New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Michelle Nijhuis, "Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction" (Norton, 2021)
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species...
Jason Karlawish, "The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It" (St. Martin's Press, 2021)
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complicati...
Can we Disagree Online Respectfully?: A Discussion with Ian Leslie
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Confl...
Scott Berkun, "How Design Makes the World" (2020)
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everything you use, from your home to your smartphone, from highways to supermarkets, was designed by someone. What did they get right? Where did they...
Tetyana Lokot, "Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tetyana Lokot's new book Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) examines how citizens use digit...
T. Sanders et al., "Paying for Sex in a Digital Age: US and UK Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020)
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based ...
Pallavi Guha, "Hear #metoo in India: News, Social Media, and Anti-Rape and Sexual Harassment Activism" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
07 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Everyone, and welcome to New Books in Gender and Sexuality, a channel on the New Books Network. I’m your host, Jana Byars, and I’m here toda...
Jillian C. York, "Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism" (Verso Book, 2021)
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the impact of surveillance capitalism on our right to free speech? The Internet once promised to be a place of extraordinary freedom beyond th...
Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym, "Twitter: A Biography" (NYU Press, 2020)
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As Twitter enters its own adolescence, both the users and the creators of this famous social media platform find themselves engaging with a tool tha...
Susan M. Reverby, "Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy" (UNC Press, 2013)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some books are new, others are newly relevant – and so worth looking at from a new, contemporary perspective. Such is the case with Susan Reverby’...
David Rainbow, "Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in Global Context" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2019)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Conflicting notions about the dynamics of race in Russia and the Soviet Union have made it difficult for both scholars and other observers of the regi...
Patrick Vitale, "Nuclear Suburbs: Cold War Technoscience and the Pittsburgh Renaissance" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From submarines to the suburbs--the remaking of Pittsburgh during the Cold War During the early Cold War, research facilities became ubiquitous featur...
Daniel Greene, "The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope" (MIT Press, 2021)
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology? What makes us feel that we need to learn to code--or else? In The Promise of Access: Technolo...
Carol Dyhouse, "Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen" (Oxford UP, 2021)
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cinderella stories captured the imagination of girls in the 1950s, when dreams of meeting the right man could seem like a happy ending, a solution to ...
Mary A. Brazelton, "Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2019)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. D...
Elise K. Burton, "Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity" (Stanford UP, 2021)
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elise K. Burton’s important book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021), documen...
John Ferris, "Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For more than a hundred years, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has played a central role in the conduct of British statecraft. But the ...
Brent D. Ziarnick, "To Rule the Skies: General Thomas S. Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War" (US Naval Institute Press, 2021)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A sadist. A madman. A sociopath seduced by the terrible allure of nuclear weapons. These are but a few of the pejoratives commonly used to describe Un...
Dave Auckly, et al., "Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles" (AMS, 2019)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Math circles defy simple narratives. The model was introduced a century ago, and is taking off in the present day thanks in part to its congruence wit...
Melvin Konner, "Believers: Faith in Human Nature" (Norton, 2019)
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist's answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is a...
Leigh Calvez, "The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature's Most Elusive Birds" (Sasquatch Books, 2016)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Join naturalist and science writer Leigh Calvez on her adventures into science and spirit of animals, as we discuss her two recent books: The Hidde...
James Doucet-Battle, "Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so f...
Douglas M. O'Reagan, "Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Dou...
Robert T. Tierney, "Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame" (U California Press, 2010)
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figur...
Daniel Heifetz, "The Science of Satyug: Class, Charisma, and Vedic Revivalism in the All World Gayatri Pariwar" (SUNY Press, 2021)
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement. The All World Gayatri Pariwar is a modern religious mov...
Mathew Sweezey, "The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media" (Harvard Business Press, 2020)
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Mathew Sweezy about his new book The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media (Harvard...
Joel Waldfogel, "Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture" (Princeton UP, 2020)
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Digitization is reshaping creative industries. Old gatekeepers in music, publishing, television, movies, and other industries no longer play such an i...
Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia, "Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan" (Stanford UP, 2019)
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the pos...
Kas Saghafi, "The World after the End of the World: A Spectro-Poetics" (SUNY Press, 2020)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I interview Kas Saghafi, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis, about his book The World After the End of t...
Carolyn J. Heinrich, et al., "Equity and Quality in Digital Learning: Realizing the Promise in K-12 Education" (Harvard Education Press, 2020)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID19 pandemic has profoundly changed the landscape of K-12 education in our society. Last March, many states closed their brick-and-mortar scho...
Allison Cobb, "Plastic: An Autobiography" (Nightboat Books, 2021)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic: An Autobiography (Nightboat Books, 2021) explores how technology, sprung from desire, draws all beings into its net, and asks how to live j...
R. Armstrong and R. Hughes "The Art of Experiment: Post-Pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st-Century Architecture and Design" (Routledge, 2020)
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Art of Experiment: Post-Pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st-Century Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2020) is a handbook for navigating our ...
