MIT Press Podcast

How are sports teams using data science?   This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT Press, Harvard Data Science Review is an open access multidisciplinary journal that defines and shapes data science as a scientifically rigorous field based on the principled and purposed production, processing, parsing and analysis of data.   In this episode, the journal's Features Editor Liberty Vittert and Editor in Chief Xiao-Li Meng dig into the data behind sports with two experts: Brian Macdonald, sports analytics at Yale (formerly Carnegie Mellon University) and Kirk Goldsberry, NBA analyst at ESPN and author of Sprawlball: A Visual Tour of the New era of the NBA.   If you enjoy this preview of the Harvard Data Science Review podcast, find the journal on twitter at @TheHDSR and remember to subscribe to their podcast on your favorite platform.

Can data science help us combat disinformation?   This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT Press, Harvard Data Science Review is an open access multidisciplinary journal that defines and shapes data science as a scientifically rigorous field based on the principled and purposed production, processing, parsing and analysis of data.   In this episode, the journal's Features Editor Liberty Vittert and Editor in Chief Xiao-Li Meng discuss fake news, disinformation, and misinformation with Scott Tranter, CEO and founder of Optimus Analytics, and Hany Farid, a professor from UC Berkeley who specializes in the analysis of digital images and is the author of two MIT Press books: Fake Photos and Photo Forensics.   If you enjoy this preview of the Harvard Data Science Review podcast, find the journal on twitter at @TheHDSR and remember to subscribe to their podcast on your favorite platform.  

What does data science tell us about art auctions?  This episode is syndicated from the new Harvard Data Science Review Podcast. Published by the MIT Press, Harvard Data Science Review is an open access multidisciplinary journal that defines and shapes data science as a scientifically rigorous field based on the principled and purposed production, processing, parsing and analysis of data. In this episode, the journal's Features Editor Liberty Vittert and Editor in Chief Xiao-Li Meng discuss art auctions with art curator Dan Cameron and Artnome's Jason Bailey. If you enjoy this preview of the Harvard Data Science Review podcast, find the journal on twitter at @TheHDSR and remember to subscribe to their podcast on your favorite platform.

Featured episode from Between Art and Science, a new podcast from Leonardo. This episode, hosted by Erica Hruby, features a conversation between two authors published in the Leonardo special issue “Cosmos and Chaos:” Bettina Forget and Lindy Elkins-Tanton. Listen as these authors discuss the connection between art and science, the flawed idea of the hero, exploration of both land and space, and the complexities of being a woman in male dominated fields.

Writer and educator Marcus Gilroy-Ware (After the Fact?, Filling the Void) speaks with Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner about their new book You Are Here. 

Joy White, author of Terraformed, speaks with Dhanveer Singh Brar about his forthcoming book Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Tariq Goddard (author, publisher and co-founder of Repeater Books) speaks with Victoria Nelson about her forthcoming book Neighbor George.    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Matt Colquhoun (author/editor of Egress and Postcapitalist Desire) speaks to to Thomas Moynihan about his most recent book X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction   Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Writer and academic Anthony Gardner (NSK from Kapital to Capital, Politically Unbecoming) interviews Marko Ilić about his new book A Slow Burning Fire, which documents Yugoslavia's cultural output throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s.    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Dungeons and Dragons expert Jon Peterson (The Elusive Shift, Game Wizards) speaks with Peter Bebergal (Season of the Witch, Too Much to Dream) about his new book Appendix N; an anthology of writing which takes its name from the list of “inspirational reading” provided by Gary Gygax in the first Dungeon Master's Guide.    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Writer Huw Lemmey (Chubz, Red Tory, Unknown Language) speaks with  Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about her most recent book The Freezer Door and searching for connection in a world that enforces bland norms of gender, sexuality, and friendship.   Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

This episode features discussions with Thomas Weaver (Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture) and Victoria Hindley (Acquisitions Editor in Visual Culture and Design) about publishing in the fields of art, architecture, and visual culture, as part of our virtual attendance of the 2021 College Art Association Conference.    Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Clive Nwonka and Anamik Saha discuss their forthcoming book Black Film, British Cinema II (publishing in March with Goldsmiths Press), a book which brings together scholars, thinkers and practitioners to consider the politics of blackness in contemporary British cinema and visual practice.    Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Nick Aikens and Elizabeth Robles discuss The Place Is Here (Sternberg Press, 2019) and the range of perspectives on black art in Thatcherite Britain offered by the collection of artworks, essays, and conversations found in the book.   Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Cathi Unsworth, journalist and author of Bad Penny Blues, as well as numerous other novels, speaks with artists and author Jenny Hval about her recent book Girls Against God. 

