New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College, about his recent book, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment (University of California Press, 2024). Spy Plane examines how the city of Baltimore, Maryland, came to adopt a corporate-run surveillance program using aerial surveillance planes that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public. Snyder bases his account on incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program. He also examines the complex reactions of community members in the neighborhoods that were surveilled and how the program eventually fell to pieces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Data Enclaves (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) focuses on our increasing dependence upon Big Tech to live, manage, and enjoy our lives. The author examines how we freely exchange our personal data for access to online platforms, services, and devices without proper consideration of the implications of this trade. Our personal data is the defining resource of the emerging digital economy, and it is increasingly concentrated in a few data enclaves controlled by Big Tech firms, cementing an increasingly parasitic form of technoscientific innovation. Big Tech controls access to these data, dictates the terms of our use of their services and products, and controls the future development of key technologies like artificial intelligence. The contention of this book is that we need to rethink our political and policy approach to data governance and to do so requires unpacking the peculiarities of personal data and how personal data are transformed into a valuable asset. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In 1818, a curious root arrived in a small English village, tucked—seemingly by accident—in a packing case mailed from Brazil. The amateur botanist who cultivated it soon realized that he had something remarkable on his hands: an exceptionally rare orchid never before seen on British shores. It arrived just as “orchid mania” was sweeping across Europe and North America, driving a vast plant trade that catered to wealthy private patrons as well as the fast-growing middle classes eager to display exotic flowers at home. Dubbed Cattleya labiata, the striking purple-and-crimson bloom quickly became one of the most coveted flowers on both continents. As tales of the flower's beauty spread through scientific journals and the popular press, orchid dealers and enthusiasts initiated a massive search to recover it in its natural habitat. In The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession (Harvard University Press, 2025) Dr. Sarah Bilston illuminates the story of this international quest, introducing the collectors and nurserymen who funded expeditions, the working-class plant hunters who set out to find the flower, the South American laborers and specialists with whom they contracted, the botanists who used the latest science to study orchids in all their varieties, and the writers and artists who established the near-mythic status of the “lost orchid.” The dark side of this global frenzy was the social and environmental harm it wrought, damaging fragile ecologies on which both humans and plants depended. Following the human ambitions and dramas that drove an international obsession, The Lost Orchid is a story of consumer desire, scientific curiosity, and the devastating power of colonial overreach. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

An interview with Jean Ryoo and Jane Margolis about Power On! A diverse group of teenage friends learn how computing can be personally and politically empowering and why all students need access to computer science education. This lively graphic novel follows a diverse group of teenage friends as they discover that computing can be fun, creative, and empowering. Taylor, Christine, Antonio, and Jon seem like typical young teens—they communicate via endless texting, they share jokes, they worry about starting high school, and they have each other's backs. But when a racially-biased artificial intelligence system causes harm in their neighborhood, they suddenly realize that tech isn't as neutral as they thought it was. But can an algorithm be racist? And what is an algorithm, anyway?In school, they decide to explore computing classes, with mixed results. One class is only about typing. The class that Christine wants to join is full, and the school counselor suggests that she take a class in “Tourism and Hospitality” instead. (Really??) But Antonio's class seems legit, Christine finds an after-school program, and they decide to teach the others what they learn. By summer vacation, all four have discovered that computing is both personally and politically empowering.Interspersed through the narrative are text boxes with computer science explainers and inspirational profiles of people of color and women in the field (including Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures fame). Power On! is an essential read for young adults, general readers, educators, and anyone interested in the power of computing, how computing can do good or cause harm, and why addressing underrepresentation in computing needs to be a top priority. Listen to the interview on the New Books Network Spanish here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, about her recent book, Slouch: Postural Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024). Slouch examines the history of conceptions of “bad posture” as they arose over the course of the 20th century. The book is a beautiful example of taking a perhaps seemingly small topic and showing how it connects to many, both surprising and well-known, themes in history. The pair also discuss a few of the potential projects Linker may be turning to next, all of which sound fascinating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between war and disease, focusing on Colombian armed conflict and the skin disease known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is transmitted through the bite of female sandflies. The most common manifestation, cutaneous leishmaniasis, is neither deadly nor contagious: it affects the skin by producing lesions of varying size and shape. In Colombia, the insect vector of the disease is native to the same forested environments that have served as the main stage for one of the longest and most violent civil wars in Latin American history. As a result, the populations most affected by leishmaniasis in Colombia are members of the state army and non-state armed groups.  Pinto-García explores how leishmaniasis and the armed conflict are inextricably connected and mutually reinforcing. Her title, Maraña, means "tangle" in Spanish but is also commonly used in Colombia to name the entangled greenery, braided lianas, and dense foliage that characterize the tropical forests where leishmaniasis typically occurs. Pinto-García argues that leishmaniasis and the war are not merely linked, but enmarañadas to each other through narratives, technologies, and practices produced by the state, medicine, biomedical research, and the armed conflict itself. She also uses the concept of desenmarañados (disentangled) to discuss how other attachments between leishmaniasis and society could be formed through different scientific programs, technological designs, healthcare practices, regulations, and social and cultural processes capable of challenging violence, suffering, and inequality. All told, Maraña is a passionate study of how war has shaped the production of scientific knowledge about leishmaniasis and access to its treatments in Colombia. This episode is hosted by Elena Sobrino, a lecturer in the Science and Technology Studies Program at Tufts University. Her research explores volunteer work, union histories, and environmentalism in the Flint water crisis. She is currently writing about the politics of fatigue and crisis, and teaching courses on science and technology studies, ethnographies of crisis, and global racisms. You can read more about her work at elenasobrino.site. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

