Podcasts about MIT Press

BIBLIOGRAPHYPRIMARY AND CLASSICAL SOURCESAristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Harvard University Press.Aristotle. On the Heavens. Translated by W. K. C. Guthrie. Harvard University Press.Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VIII. Translated by R. D. Hicks. Harvard University Press.Euclid. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements. Translated and edited by Thomas L. Heath. Cambridge University Press.Iamblichus. On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Translated by John Dillon and Jackson Hershbell. Society of Biblical Literature.Philolaus. Fragments and Testimonia, collected and discussed in Carl A. Huffman's Philolaus of Croton.Plato. Phaedo. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Republic. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Theaetetus. Translated by M. J. Levett and revised by Myles Burnyeat. Hackett Publishing.Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Donald J. Zeyl. Hackett Publishing.Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by A. H. Armstrong. Harvard University Press.Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras. In The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and edited by David R. Fideler. Phanes Press.Proclus. A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements. Translated by Glenn R. Morrow. Princeton University Press.PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREAN TRADITIONBurkert, Walter. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Translated by Edwin L. Minar Jr. Harvard University Press, 1972.Huffman, Carl A. A History of Pythagoreanism. Cambridge University Press, 2014.Huffman, Carl A. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King. Cambridge University Press, 2005.Huffman, Carl A. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic. Cambridge University Press, 1993.Kahn, Charles H. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History. Hackett Publishing, 2001.Riedweg, Christoph. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Cornell University Press, 2005.Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists. Oxford University Press, 2000.Zhmud, Leonid. Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford University Press, 2012.PLATO, PLATONISM, AND ANCIENT COSMOLOGYAnnas, Julia. An Introduction to Plato's Republic. Oxford University Press, 1981.Cornford, Francis Macdonald. Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. Hackett Publishing, 1997.Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220. Cornell University Press, 1996.Fowler, David. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 1999.Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy, Volumes I–V. Cambridge University Press.Johansen, Thomas Kjeller. Plato's Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias. Cambridge University Press, 2004.O'Meara, Dominic J. Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 1989.Sedley, David. Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity. University of California Press, 2007.Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. Hackett Publishing, 1995.EUCLID, THE PENTAGON, AND GREEK MATHEMATICSHeath, Thomas L. A History of Greek Mathematics. Dover Publications.Heath, Thomas L. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements. Cambridge University Press.Knorr, Wilbur Richard. The Evolution of the Euclidean Elements. D. Reidel Publishing, 1975.Mueller, Ian. Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclid's Elements. MIT Press, 1981.Netz, Reviel. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History. Cambridge University Press, 1999.Pappas, Theoni. The Joy of Mathematics. Wide World Publishing, for accessible visual discussion of pentagonal proportion and recursive geometry.Van der Waerden, B. L. Science Awakening. Noordhoff International Publishing.LATE ANTIQUITY, NEOPLATONISM, AND THEURGYChlup, Radek. Proclus: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2012.Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists. Cornell University Press.Finamore, John F., and Sarah Iles Johnston. The Chaldean Oracles: A New Translation and Commentary. Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.Gregory, John. The Neoplatonists: A Reader. Routledge, 1999.Shaw, Gregory. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. Angelico Press, revised edition, 2014.Smith, Andrew. Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition. Springer, 1974.Wallis, Richard T. Neoplatonism. Hackett Publishing.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