Jon Birger, "Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge" (Benbella, 2021)
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Apps have transformed dating from a mysterious adventure into a daily chore. Young, single, college-educated women are sick and tired of competing for...
David Wills, "Prosthesis" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I interview David Wills, professor of French Studies at Brown University, about his book, Prosthesis, recently republished for its 2...
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" (HarperCollins, 2017)
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Economist, data journalist, and best-selling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses data from the internet to gain new insights into the human psyche....
Can We Fix Social Media?: A Discussion with Christopher A. Bail
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We ...
Jürgen P. Melzer, "Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation" (Harvard UP, 2020)
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jürgen Melzer’s Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation (Harvard UP, 2020) traces the history of Japanese aviation...
Christopher Thaiss, "Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century" (Broadview Press, 2019)
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Christopher Thaiss, author of Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century (Broadview Press 2019). We talk about the rese...
Maria San Filippo, "Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media" (Indiana UP, 2021)
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty-first century media has increasingly turned to provocative sexual content to generate buzz and stand out within a glut of programming. New dist...
Philip N. Howard, "Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives" (Yale UP, 2020)
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Technology is breaking politics - what can be done about it? Artificially intelligent "bot" accounts attack politicians and public figures on social m...
Mark A. Waddell, "Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Mark A. Waddell, Associate professor of History, Philosophy & Sociology of Science in the Department of History at Mic...
Avi Loeb, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth" (Houghton Mifflin, 2021)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only hav...
Lucas Richert, "Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture" (MIT Press, 2020)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. Th...
James S. J. Schwartz, "The Value of Science in Space Exploration" (Oxford UP, 2020)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Value of Science in Space Exploration (Oxford UP, 2020) provides a rigorous assessment of the value of scientific knowledge and understanding in ...
Doug Bierend. "In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms" (Chelsea Green, 2021)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From ecology to fermentation, in pop culture and in medicine—mushrooms are everywhere. With an explorer’s eye, author Doug Bierend guides readers ...
Edward Ashford Lee, "The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines" (MIT Press, 2020)
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are humans defining technology, or is technology defining humans? In The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines (MIT Press, 2020),...
Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942...
Agnieszka Kościańska, "Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland" (Indiana UP, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly su...
Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and s...
Roy Richard Grinker, "Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness" (Norton, 2021)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centur...
Katherine E. Standefer, "Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life" (Little, Brown Spark, 2020)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the push for a Universal Healthcare system in the United States becomes more and more popular among the American people, we’re beginning to have ...
Sara Ritchey, "Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health" (Cornell UP, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are here today with Sara Ritchey, associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN, about her new book, Acts of Car...
William Max Nelson, "The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future...
Lukas Engelmann and Christos Lynteris, "Sulphuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation" (MIT Press, 2020)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As we mark the one-year anniversary of the COIVD-19 pandemic, take the time to listen to this discussion of previous efforts to fight yellow fever, ch...
John Durham Peters et al., "Action at a Distance" (Meson Press, 2020)
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary media leads us more than ever to an ‘acting at a distance,’ an acting entangled with the materiality of communication and the mediali...
Aaron Tugendhaft, "The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, the Islamic State released a video of men smashing sculptures in Iraq’s Mosul Museum as part of a mission to cleanse the world of idolatry....
Courtney E. Thompson, "An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the origins of both popular and elite t...
A. Blair and K. von Greyerz, "Physico-Theology: Religion and Science in Europe, 1650–1750 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz have edited an outstanding volume that breaks important new ground in the history of early modern science and religio...
Alisha Rankin, "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science" (Alisha Rankin, 2021)
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poiso...
Mitchell L. Hammond, "Epidemics and the Modern World" (University of Toronto Press, 2020)
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Normally we write blogposts that try to convince you to listen to a conversation with an author about their fascinating book. In the time of COVID-19,...
Juno Salazar Parreñas, "Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation" (Duke University Press, 2018)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press, 2018) presents a multi-species ethnography of orangutan...
Katie Hindmarch-Watson, "Serving a Wired World: London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital" (U California Press, 2020)
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did telecommunications shape Victorian London? In Serving a Wired World London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capi...
David Payne on the Community of Scientists and Diversity
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of David Payne, who is Chief Careers Editor at Nature. We talk about high quality writing, about the gracious community of...
Liat Ben-Moshe, "Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral fa...
J. L. Heilbron, "The Ghost of Galileo: In a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Heilbron, professor of history and vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of our most distinguished - and pro...
Pey-Yi Chu, "The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Anthropocene, the thawing of frozen earth due to global warming has drawn worldwide attention to permafrost. Contemporary scientists define per...
Edzard Ernst, "Chiropractic: Not All That It's Cracked Up to Be" (Springer, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Of all forms of alternative medicine, chiropractic is the one that is most generally accepted. In the UK, for instance, chiropractors are regulated by...
John M. Janzen, "Health in a Fragile State. Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo" (Wisconsin UP, 2019)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John M. Janzen's Health in a Fragile State: Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) offers a granular an...