Damon Kruskowski, author of Ways of Hearing and The New Analog, previously member of Galaxie 500 and currently a member of Damon & Naomi interviews Rose Simpson, about her book Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden.  Rose is an English former musician. Between 1968 and 1971, she was a member of the Incredible String Band, with whom she sang and played bass guitar, violin, and percussion.   Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

The philosopher Bruno Latour (We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, Science in Action) and Eugene Richardson, physician, anthropologist, and author of Epidemic Illusions discuss COVID, colonialism and Critical Zones.   Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Michael Truscello, author of Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure, discusses the ways in which infrastructure determines who may live and who must die under contemporary capitalism.    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Tai Shani (Turner Prize winning artist, educator and author of Our Fatal Magic) and Amy Hale (anthropologist, folklorist, and writer) discuss the work of artist, occultist and writer Ithell Colquhoun to celebrate the publication of Amy’s book Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of The Fern Loved Gully   Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

An extended conversation between Lauren Fournier, writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism and writer, educator and philosopher McKenzie Wark (A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, Capital Is Dead, Reverse Cowgirl.)    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux  

Lauren Fournier, writer, independent curator, artist, and author of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism discusses her forthcoming book with writer, educator and philosopher McKenzie Wark (A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, Capital Is Dead, Reverse Cowgirl.)    An extended version of this conversation will be publishing later this week.    Produced by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

In the final episode of this series, Brandon Terry, political theorist and African American Studies scholar at Harvard discusses the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr.  Terry is the editor of Fifty Years Since MLK, published in 2018 by MIT Press and Boston Review and co-edited

Around the world, liberal democracies are in crisis. Citizens have lost faith in their government; right-wing nationalist movements frame the political debate. At the same time, economic inequality is increasing dramatically; digital technologies have created a new class of super-rich entrepreneurs. Automation threatens to transform the free economy into a zero-sum game in which capital wins and labor loses. But is this digital dystopia inevitable?  In our final discussion before the election, George Zarkadakis, author of Cyber Republic, reflects on the long term technological challenges and opportunities facing democracy.  George Zarkadakis leads Future of Work at Willis Towers Watson in Great Britain, a global risk and human capital consulting firm. The author of In Our Own Image: The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence and other books, he has written extensively on science and technology for publications including Aeon and Wired.   Hosted by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

On November 3rd, America chooses its next president and in this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today.    In this episode Carol A. Stabile discusses her book The Broadcast 41 (published in April of last year by Goldsmiths Press.)   In her book, Carol traces the history of forty-one women who were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s as part of a censorship program often referred to as the Red Scare. She explains their broad and nuanced political beliefs and how an FBI-backed program of state censorship invoked the paranoia of another American revolution to try and destroy their careers.   We discuss how the cause of anti-communism, g-man masculinity and censorship destroyed a potential television landscape that reflected the reality of post-war America in favor of a white, straight, patriarchal world of white picket fences and eager beavers. We also discuss what the history of these women might tell us about current debates on free-speech and ‘cancel-culture’.   Carol is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. She’s also the author of Feminism and the Technological Fix, White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture, among other books.   You can find more resources related to the book, including FBI files released since the book's publication, at https://broadcast41.com/ 

On November 3rd, America chooses its next president and in this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today.   The second episode of this series features a discussion with the author of Anti-vaxxers, Jonathan M. Berman. Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists including actress Jenny McCarthy, talk-show host Bill Maher, and presidential hopeful Kanye West.    How do we address those with views that might be deemed absurd and confusing? How do we ensure that the public sphere is based upon evidenced and good faith arguments? And what might be redeemed from world-views built upon misinformation?    Jonathan M. Berman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Basic Sciences at NYITCOM–Arkansas. An active science communicator, he served as national cochair of the 2017 March for Science.   Hosted by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

On November 3rd, America chooses its next president and in this series of interviews from the MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today.  In this, the first episode, Robert I. Rotberg  (author of Anticorruption) discusses corruption - what is it? where is it? And is it getting worse? He explains the long history of corruption in the USA, as well as the measures that can be taken to eradicate it. We also explore issues of corruption across the globe, including the Lava Jato case in Brazil, the authoritarian anti-corruption of Rwanda and the ways in which corporate elites shape politics in countries like the US and the UK.     Robert I. Rotberg is President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation, Founding Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Intrastate Conflict, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of The Corruption Cure: How Citizens and Leaders Can Combat Graft, Things Come Together: Africans Achieving Greatness in the Twenty-First Century, Transformative Political Leadership, and numerous other books.   Hosted by Sam Kelly Mixed by Samantha Doyle  Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Michael Hollingshead, the man who turned Timothy Leary onto LSD, managed to fundamentally influenced modern drug culture whilst remaining virtually anonymous in popular culture at large. In this episode, biographer Andy Roberts talks us through the life of a key character in psychedelic history. 

In this episode Bita Moghaddam discusses the emergence of ketamine as a combat anesthetic in the Vietnam war, its transformation into a recreation drug central to club culture, and its current transition into a treatment for depression.

This episode offers an insight into the work of leading cancer specialist and author of When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael A. Sekeres. 1 in 2 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, but thankfully treatment for the disease is rapidly changing and improving. I ask Mikkael about the drugs that allow people to beat cancer and live better with it.

Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists; Nancy D Campbell has drawn together a history of a defining tragedy of contemporary life; the overdose. I ask her about the reality of drug overdoses and one of the tools being used by activists to prevent more deaths; Naloxone.

C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp read from Saturation, a book that offers an analysis of racial representation and controversy in the art world. 

Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 brings together urgency and scientific rigor so the world’s researchers can quickly disseminate new discoveries that the public can trust. Amy Brand (Director, The MIT Press) and Vilas Dhar (Trustee, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation) discuss this new overlay journal, its innovative goals, and its role as a proof-of-concept for new models of peer-review and rapid publishing.

Conor Rose reads from Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism. This extract, taken from the opening of the book, offers insight into the Black Lives Matter movement as well as new forms of predatory policing, informed by the 2008 financial crash.  Please use this link to support Black Lives Matter. 

Susan Schuppli is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. In her book, Material Witnesss, her research is an exploration of the evidential role of matter in contexts including the natural disaster, climate change, and conflict zones. In this interview she discusses her work as a writer, artist and educator. 

Best known for its introduction of French theory to American readers, Semiotext(e) has been one of America's most influential independent presses since its inception more than three decades ago. Publishing works of theory, fiction, madness, economics, satire, sexuality, science fiction, activism and confession.  In this interview Chris Kraus and Hedi El Kholti, who run Semitext(e) alongside Sylvère Lotringer, discuss the history of the press. 

In Break On Through, Lucas Richert explores Anti-psychiatry, psychedelics, and radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. In this interview Lucas discusses the issues that run through the sixties and seventies and how they're forming debates about mental health today. 

In Co-Illusion, writer and critic David Levi Strauss, tracks the rise of Donald Trump and the media landscape that warped around him. In this interview he discusses the language of Trump, the forthcoming election, and the changing relationship between image and truth. 

An interview with Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska about Collaborative Society (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and how networked technology enables the emergence of a new collaborative society.

Shashi Shekhar and Pamela Vold, authors of Spatial Computing, fromThe MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, discuss the reach, risks and importance of spatial computing in confronting COVID-19.

Author of High Weirdness, Erik Davis discusses psychedelic politics, media paranoia, conspiracy theories, and consensus reality in the time of COVID-19.

An interview with Wade Roush, author of Extraterrestrials, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. Are we alone in the universe? If not, where is everybody? And which might be more meaningful?  Soundtrack produced by artist and author of High Static, Dead Lines (Strange Attractor Press, December 2018) Kristen Gallerneaux.

An interview with Donna J. Drucker, author of Contraception, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. We discuss reproductive justice, the history of contraceptive technology and how the future of contraception can offer more choice and more freedom for every kind of person. 

In this episode we hear from John Troyer, author of Technologies of the Human Corpse and the Director of The Center for Death and Society at The University of Bath. We discuss the way technology is blurring the distinctions between life and death, the emergence of death studies from the 70s social and political milieu and how his own experiences of bereavement inform his research.

In this podcast we discuss visibility, haunting and fascism with art historian and theorist Elizabeth Otto. Otto's book Haunted Bauhaus explores the marginalized histories of occult spirituality, gender fluidity and queer identity within the Bauhaus; offering fresh insight into one of the most canonized periods of European art history. 

A discussion with the the author of Free Will (from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem, Mark Balaguer, in which we discuss the scientific arguments for and against the possibility of free will.  

The journal of Global Environmental Politics (GEP) has hit a tremendous milestone in 2020—celebrating its 20 years of publication with the MIT Press! In this episode, two of the journal’s Co-Editors Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal reflect on the origins and goals of GEP, its immeasurable impact on the discussions of relationships between global political forces and environmental change, and the thought process behind the journal’s upcoming 20th-anniversary volume.

A discussion with the the author of Citizenship (from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series), Dimitry Kochenov, in which we discuss the glorification of citizenship and the structures of power underlying this supposedly positive concept.  Featuring an incredible new soundtrack produced by artists and author of High Static, Dead Lines (Strange Attractor Press, December 2018) Kristen Gallerneaux.

Quantitative Science Studies (QSS) is a newly launched open access journal that was born out of a collaboration between the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) and the MIT Press. In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Ludo Waltman discusses the origins of QSS, its growing inaugural issue, and its future as a publishing outlet run for and by the scientometric community.

In this episode, Gita Manaktala, Editorial Director at the MIT Press, and Ellen Finnie, Co-Interim Associate Director for Collections at MIT Libraries, discuss the Ideas series: a hybrid print and open access book series for general readers, that provides fresh, strongly argued, and provocative views of the effects of digital technology on culture, business, government, education, and our lives. Learn more about the full series: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/strong-ideas

The authors of Data Feminism (forthcoming in Spring 2020), Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, along with Catherine Ahearn, Content Lead at PubPub, discuss the value and process of open peer review, share experiences and best practices, and explore issues surrounding peer review transparency. Learn more: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism.

Stefan Van der Stigchel discusses how we filter out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we need to know.