New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Thomas O. Haakenson, "Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas O. Haakenson's book Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada (Bloomsbury, 2021) focuses on the radical avant-garde interventions of Salo...
Jennifer L. Lambe, "Madhouse: Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History" (UNC Press, 2017)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its founding in 1857, ...
Michael Gordin, “Science and Pseudoscience” (Open Agenda, 2021)
30 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Science and Pseudoscience is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Michael Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Co...
Rohit Khanna, "Misunderstanding Health: Making Sense of America's Broken Health Care System" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With technological advances and information sharing so prevalent, health care should be more transparent and easier to access than ever before. So why...
Jay Gargus, “Autism: A Genetic Perspective” (Open Agenda, 2021)
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Autism: A Genetic Perspective is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jay Gargus, Professor of Physiology, Biophysics an...
Uta Frith, “Exploring Autism” (Open Agenda, 2021)
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring Autism is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and one of the world’s leading experts on autism Uta Frith, Profe...
Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer, "A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication" (Harvard UP, 2021)
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Statistical graphing was born in the seventeenth century as a scientific tool, but it quickly escaped all disciplinary bounds. Today graphics are ubiq...
Chris Frith, “In Search of a Mechanism: From the Brain to the Mind” (Open Agenda, 2020)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Search of a Mechanism: From the Brain to the Mind is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Chris Frith, Emeritus Profe...
Matthew Flisfeder, "Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media" (Northwestern UP, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fundamental aspects of modern life is that much of it is lived on and through social media. We create profiles, post pictures, update ...
Carol Anderson, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second Amend...
Craig Robertson, "The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
20 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information The ubiquity of the filing cabinet i...
Jonathan Brill, "Rogue Waves: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change" (McGraw-Hill Education, 2021)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jonathan Brill about his new book Rogue Waves: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change (McGraw-Hill E...
Barbara Fredrickson, “The Science of Emotions” (Open Agenda, 2020)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Science of Emotions is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Barbara Fredrickson, Director Positive Emotions & Psycho...
James W. Cortada, "IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon" (MIT Press, 2019)
18 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Retired from life after 38 years in several roles at IBM, the prolific academic production of James W. Cortada now continues telling his side of the s...
Raghav Rajagopalan, "Immersive Systemic Knowing: Advancing Systems Thinking Beyond Rational Analysis" (Springer Nature, 2020)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, we speak with Ragav Rajagopalan about his book, Immersive Systemic Knowing: Advancing Systems Thinking Beyond Rational Analysis, out...
Mark L. Johnson and Don M. Tucker, "Out of the Cave: A Natural Philosophy of Mind and Knowing" (MIT Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Plato's Allegory of the Cave trapped us in the illusion that mind is separate from body and from the natural and physical world. Knowledge had to be e...
Jonathan E. Robins, "Oil Palm: A Global History" (UNC Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Oil palms are ubiquitous—grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in ...
Charles Foster, “Defined By Relationship” (Open Agenda, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Defined By Relationship is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Charles Foster, who is a writer, traveller, veterinarian...
Lee McIntyre, "How to Talk to a Science Denier" (MIT Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change is a hoax--and so is coronavirus. Vaccines are bad for you. These days, many of our fellow citizens reject scientific expertise and pre...
Leslie Anne Hadfield, "A Bold Profession: African Nurses in Rural Apartheid South Africa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first African nurse was certified in the Ciskei region of South Africa during the early decades of the twentieth century. Since then, African nurs...
P. J. Boczkowski and E. Mitchelstein, "The Digital Environment: How We Live, Learn, Work, and Play Now" (MIT Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Increasingly we live through our personal screens; we work, play, socialize, and learn digitally. The shift to remote everything during the pandemic w...
Benjamin R. Cohen et al., "Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food" (MIT Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers ...
Victor Ferreira, “Speaking and Thinking” (Open Agenda, 2021)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Speaking and Thinking is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Victor Ferreira, Professor of Psychology and Principal Inv...
Mikkael A. Sekeres, "When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons from Leukemia" (MIT Press, 2020)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediat...
Nita Farahany, “Neurolaw” (Open Agenda, 2021)
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Neurolaw is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nita Farahany, Robert O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law and Pr...
Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, "When Maps Become the World" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are maps of the Earth’s landmasses, the universe, the ocean floors, human migration, the human brain: maps are so integral to how we interact ...
Beronda L. Montgomery, "Lessons from Plants" (Harvard UP, 2021)
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Lessons from Plants (Harvard University Press, 2021), Dr. Beronda Montgomery connects the science of plants to the behavior of people. She unpa...
Chiara Marletto, "The Science of Can and Can't: A Physicist's Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals" (Viking, 2021)
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There is a vast class of things that science has so far almost entirely neglected. They are central to the understanding of physical reality both at a...
Artur Ekert, “Cryptoreality” (Open Agenda, 2021)
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cryptoreality is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Artur Ekert, Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Inst...
John Davies and Alexander J. Kent, "The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union conducted an ambitious yet clandestine programme to map the world - from big cities like New York and Toky...
