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PODCAST

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

New Books Network

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

46:42

Linda Colley, "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/26

Linda Colley is a luminary in the fields of British and imperial history, and the Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. Her captivating new book The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 2021) narrates a sweeping global history of written constitutions from the 18th to the 21st century. Bold, imaginative, and strikingly original, it challenges established accounts and uncovers the close connection between

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59:09

Jenny Bangham, "Blood Relations: Transfusion and the...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/26

Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the intimate connections between the early infrastructures of blood transfusion and the development of human genetics. Focusing on mid-twentieth-century Britain, Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics (U Chicago Press, 2020) connects histories of eugenics to the local politics of giving blood, showing how the exchange of blood carved out

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51:16

Heba Y. Amin, "The General's Stork" (Sternberg Press,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/25

In 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork for espionage. This incident is the focus of Heba Y. Amin’s The General’s Stork, an ongoing project that investigates the politics of aerial surveillance. It is also the subject of the most recent book in the Research/Practice edited by Anthony Downey. Research/Practice focuses on artistic research and how it contributes to the formation of experimental knowledge systems. Drawing on preliminary material such as diaries, notebooks, audiovisual

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61:56

Alex Wellerstein, "Restricted Data: The History of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/24

The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy--and

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50:51

Deborah R. Coen, "The Earthquake Observers: Disaster...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/21

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories--stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In The Earthquake

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46:09

Ellen Helsper, "The Digital Disconnect: The Social...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/21

What are digital inequalities? In The Digital Disconnect: The Social Causes and Consequences of Digital Inequalities (Sage, 2021), Ellen Helsper, a Professor of Digital Inequalities in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, explores the unequal nature of our now digital world. The book introduces the corresponding fields theoretical framework, as a way of blending a huge range of empirical and theoretical material that provides the basis for a global analysis

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77:29

Makis Solomos, "From Music to Sound: The Emergence of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/21

In From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music (Routledge, 2019), Makis Solomos (Professor of Musicology, University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis “Paris 8”) argues that the 20th century bears witness to a kind of paradigm shift relating to the subject matter of music, a shift “from a musical culture centered on the note to a culture of sound” (5). Crucially, Solomos sets out to track this transformation as a change that is music-internal: that is, one that may be

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65:01

Joseph Rouse, "Articulating the World: Conceptual...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/21

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudiates any philosophical or religious authority over the workings and conclusions of the sciences. A longstanding paradox within naturalism, however, has been the status of scientific knowledge itself, which seems, at first glance, to be something that transcends and is therefore impossible to conceptualize within scientific naturalism

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57:23

Rob Kitchin, "Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/20

The word ‘data’ has entered everyday conversation, but do we really understand what it means? How can we begin to grasp the scope and scale of our new data-rich world, and can we truly comprehend what is at stake. In Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World (Policy Press, 2021), renowned social scientist Rob Kitchin explores the intricacies of data creation and charts how data-driven technologies have become essential to how society, government and the economy work. Creatively blending

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67:46

Aaron Shapiro, "Design, Control, Predict: Logistical...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/19

The “smart” city of today looks little like what experts of yesteryear expected them to. In this book, Aaron Shapiro, Ph.D. takes readers on a behind the scenes tour of the smart city and shows the revolution in urban technology that is currently taking place in large metropolitan areas around the United States. Technology has fundamentally transformed urban life. Throughout Design, Control, Predict: Logistical Governance in the Smart City (U Minnesota Press, 2020), Shapiro develops a new lens

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69:16

L. Ayu Saraswati, "Pain Generation: Social Media,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/19

Social media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts of sexual harassment, violence, and abuse, Asian American and Asian Canadian feminist icons such as rupi kaur, Margaret Cho, and Mia Matsumiya have turned to social media to share their stories with the world. But how does such activism reconcile with the platforms on which it is being cultivated, when its radical messaging is at total odds with the

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43:15

Zoetanya Sujon, "The Social Media Age" (Sage, 2021)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/18

How has social media shaped contemporary society? In The Social Media Age (Sage, 2021), Zoetanya Sujon, a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director in Communications and Media at London College of Communication, analyses social media, from pre-history through to our more contemporary critical turn. The book considers a wide range of issues and perspectives, from platforms and power, through data and dating, to selfies and surveillance. Packed with a vast range of case study material, including

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83:38

Adam Rogers, "Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/17

From kelly green to millennial pink, our world is graced with a richness of colors. But our human-made colors haven’t always matched nature’s kaleidoscopic array. To reach those brightest heights required millennia of remarkable innovation and a fascinating exchange of ideas between science and craft that’s allowed for the most luminous manifestations of our built and adorned world. In Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern (Houghton Mifflin, 2021), Rogers takes us on that

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54:35

Michael D. Gordin, "On the Fringe: Where Science...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/17

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from

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62:39

Bijal P. Trivedi, "Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/13

Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of every type—from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and sickle cell anemia. In 1974, Joey O'Donnell was born with strange symptoms. His insatiable appetite, incessant vomiting, and a relentless cough—which shook his tiny, fragile body and made it difficult to draw breath—confounded doctors and caused his parents agonizing, sleepless nights. After

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68:27

Michelle Nijhuis, "Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/12

In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction (Norton, 2021), acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a

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78:16

Lucy van de Wiel, "Freezing Fertility: Oocyte...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/12

How does egg freezing reshape our conception of time, aging and fertility? In her new monograph, Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging (NYU Press, 2020) Dr. Lucy van de Wiel explores the significance of egg freezing in re-orienting the temporality of the gender politics of aging. Dr. van de Wiel argues that it is critical to examine the politicized dimensions of egg freezing because it transforms the broader discourses around aging and normative timeline of

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54:45

Scott Berkun, "How Design Makes the World" (2020)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/11

Everything you use, from your home to your smartphone, from highways to supermarkets, was designed by someone. What did they get right? Where did they go wrong? And what can we learn from how these experts think that can help us improve our own lives? In How Design Makes The World, bestselling author and designer Scott Berkun reveals how designers, from software engineers to city planners, have succeeded and failed us. From the airplane armrest to the Facebook “like” button, and everything in

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55:36

Can we Disagree Online Respectfully?: A Discussion...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/11

In this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes (Harper Business, 2021), is about how to disagree better. Ian regularly publishes in The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Economist. He co-hosted the podcast series Polarized and created a BBC radio comedy series. The piece we talked about today is "How to have Better Arguments Online" (The

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64:48

Jason Karlawish, "The Problem of Alzheimer's: How...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2021/05/11

In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's:

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2,490 results

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