New Books Network
Systems and Cybernetics
Economics October 6, 2021

Discovering Prices

Auction Design in Markets with Complex Constraints

Paul Milgrom

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Neoclassical economic theory shows that under the right conditions, prices alone can guide markets to efficient outcomes. But what if it it’s hard to find the right price? In many …

Systems and Cybernetics

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Interviews with scholars of systems and cybernetics about their new books.

Economics October 5, 2021

Who Gets What -- and Why

The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

Alvin E. Roth

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
In Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design (Mariner Books, 2015), Nobel Memorial Prize Winner Alvin Roth explains his pioneering work in the …
Systems and Cybernetics September 27, 2021

Stafford Beer

The Father of Management Cybernetics

Vanilla Beer and Allenna Leonard

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
In this episode I am in conversation with artist and author Vanilla Beer about her 2019 book Stafford Beer: The Father of Management Cybernetics. While he got his start in …
Systems and Cybernetics September 17, 2021

Gaian Systems

Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene

Bruce Clarke

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis …
Systems and Cybernetics September 1, 2021

Systems Thinkers

Magnus Ramage and Karen Shipp

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
In this episode I spoke with Magnus Ramage, co-author of Systems Thinkers (Springer, 2020). This second edition provides an update to Ramage’s and co-author Karen Shipp’s earlier exploration, and presents an enlightening—often …
Systems and Cybernetics August 17, 2021

Immersive Systemic Knowing

Advancing Systems Thinking Beyond Rational Analysis

Raghav Rajagopalan

Hosted by Tom Scholte
On this episode, we speak with Ragav Rajagopalan about his book, Immersive Systemic Knowing: Advancing Systems Thinking Beyond Rational Analysis, out from Springer in 2020. This fascinating book advances systems …
Mathematics July 30, 2021

What Is a Complex System?

James Ladyman and K. Wiesner

Hosted by Cory Brunson
While i find it pretty easy to recognize when i'm reading articles in complexity science, i've never been satisfied by definitions of complexity and related concepts. I'm not alone! Researchers' …
Systems and Cybernetics July 27, 2021

Systems Approaches to Making Change: A Practical Guide

Martin Reynolds and Sue Holwell

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
Practitioners from all professional domains are increasingly confronted with incidences of systemic failure, yet poorly equipped with appropriate tools and know-how for understanding such failure, and the making of systemic …
Systems and Cybernetics July 8, 2021

The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory

Living Control Systems IV

Warren Mansell

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Regular listeners to this podcast will be well aware of my strong conviction that the Perceptual Control Theory initially formulated by William T. Powers entails many significant contributions to the …
Systems and Cybernetics June 17, 2021

Sand Talk

How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Tyson Yunkaporta

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
Although it is not described as such anywhere in the book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (HarperOne, 2021) is indeed a systems-thinking book—one that offers a much-needed fresh …
Systems and Cybernetics May 11, 2021

Cybernetic-Existentialism

Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance

Steve Dixon

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Like the transdiscipline of cybernetics, the philosophical movement known as Existentialism rose to prominence in the decade following World War II, was communicated to the general public by a handful …
Economics April 19, 2021

The Human Network

How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors

Matthew O. Jackson

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, has studied how …
Systems and Cybernetics March 22, 2021

Managing Creativity

A Systems Thinking Journey

José-Rodrigo Córdoba-Pachón

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others …
Systems and Cybernetics February 8, 2021

The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking

Governance in a Climate Emergency

Ray Ison and Ed Straw

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking: Governance in Climate Emergency (Routledge, 2020) is a persuasive, lively book that shows how systems thinking can be harnessed to effect profound, complex change.  …
Systems and Cybernetics January 18, 2021

Network Origins of the Global Economy

East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective

Hilton L. Root

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Twenty-eight years after Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” and pronounced Western-style liberalism as the culmination of a Hegelian narrative of progress, pundits and academics of all stripes find …
Medicine December 17, 2020

Unraveling

Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

Hosted by Claire Clark
Twentieth-century neuroscience fixed the brain as the basis of consciousness, the self, identity, individuality, even life itself, obscuring the fundamental relationships between bodies and the worlds that they inhabit. In Unraveling …
Systems and Cybernetics December 16, 2020

Small Arcs of Larger Circles

Framing Through Other Patterns

Nora Bateson

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
“To be a participant in a complex system is to desire to be both lost and found in the interrelationships between people, nature and ideas.” Nora Bateson writes these words …
Systems and Cybernetics November 25, 2020

Systems Practice

How to Act In Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity in a Climate-Change World

Ray Ison

Hosted by Tom Scholte
While various systems theories have received rigorous treatments across the literature of the field, reliable and robust advice for systems practice can be somewhat harder to come by. Ray Ison …
Systems and Cybernetics November 4, 2020

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

A Search for New Perspectives (Part 2)

Anthony Hodgson

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
This is the second episode of a two-part conversation with Hodgson, and in it we pick up our conversation on anticipatory systems and the role they play in ‘decision integrity’ …
Systems and Cybernetics October 7, 2020

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

A Search for New Perspectives

Anthony Hodgson

Hosted by Tom Scholte
In the view of Anthony Hodgson, fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, Hodgson believes we need to reintroduce …