New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Jason Resnikoff, "Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the fact...
Lisa Jean Moore, "Our Transgenic Future: Spider Goats, Genetic Modification, and the Will to Change Nature" (NYU Press, 2022)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The process of manipulating the genetic material of one animal to include the DNA of another creates a new transgenic organism. Several animals, notab...
Rosetta S. Elkin, "Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Rosetta S. Elkin explores the procedures of afforestation, the la...
The Future of War: A Discussion with Mark Galeotti
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wars have always been fought in different ways, depending not only on the manpower available – elite professional armies to mass mobilization of who...
Keith W. Campbell, "The New Science of Narcissism: Understanding One of the Greatest Psychological Challenges of Our Time" (Sounds True, 2020)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Narcissism” is truly one of the most important words of our time―ceaselessly discussed in the media, the subject of millions of online search q...
Jeannie N. Shinozuka, "Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, increasing traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" when nurse...
Rachael Pells, "Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare" (Random House, 2022)
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Genome sequencing is one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the past thirty years. But what precisely does it involve and how is it deve...
Disintermediation
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mark McGurl talks about disintermediation, a key term for internet commerce, and his new book about fiction in the age of digital self-publication. Th...
Veronica S. W. Mak, "Milk Craze: Body, Science, and Hope in China" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Veronika Mak’s Milk Craze: Body, Science, and Hope in China (U of Hawaii Press, 2021) mixes historical and ethnographic research on milk to unde...
Nicole Erin Morse, "Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art" (Duke UP, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art (Duke University Press, 2022) Nicole Erin Morse examines how trans...
Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporati...
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Jayita Sarkar challenges this received ...
Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Cultures in the United States" (Routledge, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Trevor Boffone's book TikTok Cultures in the United States (Routledge, 2022) examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attenti...
Jamie Susskind, "The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From one of the leading intellectuals of the digital age, The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century (Pegasus Books, 2022) ...
“Vaccine: The Human Story”: A Chat with Historian and Podcaster Annie Kelly
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Vaccine: The Human Story” is a podcast and video series that tells the story of the global fight against smallpox, from its earliest history as a...
Andrew Witt, "Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture" (MIT Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2022), Andrew Witt examines the visual, methodological, and cultural intersections b...
Samuel Ulbricht, "Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Samuel Ulbricht about his book Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022). Despite the increasing number ...
Samuel Ulbricht, "Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Samuel Ulbricht about his book Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022). Despite the increasing number ...
Jody Rosen, "Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle" (Crown, 2022)
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on...
84* Cixin Liu Talk About Science Fiction (JP, Pu Wang)
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John and Pu Wang, a Brandeis professor of Chinese literature, spoke with science-fiction genius Cixin Liu back in 2019. His most celebrated works i...
Ben Davis, "Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy" (Haymarket Books, 2022)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spect...
Frank Close, "Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass" (Basic Book, 2022)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in und...
Adrienne Buller, "The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism" (Manchester UP, 2022)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to clim...
Daniel M. Davis, "The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live" (Princeton UP, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cel...
Roberto J. González, "War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future" (U California Press, 2022)
01 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually: The Quest...
Teletherapy
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Zeavin talks about teletherapy, from Freud’s letters to suicide hotlines to therapy apps. If therapy is always mediated, teletherapy is any f...
James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, "Atlas of the Invisible: Maps and Graphics That Will Change How You See the World" (W. W. Norton, 2021)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning geographer-designer team James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti transform enormous datasets into rich maps and cutting-edge visualizations. In...
Victor Seow, "Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Victor Seow’s Carbon Technocracy: Energy regimes in Modern East Asia (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an account of the modern “world that carbon mad...
Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky, "Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power" (MIT Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An argument that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. Discard studies is an emergi...
Susan H. Brandt, "Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In her eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, the Philadelphia healer Elizabeth Coates Paschall asserted her ingenuity and authority with the b...
Ryan North, "How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain" (Riverhead Books, 2022)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Taking over the world is a lot of work. Any supervillain is bound to have questions: What's the perfect location for a floating secret base? What zany...
Whitney Trettien, "Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Whitney Trettien whose book Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork was published through the University of Minnes...
Mark Andrejevic, "Automated Media" (Routledge, 2019)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this era of pervasive automation, Mark Andrejevic provides an original framework for tracing the logical trajectory of automated media and their so...
Adrienne Mayor, "Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities" (Princeton UP, 2022)
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realitie...
Bharat Jayram Venkat, "At the Limits of Cure" (Duke UP, 2021)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can a history of cure be more than a history of how disease comes to an end? In 1950s Madras, an international team of researchers demonstrated that ...
Slobodan Perovic, "From Data to Quanta: Niels Bohr’s Vision of Physics" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Niels Bohr was a central figure in quantum physics, well known for his work on atomic structure and his contributions to the Copenhagen interpretation...
