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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

79:02

Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/25

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, about his classic 2006 book, _From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism_. They briefly explore the arc of Fred’s career and revisit the book in the spirit of asking what has changed in digital

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48:32

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/23

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and Russia's Roscosmos. JAXA's budget is more than $1 billion USD—bigger than France or Germany individually, and more than that of Italy, India, Canada, and the UK combined. And yet, Japan's significant contributions have largely been absent in the history of space exploration, and space exploration largely absent in the history of technology in Japan. The

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55:20

Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/22

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities.High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape (UNC Press, 2023) charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of

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50:18

Joe Williams, "Inequality in the Digital Economy: The...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/21

In this episode, Joe Williams speaks with Andrew White about how the digital economy is reshaping inequality, work, and the social contract. Drawing on the themes of his book Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), our conversation explores why technological progress has not translated into shared prosperity, how structural features of digital markets concentrate power and wealth, and what this means for the future of work and social

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39:28

David King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/19

Eyeglasses have become so commonplace we hardly think about them—unless we can’t find them. Yet glasses have been controversial throughout history. Roger Bacon pioneered using lenses to see and then spent a decade in a medieval prison for advocating that he could fix" God’s creations by improving our eyesight. Even today, people take off their glasses before having their picture taken, despite how necessary they are.A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See (Bloomsbury, 2026) is the

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48:16

W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/19

In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that in order for computers to become ubiquitous, people first had to become interested in them, learn about them, and take the machines seriously. A powerful catalyst for this transformation was, ironically, one of the oldest information technologies we have: books. The author uses a carefully chosen selection of books, some iconic and others obscure, to

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58:49

Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/18

In this episode, Ted Striphas, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet(Columbia University Press 2023), considering how some pre-digital human systems functioned through repetitive structures and automated processes that have similarities to electronic algorithms. They discuss how cognition has become digitized, dispersed across algorithmic and biological systems, and how digital tools attempt to overtake lived experiences and knowledges

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34:06

Vanessa Rampton, "Making Medical Progress: History of...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/15

Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of personhood, society, and health. However, the widely held enthusiasm for medical progress escapes more general critiques of progress as a conceptual category. From the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and the medical humanities, in Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Vanessa Rampton sheds light on

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54:21

Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/13

A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability.Consumers today are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiarán examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the two

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47:42

Howard Alan Israel, "Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/13

What if the tools that shaped your life’s work were rooted in unimaginable evil? In this haunting episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Dr. Howard Alan Israel to discuss Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil, a book born from a single, shattering moment in an operating room. For over twenty years, Dr. Israel had prepared for surgeries using the same anatomy atlas—methodically studying each illustration, planning for every variation, and building a career marked by innovation, research, and

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44:43

Yi-Ling Liu, "The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/12

Not too long ago, in the 2000s and 2010s, many felt that the internet–even one behind the Great Firewall–would bring about a more open China. As President Bill Clinton famously quipped in 2000, Beijing trying to control the internet would be like “trying to nail jello to the wall.”Things don’t look quite so certain now. China’s internet is now more controlled than it was a decade ago, with platforms, content creators, and tech companies now firmly guided by rules and signals from Beijing. Yi-Ling

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54:30

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/11

The United Kingdom has sixteen nuclear power stations. Most go under the radar, but their presence is enormous, both physically and culturally. They divide opinion like nothing else. Are they relics of a past era, or a crucial part of our futures? Are they cathedrals of science or temples of doom?Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations (Strange Attractor, 2025) by Dr. Tom Bolton is a journey around Britain’s nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex

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58:03

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/11

China's approach to digital governance has gained global influence, often evoking Orwellian 'Big Brother' comparisons. Governing Digital China (Cambridge UP, 2025) challenges this perception, arguing that China's approach is radically different in practice. This book explores the logic of popular corporatism, highlighting the bottom-up influences of China's largest platform firms and its citizens. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and nationally representative surveys, the authors track governance of

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35:47

Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/08

Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone Demosthenes of 4th-century BCE Athens to the recent controversies regarding Donald Trump. In Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (Basic Books, 2022), Mchangama argues that the history of freedom of thought has recurrent themes, such as a free speech entropy: the perception of rulers or governments that if speech is not restricted

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38:59

Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/07

At the heart of cybersecurity lies a paradox: Cooperation makes conflict possible. In Age of Deception (Cornell University Press 2025), Jon R. Lindsay shows that widespread trust in cyberspace enables espionage and subversion. While such acts of secret statecraft have long been part of global politics, digital systems have dramatically expanded their scope and scale. Yet success in secret statecraft hinges less on sophisticated technology than on political context.To make sense of this, Lindsay

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62:35

Polina Dimova, "At the Crossroads of the Senses: The...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/06

Inspired by Richard Wagner’s idea of the total artwork, European modernist artists began to pursue multimedia projects that mixed colors, sounds, and shapes. Dr. Polina Dimova’s At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism (Penn State UP, 2024) traces this new sensory experience of synaesthesia—the physiological or figurative blending of senses—as a modernist phenomenon from its scientific description in the late nineteenth century to its

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27:02

Rob Gallagher, "Artgames after GamerGate" (Palgrave...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/06

Videogame culture is obsessed with development. But gaming is still widely associated with wasted time, squandered potential and backwards attitudes. Even as the average gamer grows older, the medium remains dogged by the same old question: when will videogames grow up? The Gamergate movement lent this question renewed urgency, launching attacks on feminists and “social justice warriors” that have come to be seen as a catalyst for the emergence of the alt-right and election of Donald Trump. Artgames

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68:37

Tom Griffiths, "The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/04

The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind (Henry Holt and Co., 2026) is an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human mindsEveryone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force,

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34:22

Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP,...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/02/03

Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or reached for a can of WD-40 to fix a creaking door hinge, then you know the headache this force can cause.In Friction: a Biography (Harvard UP, 2026), Dr. Jennifer Vail reveals beneath the difficulty and complication a force as enigmatic and intriguing as it is central to the human story. She traces how, from the moment we first harnessed the power of

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36:54

John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We...

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society ·

2026/01/31

Today I talked to John L. Rudolph about his book Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should) (Oxford UP, 2023). Few people question the importance of science education in American schooling. The public readily accepts that it is the key to economic growth through innovation, develops the ability to reason more effectively, and enables us to solve the everyday problems we encounter through knowing how the world works. Good science teaching results in all these benefits and more -- or so we think. But

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2,355 results

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