New Books Network Podcast

Peoples & Things September 18, 2023

Forty Years of Technology Studies

A Conversation with Steve Barley

Steve Barley

Hosted by Lee Vinsel

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Stephen Barley, professor emeritus at both Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about the long arc of his forty-year career studying organizations and technologies with Peoples …

Library Science September 17, 2023

The Two Revolutions

A History of the Transgender Internet

Avery Dame-Griff

Hosted by Hallel Yadin

Avery Dame-Griff's The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (NYU Press, 2023) explores how the rise of the internet shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s to the present …

Environmental Studies September 17, 2023

Unbottled

The Fight Against Plastic Water and for Water Justice

Daniel Jaffee

Hosted by Joshua Mullenite

In just four decades, bottled water has transformed from a luxury niche item into a ubiquitous consumer product, representing a $300 billion market dominated by global corporations. It sits at …

Environmental Studies September 16, 2023

Disrupting D.C.

The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City

Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen

Hosted by Brian Hamilton

The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a playbook for …

Sociology September 14, 2023

Technosleep

Frontiers, Fictions, Futures

Catherine Coveney, Michael Greaney, Eric L. Hsu, Robert Meadows, and Simon J. Williams

Hosted by Michael Johnston

Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, literature, and popular culture to highlight how a new technoscientifically mediated and …

Japanese Studies September 11, 2023

Globalizing the Soybean

Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950

Ines Prodöhl

Hosted by Nathan Hopson

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Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soybean became a critical ingredient in industry …

Peoples & Things September 11, 2023

Race and Electrical Infrastructure in the Jim Crow South

A Conversation with Conor Harrison

Conor Harrison

Hosted by Lee Vinsel

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Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina, talks about his research into the racist development of electrical …

Geography September 10, 2023

Invisible Lines

Boundaries and Belts That Define the World

Maxim Samson

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Our world has innumerable boundaries, ranging from the obvious - like an ocean - to subtle differences in language or climate. Most of us cross invisible lines all the time …

Science September 8, 2023

Fascination of Science

60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time

Herlinde Koelbl

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

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An intimate collection of portraits of internationally renowned scientists and Nobel Prize winners, paired with interviews and personal stories. What makes a brilliant scientist? Who are the people behind the …

Game Studies September 7, 2023

Open World Structures

Architecture, Urban and Natural Landscape in the Computer Game

Marc Bonner

Hosted by Rudolf Thomas Inderst

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What role do algorithms play in the construction of images and the representation of the world and weather in computer games? How does the design of rooms, levels and topographies …

Education September 6, 2023

The Alienation of Fact

Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers

Kenneth J. Saltman

Hosted by Joao Souto-Maior

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Today, conspiracy theories run rampant, attacks on facts have become commonplace, and systemic inequities are on the rise as individual and collective agency unravels. The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational …

Library Science September 6, 2023

On the Digital Humanities

Essays and Provocations

Stephen Ramsay

Hosted by Hallel Yadin

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Stephen Ramsey's On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a witty and incisive exploration of the philosophical conundrums that animate the digital humanities. Since its inception …

General History September 6, 2023

After Work

A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time

Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

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Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you're confronted by a pile …

Japanese Studies September 5, 2023

Gas Mask Nation

Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan

Gennifer Weisenfeld

Hosted by Ran Zwigenberg

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Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with paper gas masks as promotional giveaways …

Disability Studies September 5, 2023

Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

Implications for the Social Work Profession

Gerald O'Brien

Hosted by Shu Wan

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Gerald O'Brien's book Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective: Implications for the Social Work Profession (Oxford UP, 2023) focuses on the conceptual relationship between the American eugenic movement …

Australian and New Zealand Studies September 4, 2023

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

Alexandra Roginski

Hosted by Piers Kelly

The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external ‘reading’ of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand …

Science, Technology, and Society September 2, 2023

Industry Unbound

The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power

Ari Ezra Waldman

Hosted by Jake Chanenson

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In Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power (Cambridge UP, 2021), Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine …

Darts & Letters September 1, 2023

The Past and Present of Psychedelic Medicine

A Discussion with Erika Dyke and David Nickles

Erika Dyke and David Nickles

Hosted by Gordon Katic

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Psychedelics have gone from the counterculture, to the mainstream. However, can you turn take such an ineffable thing — a tool for personal revelation, cosmic oneness, spiritual enlightenment, whatever people …

Music August 31, 2023

Voice Machines

The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds

Bonnie Gordon

Hosted by Nathan Smith

Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical …

Library Science August 30, 2023

Ownership of Knowledge

Beyond Intellectual Property

Dagmar Schafer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning

Hosted by Jen Hoyer

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Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and …