaries that serve as the parameters ...
48 min
2494
Kathleen McAuliffe, “This is Your Brain on Para...
Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the world of parasites. From the influence of parasites on the ability to transform rats brains to be easil...
38 min
2495
Meredith K. Ray, “Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letter...
Meredith K. Ray’s new book contextualizes and translates a range of seventeenth-century letters, mostly between Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617) and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), that collectively offer a fascinating window into the correspondence of tw...
59 min
2496
Ericka Johnson, ed. “Gendering Drugs: Feminist ...
On the frontier of feminist technoscience research, Ericka Johnson’s collaborative project Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) explores how the gendered body is produced in and by medical technologies.
33 min
2497
Matthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug...
Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the early modern Spanish Atlantic world. The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the S...
61 min
2498
Stacy Alaimo, “Exposed: Environmental Politics ...
Stacy Alaimo’s Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) is a provocative reflection on environmental ethics, politics, and forms of knowledge. Through a range of examples as broad as the the...
35 min
2499
Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMi...
How do we do sociology in the digital era? In Digital Sociologies (Policy Press, 2016) Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, Karen Gregory a Lecturer in Digital Sociology at the University of Edinburgh,...
29 min
2500
John Hadley, “Animal Property Rights: A Theory ...
John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing habitat and biodiversity loss: extending liberal property rights to wildlife.
54 min