x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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:

science social sciences

All Episodes

67:29

Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/07

In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnology meets patent law. With a background as a molecular biologist turned patent attorney, Goldstein offers unique insights into how commercial biology has evolved and its profound effects on patent regulations. The discussion takes listeners on a journey from the early days of recombinant DNA technology to the cutting-edge advancements of CRISPR

en

60:19

Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/05

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences’. Prince Albert’s overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial

en

20:09

Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/04

If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle game with a ticking clock and a ton of “just one more game” replayability. Originally sold as part of a “big box” bundle of simple games, Minesweeper became a cornerstone of the Windows experience when it was pre-installed with every copy of Windows 3.1 and decades of subsequent OS updates. Alongside fellow Windows gaming staple Solitaire, Minesweeper

en

58:01

Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/03

Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted ChatGPT, they propitiated oracles. Before they fell in love with robot boyfriends, they ventured into the forest to marry nature spirits. In his new book Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination (Princeton UP, 2025) Keane combines anthropology and philosophy to show us what is new and what is not in our current technological moment

en

37:57

Sonic AI

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/03

Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which provides AI-created custom voices for people with vocal disabilities. Hussein Boon contemplates the future of AI in music via some very short and thought-provoking fiction tales. And we start off the show with Mack reflecting on how hard the post-shutdown adjustment has been for many of us and how that might be feeding into the current AI hype. For our

en

36:05

Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/03

Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that is not only different, but in certain aspects, more profound than traditional literary or cinematic forms of medievalism. However, although it is important to understand the versions of the Middle Ages presented by these games, how players engage with these medievalist worlds, and why particular representational trends emerge in this most modern

en

77:33

Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/02

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pandemic.”In Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022), Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague that led to over twelve million deaths. Unlike medical photography, epidemic photography was not exclusively, or even

en

55:17

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/03/01

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She teaches courses on identity, race/racism, digital media production, and video game studies/production. Prior to

en

46:08

Daniel Silverman, "Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/28

Factual misinformation is spread in conflict zones around the world, often with dire consequences. But when is this misinformation actually believed, and when is it not? Seeing is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Daniel Silverman examines the appeal and limits of dangerous misinformation in war, and is the go-to text for understanding false beliefs and their impact in modern armed conflict. Dr. Silverman

en

22:24

Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/27

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a new approach to fighting an increasingly exhausting war. By putting the work of cancer research into the hands of

en

38:40

Sybil Derrible, "The Infrastructure Book: How Cities...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/27

Clean water, paved roads, public transit, electricity and gas, sewers, waste processing, telecommunication, even the Internet – all this infrastructure is what makes cities work and powers our lives, often seamlessly and silently. Virtually everything we do and consume depends on infrastructure. Yet, most people have little to no idea how these systems work. How is water treated? How do cities manage rainwater? Why do traffic jams exist? How is electricity generated and distributed? What happens to

en

46:20

The Internet, Power, and the Deep State: Zeynep...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/26

As the second Trump administration reshapes the U.S. government and its role in the world, how do technology, media, and political power intersect? In this episode of International Horizons, host John Torpey speaks with Zeynep Tufekci—New York Times columnist, Princeton professor, and author of Twitter and Tear Gas—about the evolving relationship between social media platforms, political movements, and democracy. From the shifting role of the internet in global protests to Elon Musk’s interventions

en

96:09

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/24

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, about their book, Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America (MIT Press, 2024) Politics Recoded examines the history and culture of Code for America, an organization that, as one of its leaders put it, aimed “to promote ‘civic hacking,’ and to bring 21st century technology to government.” The book describes how the organization

en

76:31

In “The Beast,” AI Puts Limits on Human Emotion

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/22

It’s the UConn Popcast, and “The Beast” is a 2023 sci fi / romance movie by French director Bertrand Bonello, in which artificial intelligence has determined that human emotions are a danger, and must be surgically controlled. In this deep dive, we ask whether this is really a film about AI, a transhistorical love story, a narrative of societal decline, or something else entirely. The Beast stars Lea Seydoux and George McKay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our

en

72:16

Peter D. Hershock, "Buddhism and Intelligent...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/21

Machine learning, big data and AI are reshaping the human experience and forcing us to develop a new ethical intelligence. In Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (Bloomsbury, 2021), Peter Hershock offers a new way to think about attention, personal presence, and ethics as intelligent technology shatters previously foundational certainties and opens entirely new spaces of opportunity. Rather than turning exclusively to cognitive science and contemporary ethical theories,

en

50:27

Mario Cams and Elke Papelitzky, "Remapping the World...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/20

When we think of the sixteenth-century arrival of European missionaries in East Asia, there is a tendency to imagine this meeting as a civilizational clash, a great meeting of two fixed cultures. This clash is symbolized in the ‘Ricci map(s)’: a map created by a Jesuit missionary to bring scientific cartography to East Asia. Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the “Ricci Maps” (Hawai’i University Press, 2024) rethinks these maps and this encounter. By taking a global

en

49:39

Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/19

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusion and curiosity. In X-Ray (Bloomsbury, 2024), Nicole Lobdell explores when, where, and how we use X-rays, what meanings we give them, what metaphors we

en

40:45

Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds (3)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/19

In the third podcast of this series, “Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds,” host Dr. Karyne Messina, psychologist, psychoanalyst and author talked about the problems that can emerge in Erik Erikson’s Identity versus Identity Diffusion stage of development along with Dr. Harry Gill, a psychiatrist who has a PhD in neuroscience. The two mental health professionals discussed major difficulties they see in their young patients when they are exposed to too much screen time. For one thing,

en

57:13

The Anxious Generation: A Conversation with Jonathan...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/19

In this episode of Madison's Notes, Jonathan Haidt, renowned social psychologist and author, dives deep into the impact of digital saturation on today's youth, drawing insights from his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Allen Lane, 2024). The discussion explores how growing up immersed in social media, video games, and smart technology is reshaping young people’s sense of self and influencing their political engagement

en

56:51

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2025/02/19

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces with norms of good governance developed in London. Officials derived these norms by studying the histories of government contained in the official records of both the state and corporations and located in

en

2,398 results

Similar Podcasts

Classic Radio Science Fiction

solgoodmedia.com

Mission to Mars

Inception Point Ai

The 365 Days of Astronomy

365DaysOfAstronomy.org

Creek Devil

william Jevning

UFO Chronicles Podcast

Nik Hunter