Peter B. Kaufman, "The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge" (Seven Stories Press, 2021)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Peter Kaufman, Program Manager in Strategic Initiatives and Resource Development at MIT Open Learning and author of Th...
Alex Csiszar, "The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Alex Csiszar, professor in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University and author of The Scientific Jour...
Hoyt Long, "The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2021)
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ideas about how to study and understand cultural history—particularly literature—are rapidly changing as new digital archives and tools for search...
John Duncan, “Investigating Intelligence” (Open Agenda, 2021)
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating Intelligence is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and neuroscientist John Duncan, University of Cambridge, ...
Chinmay Tumbe, "Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World" (Harper Collins, 2020)
02 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel I spoke with Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute ...
Iris Berent, "The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason about Human Nature" (Oxford UP, 2020)
02 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happi...
Joseph Curtin, “The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled” (Open Agenda, 2021)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and master violinmaker and acoustici...
James Ladyman and K. Wiesner, "What Is a Complex System?" (Yale UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
While i find it pretty easy to recognize when i'm reading articles in complexity science, i've never been satisfied by definitions of complexity and r...
Stefan Collini, “The Two Cultures, Revisited” (Open Agenda, 2021)
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The ‘Two Cultures’ debate of the 1960s between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis is one of the most misunderstood intellectual disputes of the 20th centur...
Simon Ferdinand, "Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity (U Nebraska Press, 2019), Simon Ferdinand analyzes diverse map-base...
The Renewable Energy Revolution in East Asia and the Nordics
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The world is in a midst of a renewable energy revolution, with the price of utility scale photo-voltaic solar power falling by nearly 90% between 2009...
Eszter Varsa, "Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956" (Central European UP, 2020)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Eszter Varsa’s new book Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1...
Gayle Rogers, "Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI" (Columbia UP, 2021)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a world that purports to know more about the future than any before it, why do we still need speculation? Insubstantial speculations – from utopi...
Joseph P. Laycock, "Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds" (U California Press, 2015)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that include...
Patricia Churchland, “Philosophy of Brain” (Open Agenda, 2021)
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophy of Brain is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland, UC San Diego. Patricia...
John Horgan, "Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science" (MIT Press, 2020)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What would it feel like to wake up inside the head of someone who writes about science for a living? John Horgan, acclaimed author of the bestseller ...
Michael Moore, "We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales' entanglement an...
Rahul Mukherjee, "Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty" (Duke UP, 2020)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (Duke UP, 2020), Rahul Mukherjee explores how the media coverage of nucl...
Popular Protests in the Age of #MilkTeaAlliance
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What influence can online and visual activism have on protest movements? With a wave of anti-establishment protests sweeping over East and Southeast A...
Eugene T. Richardson, "Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health" (MIT Press, 2020)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how pub...
James Leo Cahill and Luca Caminati, "Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice" (Routledge, 2020)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing together 18 contributions from leading international scholars, Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice (Routledge, 202...
Andrew Jenks, "Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth" (Anthem Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970...
Stacia Ryder et al., "Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene: From (Un)Just Presents to Just Futures" (Routledge, 2021)
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Through various international case studies presented by both practitioners and scholars, Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene: From (Un)Just Pre...
Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner, "Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to imagine a place more central to American mythology today than Silicon Valley. To outsiders, the region glitters with the promise of ext...
Terry McGlynn, "The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Terry McGlynn, author of The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching (U Chicago Press, 2020). McGlynn is also a profe...
John Troyer, "Technologies of the Human Corpse" (MIT Press, 2020)
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination--not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that...
Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, "Forces of Nature: The Women who Changed Science" (Frances Lincoln, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, dis...
Yurou Zhong, "Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916-1958" (Columbia UP, 2019)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1928 linguist Yuen Ren Chao had reason to celebrate. The Nationalist government had just recognized his system for writing Chinese, Gwoyeu Romatzy...
Adam Crymble, "Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The digital age has touched and changed pretty much everything, even altering how historical research is practiced. In his new book Technology and th...
Lindy McDougall, "The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century" (Indiana UP, 2021)
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in Gender Studies Jana Byars talks with Lindy McDougall, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia about her new book, The Perf...
Angus Fletcher, "Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature" (Simon & Schuster, 2021)
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere--from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others--each made a unique technical breakt...
Nicoletta Batini, "The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for Health and the Planet" (Island Press, 2021)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for Health and the Planet (Island Press, 2021), Dr. Nicoletta Batini, and co-authors, unpack t...
Nima Arkani-Hamed, “The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed” (Open Agenda, 2021)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nima Arkani-Hamed, faculty member at t...
Alyssa Ney, "The World in the Wave Function: A Metaphysics for Quantum Physics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Quantum mechanics is full of weird findings – for example, that systems widely separated can somehow still be correlated, and that a system may be i...
Thomas D. Mullaney et al., "Your Computer Is on Fire" (MIT Press, 2021)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking ...
Warren Mansell, "The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory" (Academic Press, 2020)
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Regular listeners to this podcast will be well aware of my strong conviction that the Perceptual Control Theory initially formulated by William T. Pow...
Kristin Poling, "Germany's Urban Frontiers: Nature and History on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century City" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In an era of transatlantic migration, Germans were fascinated by the myth of the frontier. Yet, for many, they were most likely to encounter frontier ...
Arunabh Ghosh, "Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People's Republic of China" (Princeton UP, 2020)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first historical study of the development of statistics in Mao-era China, Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People’s Repu...
Martin Summers, "Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the c...
Stefan Vogler, "Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Stefan Vogler deftly unpacks the pol...
Catalina M. de Onís, "Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2021)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) provides an urgent and nuanced p...
Nathan R. Johnson, "Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are now living in the richest age of public memory. From museums and memorials to the vast digital infrastructure of the internet, access to the pa...
Jenny Price, "Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto" (W. W. Norton, 2021)
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been “saving the planet” for decades…and environmental crises just get worse. All this Tesla driving and LEED building and carbon tra...
Sandeep Mertia, "Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India" (Institute of Networked Cultures, 2020)
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India (Institute of Networked Cultures, 2020) maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big d...
Luiz Valerio de Paula Trindade, "No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media" (Vernon Press, 2020)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media (Vernon Press, 2020) examines the social phenomenon of construction and diss...
Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Hea...
Open Access Publishing Explained: A Discussion with Ros Pyne
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to br...
stef m. shuster, "Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender" (NYU Press, 2021)
30 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A rich examination of the history of trans medicine and current day practice Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century, yet shrouded in social stigma, tr...
Rowena Lennox, "Dingo Bold: The Life and Death of K'gari Dingoes" (Sydney UP, 2021)
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Australia and dingos - we have a past and future, and not without controversy. Dingo Bold: The Life and Death of K'gari Dingoes (Sydney UP, 2021) e...
Leah DeVun, "The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance" (Columbia UP, 2021)
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Leah DeVun is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Leah DeVun focuses on the history of gender, sexuality, science, and medicine i...
Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither sh...
Faith Kearns, "Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement" (Island Press, 2021)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication (Island Press, 2021), Dr. Faith Kearns unpacks science communication as so much more than the “...
Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical...
Canay Özden-Schilling, "The Current Economy: Making Energy and Markets in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2021)
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Electricity is a quirky commodity: more often than not, it cannot be stored, easily transported, or imported from overseas. Before lighting up our hom...
Sarah K. Mock, "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm" (New Degree Press, 2021)
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm (New Degree Press, 2021), Sarah K. Mock seeks to answer “what exactly d...
Howard Burton, "First Principles: Building Perimeter Institute" (Open Agenda Publishing, 2021)
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this second edition of First Principles: Building Perimeter Institute, Howard Burton tells the remarkable and unconventional story—with a bold a...
Jessica Helfand, "Face: A Visual Odyssey" (MIT Press, 2019)
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jessica Helfand about her new book Face: A Visual Odyssey (MIT Press, 2019) Helfand is a designer, artist, and author. She’s tau...
Gavin Van Horn and John Hausdoerffer, "Wildness: Relations of People and Place" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whether referring to a place, a nonhuman animal or plant, or a state of mind, wild indicates autonomy and agency, a unique expression of life. Yet t...
Aim Sinpeng, "Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age: The Yellow Shirts in Thailand" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why did hundreds of thousands of Thai people rise up in opposition to elected governments in 2006, 2008 and 2013-14? What were the ideological underpi...
Javier Guerrero C., "Narcosubmarines: Outlaw Innovation and Maritime Interdiction in the War on Drugs" (Palgrave, 2020)
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Javier Guerrero's "Narcosubmarines: Outlaw Innovation and Maritime Interdiction in the War on Drugs" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) is about the encounter...
Howard Burton, "Conversations About Neuroscience" (Open Agenda, 2020)
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This Ideas Roadshow Collection includes five Ideas Roadshow books that have been developed from filmed wide-ranging conversations with the following l...
Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021)
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in Amer...
W. Patrick McCray, "Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture" (MIT Press, 2020)
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Artwork as opposed to experiment? Engineer versus artist? We often see two different cultural realms separated by impervious walls. But some fifty yea...
George Szmukler, "Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion" (Oxford UP, 2017)
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their...
A. Burton and R. Mawani, "Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times" (Duke UP, 2020)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to An...
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "Objectivity" (Zone Books, 2010)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Obj...
Jonathan Rauch, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth" (Brookings, 2021)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years Americans have experienced a range of assaults upon the truth. In The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Insti...
Suzanne L. Marchand, "Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2020)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Suzanne L. Marchand's new book Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020) balances several histories at once t...
Maneesha Deckha, "Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders (University of Toronto Press, 2021), Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Can...
S. Livingstone and A. Blum-Ross, "Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives" (Oxford UP, 2020)
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, I talked with Professor Sonia Livingstone about her book Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shap...