New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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...

Gijs Mom, "Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980" (Berghahn Books, 2020)

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Why has "car society" proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and ...

David M. Peña-Guzmán, "When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness" (Princeton UP, 2022)

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Conscious...

Donald A. Barclay, "Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Does the idea of a world in which facts mean nothing cause anxiety? Fear? Maybe even paranoia? Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Po...

Will Kinney, "An Infinity of Worlds: Cosmic Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)

16 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost fourteen billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical th...

Simon Peter Rowberry, "Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform" (MIT Press, 2022)

15 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform (MIT Press, 2022) is the first book-length analysis of Amazon's Kindle explores the platform's techno...

Nigel Rothfels, "Elephant Trails: A History of Animals and Cultures" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

13 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When looking at historic records of all kinds—from prehistoric cave drawings and ancient rock art in Africa and India, from poetic narrations of tra...

Mark Neocleous, "The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies" (Verso, 2022)

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how ...

Facing Failure and the Museum Dedicated to It

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why failure is part of the hidden curriculum Why you can’t be creative or innov...

Banu Subramaniam, "Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism" (U of Washington Press, 2019)

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), Banu Subramaniam examines how science and religion ha...

Samuel J. Redman, "Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology" (Harvard UP, 2021)

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology (Harvard UP, 2021) is a searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effor...

Sam Tatam, "Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking Ancient Innovation to Solve Tomorrow's Challenges" (Harriman House, 2022)

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this i...

Eve Ng, "Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Eve Ng’s new book Cancel Culture: A Critical Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), examines the phenomenon of "cancel culture" from a critical medi...

Pandemic Perspectives 10: Covid and the Art of Science Communication

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to John Tregoning, Imperial College respiratory infections...

Nicole Charles, "Suspicion: Vaccines, Hesitancy, and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados" (Duke UP, 2022)

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2014 Barbados introduced a vaccine to prevent certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce the risk of cervical cancer in young wom...

Sangeet Kumar, "The Digital Frontier: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web" (Indiana UP, 2021)

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Digital Frontier: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web (Indiana University Press, 2021), Sangeet Kumar interrogates the world wide we...

The Future of Opinion Polls: A Conversation with Mark Pack

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As the culture wars intensify, it seems that all sources of neutral authority get challenged and that includes opinion polls. Accusations about bias a...

Emily West, "Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly" (MIT Press, 2022)

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital e...

Eugenics

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kim talks with Mercedes Trigos about eugenics. Mercedes references Francis Galton, who coined the term, preimplantation genetic profiling, and the f...

Gary B. Fogel, "Sky Rider: Park Van Tassel and the Rise of Ballooning in the West" (U New Mexico Press, 2021)

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With a reputation as the hot-air balloon capital of the world and the home of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the southwestern desert ci...

Computational Creativity

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Saronik talks to Tuhin Chakrabarty about the creative processes of Artificial Intelligence, what we can expect from it, and how to keep the results...

Jason Steinhauer, "History, Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

06 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphe...

Sarah Walsh, "The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) examines the interconnections and relationship between Cath...

Christine Leuenberger and Izhak Schnell, "The Politics of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Israel/Palestine" (Oxford UP, 2020)

04 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley has been one of the most disputed territories in history. Since the establishment of the ...

Pandemic Perspectives 9: Covid, 'Scientism,' and the Betrayal of the Enlightenment

04 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law profess...

John Zerilli, "A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2022)

04 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracke...

William F. Eadie, "When Communication Became a Discipline" (Lexington, 2021)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Communication Became a Discipline (Lexington, 2021) argues that speech and journalism professors embraced the concept of communication between 1...

Daniel J. Solove and Woodrow Hartzog, "Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It" (Oxford UP, 2022)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Digital connections permeate our lives-and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, i...

Maia Weinstock, "Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)

29 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus (MIT Press, 2022) follows Mildred Dresselhaus (or Millie, as everyone c...

Anthony Hatch, "Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It’s no secret that the United States has the most expansive prison system of any nation in the world. And the US carceral system overwhelmingly and...

Rana A. Hogarth, "Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840" (UNC Press, 2017)

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Medicine and slavery went hand-in-hand. But what was the nature of this vile partnership? In Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the ...