To what extent do cyberspace operations increase the risks of escalation between nation-state rivals? Scholars and practitioners have been concerned about cyber escalation for decades, but the question remains hotly debated. The issue is increasingly important for international politics as more states develop and employ offensive cyber capabilities, and as the international system is increasingly characterized by emergent multipolarity.In Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace, Erica D. Lonergan and Shawn W. Lonergan tackle this question head-on, presenting a comprehensive theory that explains the conditions under which cyber operations may lead to escalation. In doing so, they challenge long-held assumptions about strategic interactions in cyberspace, arguing that cyberspace is not as dangerous as the conventional wisdom might suggest. In some cases, cyber operations could even facilitate the de-escalation of international crises. To support their claims, Lonergan and Lonergan test their theory against a range of in-depth case studies, including strategic interactions between the United States and key rivals; a series of case studies of the role of cyber operations in international crises; and plausible future scenarios involving cyber operations during conflict.  The authors then apply their analytical insights to policymaking, making the case that skepticism is warranted about the overall efficacy of employing cyber power for strategic ends. By exploring the role of cyber operations in routine competition, crises, and warfighting, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace presents nuanced insights about how cyberspace affects international politics Our guest is Erica D. Lonergan, an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (MIT Press, 2020), Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy--connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that. Dr. Mitchell Thomashow is a renowned environmental educator with a career that spans decades, and this is his 4th book within this domain… published by MIT press. An overarching theme of ‘sense of place' has permeated this and his other writings, and all have asked people to stop, see and reflect on the changes around them. Mitch has a had varied career in academia, from teaching and advising graduate students, to initiating a cohort-based, low residency model, for a PhD in Environmental Studies. He has chaired an Environmental Studies Department at Antioch University and subsequently was appointed as the President of Unity College. Mitchell's expertise is still in demand in the environmental arena. He has been well received through over a hundred of his plenary addresses, workshops, and sustainability consultations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (Simon & Schuster, 2022), Alex Davies tells the enlightening and significant story of the effort to create driverless cars and the intense competition among tech heavyweights such as Google, Uber, and Tesla to move this technology forward. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been one of the most hyped technologies of recent years, but early promises that they would quickly become common place have not borne fruit. Alex Davies set forth the twisted paths of this technology's evolution from its genesis to the current moment. The idea began with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which aimed to create a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA established “Grand Challenges” that enticed future-oriented thinkers including amateurs and students to help drive the technology from fantasy to reality. Carnegie-Mellon University and other universities played a major role. The technology got the attention of Silicon Valley companies like Google and Uber. Next arriving were the major US automakers, GM and Ford, who initiated their programs of their own to commercialize the technology, and Chinese companies also showed an intense interest. As road testing went forward, however, the challenges became far more apparent. The difficulties of traversing diverse terrains under varying weather conditions without a driver came out to be far more daunting than expected. Progress was made but in no way as fast as the developers of the technology hoped. The early enthusiasm of the key players dissipated as they came to realize that AI-assisted driverless transportation faced formidable barriers. This book provides fabulous insights into the key characters in this story and how they struggled with a technology that was not ready for rush-hour driving It is a fast-paced, exciting account of how autonomous technology emerged, the main players, the conflicts between companies, and state of the technology today. The book provides the reader with a genuine feel for how real happens. The writing is fantastic because of the emphasis on that details that come from the many conversations that Davies had with people at the center of the story. Hosted by Alfred Marcus, Edson Spencer Professor of Strategy and Technology University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

This book from Cambridge University Professor Tim Minshall provides an enlightening view of how the world of manufacturing world has an immense influence on our lives. We all reside in a world of multiple manufactured products, which include our clothing, food, furniture, electronics, automobiles, and so many other products upon which we rely, including commercial aviation, pharmeceuticals, baked good, and medical devices. Nonetheless, the processes by which these items are made and enter our lives are nearly unknown to us. How often do we think about from where these items come, how they are made, and how they come into our lives? Professor Minshall delivers answers in How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing (Ecco, 2025). The book traces the amazing paths that everyday products take to enter our lives, showing how products are designed, delivered, and assembled in small shops and giant factories throughout the work. The book depicts the role that global shipping hubs plays as well as the role that home delivery is playing in providing us with the products we want and upon which we depend. The book also delves into the important question of how we can improve the resiliency of the global manufacturing system. What makes the book special is that Professor Minshall pays substantial attention to the impacts of global manufacturing on nature and on how we can move to a more sustainable future. Brimming with vitality and sparkling examples, this book depicts the grand system of global of manufacturing that allows us to have all the products we need for virtually every aspect of our existence. By making sense of this astonishing and largely concealed world, Professor Minshall is enabling us to make better choices for ourselves, our communities, and the planet. Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor Chair of Strategy and Technology Leadership at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 to explore the staggering wealth being generated by the Trump family's crypto empire. We also hear from Sergei Sergienko, a crypto entrepreneur who has made and lost hundreds of millions in the crypto markets. Sergei has also faced down gangsters who tried to extort his wealth—an attack that mirrors a recent spate of kidnappings and abductions of crypto players in Paris. Join us for a modern tale of global grift that is changing how the American presidency can function and do deals on the world stage. Guests Matt Binder – Journalist and host of the Scam Economy podcast Edward Luce – U.S. national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. His forthcoming biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Zbig: The Life of Zbig Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet, will be published in May 2025 by Simon & Schuster (U.S.) and Bloomsbury (U.K.). Sergei Sergienko – CEO at Chrono.tech; Australian entrepreneur and leading blockchain expert Producer: Pearse LynchExecutive Producer: Lucinda Knight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2025) massacres fields sacred cows to challenge many of the mainstream ideas about the future of land warfare and how it should be conducted. Based on his experience working with the British Army and industry, Owen draws the reader back to basics based on limited budgets, limited resources and an overall reduction in cost, weight and complexity to comprehensively understand how armies might or should equip, train and organise for any unknowable future. Stripped of traditional academic or journalistic approaches and well-worn familiar narratives, Euclid's Army reformulates how soldiers, civil servants and politicians should think about land warfare, thus war in general.William F. Owen (Wilf) served for 12 years in the British Army in regular and reserve Infantry and Intelligence units. He then worked on defence advisory and security projects in West Africa and the Far East before moving to writing and editing on defence matters. In 2010, he co-founded Military Strategy Magazine, for which he is currently editor. He also worked as a consultant and contractor for the British Army and several defence agencies and companies worldwide.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 uncanny ways it uses us, Vauhini Vara admits that several reviewers seemed to mistake her engagement with ChatGPT as an uncritical embrace of large language models. Enter Aarthi Vadde to talk with Vauhini about the power and the danger of digital tech and discuss to what it means to co-create with AI. Vauhini tells Aarthi and host Sarah Wasserman that at the heart of all her work is a desire to communicate—that “language,” as she says, “is the main tool we have to bridge the divide.” She explains that the motivation in Searches as in her journalism is to test out tools that promise new forms of communication—or even tools that promise to be able to communicate themselves. Amidst all her interest in new tech, Vauhini is first and foremost a writer: she and Aarthi discuss what it means to put ChatGPT on the printed page, what genre means in today's media ecosystem, and whether generative AI will steal writers' paychecks. Considering generative AI models as tools that “don't have a perspective,” makes for an episode that diagnoses the future of writing with much less doomsaying than authors and critics often bring to the topic. And if all of this writing with robots sounds too “out there,” stay tuned for Vauhini's down-to-earth answer to our signature question. Mentioned in this episode: Vauhini Vara, Searches (2025), The Immortal King Rao (2022), “My Decade in Google Searches” (2019) Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1580) Tom Comitta, The Nature Book (2023) Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries (2024), “According to Alice” (2023) Audre Lorde, “The Master's Tools will never Dismantle the Master's House” (1979) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University's Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he's currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing.  In this conversation, we explore:  the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey  2001's strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.” why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking's voice didn't make it into the voice of Siri the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 youth and American past that never existed. Yet, new road novels appear every year, tackling unexpected questions and spanning new geographies, from Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria, Palestine, Ukraine, and former-Yugoslavia. Why did the road novel emerge and why does it persist? What does it do and why has it traveled so widely? In Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony (Stanford University Press, 2025) Dr. Myka Tucker-Abramson draws from an archive of more than 140 global road novels from over twenty countries, challenging dominant conceptions of the road novel as primarily concerned with American experiences and subjectivities. Grounding her analysis in materialist theories of genre, world-ecology and commodity frontier frameworks, and post-45 American literary studies, Dr. Tucker-Abramson persuasively argues that the road novel is a genre specific to, coterminous with, and revealing of US hegemony's global trajectory. Shifting our focus from Americanness to the fraught geopolitics of US Empire, from the car to the built environment through which it moves, and from passengers to those left behind, Dr. Tucker-Abramson remaps the road novel, elucidating the genre's unique ability both to reveal the violent and vertiginous processes of capitalist modernization and to obfuscate these harsh truths through seductive narratives of individual success and failure. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, and beliefs that led to the contemporary American unmanned arsenal. It takes an expansive look at automated and autonomous technologies, from mines and torpedoes to guided bombs and missiles, satellites, and ultimately, drones. Instead of asking the question, "Why unmanned rather than manned?" the book explains why certain types of unmanned systems became popular while others languished in research or in small pockets of the American military. To answer this question, Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald use interviews of senior decision-makers, military doctrine and writings, and historical sources to detail the proliferation of over a hundred years of unmanned weapons in the US arsenal, from mines and balloons to Reapers and Global Hawks. Their exploration reveals how multiple factors--key policy entrepreneurs, like Andy Marshall in the Office of Net Assessment; critical junctures like the fall of the USSR or the 9/11 attacks; beliefs that emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War; and US military service culture--all interacted in complex ways to form today's unmanned arsenal. The Hand Behind Unmanned uses theories of organizational innovation and process tracing of historical cases to explain recent developments, including US precision munition shortfalls and the rise of unmanned aerial platforms. It also foreshadows where the US unmanned arsenal may be headed in the future. Ultimately, the book uses a remarkable case study to illustrate how ideas diffuse across people and organizations to build the weapons of modern warfare. Our guests are Doctor Jacquelyn Schneider, who is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; and Doctor Julia Macdonald, who is a Research Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and Director of Research and Engagement at the Asia New Zealand Foundation. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (U Chicago Press, 2018), Nicole C. Nelson takes us inside an animal behavior genetics laboratory to examine how scientists create and manage the foundational knowledge of their field. Behavior genetics is a particularly challenging field for making a clear-cut case that mouse experiments work, because researchers believe that both the phenomena they are studying and the animal models they are using are complex. These assumptions of complexity change the nature of what laboratory work produces. Whereas historical and ethnographic studies traditionally portray the laboratory as a place where scientists control, simplify, and stabilize nature in the service of producing durable facts, the laboratory that emerges from Nelson's extensive interviews and fieldwork is a place where stable findings are always just out of reach. The ongoing work of managing precarious experimental systems means that researchers learn as much--if not more--about the impact of the environment on behavior as they do about genetics. Model Behavior offers a compelling portrait of life in a twenty-first-century laboratory, where partial, provisional answers to complex scientific questions are increasingly the norm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 that cannot be reclaimed. While there are many things in life that can be found or recovered when lost, time is not among them; once it is gone, it is lost forever. They highlighted the impact of technology on human connections and the importance of judicious use of time for personal growth and well-being since the risks of constant digital device usage can lead to depression, suicidal ideation, and social isolation. However, alternative activities to foster more meaningful connections can mitigate losses. The inherent ambiguity of this type of loss – its lack of clear definition or resolution – is precisely what makes it so difficult to process. Because the loss is intangible (lost presence, loss of potential connections) and is ongoing rather than a single, definable event, it prevents the typical processes of grieving from unfolding naturally. Individuals can become stuck. It is also the case for older adults. While they may not spend too much time on smartphones or scrolling through their social media accounts—some older adults do engage in these types of activities---they can lose time by watching continuous episodes of a television show versus connecting with friends. At any age, no matter how much time anyone has lost, it is important to come to the realization that our time spend with others is a precious commodity that can't be reclaimed but there are ways to change our behavior. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the foundation of the public interest over the past century. Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data (MIT Press, 2024) is a policy history that chronicles how the past century of regulating media infrastructure in the United States has eroded global civil liberties as well as democratic principles and the foundation of the public interest. Jennifer Holt explores the long arc of regulating broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and the data centers that serve as the cloud's storage facilities—an evolution that is connected to the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media and networks, including railroads, highways, telephony, radio, and television. In the process, Cloud Policy unearths the lasting inscriptions of policy written for an analog era and markets that no longer exist on the contemporary governance of digital cloud infrastructure.Cloud Policy brings together numerous perspectives that have thus far remained largely siloed in their respective fields of law, policy, economics, and media studies. The resulting interdisciplinary argument reveals a properly scaled view of the massive challenge facing policymakers today. Holt also addresses the evolving role of the state in the regulation of global cloud infrastructure and the growing influence of corporate gatekeepers and private sector self-governance. Cloud policy's trajectory, as Holt explains, has enacted a transformation in the cultural valuation of infrastructure as civic good, turning it into a tool of commercial profit generation. Despite these current predicaments, the book's historical lens ultimately helps the reader to envision restorative interventions and new forms of activism to create a more equitable future for infrastructure policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by what was known as the Radio Craze. Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home (Bodleian Library, 2025) expresses what the radio's arrival signified at a personal level. This narrative history recounts the perspective of listeners who adopted the then radical form of communication technology, invested in their first-ever gadgets, and tuned in by their firesides to outside voices, music, SOS calls, the Pips, news, sports, royalty, and innovative radiogenic comedy. Listen In also traces how radio affected family life by exploring whether it altered dynamics between children and adults, changed relationships between women and men, as well as affected class and a wider sense of nationhood. Packed with touching stories and anecdotes, Listen In comes at a timely moment when traditional linear radio is shifting, and the experience of how people consume audio is once again transforming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix. Software was supposed to radically improve society. Outdated mechanical systems would be easily replaced; programs like PowerPoint would make information flow more freely; social media platforms like Facebook would bring people together; and generative AI would solve the world's greatest ills. Yet in practice, few of the systems we looked to with such high hopes