Water always wins. The question is whether we let it cool the planet while it does — or keep fighting it until there's nothing left to fight with.Erica Gies is the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge, and is currently writing her second book, Roots to Sky: How Life and Water Can Help Cool Earth's Climate, due in 2028. She is an environmental journalist who has spent more than a decade travelling the world to document how communities are rebuilding their relationship with water — not by controlling it better, but by understanding what water wants and working with it.The common climate narrative — decarbonise, bring fossil fuel emissions to zero, done — is no longer sufficient on its own. Water vapour accounts for roughly half the greenhouse effect. We've degraded 75% of the earth's land surface, largely by draining it. And more sea level rise comes from pumping groundwater than from melting glaciers — something a 1970 MIT Press report already knew. We've only accelerated since.The good news: this is something we can change relatively quickly through land restoration. And water is absolutely key.In this episode:— Why water always wins and what it means to ask what water wants rather than fighting it— How growing up in California, built on extreme water engineering, shaped Erica's obsession— Why she shifted from surface water to the atmosphere for her new book Roots to Sky— The 1970 MIT report that flagged pumping groundwater raises sea levels — 55 years of acceleration since— Why 87% of wetlands drained, two thirds of rivers dammed, and cities doubled since 1992 have made our water problems worse, not better— Why the best water solutions are modular and decentralised — and why that's empowering— What beavers in California are teaching farmers who spent eighty years shooting them— Why investors optimising single variables are running out of natural buffers faster than they think— Why land back for indigenous peoples may be one of the highest-return interventions available— Her magic wand answer: caring for non-humans — and why she thinks we're closer to it than it seems.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Host Scott Rettberg speaks with Aarhus University Associate Professor Christian Ulrik Andersen about autonomous AI imaging and his co-authored book, Objects of Interest and Necessity. They examine how fringe user communities, micro-models, and platforms like Civitai, AI Horde, and Hugging Face challenge big-tech dominance in generative AI. The conversation also delves into "minor tech" strategies, alternative infrastructures, and the role of digital art in rethinking our political and cultural relationship to technology.References Andersen, C. U., & Cox, G. (2017). The Metainterface: The Art ofPlatforms Cities and Clouds. MIT Press.https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262038133/the-metainterface/Andersen,C. U., Milev, N., & Velasco, P. (2024). Objects of Interest and Necessity:A Tour Guide to Autonomous AI Imaging. Digital Aesthetics Research Center /Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI).https://darc.au.dk/publications/darc-booksDeleuze,G., & Guattari, F. (1986). Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (D. Polan, Trans.).University of Minnesota Press.https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816615155/kafka/LAION(Large-scale AI Open Network). (2021). Open-Source Datasets and MachineLearning Infrastructure. LAION.https://laion.ai/Marx,L. U.(2020). The Small File Media Festival. Simon Fraser University Schoolfor the Contemporary Arts.https://smallfile.ca/Pamuk,O. (2012). TheMuseum of Innocence. Vintage Books.https://www.orhanpamuk.net/book.aspx?id=96&lng=engRombach, R., Blattmann, A., Lorenz, D., Esser, P.,& Ommer, B. (2022). High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models. Proceedings of the IEEE/CVFConference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 10684–10695.https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10752

Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding new cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran. In this episode, I interview two authors, M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi, from the teams of researchers that wrote Cycling Cities: The Lisbon Experience and Cycling Cities: The Tehran Experience. These books uncover the histories of bicycles and their cyclists from Lisbon to Tehran, from the 19th century to the 21st century, and from royals to revolutionaries. As you'll hear, while there are of course many differences between Lisbon and Tehran, there are also many commonalities in their cycling histories. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he's currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding new cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran. In this episode, I interview two authors, M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi, from the teams of researchers that wrote Cycling Cities: The Lisbon Experience and Cycling Cities: The Tehran Experience. These books uncover the histories of bicycles and their cyclists from Lisbon to Tehran, from the 19th century to the 21st century, and from royals to revolutionaries. As you'll hear, while there are of course many differences between Lisbon and Tehran, there are also many commonalities in their cycling histories. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he's currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding new cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran. In this episode, I interview two authors, M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi, from the teams of researchers that wrote Cycling Cities: The Lisbon Experience and Cycling Cities: The Tehran Experience. These books uncover the histories of bicycles and their cyclists from Lisbon to Tehran, from the 19th century to the 21st century, and from royals to revolutionaries. As you'll hear, while there are of course many differences between Lisbon and Tehran, there are also many commonalities in their cycling histories. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he's currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cycling Cities is a series of books that investigates 150 years of cycling policy and practice across fifty cities in twenty-five countries, and keeps adding new cities to the list including, recently, Lisbon and Tehran. In this episode, I interview two authors, M. Luísa Sousa and Kazem Afradi, from the teams of researchers that wrote Cycling Cities: The Lisbon Experience and Cycling Cities: The Tehran Experience. These books uncover the histories of bicycles and their cyclists from Lisbon to Tehran, from the 19th century to the 21st century, and from royals to revolutionaries. As you'll hear, while there are of course many differences between Lisbon and Tehran, there are also many commonalities in their cycling histories. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he's currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children's menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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/new-books-network

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children's menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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/east-asian-studies

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children's menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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/sociology

