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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

20:11

Susan Greenhalgh, "Soda Science: Making the World...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/31

Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (U Chicago Press, 2024) takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powerful companies and allied academic scientists mould research to meet industry needs. The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages—and threaten the

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48:29

Mel Stanfill, "Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/31

In their latest book, Fandom is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture (NYU Press, 2024), Mel Stafill highlights the importance of considering contemporary public culture through the lens of fan studies The Gamergate harassment campaign of women in video games, the “Unite the Right” rally where hundreds of Confederate monument supporters cried out racist and antisemitic slurs in Charlottesville, and the targeted racist and sexist harassment of Star Wars’ Asian American actress Kelly

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68:22

Tarryn Li-Min Chun, "Revolutionary Stagecraft:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/30

Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) offers a fascinating approach to modern Chinese theater history by placing the stage at the center of the story. Combining vivid readings of plays with technical manuals and how-to guides, Tarryn Li-Min Chun charts how stage technology changed from the 1920s to the 1980s, showing how Chinese theater artists mobilized staging, lighting, and props to convey different meanings, including

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41:15

John V. Pavlik, "Journalism and the Metaverse"...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/30

Journalism has been in a state of disruption since the development of the Internet. The Metaverse, or what some describe as the future of the Internet, is likely to fuel even further disruption in journalism. Digital platforms and journalism enterprises are already investing substantial resources into the Metaverse, or its likely components of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. Although research shows most of the public has little knowledge of the Metaverse, many are

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54:51

The Human Advantage: A Conversation with Jay Richards

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/28

In this episode, we explore the insights of Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines (Forum, 2019). Richards wrote this book during a time when automation and technology were beginning to redefine the boundaries of human work and creativity. His core argument is that, despite the rise of machines, there are certain uniquely human qualities—such as creativity, moral judgment, and entrepreneurial spirit—that cannot be replicated by

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53:29

Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, "Mumbai on Two Wheels:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/27

Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic bicycle communities. Exploring how people bike and what biking means in the city, Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria challenges assumptions that underlie sustainable transportation planning.Arguing that planning professionals and advocates need to pay closer attention to ordinary people who cycle for transportation or for work, or who choose to

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57:20

Joanna Wuest, "Born This Way: Science, Citizenship,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/27

Scholars often narrate the legal cases confirming LGBTQ+ rights as a huge success story. While it took 100 years to confirm the rights of Black Americans, it took far less time for courts to recognize marriage and adoption rights or workplace discrimination protections for queer people.The legal and political success of LGBTQ+ advocates often depended upon presenting sexual and gender identities as innate – or “immutable” to fit legal categories. Conservatives who oppose LGBTQ+ equality often argue

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59:24

Yerkebulan Sairambay, "New Media and Political...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/26

Dr. Yerkebulan Sairambay’s New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) confronts the sociological problem of the usage of new media (social media, the Internet, digital technologies, messaging applications) by young people in political participation. This book not only sheds light on the ways in which new media use contributes to the nature of political participation in Kazakhstan and Russia, but also explains why citizens use these tools in their

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71:56

Cyrus Mody on the Importance of Square (as in NOT...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/26

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Cyrus Mody, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation and Director of the STS Program at Maastricht University, about his book, The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s (MIT Press, 2022). Many narratives about contemporary technologies, especially digital computing and the Internet, focus on the influences of 1960s counter-cultures. In _The Squares_, Mody takes the opposite approach and asks how square,

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43:07

Phil Haun, "Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War:...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/25

Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare (Cambridge UP, 2023) introduces a much-needed theory of tactical air power to explain air power effectiveness in modern warfare with a particular focus on the Vietnam War as the first and largest modern air war. Phil Haun shows how in the Rolling Thunder, Commando Hunt, and Linebacker air campaigns, independently air power repeatedly failed to achieve US military and political objectives. In contrast, air forces

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102:59

Nick Chater, "The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/24

Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “surface” of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In the The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain (Yale UP, 2019), behavioural scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: rather

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59:01

Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/23

Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without butterflies. And yet their populations are declining at an alarming rate, to the extent that even the seemingly ubiquitous Monarch could conceivably go the way of the Passenger Pigeon. Many other, more obscure, butterfly species are already perilously close to extinction. For the last 20 years, Nick Haddad has worked to identify and save some of the

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57:37

Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, "Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/23

In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing system. The Chinese characters, they argued, were too cumbersome to learn, blocking the channels of communication, obstructing mass literacy, and impeding scientific progress. What had sustained a civilization for more than two millennia was suddenly recast as the root cause of an ongoing cultural suicide. China needed a new script to survive in the

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58:12

Michele Santamaria and Nicole Pfannenstiel,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/20

Teaching our students how to become flexible and accurate evaluators of information requires teaching them adaptable processes and not static heuristics. Our conventional information literacy teaching and learning tools are simply not up to tackling the life-long, real-world challenges and transferable applications required by today's evolving information landscape. Information Literacy and Social Media: Empowered Student Engagement with the ACRL Framework (ACRL, 2024) by Michele Santamaria and A

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72:30

12 Angry Alaskans: Re-Examining the Exxon Valdez Oil...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/16

This is part #2 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last episode, the spill devastates Cordova, Alaska. In this second part, 12 Angry Alaskans, a jury of ordinary Alaskans picks up our story. They muddle through the most devastating, and most complicated, environmental disaster in US history. How would they decide the case? Subscribe today to ensure you do not miss our finale, Damaging Rationality, which examines the

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53:04

Noah Heringman, "Deep Time: A Literary History"...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/14

In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “counter-history” of deep time. This counter-history acknowledges and investigates the literary and imaginary origins of the idea of deep time, from eighteen-century narratives of voyages around the world to William Blake’s ballads and writings by Charles Darwin. This approach to the idea of deep time and the history of its formation engages with

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56:05

Craig Gent, "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/13

Across the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasingly dystopian management technologies.In Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work (Verso, 2024), Craig Gent takes us into workplaces where algorithms rule to excavate the politics behind the newest form of managerial power. Combining worker testimony and

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43:53

Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/13

Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultural and intellectual history of people with mental illnesses in the twentieth-century United States. While acknowledging the fraught, and often violent, histories of American psychiatric hospitals, Heather Murray also suggests that it is in these hospitals that patients became more intense observers: they gave more conscious consideration to institutional

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45:16

Aimee Louise Middlemiss, "Invisible Labours: The...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/12

Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labour: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England (Berghahn, 2024) by Dr. Aimee Louise Middlemiss describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester

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60:02

Matthew Evangelista, "Allied Air Attacks and Civilian...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2024/08/11

Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943 than before, when the air attacks were intended to induce Italy’s surrender.Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945 (Routledge, 2023) addresses this seeming paradox, by examining the views of Allied political and military leaders, Allied air crews, and Italians on the ground. It tells the stories of a little-known diplomat (Myron

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2,295 results

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