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
Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machine...
When we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, became popular in the West in the late 1940s and early 1950s and was seen as a form of entertainment and enjoym...
33 min
2752
Peter J. Gloviczki, “Journalism and Memorializa...
Humans have coped with tragedy using ritual and memorials since the Neolithic era. Doka called a memorial a space invested with meaning, “set aside to commemorate an event such as a tragedy.” Memorialization is a ritual of bereavement,
31 min
2753
Nathan Altice, “I Am Error: The Nintendo Family...
The genre of “platform studies” offers both researchers and readers more than an examination of the technical machinations of a computing system. Instead, the family of methodologies presents a humanist exploration of digital media from the perspective...
36 min
2754
Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Model...
After reading Natasha Myers’s new book, the world begins to dance in new ways. Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter (Duke University Press, 2015) is a sensory ethnography of protein crystallographers that is based on five ye...
64 min
2755
Brian P. Copenhaver, “Magic in Western Culture:...
Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the Enlightenment. What happened? Why did it become embarrassing for Isaac Newton to have sought the phil...
69 min
2756
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the ...
Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-Find-A-Way-To-Somehow-Engage-Even-If-Reading-Is-Not-Their-Thing.
61 min
2757
Stephen Macekura, “Of Limits and Growth: The Ri...
Today, sustainability is all the rage. But when and why did the idea of sustainable development emerge, and how has its meaning changed over time? Stephen Macekura’s new book, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twen...
72 min
2758
Nick Hopwood, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolu...
Nick Hopwood‘s Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (University of Chicago Press, 2015) blends textual and visual analysis to answer the question of how images succeed or fail. Hopwood is Reader in History of Science at Cambridge University,...
45 min
2759
Jorg Matthias Determann, “Researching Biology a...
Jorg Matthias Determann‘s new book looks at the history of modern biology in the Arab Gulf monarchies, focusing on the treatment of evolution and related concepts in the publications of biologists who worked in the Gulf states.
61 min
2760
Dan Bouk, “How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk a...
Who made life risky? In his dynamic new book, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (University of Chicago Press, 2015), historian Dan Bouk argues that starting in the late nineteenth century,
42 min
2761
Megan Prelinger, “Inside the Machine: Art and I...
Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?
68 min
2762
Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder, “Knowledge M...
By now it is incontrovertible that new technology has had an effect on how regular people get information. Whether in the form of an online newspaper or a Google search, new technology has allowed individuals to access masses of information faster than...
37 min
2763
Peter A. Shulman, “Coal and Empire: The Birth o...
Peter A. Shulman‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and security in nineteenth century America. Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial Amer...
70 min
2764
Anita Guerrini, “The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Ani...
Anita Guerrini‘s wonderful new book explores Paris as a site of anatomy, dissection, and science during the reign of Louis XIV between 1643-1715. The journey begins with readers accompanying a dead body to sites of dissection across the city,
64 min
2765
Colin Milburn, “Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in th...
Colin Milburn’s wonderful new book looks carefully and imaginatively at the relationship between nanotechnology and play. Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter (Duke University Press, 2015) considers the many ways in which the resear...
71 min
2766
Eugene Raikhel, Todd Meyers, Emily Yates-Doerr,...
Somatosphere is “a collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics.” Founded in July 2008, Somatosphere has evolved into an innovative platform for ...
60 min
2767
James E. Strick, “Wilhelm Reich, Biologist” (Ha...
“Life must have a father and mother…Science! I’m going to plant a bomb under its ass!” The author of the line above – who scrawled it in his private diary in the midst of a series of experiments in which he thought he was creating structures that were ...
67 min
2768
Joseph M. Reagle, “Reading the Comments: Likers...
What do we know about the individuals who make comments on online news stories, blogs, videos and other media? What kind of people take the time to post all manner of information and context to material created by others? Joseph M. Reagle,
30 min
2769
Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, “Using Technology, Bu...
Jessica Baldwin-Philippi is the author of Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2015). She is an assistant professor of new media at Fordham University.
22 min
2770
Isabelle Dussauge, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, and...
Valuation is a central question in contemporary social science. Indeed the question of value has a range of academic projects associated with it, whether in terms of specific questions or in terms of emerging fora for academic publications.
49 min
2771
Federico Marcon, “The Knowledge of Nature and t...
Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (University of Chicago Press,
73 min
2772
Ryan Craig, "College Disrupted: The Great Unbun...
An interview with Ryan Craig
41 min
2773
Dana Simmons, “Vital Minimum: Need, Science, an...
Dana Simmons‘s marvelous and thoughtful new book takes on a question that many of us likely take for granted: “What is a need; what is a want, a desire, a luxury?” Vital Minimum: Need, Science, and Politics in Modern France (University of Chicago Press...
62 min
2774
Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Ci...
Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade links West Africa within a larger global economy. Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life ...
63 min
2775
Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: Ano...
Sandra Harding‘s new book Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research (University of Chicago Press, 2015) raises new questions about two central concepts in STS – objectivity and diversity – and in doing so it allows us to animate t...
72 min