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children's menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological context, including emerging roles for women and perceptions of coloniality. The book focuses on three areas: the mediascape of proliferating department store posters, advertisements, commercial design, promotional magazines, and merchandise; the physical space, such as the Western-style architecture that characterized many of these early department stores, and the imagined “modern space” created within their walls; and, finally, the production of a novel “dreamworld,” which included dining spaces with children's menus, new technology such as elevators and escalators, and more. Although the research on department stores and their role in the quotidian experience is vast, there is nothing like this study, which is uniquely grounded in an art-historical approach that draws on the visual media environment of early twentieth-century Japan and its impact on the everyday. 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/japanese-studies

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-south

Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. In The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (MIT Press, 2026), Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Political conflicts related to immigration are thorny enough on their own. The issues and challenges intensify once we add to the mix our warming planet and its relationship to migration, immigration, and human displacement. Two 2024-25 CASBS fellows – Maureen Eger, a sociologist of immigration, and Alice Farmer, a refugee lawyer specializing in climate change and displacement – discuss scholarly and policy dimensions of the climate migration landscape in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Markoff (CASBS fellow, 2017-18). Maureen Eger: USC faculty page | personal website | Google Scholar page | Alice Farmer: LinkedIn page |  Read John Markoff's latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand  (Penguin Random House, 2022). John's next book, expected in 2027, will be published by MIT Press. Referenced in the episode or related works L. Yang, M. Eger, and Link, eds. Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion (MIT Press, 2024) M. Eger and S Valdez, "From Radical Right to Neo-nationalist," European Political Scientist (2019) M. Eger, M. Hjerm, and P. Velasquez, "What is the Liberalizing Potential of Higher Education? An Analysis of Academic Fields and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Across 32 Countries," The British Journal of Sociology (2025) M. O'Brien and M. Eger, "Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How COVID-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It," International Migration Review (2020) L. Yang, M. Eger, and B. Link, "The Human Cost of Politicizing Immigration: Migration Stigma, US Politics, and Health," JAMA (2024) A. Farmer and K. Linos, "Tools to Finance Climate Mobility: An Introduction to the Symposium," American Journal of International Law (2025) A. Farmer, "Disasters in Slow Motion: Why Climate Displacement Tests International Legal Frameworks, and What to Do about it," University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2026) J. Bittle, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration (Simon & Schuster, 2024) G. Vince, Nomad Century: How Climate Migration will Reshape our World (Macmillan, 2022) A. Lustgarten, On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America (Macmillan, 2024) T. Hale, Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time (Princeton Univ. Press, 2024) Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford UniversityExplore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast | latest newsletter | signup | outreach​Human CenteredProducer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel

Die bisher größte Meta-Analyse von 168 Studien zu wirtschaftlicher Ungleichheit war das Thema der vorangegangenen bto-Episode #409. Daniel Stelter sprach mit dem Sozialpsychologen Nicolas Sommet, dem federführenden Autor der Meta-Studie. Ergebnis: Wirtschaftliche Ungleichheit hat im Durchschnitt der Menschen keinen Effekt auf ihr Wohlbefinden oder ihre psychische Gesundheit. Anders gesagt, Ungleichheit macht im Durchschnitt nicht unglücklich. Die naheliegende Anschlussfrage ist, was macht Menschen denn dann glücklich? Der World Happiness Report 2026 hat im März geantwortet – und Deutschland ist überraschend um fünf Plätze auf Rang 17 nach oben gerückt. Der Ipsos Happiness Index 2026 bestätigt: 72 Prozent der Deutschen bezeichnen sich als glücklich, acht Prozentpunkte mehr als im Vorjahr. Wichtigster Unglücksfaktor: nicht Ungleichheit, sondern die eigene Finanzsituation.Passend dazu holen wir das Original-Interview mit Prof. Bruno S. Frey aus dem Archiv. Frey, Jahrgang 1941, Permanent Visiting Professor an der Universität Basel und Mitgründer des Center for Research in Economics and Well-Being (CREW), gilt als einer der Pioniere der ökonomischen Glücksforschung. Sein Standardwerk „Happiness and Economics“ von 2002 (mit Alois Stutzer) begründete dieses Feld. Sein Gespräch mit Daniel Stelter zeigt, warum Deutschland heute überhaupt aufsteigen konnte – und was Frey schon 2022 gewusst hat.Hinweis ABSTURZ – So retten wir Deutschland: das neue Buch von Daniel Stelter. Jetzt überall, wo es Bücher gibt. Auch bestellbar bei Thalia, Amazon, geniallokal.HörerserviceBericht World Happiness Report 2026 (März 2026) des Wellbeing Research Centre Oxford, Autorengruppe: https://tinyurl.com/r7p5kmnrBuch Happiness and Economics – How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being von Bruno S. Frey und Alois Stutzer, Princeton University Press 2002: https://tinyurl.com/4we6u25h Buch Happiness – A Revolution in Economics von Bruno S. Frey, MIT Press 2008: https://tinyurl.com/574w3m2v Buch Demokratische Wirtschaftspolitik – Theorie und Anwendung von Bruno S. Frey, Lars P. Feld, Melanie Häner, Christoph A. Schaltegger und Gebhard Kirchgässner, Verlag Franz Vahlen 2024: https://tinyurl.com/mupy84re Buch Automated Democracy – Die Neuverteilung von Macht und Einfluss im digitalen Staat von Bruno S. Frey und Christian R. Ulbrich, bpb – Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung 2025: https://tinyurl.com/jf27cdjn beyond the obvious – Neue Analysen, Kommentare und Einschätzungen zur Wirtschafts- und Finanzlage finden Sie unter think-bto.com.Newsletter – Den monatlichen bto-Newsletter abonnieren Sie hier.Redaktionskontakt – Wir freuen uns über Ihre Meinungen, Anregungen und Kritik unter podcast@think-bto.com.Handelsblatt – Das Handelsblatt ordnet ein, was aktuelle Wirtschafts- und Politikthemen konkret bedeuten – klar, relevant und auf den Punkt – und jetzt zum Vorteilspreis: 12 Monate lang mit 50 % Rabatt. Ein Angebot für alle, die hinter die Schlagzeilen blicken wollen. Für kurze Zeit unter: handelsblatt.com/rabatt50. Werbepartner – Weitere Informationen zu den Angeboten unserer aktuellen Werbepartner finden Sie hier. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Howitt won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The award was for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction. He and Philippe Aghion gave that theory a mathematical form in 1992.Competition and innovation do not move together in a straight line. What decides the direction is where a firm sits relative to the technological frontier. Peter also draws the line between a merger that buys innovation and one that removes it, and he describes the route by which an incumbent turns market power into political power. We then turn to agent-based modeling. He is candid about why a method he still defends took thirty years to find readers.Follow me on X (https://x.com/profschrepel) and BlueSky (@ProfSchrepel).***References:"A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction" (with Aghion), Econometrica 60(2), March 1992, 323–351. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951599.Endogenous Growth Theory (with Aghion), MIT Press, 1998. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262528467/endogenous-growth-theory/"Competition and Innovation: An Inverted-U Relationship" (with Aghion, Bloom, Blundell, Griffith), Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(2), May 2005, 701–728. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/120/2/701/1933966."The Effects of Entry on Incumbent Innovation and Productivity" (with Aghion, Blundell, Griffith, Prantl), Review of Economics and Statistics 91(1), February 2009, 20–32. https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/91/1/20/57753/The-Effects-of-Entry-on-Incumbent-Innovation-and."The Emergence of Economic Organization" (with Robert Clower), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 41(1), January 2000, 55–84. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268199000876."Banks, Market Organization, and Macroeconomic Performance: An Agent-Based Computational Analysis" (with Ashraf and Gershman), JEBO 135, March 2017, 143–180. DOI 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.023."How Inflation Affects Macroeconomic Performance: An Agent-Based Computational Investigation" (with Ashraf and Gershman), Macroeconomic Dynamics 20(2), March 2016, 558–581. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/macroeconomic-dynamics/article/abs/how-inflation-affects-macroeconomic-performance-an-agentbased-computational-investigation/DC3AF3CA750F82FDE20164B36935FA1F."Getting at Systemic Risk via an Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market" (with Geanakoplos, Axtell, Farmer and others), American Economic Review 102(3), May 2012, 53–58. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.3.53.