Jonathan Crary, "Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World" (Verso, 2022)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age’ is synonymous with the disastrous termi...
Drone Life
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Gaeta uses the relationship between humans and technology, non-military use of drones being a prime example, to rethink concepts of passivity and ...
Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish, "Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that ...
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, "Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe" (Dey Street Books, 2022)
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz about his new book Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe (Dey Street Boo...
Robert-Jan Smits and Rachael Pells, "Plan S for Shock: Science. Shock. Solution. Speed." (Ubiquity Press, 2022)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plan S: the open access initiative that changed the face of global research. Robert-Jan Smits and Rachael Pells's book Plan S for Shock: Science. S...
Artificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is artificial intelligence (AI) with Chinese characteristics? Why is the Chinese Government labelling AI as a matter of security? How has AI been...
David L. Sloss, "Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare" (Stanford UP, 2022)
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become...
Catherine Gibson, "Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic" (Oxford UP, 2022)
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic (Oxford UP, 2022) examines the meteoric rise of ethnograp...
Andrew Simon, "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2022)
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—...
Juli Berwald, "Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs" (Riverhead Books, 2022)
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they're thriving, these fairy gar...
John Wills, "Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutt...
Albert Folch, "Hidden in Plain Sight: The History, Science, and Engineering of Microfluidic Technology" (MIT Press, 2022)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden from view, microfluidics underlies a variety of devices that are essential to our lives, from inkjet printers to glucometers for the monitoring...
Michael Munger, "The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises" (Duke UP, 2021)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that 'place' was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades ...
Gian Maria Campedelli, "Machine Learning for Criminology and Crime Research: At the Crossroads" (Routledge, 2022)
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Machine Learning for Criminology and Crime Research: At the Crossroads (Routledge, 2022) reviews the roots of the intersection between machine learn...
R. John Aitken, "The Infertility Trap: Why Life Choices Impact your Fertility and Why We Must Act Now" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A potential crisis in human fertility is brewing. As societies become more affluent, they experience changes that have a dramatic impact on reproducti...
Timothy J. Jorgensen, "Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life" (Princeton UP, 2021)
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices--or perhaps we env...
Mark Anthony Neal, "Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive" (NYU Press, 2022)
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are living in an era of unprecedented access to popular culture: contemporary digital infrastructure provides anyone with an internet connection ac...
Nikita Braguinski, "Mathematical Music: From Antiquity to Music AI" (Focal Press, 2022)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is mathematical music? In Mathematical Music from Antiquity to AI (Routledge, 2022), musicologist Nikita Braguinski discusses how mathematics h...
Wake Smith, "Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Reaching net zero emissions will not be the end of the climate struggle, but only the end of the beginning. For centuries thereafter, temperatures wil...
On Religion and Photography in 19th-Century America
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Rachel Lindsey is Assistant Professor in Saint Louis University’s Department of Theological Studies. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Religi...
Marco Grasso, "From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis" (MIT Press, 2022)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis (MIT Press, 2022), Marco Grasso examines the responsibility...
Matthew Ricketson and Patrick Mullins, "Who Needs the ABC?: How Digital Disruption and Political Dysfunction Threaten the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Existence" (Scribe, 2022)
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello media fans - The ABC is Australia's public broadcaster, for TV, digital and radio. Think BBC and CBC and NPR. Who Needs the ABC?: How Digital...
Joshua Citarella, "Politigram and the Post-Left" (Blurb, 2021)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The internet’s potential to perform political miracles has been a source of both hope and disappointment for many grassroots movements. We remember ...
Allison Hahn, "Media Culture in Nomadic Communities" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Media Culture in Nomadic Communities (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), author Allison Hahn examines the ways that new communications technolog...
Gernot Wagner, "Geoengineering: The Gamble" (Polity, 2021)
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stabilizing the world's climates means cutting carbon dioxide pollution. There's no way around it. But what if that's not enough? What if it's too dif...
David B. Goldstein, "The End of Genetics: Designing Humanity's DNA" (Yale UP, 2022)
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along wi...
Thomas J. Misa, "Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“My underlying goal,” writes my guest Tom Misa, “has been to display the variety of technologies, to describe how they changed across time, an...
Andrew Shortland and Patrick Degryse, "When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation" (Leuven UP, 2022)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation (Leuven University Press, 2022), Dr. Andrew Shortland and Dr. P...
Shara Rambarran, "Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [u...
Andrew Bickford, "Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military" (Duke UP, 2021)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military (Duke UP, 2021), Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military's attempts to design...
Joshua Neves, "Underglobalization: Beijing's Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy" (Duke UP, 2020)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Neves’ Underglobalization: Beijing's Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy (Duke University Press, 2020) examines the interplay of ...