have lived up to their fundamental mandate. In fact, in too many cases they've made things worse, exposing us to immense risk at the societal and the individual levels. How did we get to this point? In Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software (W. W. Norton, 2025), Darryl Campbell shows that the problem is “managerial software”: programs created and overseen not by engineers but by professional managers with only the most superficial knowledge of technology itself. The managerial ethos dominates the modern tech industry, from its globe-spanning giants all the way down to its trendy startups. It demands that corporate leaders should be specialists in business rather than experts in their company's field; that they manage their companies exclusively through the abstractions of finance; and that profit margins must take priority over developing a quality product that is safe for the consumer and beneficial for society. These corporations rush the development process and package cheap, unproven, potentially dangerous software inside sleek and shiny new devices. As Campbell demonstrates, the problem with software is distinct from that of other consumer products, because of how quickly it can scale to the dimensions of the world itself, and because its inner workings resist the efforts of many professional managers to understand it with their limited technical background. A former tech worker himself, Campbell shows how managerial software fails, and when it does what sorts of disastrous consequences ensue, from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes to a deadly self-driving car to PowerPoint propaganda, and beyond. Yet just because the tech industry is currently breaking its core promise does not mean the industry cannot change, or that the risks posed by managerial software should necessarily persist into the future. Campbell argues that the solution is tech workers with actual expertise establishing industry-wide principles of ethics and safety that corporations would be forced to follow. Fatal Abstraction is a stirring rebuke of the tech industry's current managerial excesses, and also a hopeful glimpse of what a world shaped by good software can off. Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

A fascinating exploration of how algorithms penetrate the most intimate aspects of our psychology—from the pioneering expert on psychological targeting. There are more pieces of digital data than there are stars in the universe. This data helps us monitor our planet, decipher our genetic code, and take a deep dive into our psychology. As algorithms become increasingly adept at accessing the human mind, they also become more and more powerful at controlling it, enticing us to buy a certain product or vote for a certain political candidate. Some of us say this technological trend is no big deal. Others consider it one of the greatest threats to humanity. But what if the truth is more nuanced and mind-bending than that? In Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior (Harvard Business Press, 2025), Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives—for example, by improving our mental health, encouraging better financial decisions, or enabling us to break out of our echo chambers. With passion and clear-eyed precision, Matz shows us how to manage psychological targeting and redesign the data game. Mindmasters is a riveting look at what our digital footprints reveal about us, how they're being used—for good and for ill—and how we can gain power over the data that defines us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Drs. Messina and Gill discussed the concept of technoference, which refers to the interference of technology with human connection and its impact on personal interactions and relationships. They emphasized the importance of being present in the moment and not letting devices like smartphones and laptops distract us from connecting with others, highlighting the negative impact of constant distractions on relationships. Dr. Messina provided an example that focused on a family gathered around their dinner table, the aroma of food mingling with the day's leftover stress suggesting this time was meant to be a time to reconnect and perhaps to share stories. A young child, eager for attention, started to recount an exciting event from school but their parents' attention was elsewhere. Their phones rested beside their plates, "just in case." Their thumbs were busy scrolling through social media feeds. They both offered distracted acknowledgments like "uh-huh," and "that's nice" – without ever making eye contact. The child's story faltered; his enthusiasm visibly dimmed. He felt ignored as though his story was unimportant. Research confirms that children notice and dislike when parents prioritize devices during family time. This perceived neglect can lead to frustration, sadness, or even acting out as a bid for the attention they crave. This isn't just about a missed story. It's a lost opportunity for vital family bonding during a core routine. The parents missed the chance to validate their child's experiences, to engage in a shared moment, and to reinforce the child's sense of being seen and valued. A precious "micro-moment" of connection, irreplaceable, vanished into the glow of a screen. They also discussed the how blue light effects the production Melatonin which is the key hormone responsible for regulating our natural sleep-wake cycles. This disruption not only makes it more challenging to fall asleep but also reduces the quality and duration of those crucial sleep stages required for effective memory consolidation. Consequently, even if an individual manages to stay awake and seemingly absorb information during a meeting or lecture, that information might not be properly encoded and stored if their subsequent sleep is compromised by late-night screen use. This neurological mechanism resonates strongly with frequent clinical reports of individuals experiencing a pervasive sense of mental fog, increased forgetfulness, and a subjective feeling that their memory is simply not as sharp as it once was. The conversation ended with a call to manage notifications and regulate the relationship with devices, and to be present and mindful in our interactions with others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Network.  In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture. Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbolic work and foregrounding hypothetical literacy. Secondly, he positions simulation as crucial for the preservation of cultural memory, where modeling, emulation, and serious play are constitutive in how we relate to our mediated history. And lastly, despite suggestions that we may already live in a simulation, he interrogates how simulation can serve as critique of the computer age. In tracing our digital heritage, Computing Legacies elucidates inflection points where quantitative data becomes tractable for qualitative evaluations: modeling epidemics for scientific study or entertainment, emulating older devices, turning numerical calculations into music, conducting espionage in virtual worlds, and gamifying higher education. Simulation, this book demonstrates, is pivotal not only to high-tech research and to archives, museums, and the preservation of digital culture but also to our understanding of what it is to live and work under the technical conditions of computing. Dr. Peter Krapp is a Professor of Film & Media Studies, English, and Music at UC-Irvine. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Assistant Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Jessica Smith, Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department and Dean's Fellow for Earth and Society Programs of the Colorado School of Mines, about her work on engineering and public accountability in energy and mining industries. The pair discuss Smith's long-held interests in mining and extractive industries, including her roots in coal country; her book, Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021); her current work on the social and community dimensions of carbon sequestration projects; and many asides about what it takes to study the social dimensions of engineering, including in humanities and social sciences cultures that contain many negative stereotypes of engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has shifted dramatically. In the past, blockbuster movies and TV shows like Friends aimed first for domestic mass audiences, although the biggest hits circulated globally. Now, transnational distribution plays a primary role and imagined audiences are global. At the same time, the once-mass audience has significantly fragmented to enable an expansion in the range of commercially viable stories, as evident in series as varied as Atlanta, Better Things, and dozens of others that are not widely known, but deeply loved by their microaudiences. Delving into the changing landscape of commercial screen storytelling, After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century (NYU Press, 2025) explores how industrial shifts and technological advancements have remade the narrative landscape over the past two decades. Television and movies have long shaped society, whether by telling us about the worlds around us or far away. By examining the internationalization of screen businesses, the rise of streaming services with multi-territory reach, and the stories made for this environment, this book sheds light on the profound transformations in television and film production and circulation. With a keen focus on major changes in the types of screen stories being told, Amanda D. Lotz unravels the industrial roots that made these transformations possible, challenges some conventional distinctions of screen storytelling, and provides new conceptual tools to make sense of the abundance and range of screen stories on offer. Through its comprehensive analysis, After Mass Media exposes how contemporary industrial dynamics, particularly the erosion of traditional distribution models based on geography and mass audience reach, have far-reaching implications for our understanding of national video cultures. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 the media landscape during America's founding era? Join us as we explore these pressing questions with William English, a political economist and Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Professor English will discuss his long-standing research on the intersection of ethics, media, and politics, including the Founding Fathers' views on press freedom and its vital role in maintaining democracy. He'll also examine the growing problem of “hermeneutic unintelligibility”—where conflicting worldviews make meaningful dialogue between opposing groups nearly impossible. Finally, he'll explore potential technological solutions, such as open-source protocols, that could help restore trust and transparency in media. Madison's Notes is the podcast of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 seen as a process, as a set of skills enacted on a daily basis. How, why, and where were these skills learned? Concentrating on Scottish students living during the long eighteenth century, Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830 (University of Chicago Press, 2023) by Dr. Matthew Daniel Eddy argues that notebooks were paper machines and that notekeeping was a capability-building exercise that enabled young notekeepers to mobilize everyday handwritten and printed forms of material and visual media in a way that empowered them to judge and enact the enlightened principles they encountered in the classroom. Covering a rich selection of material ranging from simple scribbles to intricate watercolor diagrams, the book reinterprets John Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank piece of paper, the tabula rasa. Although one of the most recognizable metaphors of the British Enlightenment, scholars seldom consider why it was so successful for those who used it. Each chapter uses one core notekeeping skill to reveal the fascinating world of material culture that enabled students in the arts, sciences, and humanities to transform the tabula rasa metaphor into a dynamic cognitive model. Starting in the home, moving to schools, and ending with universities, the book reconstructs the relationship between media and the mind from the bottom up. It reveals that the cognitive skills required to make and use notebooks were not simply aids to reason; rather, they were part of reason itself. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Today's guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you're a scholar of sound or radio, you likely know her work, particularly her monograph Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) which was the recipient of the ASCA Book Award in 2013. Her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023), examines the love of radio through history. It will be a great value to anyone–from novice to expert–who wants to understand radio studies and think about where it should go in the future. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss Carolyn's career and both of her books. We also get into the present state of radio and media studies, as well as the kind of skeptical orientation to media that tends to set sound studies scholars apart from many of their peers. And for our Patrons we'll have Carolyn's What's Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower.  Today's show was edited by Matt Parker. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa Villa-Nicholas deftly explains how private corporations such as Amazon and Palantir, government agencies including ICE and the CBP, and even public libraries all coordinate to track citizens and non-citizens alike. Mass amounts of data are networked to immigrants, who link people together like nodes on a map. A startlingly relevant book, Villa-Nicholas argues that stories we tell about data, and about human experiences, can either aid or act as a bulwark against this type of mass surveillance. The surveillance state is here, and it was born in the American West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges' work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformation and the realities of data center power demands and other material factors. They also discuss Bridges' other projects, including “Geographies of Digital Wasting,” a global collaborative project, which Bridges was co-PI on, tracing the global flows and practices of digital wasting throughout the tech supply chain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today's most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world's internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.  