Evan Friss, "The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s" (U Chicago Press, 2015)
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Dr. Evan Friss, associate professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia in the US to talk...
Roland T. Rust and Ming-Hui Huang, "The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ming-Hui Huang about her book (coauthored with Roland T. Rust), The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the ...
Common Ground Scholar: A Discussion with Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, creators of the website newlearningonline.com and also professors at the College of Educat...
J. Jureidini and L. B. McHenry, "The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the Crisis of Credibility in Clinical Research" (Wakefield Press, 2020)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An exposé of the corruption of medicine by the pharmaceutical industry at every level, from exploiting the vulnerable destitute for drug testing, thr...
Han Yu, "Mind Thief: The Story of Alzheimer's" (Columbia UP, 2021)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alzheimer’s disease, a haunting and harrowing ailment, is one of the world’s most common causes of death. Alzheimer’s lingers for years, with pa...
Ronald J. Deibert, "Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society" (House of Anansi, 2020)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ronald Deibert is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and the Director of The Citizen Lab, a public interest research organi...
Teresa Berger, "@Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds" (Routledge, 2018)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Digital dualism, or a sharp division between online and offline activity as "virtual" or "real" has long been a feature of liturgical studies and disc...
Erika Engelhaupt, "Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science" (National Geographic, 2020)
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Would your dog eat you if you died? What are face mites? Why do clowns creep us out? In this illuminating collection of grisly true science stories, j...
L. Vinsel and A. L. Russell, "The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most" (Currency, 2020)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a...
Tracie White and Ronald W. Davis, "The Puzzle Solver: A Scientist's Desperate Hunt to Cure the Illness That Stole His Son" (Hachette, 2021)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Based on a viral article, the gripping medical mystery story of Ron Davis, a world-class Stanford geneticist who has put his career on the line to fin...
Seema Yasmin, "Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Can your zip code predict when you will die? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e...
Jacob Steere-Williams, "The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific d...
Nicole Perlroth, "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For years, cybersecurity experts have debated whether cyber-weapons represent a destabilizing new military technology or merely the newest tool in the...
Alan Lightman, "Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings" (Pantheon, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Imagination with a Straight Jacket Alan Lightman is a writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Ma...
S. Carlsson and J. Leijonhufvud, "The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance" (Diversion Books, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fifteen years ago in Stockholm, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had a big idea. The music industry was playing a desperate game of whack-a-mole with pi...
Emily Willingham, "Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis" (Avery, 2020)
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fallacy sold to many of us is that the penis signals dominance and power. But this wry and penetrating book reveals that in fact nature did not sh...
David Badre, "On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done" (Princeton UP, 2020)
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton UP, 2020) is a look at the extraordinary ways the brain turns thoughts into actions—and how thi...
Hannah Marcus, "Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Hannah Marcus, Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a...
Daniel B. Rood, "The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The period of the "second slavery" was marked by geographic expansion of zones of slavery into the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil and chronological ...
Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, "Vera Rubin: A Life" (Harvard UP, 2021)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few astronomers in the 20th century did as much to expand our understanding of the universe as Vera Rubin. To tell her remarkable story in their biog...
Henry T. Greely, "CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans" (The MIT Press, 2021)
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does the birth of babies whose embryos have gone through genome editing mean—for science and for all of us? In November 2018, the world was sho...
Nathaniel Greenberg, "How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Egypt and Tunisia" (Edinburgh UP, 2019)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London p...
Jeremy Black, "A History of the 20th Century: Conflict, Technology & Rock'n'roll" (Sirius Entertainment, 2021)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black – professor of history at Exeter University, and one of the world’s most prolific writers – has just published an outstanding illus...
Jack Price, "The Future of Brain Repair: A Realist's Guide to Stem Cell Therapy" (MIT Press, 2020)
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A scientist assesses the potential of stem cell therapies for treating such brain disorders as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s diseas...
Nina Jankowicz, "How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Barely a month after the riot on the Capitol Building, the United States is no more adept at fending off foreign information operations than it was fo...
Tara Fickle, "The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities" (NYU Press, 2019)
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This unique episode features a dual/duel interview with two authors whose recent books focus on the overlapping contexts and theories of Game Studies ...
Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A four-hundred-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. Tracing the development of al...
Matthieu Ricard, "A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion" (Shambhala, 2016)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Matthieu Ricard about two books. The first is A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to T...
Michael Rossi, "The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America" (Chicago UP, 2019)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The appreciation of color is considered universal among human societies, yet varies vastly according to cultural norms and material circumstances. In ...
Ethan Lou, "Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended" (Signal, 2020)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are just over a year from when global news first reported a new type of pneumonia emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A lockdown of Wuhan on Jan...
Earl Wright II, "Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology" (University of Cincinnati Press, 2020)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology (U Cincinnati Press, 2020) is an extraordinary new volume that examines the o...
Jon Birger, "Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge" (BenBella Books, 2021)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Modern romance is broken. It's time to flip the script. Apps have transformed dating from a mysterious adventure into a daily chore. Young, single, co...