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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2751
Timothy Morton, “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and E...
So much of Science Studies, of STS as a field or a point of engagement, is deeply concerned with objects. We create sociologies and networks of and with objects, we study them as actors or agents or actants,
69 min
2752
Michael Pettit, “The Science of Deception: Psyc...
Parapsychology. You may have heard of it. You know, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis. Spoon-bending and that sort of thing. If you have heard of it, you probably think of it as a pseudoscience. And indeed it is.
53 min
2753
Eduardo Kohn, “How Forests Think: Toward an Ant...
When you open Eduardo Kohn‘s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human (University of California Press, 2013), you are entering a forest of dreams: the dreams of dogs and men, dreams about policemen and peccaries,
69 min
2754
Hallam Stevens, “Life Out Of Sequence: A Data-D...
Hallam Stevens‘s new book is a rich and fascinating ethnographic and historical account of the transformations wrought by integrating statistical and computational methods and materials into the biological sciences.
74 min
2755
Robert J. Richards, “Was Hitler a Darwinian?: D...
In his new collection of wonderfully engaging and provocative set of essays on Darwin and Darwinians, Robert J. Richards explores the history of biology and so much more. The eight essays collected in Was Hitler a Darwinian?
60 min
2756
Gabriel Finkelstein, “Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neu...
“A good wife and a healthy child are better for one’s temper than frogs.” For Gabriel Finkelstein, Emil du Bois-Reymond was “the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century.” Most famously in a series of experimental works on electr...
73 min
2757
Angela N. H. Creager, “Life Atomic: A History o...
Angela Creager‘s deeply researched and elegantly written new book is a must-read account of the history of science in twentieth-century America. Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (University of Chicago Press,
69 min
2758
Conevery Bolton Valencius, “The Lost History of...
The story begins with Davy Crockett and his hunting dogs chasing a bear in 1826. The bear gets caught in an earthquake crack, an effect of the great Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 that are now collectively known as the New Madrid earthquak...
63 min
2759
Sarah S. Richardson, Sex Itself: The Search for...
Men and women are different, there’s no doubt about it. And you might well want to know what the root of that difference is. What makes a man a man and a woman a woman? Before the beginning of the twentieth century,
58 min
2760
Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott, eds., “Add...
Addiction has recently emerged as an object of anthropological inquiry. In a wonderful, focused volume of ethnographies of addiction in a wide range of contexts, Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott have curated a collection of essays that each follow a...
75 min
2761
Todd H. Weir, “Monism: Science, Philosophy, Rel...
I always learn something when I interview authors, but in this chat with Todd H. Weir I learned something startling: I’m a monist. What is more, you may be a monist too and not even know it. Do you believe that there is really only one kind of stuff an...
51 min
2762
Kim TallBear, “Native American DNA: Tribal Belo...
Is genetic testing a new national obsession? From reality TV shows to the wild proliferation of home testing kits, there’s ample evidence it might just be. And among the most popular tests of all is for so-called “Native American DNA.
57 min
2763
Thomas Bey William Bailey, “Unofficial Release:...
Thomas Bey William Bailey is the author of Unofficial Release: Self-Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society (Belsona Books, 2012). He is a psycho-acoustic sound artist and writer on saturation culture.
54 min
2764
Ian Jared Miller, “The Nature of the Beasts: Em...
A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press,
78 min
2765
Gabrielle Hecht, “Being Nuclear: Africans and t...
We tend to understand the nuclear age as a historical break, a geopolitical and technological rupture. In Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press, 2012), Gabrielle Hecht transforms this understanding by arguing instead that nucl...
59 min
2766
William J. Clancey, “Working on Mars: Voyages o...
How does conducting fieldwork on another planet, using a robot as a mobile laboratory, change what it means to be a scientist? In Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers (MIT Press, 2012), William J.
66 min
2767
Sienna R. Craig, “Healing Elements: Efficacy an...
Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is efficacy determined, and what is at stake in those determinations?
72 min
2768
Ian Bogost, “Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s ...
“Particle Man”, Charles Bukowski, Heidegger’s tool-analysis, Atari, Ace of Cakes, aliens, tiny ontology, Bruno Latour, ontography, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, the Bossa-Nova, Scribblenauts, Ben Marcus, “What is it like to be a bat?”, carpentry,
68 min
2769
Aaron S. Moore, “Constructing East Asia: Techno...
We tend to understand the modernization of Japan as a story of its rise as a techno-superpower. In East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013),
68 min
2770
Marga Vicedo, “The Nature and Nurture of Love” ...
Between WWII and the 1970s, prominent researchers from various fields established and defended a view that emotions are integral to the self, and that a mother’s love determines an individual’s emotional development. In Marga Vicedo,
71 min
2771
Sanja Perovic, "The Calendar in Revolutionary F...
An interview with Sanja Perovic
60 min
2772
Adam R. Shapiro, “Trying Biology: The Scopes Tr...
During the 1924-25 school year, John Scopes was filling in for the regular biology teacher at Rhea County Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee. The final exam was coming up, and he assigned reading from George W.
71 min
2773
John P. DiMoia, “Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedi...
For a patient choosing among available forms of healing in the medical marketplace of mid-20th century South Korea, the process was akin to shopping. In Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea Since 1945 (Stanford...
83 min
2774
Ian Samson, “Paper: An Elegy” (Harper Collins, ...
In our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the internet than from newspapers. But how irrelevant has paper really become?
32 min
2775
Tim Maudlin, “Philosophy of Physics: Space and ...
Tim Maudlin‘s Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (Princeton University Press, 2012) is a clear, approachable, and engaging introduction to the philosophy of physics that focuses on fundamental notions of space and time.
55 min