The MIT Press Podcast
Episodes
Kees van Deemter, “Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
22 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes we have to depend on philosophy to explain to us why something apparently simple is in fact extremely complicated. The way we use referring ...
David Danks, “Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models” (MIT Press, 2014)
15 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For many cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of mind, the best current theory of cognition holds that thinking is in some sense comp...
Tara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
11 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Fueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, War...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: T...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: T...
Benjamin Hale, “The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature” (MIT Press, 2016)
15 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Many environmentalists approach the problem of motivating environmentally friendly behavior from the perspective that nature is good and that we ought...
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry...
Jennifer Greenwood, “Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality” (MIT, 2016)
18 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Psychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotio...
Sharon Rotbard, “White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa” (MIT Press, 2015)
26 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (MIT Press, 2015), Sharon Rotbard, Senior Lecturer in the Architecture Departmen...
James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)
26 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned...
Benjamin Peters, “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” (MIT Press, 2016)
16 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Something we might think of as the Soviet internet once existed, according to Benjamin Peters‘ new book, and its failure was neither natural nor ine...
Arianna Betti, “Against Facts” (MIT Press, 2015)
15 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell claimed it is a truism that there are facts: the planets revolve around the sun, 2 + 2 = 4, elep...
Jonathan Donner, “After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet” (MIT Press, 2015)
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to mobile phones, getting online is easier and cheaper than ever. In After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet (MIT Pres...
Phillip Penix-Tadsen, “Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America” (MIT Press, 2016)
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Symbols have meanings that change depending upon the cultural context. But how do we discuss symbols, their meanings, and their cultural contexts with...
Jeffery Pomerantz, “Metadata” (MIT, 2015)
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the “stuff” that fuels the information society in which we live? In his new book, Metadata (MIT 2015), information scientist Jeffrey Pomer...
Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Finn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our atten...
Colin Klein, “What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain” (MIT Press, 2015)
15 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing seems so obviously true as the claim that pains feel bad, that pain and suffering go together. Almost as obviously, it seems that the function...
Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machines” (MIT 2015)
06 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, becam...
Nathan Altice, “I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer-Entertainment System Platform” (MIT Press, 2015)
23 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The genre of “platform studies” offers both researchers and readers more than an examination of the technical machinations of a computing system. ...
Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder, “Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities” (MIT Press, 2015)
15 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
By now it is incontrovertible that new technology has had an effect on how regular people get information. Whether in the form of an online newspaper ...
Joseph M. Reagle, “Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web” (MIT Press, 2015)
02 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What do we know about the individuals who make comments on online news stories, blogs, videos and other media? What kind of people take the time to po...
M. Chirimuuta, “Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy” (MIT Press, 2015)
15 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What is color? On the one hand it seems obvious that it is a property of objects – roses are red, violets are blue, and so on. On the other hand, ev...
Chad Engelland, “Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind” (MIT Press, 2015)
14 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How do we learn our first words? What is it that makes the linguistic intentions of others manifest to us, when our eyes follow a pointing finger to a...
Helen de Cruz and Johan de Smedt, “A Natural History of Natural Theology” (MIT Press, 2015)
15 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion (MIT Press, 2015), Helen de Cruz of the VU Univ...
Charis Thompson, “Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research” (MIT Press, 2013)
08 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Charis Thompson‘s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book. Good Science explores the “...
John Sharp, “Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art” (MIT Press, 2015)
01 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
That games, particularly video games, could be viewed as art should come as no surprise. And yet, a debate exists over what is and should be considere...
Colin McGinn, “Philosophy of Language: the Classics Explained” (MIT Press, 2015)
28 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I must admit that my relationship to philosophy of language is a bit like my relationship to classic literature: I tend to admire it from afar, and re...
Myles W. Jackson, “The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race” (MIT Press, 2015)
18 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when you allow human materials to become property? More specifically, how does granting monopoly rights over genetic material affect the ...
Christine L. Borgman, “Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World” (MIT Press, 2015)
20 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Social media and digital technology now allow researchers to collect vast amounts of a variety data quickly. This so-called “big data,” and the pr...
Casey O’Donnell, “Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators” (MIT Press, 2014)
06 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (MIT Press, 2014), Casey O’Donnell, an assistant professor in the dep...
Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke, “Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming” (MIT, 2014)
07 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few ...
Gohar Homayounpour, “Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran” (MIT Press, 2012)
19 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran (MIT Press, 2012) — part memoir, part elegy, and part collection of clinical vignettes — Gohar Homayounpour take...
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, “Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe” (MIT Press, 2014)
14 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Words have meaning. More specifically, the definitions attached to words shape our perspective on, and how we categorize, the things that we encounter...
Alon Peled, “Traversing Digital Babel: Information, E-Government, and Exchange” (MIT Press, 2014)
07 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Failure by government agencies to share information has had disastrous results globally. From the inability to prevent terrorist attacks, like the 9-1...
James Nisbet, “Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s” (MIT Press, 2014)
10 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It is a rare event when a dissertation focused on a single work yields a rich and fruitful account of an entire period. James Nisbet‘s new book, whi...
Elise Springer, “Communicating Moral Concern: An Ethics of Critical Responsiveness” (MIT Press, 2013)
01 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The long tradition of moral philosophy employs a familiar collection of basic concepts. These include concepts like agent, act, intention, consequence...
Josh Lerner, “Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics” (MIT Press, 2014)
28 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Lerner is the author of Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics (MIT Press, 2014). Lerner earned his Ph...
Judith Donath, “The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online” (MIT Press, 2014)
19 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The conversation about the Web and social media skews toward a discussion of the potential for connections, and how both individuals and organizations...
Marcin Milkowski, “Explaining the Computational Mind” (MIT Press, 2013)
15 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The computational theory of mind has its roots in Alan Turing’s development of the basic ideas behind computer programming, specifically the manipul...
Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova, “Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis” (MIT, 2014)
19 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The continued growth of online gaming and virtual worlds has effects not only in the analog world, with games and social media organizations taking st...
Peter Gardenfors, “The Geometry of Meaning: Semantics Based on Conceptual Spaces” (MIT Press, 2014)
09 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A conceptual space sounds like a rather nebulous thing, and basing a semantics on conceptual spaces sounds similarly nebulous. In The Geometry of Mean...
David Adger, “A Syntax of Substance” (MIT Press, 2013)
26 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Nouns are the bread and butter of linguistic analysis, and it’s easy not to reflect too hard on what they actually are and how they work. In A Synta...
Alistair Knott, “Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax” (MIT Press, 2012)
28 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When big claims are made about neurolinguistics, there often seems to be a subtext that the latest findings will render traditional linguistics obsole...
Gabriel Finkelstein, “Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany” (MIT Press, 2013)
14 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
“A good wife and a healthy child are better for one’s temper than frogs.” For Gabriel Finkelstein, Emil du Bois-Reymond was “the most importan...
Gabrielle Hecht, “Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade” (MIT Press, 2012)
10 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to understand the nuclear age as a historical break, a geopolitical and technological rupture. In Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uran...
William J. Clancey, “Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers” (MIT Press, 2012)
03 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
How does conducting fieldwork on another planet, using a robot as a mobile laboratory, change what it means to be a scientist? In Working on Mars: Vo...
Tadeusz Zawidzki, “Mindshaping: A New Framework for Understanding Human Social Cognition” (MIT Press, 2013)
15 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Social cognition involves a small bundle of cognitive capacities and behaviors that enable us to communicate and get along with one another, a bundle ...
David Munns, “A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy” (MIT Press, 2012)
29 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
How do you measure a star? In the middle of the 20thcentury, an interdisciplinary and international community of scientists began using radio waves to...
Anne Cutler, “Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words” (MIT Press, 2012)
01 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there’s no way around this and we just hav...
Patrick Hanks, “Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations” (MIT Press, 2013)
10 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
It’s tempting to think that lexicography can go on, untroubled by the concerns of theoretical linguistics, while the rest of us plunge into round af...
Jonathan Bobaljik, “Universals of Comparative Morphology” (MIT Press, 2012)
06 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Morphology is sometimes painted as the ‘here be dragons’ of the linguistic map: a baffling domain of idiosyncrasies and irregularities, in which H...
Alexandra Hui, “The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910” (MIT Press, 2013)
30 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In The Psychophysical Ear: Musical Experiments, Experimental Sounds, 1840-1910 (MIT Press, 2013), Alexandra Hui explores a fascinating chapter of that...
Stephen E. Nadeau, “The Neural Architecture of Grammar” (MIT Press, 2012)
13 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Although there seems to be a trend towards linguistic theories getting more cognitively or neurally plausible, there doesn’t seem to be an imminent ...
Matthew Wisnioski, “Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America” (MIT Press, 2012)
26 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In his compelling and fascinating account of how engineers navigated new landscapes of technology and its discontents in 1960s America, Matthew Wisnio...
Kristin Andrews, “Do Apes Read Minds?: Toward a New Folk Psychology” (MIT Press, 2012)
15 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The ability to figure out the mental lives of others – what they want, what they believe, what they know — is basic to our relationships. Sherlock...
Lee Braver, “Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger” (MIT Press, 2012)
15 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are both considered among the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Both were born in 1889 ...
David A. Kirby, “Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema” (MIT Press, 2011)
02 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
First things first: this was probably the most fun I’ve had working through an STS monograph. (Really: Who doesn’t like reading about Jurassic Par...
Paul Thagard, “The Cognitive Science of Science: Explanation, Discovery, and Conceptual Change” (MIT Press, 2012)
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard about scientific revolutions, such as the change from the Ptolemaic geocentric universe to the Copernican heliocentric one. Such dra...
Michael Lynch, “In Praise of Reason” (MIT Press, 2012)
27 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Modern society seems in awe of the advances of science and technology. We commonly praise innovations that enable us to live longer and more comfortab...
Lawrence Busch, “Standards: Recipes for Reality” (MIT Press, 2011)
16 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
As Lawrence Busch reminds us, standards are all around us governing seating arrangements, medicine, experimental objects and subjects and even romance...
Robert F. Barsky and Noam Chomsky, “Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism” (MIT Press, 2011)
07 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Zellig Harris’s name is famous in linguistics primarily for his early work on transformational grammar and his influence on his most famous student,...
Susan Schneider, “The Language of Thought: A New Philosophical Direction” (MIT Press, 2011)
15 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In 1975, Jerry Fodor published a book entitled The Language of Thought, which is aptly considered one of the most important books in philosophy of min...
Lee Ambrozy, “Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009” (MIT Press, 2011)
21 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who has been following the news this year has likely heard of Ai Weiwei. This provocative and gifted Chinese artist-activist has made 2011 head...
Eric Schwitzgebel, “Perplexities of Consciousness” (MIT Press, 2011)
15 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
How much do we know about our stream of conscious experience? Not much, if Eric Schwitzgebel is right. In his new book Perplexities of Consciousness (...