In this week's episode, we sort of turn the tables on Jonathan to discuss the art of assembling anthologies, and in particular no fewer than four books he has coming out over the next few months: Revolution in the Heart: Stories Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Book of the Dead, Vaster Than Empires:, Speculative Fiction of the Eternal and the Ephemeral , and The Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1. Not surprisingly, there is a story behind each of these. One honors one of our greatest writers, another continues a popular series that began with The Book of Dragons and The Book of Witches, a third comes from MIT Press, and the fourth includes stories voted on by jurors at Locus magazine. Along the way we both get to mention some of our favorite writers, along with new discoveries and other surprises—in other words, why anthologies are almost always fun to read. Order links: Revolution in the Heart, Titan Books, September The Book of  the Dead, Harper Voyager, October 2026 Vaster than Empires, MIT Press, November 2026 The Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume 1, Locus Press, November 2026

Send us Fan MailWe start with a simple mystery: how the same person can make a proud plan at night and break it in the morning, even while still believing the plan is good. We connect akrasia, free will, and moral responsibility to transaction costs, treating self-control as a contracting problem between competing versions of ourselves. • Jordan I and Jordan II as a model of divided preferences over time • Hard determinism, libertarian free will, and compatibilism as the main philosophical map • Responsibility and punishment as social conventions that reduce coordination costs • Aristotle on voluntary intoxication and why blame can attach upstream • Akrasia defined as wanting to want the right thing • Plato's knowledge-based denial of akrasia versus Aristotle's acceptance of weakness of will • Paul and Augustine on the internal conflict of the will • Time-inconsistent preferences and hyperbolic discounting as a behavioral explanation • Commitment devices as credible commitments and transaction cost engineering • Odysseus and the sirens as the classic precommitment story • Listener letter on military punctuality as costly signaling and institutional discipline • Listener letter on recycling labels as regulation creating new transaction costs Links and Sources1. Ainslie, G. (1992). Picoeconomics: The strategic interaction of successive motivational states within the person. Cambridge University Press.  Link: Cambridge University Press — Picoeconomics 2. Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Batoche Books. (Original work published ca. 350 B.C.E.)  Passage: Book VII (on incontinence/akrasia). Link: Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross (free PDF)3. Augustine. (1838). The confessions of Saint Augustine (E. B. Pusey, Trans.). John Henry Parker. (Original work written ca. 397–400 C.E.)  Passage: Book VIII, Chapters 8–9 (§§20–21). Link: Confessions, Book VIII, Pusey translation (free full text)4. Davidson, D. (1970). How is weakness of the will possible? In J. Feinberg (Ed.), Moral concepts (pp. 93–113). Oxford University Press. Link: Oxford Academic — "How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" (in Essays on Actions and Events) (gated — subscription/institutional access)5. Dennett, D. C. (1984). Elbow room: The varieties of free will worth wanting. MIT Press. Link: MIT Press — Elbow Room (gated — purchase; excerpts free)6. Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. Viking.  Link: Internet Archive — Freedom Evolves (gated — free with Internet Archive lending account)7. Hume, D. (1999). An enquiry concerning human understanding (T. L. Beauchamp, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1748) Passage: Section VIII, "Of Liberty and Necessity." Link: Hume Texts Online — Section 8 (free full text)8. King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769) Passage: Romans 7. Link: Romans, Chapter 7 (KJV) (free full text)9. Plato. (1967). Protagoras (W. R. M. Lamb, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 380 B.C.E.)  Link: Perseus Digital Library — Protagoras (Lamb trans.) (free full text)10. Schelling, T. C. (1984). The intimate contest for self-command. In Choice and consequence: Perspectives of an errant economist. Harvard University Press.  Link: National Affairs — "The Intimate Contest for Self-Command" (original 1980 essay, free full text) · Harvard University Press — Choice and Consequence (book page, gated)11. Strawson, P. F. (1962). Freedom and resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, 1–25. Link: The British Academy — Freedom and Resentment (official publisher page, may be gated)12. Vaihinger, H. (1925). The philosophy of 'as if': A system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of mankind (C. K. Ogden, Trans.). Harcourt, Brace. (Original work published 1911)Link: Internet Archive — The Philosophy of 'As If' (free full text)Book-o-da-Week:  Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's THE ODYSSEY, 2018, WW Norton. If you have questions or comments, or want to suggest a future topic, email the show at taitc.email@gmail.com !You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz 

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored. In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored. In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored. In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. 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