Experimental Life
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He look...
Jahara Matisek and Buddhika Jayamaha, "Old and New Battlespaces: Society, Military Power, and War" (Lynne Rienner, 2022)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
War is ever changing. Just within the last decade or so, new domains have opened up as potential battlefields of the present and the future. These ran...
Rob Dunn, "A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species" (Basic Book, 2021)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A ...
Jessamyn Abel, "Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train" (Stanford UP, 2022)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jessamyn Abel’s Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train (Stanford UP, 2022) is a history of Japan’s famous ...
Margie Meacham, "AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live" (ASTD, 2020)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live (ASTD, 2020), Margie Meacham describes t...
Stephen M. Wheeler and Christina D. Rosan, "Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable Communities" (U California Press, 2021)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What would it take to make urban places greener, more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for everyone? In recent years, cities have stepped up ...
Paul Huebener, "Nature's Broken Clocks: Reimagining Time in the Face of the Environmental Crisis" (U Regina Press, 2020)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nature's Broken Clocks: Reimagining Time in the Face of the Environmental Crisis (University of Regina Press, 2020), Paul Huebener argues that ...
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim, "Song of the Earth: Understanding Geology and Why It Matters" (Oxford UP, 2021)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s podcast, Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim explains how understanding harmonics of the earth provides a forward-thinking methodology to confro...
Alexander Monea, "The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight" (MIT Press, 2022)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight (MIT Press, 2022), Alexander Monea argues provocatively that the internet became straight by...
Rajesh Veeraraghavan, "Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India" (Oxford UP, 2021)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms? Political will and good policy d...
Nathaniel Isaacson, "Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction" (Wesleyan UP, 2017)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese science fiction has been booming lately through the translation of books like Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, but where did the current...
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we bre...
Greg Brennecka, "Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong" (William Morrow, 2022)
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Solar System. Dinosaurs. Donkey Kong. What is the missing link? Surprisingly enough, it's meteorites. They explain our past, constructed our prese...
Adam M. Romero, "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" (U California Press, 2021)
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Ec...
Aniket Aga, "Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India" (Yale UP, 2022)
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How the debate over genetically modified crops in India is transforming science and politics Genetically modified or transgenic crops are controversia...
Should Scholars Trust Machine Translation of their Articles?
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Should academic scholars trust machine translation for the publication of their academic articles? In this episode, Avi Staiman and Ana Guerberof Aren...
Andrew Doig, "This Mortal Coil: A History of Death" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely...
On Blogging Religion
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Giulia Evolvi is the author of Blogging My Religion: Secular, Muslim, and Catholic Media Spaces in Europe, out now from Routledge. Evolvi is a Re...
Pandemic Perspectives 12: Politicizing the COVID Pandemic
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Michael Berry, Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese...
Paul Morland, "Tomorrow's People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers" (Picador, 2022)
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The great forces of population change – the balance of births, deaths and migrations – have made the world what it is today. They have determined ...
Nomi Claire Lazar, "Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time" (Yale UP, 2019)
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Nomi Claire Lazar about Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time (Yale University Press, 2019). Drawing on stories of...
John Markoff, "Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand" (Penguin, 2022)
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental moveme...
Scott Reynolds Nelson, "Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World" (Basic Books, 2022)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Grain traders wandering across the steppe; the Russian conquest of Ukraine (in the 18th century, that is); boulevard barons and wheat futures; railro...
John Cardina, "Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly" (Comstock Publishing, 2021)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly (Comstock Publishing, 2021) explores the tangled history of weeds and their relationship to humans. T...
Emily Mendenhall, "Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (Vanderbilt UP, 2022) is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when ...
Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2021)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading ...
John Lardas Modern, "Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain (U Chicago Press, 2021), religious studies scholar John Lardas Modern offers a spr...
Alice Dailey, "How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol" (Cornell UP, 2022)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alice Dailey’s How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022)...
Jim Al-Khalili, "The Joy of Science" (Princeton UP, 2022)
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s world is unpredictable and full of contradictions, and navigating its complexities while trying to make the best decisions is far from easy....
Shannon L. Walsh, "Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era: Watch Whiteness Workout" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Dr. Shannon Walsh, Associate Professor of Theatre History, and author of Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Prog...
Elena Esposito, "Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Algorithms that work with deep learning and big data are getting so much better at doing so many things that it makes us uncomfortable. How can a devi...
Pandemic Perspectives 11: The Covid Pandemic and Learning about Learning
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned cognitive psychologist Stephen Kosslyn about h...
Alison Calder, "Synaptic" (U Regina Press, 2022)
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This intricate, yearning work from award-winning poet Alison Calder asks us to think about the way we perceive and the ways in which we seek to know o...