Drawing on decades as an educator, publisher, and producer, MIT's Peter Kaufman presents new tools, best practices, and community resources for integrating film and sound into media that matters. Kaufman describes video's vital role in politics, law, education, and entertainment today, only 130 years since the birth of film. He explains how best to produce video, distribute it, clear rights to it, cite it, and, ultimately, archive and preserve it. With detailed guidance on producing and deploying video and sound for publication, finding and using archival video and sound, securing rights and permissions, developing distribution strategies, and addressing questions about citation, preservation, and storage—across the broadest spectrum of platforms, publications, disciplines, and formats—The Moving Image equips readers for the medium's continued ascendance in education, publishing, and knowledge dissemination in the decades to come. And, modeled in part on Strunk and White's classic, The Elements of Style, it's also a highly enjoyable read. Peter B. Kaufman is Senior Program Officer at MIT Open Learning. He is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge and founder of Intelligent Television, a video production company that works with cultural and educational institutions around the world. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Drawing on insights from law, philosophy, sociology, and communication studies, Solove unpacks the complex ways in which digital innovations challenge traditional notions of privacy and autonomy. The book advances a nuanced argument advocating for a reevaluation of how privacy is conceptualized and protected in an age dominated by data collection, surveillance, and algorithmic governance. In this episode, Daniel Solove discusses how contemporary privacy concerns—ranging from mass surveillance and data breaches to algorithmic bias and digital profiling—can be critically understood and addressed. Grounded in rigorous theoretical analysis, the conversation pushes against the narrative that technological advancement inevitably erodes privacy, instead highlighting strategies and frameworks through which privacy rights can be reclaimed and reinforced in the digital age. This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Drs. Messina and Gill talked about cognitive offloading in our digital age—how smartphones, AI, and other technologies are reshaping our mental habits, our memory, our capacity for attention, and ultimately, our emotional lives. Cognitive offloading refers to the process of using tools and technologies to take over mental functions we used to perform ourselves. Whether it's using GPS to navigate, storing phone numbers in our contacts, or asking ChatGPT for help organizing thoughts, we're increasingly externalizing our thinking. They also discussed the psychoanalytic defense mechanisms involved in our reliance on technology, how AI impacts metacognition, and how this process influences us both individually and collectively. From a psychoanalytic perspective, cognitive offloading is similar to projection—placing uncomfortable labor or responsibility outside of ourselves. It may also involve disavowal: we know we're becoming dependent, but we ignore or deny the psychological cost. Dr. Messina mentioned that Freud saw memory as a core element of identity adding that when we delegate memory to devices, we risk fragmenting the ego. She also elaborated on the concept of “metacognition” which refers to the awareness and regulation of one's own thought processes, also described as “thinking about thinking.” It involves understanding how we learns, plans, monitors, and evaluates our cognitive strategies to achieve specific goals. Dr. Gill talked about cognitive offloading from a neuroscience perspective noting that the practice of using external tools or resources to reduce mental effort involves complex interactions between several brain regions. He discussed how the prefrontal cortex plays a central role in cognitive offloading while the hippocampus is critical for memory encoding and retrieval. How to mitigate problems that arise from cognitive offloading was also discussed as well as the risks of overreliance on AI chatbots which can lead to cognitive atrophy. This is now referred to as artificial intelligence chatbots induced cognitive atrophy or AICICA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 just released a big report on this question, based on a survey of nearly 300 global tech experts. These insiders predict major changes in the very near future to the way we think about work, life, and ourselves. We talked with Lee Rainie, the director of the center and co-author of the report. We also discuss another center report, on the impact of AI on higher education, as well as Lee's earlier career as a political journalist. Lee has spent decades studying expert opinion on technology - before joining Elon he spent 24 years directing the Pew Research Center's studies of the internet. Prior to this, Lee was managing editor of U.S. News and World Report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion, more than they spent on movies and video games combined. The rise of online sports gambling—the immediacy of betting with your phone, the ability of the companies to target users, the dynamic pricing and offers based on how good or bad of a gambler you are—has produced a public health crisis marked by addiction and far too many people, particularly young men, gambling more than they can afford to lose. Under intense lobbying from the gaming industry, states have created a system built around profit for sportsbooks, not the well-being of players. In Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), historian Jonathan D. Cohen lays out the astonishing emergence of online sports gambling, from sportsbook executives drafting legislation to an addicted gambler confessing their $300,000 losses. Sports gambling is here to stay, and the stakes could not be higher. Losing Big explains how this brewing crisis came to be, and how it can be addressed before new generations get hooked. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although agricultural inputs are a huge sector of the global economy, the lion's share of that market is controlled by a relatively small number of very large transnational corporations. The high degree of concentration among these agribusiness titans is striking, considering that just a few hundred years ago agricultural inputs were not even marketed goods. In Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters (MIT Press, 2025), Dr. Jennifer Clapp explains how we got from there to here, outlining the forces that enabled this extreme concentration of power and the entrenchment of industrial agriculture. Clapp reveals that the firms that rose to the top of these sectors benefited from distinct market, technology, and policy advantages dating back a century or more that enabled them to expand their businesses through mergers and acquisitions that made them even bigger and more powerful. These dynamics matter because the firms at the top have long shaped industrial farming practices that, in turn, have generated enormous social, ecological, and health impacts on the planet and the future of food systems. Beyond analyzing how these problems have arisen and manifested, the book examines recent efforts to address corporate power and dominance in food systems and assesses the prospects for change. Among the first works to examine deep roots of corporate power in agriculture, Titans of Industrial Agriculture helps illuminate just how corporate actors have encouraged the “lock-in” of industrial agriculture, despite all its known social and ecological costs. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. But why should scientists simply “stick to the facts” and leave politics to the politicians when the world seems to be falling down around us? Drawing on his experience as both a research scientist and an expert advisor at the centre of government, Ian Boyd takes an empirical approach to examining the current state of the relationship between science and politics. He argues that the way politicians and scientists work together today results in a science that is on tap for ideological (mis)use, and governance that fails to serve humanity's most fundamental needs. Justice is unlikely―perhaps impossible―while science is not a fully integrated part of the systems for collective decision-making across society. In Science and Politics (Polity, 2024), Boyd presents an impassioned argument for a series of conceptual and structural innovations that could resolve this fundamental tension, revealing how a radical intermingling of these (apparently contradictory) professions might provide the world with better politics and better science. Professor Sir Ian Boyd is currently a professor at the University of St Andrews and Chair of the UK Research Integrity Office. He was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on Food and the Environment (2012-2019). He is a marine and polar scientist and previously served as the first Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute at St Andrews Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and geographical knowledge not only to consolidate power and protect borders but also to define the physical contours of their respective nations. Chilean and Argentine authorities in particular attempted to transform northern Patagonia, a space they perceived as "desert," through a myriad of nationalizing policies, from military campaigns to hotels. But beyond the urban governing halls of Chile and Argentina, explorers, migrants, local authorities, bandits, and visitors also made sense of the nation by inhabiting the physical space of the northern Patagonian Andes. They surveyed passes, opened roads, claimed land titles or leases, traveled miles to the nearest police station, rode miles on horseback to escape the police, and hiked the landscape. In Landscaping Patagonia: Spatial History and Nation-Making in Chile and Argentina (University of North Carolina Press, 2025) Dr. María de los Ángeles Picone tells the story of how people living, governing, and traveling through northern Patagonia sought to construct versions of Chile and Argentina based on their ideas about and experiences in geographical space in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By repositioning the analytical focus from Santiago and Buenos Aires to northern Patagonia, Picone reveals how a wide array of actors, with varying degrees of political, economic, and social power, assigned distinctive—and sometimes conflicting—meanings to space and national identity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 cognitive neuroscience, psychology and psycholinguistics, Writing for the Reader's Brain (Cambridge University Press, 2025) provides a practical, how-to guide on how to write for your reader. It introduces the five 'Cs' of writing - clarity, continuity, coherence, concision, and cadence - and demonstrates how to use these to bring your writing to life. Dr. Yellowlees Douglas is the founder of ReadersBrain Academy and has spent over twenty-five years teaching writing to everyone from professors to freshmen. This interview was conducted by Renee Hale, who holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files, a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing the joy of new perspectives with listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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 of Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (U California Press, 2025). Chan is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as the author of a prior book Networking Peripheries on tech movements among craftwork communities in Peru. In her current book, Chan documents how the Big Data on which AI are trained are based on long-standing data infrastructures—sets of practices, policies, and logics—that remove, imperil, devalue, and actively harm people who refuse to conform to racialized patriarchal power structures and the priorities of surveillance capitalism—most pointedly immigrant, feminist, and low-income communities. Centered mostly in the United States as well as Latin America, Predatory Data shows how the eugenicist data practices of the past now shape our present. But her approach is fundamentally a politics of pluralism. Chan dedicates half of the book to amplifying and praising the small-scale, community-led projects of the past and present—from the legendary Hull House's data visualizations to community data initiatives in Champaign, Illinois. There is much fuel for political outrage in this book and also fodder for solidarity and hope. This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “The Politics of AI.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom. email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu . Student collaborators on this interview were Emma Bufkin, Keyonté Doughty, Natalie Dumm, Karim Elmehdawi, Lauren Garza, Eden Kim, Michelle Kugel, Kai Lee, Sam Mitike, Hadassah Nehikhuere, Shalini Thinakaran, Logan Walsh, and Wesley Williams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, 2025), Ysabel Gerrard, a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the University of Sheffield explores the understandings and experience of young people as they navigate both the online and offline world. Drawing on a range of sociological, digital and creative methods, the book punctures many myths around young people's digital lives, showing both the potential as well as the problems of contemporary online spaces. Framed through the idea of the paradoxes of social media for young people, the book's analysis is insightful and engaging, as well as deeply theoretically informed. The book is essential reading across the social sciences and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in understanding contemporary digital life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society