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored. In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored. In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master's degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Orit Halpern on Knowledge, Data and Democracy Shownotes Orit Halpern Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern at TU Dresden: https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/slk/germanistik/digitalcultures/die-professur/inhaber-in Orit Halpern's website: https://orithalpern.net/ Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful data: A history of vision and reason since 1945. Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/beautiful-data Halpern, O., & Mitchell, R. (2023). The smartness mandate. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544511/the-smartness-mandate/  Hayek, F. A. (2013). The use of knowledge in society. In Modern understandings of liberty and property (pp. 27-38). Routledge. https://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf  Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The atlantic monthly, 176(1), 101-108. https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/reso/005/11/0094-0103  on CERN: https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/ on the Event Horizon Telescope: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/ on the IPCC: https://www.ipcc.ch/ on critiques of the Enlightenment: https://polsci.institute/modern-political-philosophy/critiques-enlightenment-modernity/ Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T. W., & Noeri, G. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/theory-and-philosophy/dialectic-enlightenment  on Keynesianism: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesianismus on MAGA: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again  on the Frankfurt School: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Frankfurt-School on high modernism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_modernism on totalitarianism according to Hannah Arendt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism Friedrich Hayek: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_August_von_Hayek  on strict constitutionalism/constructionism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism on the Electoral College: https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/about on Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer https://www.kybernetik.ch/en/fs_beer.html  on post-sovereign planning: Mohammed, S. Z. (2025). Post-sovereign planning? Nature, culture and care in the new socialist calculation debate. In Creative Construction (pp. 265-278). Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/edcollchap/book/9781529235142/ch014.xml Latour, B. (2012). We have never been modern. Harvard university press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674948396  on the cultural revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution on the Belt and Road initiative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative on Mao Zedong: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong on Planetary Experiments: https://orithalpern.net/planetaryexperiments Halpern, O. (2019). The Planetary Test. Zeitschrift für Medien and Kulturforschung, Vol 10. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e2c7ee53de3f756cfd6cbbc/t/65a808813c02ca697d90089a/1705511045522/planetarytestarticleZMK.pdf Halpern, O. (2020). Planetary intelligence. In The cultural life of machine learning: An incursion into critical AI studies (pp. 227-256). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-56286-1_8 on Large Language Models (LLMs): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Language_Model  on Victor Papanek: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Papanek Groos, J., & Sorg, C. (Eds.). (2025). Creative construction: Democratic planning in the 21st century and beyond. Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction  on Terraforming: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming on Geoengineering: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering on NVIDIA Earth 2: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/high-performance-com on Destination Earth: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Destination_Earth on Piketty's inequality equation r > g: https://equitablegrowth.org/pareto-distribution-r-g/ Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674430006  the mentioned quote on the ‘weak cyborg dream' in Orit Halpern (2019, p. 22):  https://publish.fid-media.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/73aba255-56d2-4595-83b5-bfdad3740ffb/content Against Catastrophes: https://againstcatastrophe.net/ Orit Halpern on resilience: Halpern, O. (2025). The geo-politics of resilience: On the historical convergence between ecology, artificial intelligence, and corporate strategy. new media & society, 27(8), 4581-4605. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448251336420  on Ground Truth: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Truth  on benchmark data: https://brilliantfuture.se/en/glossaries/benchmark-data Related Episodes of Future Histories S03E34 | Cecilia Rikap on Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism and Corporate Power in the Age of AI https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e34-cecilia-rikap-on-intellectual-monopoly-capitalism-and-corporate-power-in-the-age-of-ai/ S02E44 | Evgeny Morozov on Discovery Beyond Competition https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e44-evgeny-morozov-on-discovery-beyond-competition/ S02E43 | Samia Mohammed zur Zukunft jenseits des Marktes https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e43-samia-mohammed-zur-zukunft-jenseits-des-marktes/ — Future Histories Contact & Support If you like Future Histories, please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/FutureHistories Contact: office@futurehistories.today  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurehpodcast/ Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories English webpage: https://futurehistories-international.com Episode Keywords #OritHalpern #JanGroos, #Interview, #TUDresden, #FutureHistoriesInternational, #FutureHistories, #Knowledge, #Data, #Democracy, #Technology, #Society, #ArtificialIntelligence, #AI, #Data, #Capitalism, #Neoliberalism, #PlanetaryExperiments, #PostSovereignPlanning, #DemocraticPlanning, #Alternatives

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism's reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women's experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America's Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet. Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes. 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/new-books-network

This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America's Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet. Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes. 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/political-science

This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America's Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet. Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes. 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/american-studies

