New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Hannah Star Rogers, "Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2022)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2022)' by Hannah Star Rogers When I sat down with Hannah Star Rogers to discuss her new book...

Petter Törnberg and Justus Uitermark, "Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity (Taylor & Francis, 2025)' by Petter Törnberg & Justus Uitermark In m...

Tatiana Bur, "Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025) This open-access book investigates the ways that techno...

Vijay Selvam, "Principles of Bitcoin: Technology, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. B...

Kenneth Jones, "African American Males and Video Games: How Gaming Technology Can Motivate and Enhance Learning" (Myers Education, 2025)

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

African American males are confronted with formidable barriers in their pursuit of quality education, resulting in stark disparities in academic perfo...

Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment...

Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favo...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...

Athena Aktipis, "The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer" (Princeton UP, 2020)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the histori...

Emilio Elizalde, "The True Story of Modern Cosmology: Origins, Main Actors and Breakthroughs" (Springer, 2021)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book tells the story of how, over the past century, dedicated observers and pioneering scientists achieved our current understanding of the unive...

David J. Helfand, "The Universal Timekeepers: Reconstructing History Atom by Atom" (Columbia UP, 2023)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Atoms are unfathomably tiny. It takes fifteen million trillion of them to make up a single poppy seed—give or take a few billion. And there’s hard...

154 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, Kim Stanley Robinson h...

Maxim Samson, "Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World" (Profile Books, 2025)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mountains, meridians, rivers, and borders--these are some of the features that divide the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far les...

The Social Impact of Automating Translation

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Inter...

Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of ...

On Bullshit in AI

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re continuing our series on Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. I have the privilege to speak with Arvind Narayanan co-author o...

Christa Kuljian, "Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race, and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Christa Kuljian arrived on the Harvard College campus as a first-year student in the fall of 1980 with copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. ...

Anil Ananthaswamy, "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI" (Dutton, 2024)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Machine learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumor is cancerous, or deciding if...

Aline Nardo, "Evolutionary Theory and Education" (Brill, 2025)

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolution...

Book Talk 67 : The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to und...

Kurt D. Fausch, "A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters" (OSU Press, 2025)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters (OSU Press, 2025), Kurt Fausch draws on his experience as a stream ecologist, h...

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)

26 Jul 2025

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...

Paul A. Thomas, "Inside Wikipedia: How It Works and How You Can Be an Editor" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this book, Paul A. Thomas—a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who has accrued about 60,000 edits since he started editing in 2007—breaks down the ...

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it goin...

Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T. Nguyen eds., "Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics" (NYU Press, 2025)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics, Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen come together across disciplines to offer a...

Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019)

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist whose best-selling 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest...

How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

 Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learnin...

Meegan Kennedy, "Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism" (Oxford UP, 2025)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopi...

Cara Wallis, "Social Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China" (NYU Press, 2025)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on domestic workers, rural microentrepreneurs, disadvantaged young creatives, and young feminists, Social Media and Ordinary Life (NYU Pres...

Haley Cohen Gilliland, "A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s...

Chris Bernhardt, "Beautiful Math: The Surprisingly Simple Ideas behind the Digital Revolution in How We Live, Work, and Communicate" (MIT Press, 2024)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us know something about the grand theories of physics that transformed our views of the universe at the start of the twentieth century: quantu...

Savannah Mandel on an Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with space anthropologist, writer, and Virginia Tech doctoral candidate, Savannah Mandel, about her book, Gr...

Andréa Becker, "Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy" (NYU Press, 2025)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, ...

Emma Marris, "Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), Emma Marris wrestles with big ethical questions facin...

David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal...

Rebecca Lemov, "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion" (Norton, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Because brainwashing affects both the world and our observation of the world, we often don’t recognize it while it’s happening—unless we know wh...

Tom Waidzunas et al., "Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM Professionals and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times" (UMass Press, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer professionals have organized to achieve greater inclusion into the fields of sc...

Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants" (Cornell UP, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation th...

Edward Tenner, "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences" (APS Press, 2025)

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did the addition of lifeboats after the Titanic shipwreck contribute to another tragedy in Chicago harbor three years later? How efficient are wil...

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot...

Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Bo...

Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austi...

Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending Republic: The Ballooning Revival in Nineteenth-Century France" (MIT Press, 2025)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the m...

Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper, "Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A thrilling exploration of competing cosmological origin stories, comparing new scientific ideas that upend our very notions of space, time, and reali...

Matthew Wisnioski on the History of the Idea and Culture of “Innovation” in the United States

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Wisnioski, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, about his new book, Eve...

David Zweig, "An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions" (MIT Press, 2025)

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions (MIT Press, 2025) is a devastating account of the decision-making...

Elliot Lichtman, "The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games" (MIT Press, 2025)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games (MIT Press, 2025), Elliot Lichtman will teach ...

John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025)

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1960s continue to hold an almost mythical place in Western culture, particularly in Britain, where change was widespread and infiltrated many aspe...

David Crystal, "Bookish Words and Their Surprising Stories" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Bookish Words & their Surprising Stories (Bodleian, 2025) by Dr. David Crystal, explore how books have played a pivotal role in the history of En...

Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Jeremy Stolow is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and...

Trans Technologies

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can technology creates new possibilities for transgender people? How do trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology? Tran...

Anna Gjika, "When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age" (Univ of California Press, 2023)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stories of teen sexting scandals, cyberbullying, and image-based sexual abuse have become commonplace fixtures of the digital age, with many adults st...

Violet Moller, "Inside the Stargazer's Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Europe" (OneWorld, 2024)

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into vi...

Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College...

Kean Birch, "Data Enclaves" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Data Enclaves (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) focuses on our increasing dependence upon Big Tech to live, manage, and enjoy our lives. The author examines...

Sarah Bilston, "The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession" (Harvard UP, 2025)

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1818, a curious root arrived in a small English village, tucked—seemingly by accident—in a packing case mailed from Brazil. The amateur botanis...

Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis, "Power On!" (MIT Press, 2022)

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An interview with Jean Ryoo and Jane Margolis about Power On! A diverse group of teenage friends learn how computing can be personally and political...

Beth Linker on Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the...

Lina Pinto-García, "Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

31 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between...

Erica D. Lonergan and Shawn W. Lonergan, "Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To what extent do cyberspace operations increase the risks of escalation between nation-state rivals? Scholars and practitioners have been concerned a...

Mitchell Thomashow, "To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning" (MIT Press, 2020)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can...

Alex Davies, "Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car" (Simon & Schuster, 2022)

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (Simon & Schuster, 2022), Alex Davies tells the enlightening and significant story of the effort ...

Tim Minshall, "How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing" (Ecco, 2025)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book from Cambridge University Professor Tim Minshall provides an enlightening view of how the world of manufacturing world has an immense influe...

William F. Owen, "Euclid's Army: Preparing Land Forces for Warfare Today" (Howgate Publishing, 2024)

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rejecting much of the conventional wisdom to what makes up a modern Army, William F. Owen's Euclid's Army: Preparing Land Forces for Warfare Today (...

Empire of Gain: Inside Trump’s Billion-Dollar Crypto Hustle

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones are joined by crypto journalist Matt Binder and longtime observer of U.S. politics and policy Edward Luce...

Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an essay about her recent book Searches (Pantheon, 2025), a genre-bending chronicle of the deeply personal ways we use the internet and the uncan...

From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Cul...

Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...

Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, "The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal" (Oxford UP, 2023)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, ...

Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us...

Brain Rot: What Our Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (8)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Episode 8, Dr. Messina and Dr. Gill, the host and co-host of this podcast, talked about the emotional toll that is associated with lost time---time...

Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil libe...

Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by wh...

Darryl Campbell, "Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software" (W. W. Norton, 2025)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix. Software was supposed to radically improve society. Ou...

Sandra Matz, "Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior" (HBRP, 2025)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A fascinating exploration of how algorithms penetrate the most intimate aspects of our psychology—from the pioneering expert on psychological target...

Brain Rot: What Our Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (7)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drs. Messina and Gill discussed the concept of technoference, which refers to the interference of technology with human connection and its impact on p...

Peter Krapp, "Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation" (MIT Press, 2024)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Netw...

Jessica Smith on Engineering and Public Accountability in Energy Industries

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Jessica Smith, Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department and Dean’s Fellow for Earth ...

Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has s...

Institutional Corruption in News Media: A Conversation with William English

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why has trust in the news media declined? How can we combat biased reporting and the spread of misinformation? And how do these challenges compare to ...

Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...

Radiophilia

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you like...

Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who hav...

Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on t...

Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is vid...

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and de...

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, ...

Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (6)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drs. Messina and Gill talked about cognitive offloading in our digital age—how smartphones, AI, and other technologies are reshaping our mental habi...

Will AI Transform What it Means to be Human in the Next Ten Years?

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and what impact will AI have on being human in the next decade? Elon University’s Center for Imagining the Digital Future...

Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have d...

Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although...

Ian Boyd, "Science and Politics" (Polity, 2024)

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. Bu...

María de Los Ángeles Picone, "Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina" (UNC Press, 2025)

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and geographical knowledge not only to consolidate power and...

Yellowlees Douglas, "Writing for the Reader's Brain: A Science-Based Guide" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What makes one sentence easy to read and another a slog that demands re-reading? Where do you put information you want readers to recall? Drawing on c...

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author ...

Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, ...

Milena Droumeva, "Playthrough Poetics: Gameplay as Research Method" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Game streamers and live commentators are producing increasingly comprehensive analyses of gameplay, yet scholarship still tends to flatten the experie...

Brain Rot: How Screens Affect the Minds of Middle-Age and Older Adults

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 5 Dr. Karyne Messina and Dr. Harry Gill talked about what can happen when middle-age and older adults watch screens too much as opposed to ...

Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Coordinator of the Media Studies Init...

Rebecca Heisman, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration" (Harper, 2025)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Flight Paths (HarperCollins, 2023), Rebecca Heisman illuminates the stories and methods of the scientists who unlocked the secrets of bird migrat...