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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2626
Nicole Starosielski, “The Undersea Network” (Du...
Nicole Starosielski‘s new book brings an environmental and ecological consciousness to the study of digital media and digital systems, and it is a must-read. The Undersea Network (Duke University Press, 2015) looks carefully and imaginatively at the ge...
67 min
2627
Stefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutica...
Drugs exist that are meant to help people feel better. The doctors who prescribe them might believe that they work, while their patients do not. In explaining the drugs to their patients, should those doctors use the medical terminology they themselves...
78 min
2628
Candis Callison, “How Climate Change Comes to M...
Candis Callison‘s timely and fascinating new book considers climate change as a form of life and articulates how journalists, scientists, religious groups, economic collectives, and others shape and influence public engagement around the issue.
64 min
2629
Alexandra Minna Stern, “Telling Genes: The Stor...
Due in part to lobbying efforts on behalf of the human genome project, human genes tend to be thought of in light of the present–genetic components of human disease and differential risks associated with genetic individuals–before the future,
68 min
2630
Janet Vertesi, “Seeing like a Rover: How Robots...
Janet Vertesi‘s fascinating new book is an ethnography of the Mars Rover mission that takes readers into the practices involved in working with the two robotic explorers Spirit and Opportunity. Based on two years of immersive ethnography from 2006-2008...
65 min
2631
Eva Hemmungs Wirten, “Making Marie Curie: Intel...
When we study the history of a famous scientific figure – especially one that has gone on to become a cultural icon – we are dealing not just with a person, but also with an identity or series of identities that have been constructed over time.
63 min
2632
Raf De Bont, “Stations in the Field: A History ...
While museums, labs, and botanical gardens have been widely studied by historians of science, field stations have received comparatively little attention.Raf De Bont‘s new book rectifies this oversight, turning our attention to the importance of biolog...
59 min
2633
Jonathan Coopersmith, “Faxed: The Rise and Fall...
Jonathan Coopersmith‘s new book takes readers through the century-and-a-half-long history of the fax machine and the technologies that shaped and were shaped by it, from Alexander Bain’s 1843 patent to the computer-based faxing of the end of the 20thce...
60 min
2634
Meredith K. Ray, “Daughters of Alchemy: Women a...
According to sixteenth-century writer Moderata Fonte, the untapped potential of women to contribute to the liberal arts was “buried gold.” Exploring the work of Fonte and that of many other incredible women, Meredith K.
61 min
2635
James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and...
James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambridge University Library, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Universi...
64 min
2636
Jonathan Eig, “The Birth of the Pill: How Four ...
Jonathan Eig is a New York Times best-selling author of four books and former journalist for the Wall Street Journal. His book The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution (W.W. Norton,
48 min
2637
M. Alper Yalcinkaya, “Learned Patriots: Debatin...
What were Ottomans talking about when they talked about science? In posing and answering that question (spoiler: they were talking about people), M. Alper Yalcinkaya‘s new book Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State,
69 min
2638
Jenifer Van Vleck, “Empire of the Air: Aviation...
[Re-posted with permission from Who Makes Cents?] Today’s guest discusses the history of aviation and how this provides a lens to interpret the history of capitalism and U.S. foreign relations across the twentieth century. Amongst other topics,
35 min
2639
Nick Sousanis, “Unflattening” (Harvard UP, 2015)
Nick Sousanis‘s new book is a must-read for anyone interested in thinking or teaching about the relationships between text, image, visuality, and knowledge. Unflattening (Harvard University Press, 2015) uses the medium of comics to explore “flatness of...
65 min
2640
Charis Thompson, “Good Science: The Ethical Cho...
Charis Thompson‘s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book. Good Science explores the “ethical choreography” of the consolidation of human embryonic stem cell research in the first decade of th...
72 min
2641
John Sharp, “Works of Game: On the Aesthetics o...
That games, particularly video games, could be viewed as art should come as no surprise. And yet, a debate exists over what is and should be considered art with respect to games. In his new book, Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art (MIT P...
37 min
2642
Greg Siegel, “Forensic Media: Reconstructing Ac...
Greg Siegel‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging and meticulously researched account of a dual tendency in modern technological life: treating forensic knowledge of accident causation as a key to solving the accident,
65 min
2643
Jon L. Mills, “Privacy in the New Media Age” (U...
That privacy in the digital age is an important concept to be discussed is axiomatic. Cameras in mobile phones make it easy to record events and post them on the web. Consumers post an enormous amount of information on social media sites.
31 min
2644
Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism: Geograp...
Benjamin Schmidt‘s beautiful new book argues that a new form of exoticism emerged in the Netherlands between the mid-1660s and the early 1730s, thanks to a series of successful products in a broad range of media that used both text and image to engage ...
66 min
2645
Myles W. Jackson, “The Genealogy of a Gene: Pat...
What happens when you allow human materials to become property? More specifically, how does granting monopoly rights over genetic material affect the potential for innovation and research on treatments of disease related to those genes?
37 min
2646
Eben Kirksey, “The Multispecies Salon” (Duke Un...
Eben Kirksey‘s wonderful new volume is an inspiring introduction to a kind of multispecies ethnography where artists, anthropologists, and others collaborate to create objects and experiences of great thoughtfulness and beauty.
66 min
2647
Lu Zhang, “Inside China’s Automobile Factories”...
China’s automobile industry has grown considerably over the past two decades. Massive foreign investment and an increased scale and concentration of work spurred the creation of a new generation of autoworkers with increased bargaining power.
63 min
2648
Timothy Jordan, “Information Politics: Liberati...
Struggles over information in the digital era are central to Tim Jordan‘s new book, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society (Pluto Press, 2015). The book aims to connect a critical theoretical reading of the idea of inf...
50 min
2649
Naomi S. Baron, “Words Onscreen: The Fate of Re...
Screens are ubiquitous. From the screen on a mobile, to that on a tablet, or laptop, or desktop computer, screens appear all around us, full of content both visual and text. But it is not necessarily the ubiquity of screens that has societal implicatio...
37 min
2650
Matthew M. Heaton, “Black Skin, White Coats” (O...
In Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry (Ohio University Press, 2013), Matthew M. Heaton explores changes in psychiatric theory and practice during the decolonization of European empires i...
64 min