This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America's Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet. Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes. 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

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray's first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray's first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray's first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray's first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life. Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray's first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin's Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC. 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 I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of 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/new-books-network

Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of 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/intellectual-history

Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of 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/israel-studies

Steve sits down with Cindy Cohn, former Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for a conversation about values, leadership, change, and knowing when it is time to make room for what comes next.Cindy has spent decades fighting for digital rights, privacy, free speech, and a better internet for the people who use it. Her career is a powerful example of what it means to stay grounded in your values while remaining flexible enough to adapt as the world changes around you.Cindy also shares a deeply personal look at her decision to step away from her leadership role at EFF. Not because the mission stopped mattering, but because she knew it was time to create space for the next chapter.In this episode, you'll hear about:What it means to be “growth ready”Building a career around values instead of a fixed titleLeading through constant changeWhy change should not be treated as a solo sportHow to protect the work that gives you energyThe importance of listening across an organizationCindy's transition out of EFF and into what comes nextHer book, Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital SurveillanceWhether you are navigating transition, leading through uncertainty, or trying to reconnect with the work that fuels you, Cindy's story offers a thoughtful reminder: staying true to your values does not mean staying still.Listen now and ask yourself: What part of your work gives you energy right now?About the Guest:Cindy Cohn is a digital rights attorney and longtime leader in the fight for privacy, free expression, and civil liberties online.She served as Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for a decade and spent 26 years helping shape the organization's work as the internet evolved—from early battles over encryption to today's questions around platform power, surveillance, and AI.Cindy is also the author of Privacy's Defender: My 30-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance (MIT Press). Proceeds support EFF.Connect with Cindy:EFF:  https://www.eff.org Cindy's book page (via EFF):  https://www.eff.org  (search “Privacy's Defender”)Book retailers: available wherever books are sold (including audiobook)Send us Fan MailSupport the showConnect with Steve MellorStay connected and keep growing with Steve:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-mellor-cc/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/coachstevemellorBook Steve to speak at your next event → www.stevemellorspeaks.comSupport the GrowthReady Podcast by leaving a 5-star rating → Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/growthready-podcast/id1406082163Connect with GrowthReadyJoin the community and keep your growth journey going:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearegrowthready/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/growthreadypodcast/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/growthreadywithcoachstevemellorOfficial Website - https://growthready.com/----This podcast was produced on Riverside and released via ...

Matthew applies three interlocking frameworks to the conspirituality phenomenon—and to the podcast itself. Drawing on Jodi Dean's theory of neofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis's technofeudalism, and McKenzie Wark's vectoralism, he argues that conspirituality is an epistemic crisis—a problem of bad information spreading through inadequately critical communities—but also a structural product of platform capitalism's feudal logic. Dean's four elements (parcellated sovereignty, new lords and serfs, hinterlandization, and catastrophic anxiety) explain why certain populations are rendered susceptible before they encounter any specific piece of misinformation. Varoufakis names the extraction mechanism as  cloud rent. Wark shows what this means for the producer: a hacker class worker who owns every tool except the vector that makes the work valuable.  Matthew then turns the analysis on himself, exploring what it means to have spent six years building critical content inside the infrastructure he is criticising. Show Notes Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?' Los Angeles Review of Books, May 2020. Dean, Jodi. 'From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism.' Emancipations, Vol. 3, Iss. 3, 2024. Dean, Jodi. 'Neofeudalism: The Messy Political Economy of Transitioning to Something Worse.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 3, 2025. Dean, Jodi. Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. Verso, 2025. Dean, Jodi. 'Communism or Neo-Feudalism?' New Political Science, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2020. Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Bodley Head, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? Verso, 2019. McIntyre, Lee. How to Talk to a Science Denier. MIT Press, 2021. Heron, Kai. 'Are We Witness to the Disintegration of Capital's Laws of Motion? A Review of Jodi Dean's Capital's Grave.' Emancipations, Vol. 4, Iss. 2, 2025. Gane, Nicholas. 'Capitalism is Capitalism, Not Technofeudalism.' Journal of Classical Sociology, 2024. James W. 'Worse than Dead: A Critical Response to McKenzie Wark.' Cosmonaut Magazine, October 2020. Freedom Socialist Party. 'Book Review: Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism.' Socialism.com, 2024. Beres, Derek, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker. Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat. PublicAffairs, 2023. Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, 2004. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices