New Books in Science, Technology, and...

Interviews with Scholars of Science, Technology, and Society about their New Books

Science
Social Sciences
2026
Maurice Finocchiaro, "On Trial for Reason: Scie...
Finocchiaro shows that there were (and are) really two Galileo “affairs.”
61 min
2027
Joseph Reagle, "Hacking Life: Systematized Livi...
Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods...
73 min
2028
Tweeting the Word of God: Evangelism from a "Di...
An interview with Ryan P. Burge
10 min
2029
Great Books: Julie Carlson on Mary Shelley's "F...
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet...
50 min
2030
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, "Übermensch: Plädoyer Fü...
Sorgner makes the case for a Nietzschean transhumanism...
74 min
2031
Melissa Kravetz, "Women Doctors in Weimar and N...
Kravetz examines how German women physicians gained a foothold in the medical profession during the Weimar and Nazi periods,..
57 min
2032
Nancy Appelbaum, "Mapping the Country of Region...
Appelbaum reconstructs how elites, through visual and textual methodologies, envisioned the nation and its component parts...
57 min
2033
Jacob Turner, "Robot Rules: Regulating Artifici...
Turner explains why AI is unique, what legal and ethical problems it could cause, and how we can address them...
73 min
2034
Jerome Whitington, "Anthropogenic Rivers: The P...
Whitington examines the dynamics and discourses centered around the development of hydropower dams in the Mekong River Basin...
38 min
2035
Adrian Wisnicki, "Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-190...
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s.
31 min
2036
Kate Devlin, "Turned On: Science, Sex and Robot...
Devlin builds on the science and the philosophy surrounding our most intimate relationship with technology...
61 min
2037
Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "Data Fem...
D'Ignazio and Klein call for changing the way we think about data and how it is communicated, particularly through visualization...
34 min
2038
Michael Rechtenwald, "Google Archipelago: The D...
Rechtenwald argues that Big Digital technologies and their principals represent not only economic powerhouses but also new forms of governmental power...
97 min
2039
David J. Gunkel, "Robot Rights" (MIT Press, 2018)
Should robots have rights?
88 min
2040
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Bo...
How does the world of book reviews work?
39 min
2041
Sarah Fawn Montgomery, "Quite Mad: An American ...
If you live in America, chances are good you’ve heard the term “mental health crisis” bandied about in the media...
35 min
2042
Amy Shira Teitel, "Breaking the Chains of Gravi...
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history.
27 min
2043
Angela Jones, "Camming: Money, Power, and Pleas...
Jones engages readers in a five-year mixed-methods study she conducted on the erotic webcam industry where she tells a pornographic story about the multibillion-dollar online sex industry that is colloquially known as “camming.”
50 min
2044
Alistair Sponsel, "Darwin’s Evolving Identity: ...
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist...
33 min
2045
Francesca Minerva, "The Ethics of Cryonics: Is ...
Minerva discusses the moral concerns of cryonics...
57 min
2046
Germaine R. Halegoua, "The Digital City: Media ...
Halegoua rethinks everyday interactions that humans have with digital infrastructures, navigation technologies, and social media as we move through the world...
51 min
2047
Gil Eyal, "The Crisis of Expertise" (Polity, 2019)
Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other...
63 min
2048
Michael F. Robinson, "The Coldest Crucible: Arc...
The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 turned the Arctic into an object of fascination...
36 min
2049
Shannon Vallor, "Technology and the Virtues" (O...
How can we possibly improve the chances that the human family will not only live, but live well, into the 21st century and beyond?
71 min
2050
Kyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecology...
What is the human and environmental cost of music?
40 min