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About MIT Press

The MIT Press Podcast features exclusive interviews and content that draw on the topics, themes, and trends explored in our books and journals.

NBN Episodes hosted by MIT Press:

MIT Press Podcast July 27, 2023

The Digital Mind

How Science Is Redefining Humanity

Arlindo Oliveira

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
What do computers, cells, and brains have in common? Computers are electronic devices designed by humans; cells are biological entities crafted by evolution; brains are the containers and creators of …
MIT Press Podcast July 26, 2023

Codename Revolution

The Nintendo Wii Platform

Steven E. Jones and George K. Thiruvathukal

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
The Nintendo Wii, introduced in 2006, helped usher in a moment of retro-reinvention in video game play. This hugely popular console system, codenamed Revolution during development, signaled a turn away …
MIT Press Podcast July 25, 2023

In Praise of Reason

Why Rationality Matters for Democracy

Michael P. Lynch

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Why does reason matter, if (as many people seem to think) in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what you …
MIT Press Podcast July 24, 2023

Consciousness

Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Christof Koch

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has …
MIT Press Podcast July 23, 2023

Net Smart

How to Thrive Online

Howard Rheingold

Hosted by MIT Press
Like it or not, knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient to personal success in the twenty-first century …
MIT Press Podcast July 22, 2023

The Future Was Here

The Commodore Amiga

Jimmy Maher

Hosted by MIT Press
Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commodore products); and the boring, beige adult …
MIT Press Podcast July 21, 2023

Networked

The New Social Operating System

Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and …
MIT Press Podcast July 20, 2023

Infectious Behavior

Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression

Paul H. Patterson

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
In Infectious Behavior, neurobiologist Paul Patterson examines the involvement of the immune system in autism, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder. Although genetic approaches to these diseases have garnered the lion's …
MIT Press Podcast July 19, 2023

Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch

Living Sustainably in a Connected World

Leslie Paul Thiele

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
We live today in a global web of interdependence, connected technologically, economically, politically, and socially. As a result of these expanding and deepening interdependencies, it has become impossible fully to …
MIT Press Podcast July 18, 2023

Hello Avatar

Rise of the Networked Generation

B. Coleman

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Hello Avatar Or, {llSay(0, Hello, Avatar ); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. Coleman examines a crucial …
MIT Press Podcast July 17, 2023

Small, Gritty, and Green

The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World

Catherine Tumber

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities--Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others--increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems that laid waste to …
MIT Press Podcast July 16, 2023

The Silent Epidemic

Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health

Alan H. Lockwood

Hosted by MIT Press
We will not find “exposure to burning coal” listed as the cause of death on a single death certificate, but tens of thousands of deaths from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary …
MIT Press Podcast July 15, 2023

Working on Mars

Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers

William J. Clancey

Hosted by MIT Press
Geologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team …
MIT Press Podcast July 14, 2023

Take Back the Center

Progressive Taxation for a New Progressive Agenda

Peter S. Wenz

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Midcentury America was governed from the center, a bipartisan consensus of politicians and public opinion that supported government spending on education, the construction of a vast network of interstate highways …
MIT Press Podcast July 13, 2023

Logistic Clusters

Delivering Value and Driving Growth

Yossi Sheffi

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Why is Memphis home to hundreds of motor carrier terminals and distribution centers? Why does the tiny island-nation of Singapore handle a fifth of the world's maritime containers and half …
MIT Press Podcast July 12, 2023

Borges and Memory

Encounters with the Human Brain

Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Imagine the astonishment felt by neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga when he found a fantastically precise interpretation of his research findings in a story written by the great Argentinian fabulist Jorge …
MIT Press Podcast July 11, 2023

The Art of Failure

An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

Jesper Juul

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
We may think of video games as being "fun," but in The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul claims that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, our …
MIT Press Podcast July 10, 2023

Robot Futures

Illah Reza Nourbakhsh

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking …
MIT Press Podcast July 9, 2023

What Was Contemporary Art?

Richard Meyer

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as if the very idea of art that is contemporary is new. Yet all works of art were once contemporary …
MIT Press Podcast July 8, 2023

Ambient Commons

Attention in the Age of Embodied Information

Malcolm McCullough

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
The world is filling with ever more kinds of media, in ever more contexts and formats. Glowing rectangles have become part of the scene; screens, large and small, appear everywhere …
MIT Press Podcast July 7, 2023

Spam

A Shadow History of the Internet

Finn Brunton

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
The vast majority of all email sent every day is spam, a variety of idiosyncratically spelled requests to provide account information, invitations to spend money on dubious products, and pleas …
MIT Press Podcast July 6, 2023

Moving Innovation

A History of Computer Animation

Tom Sito

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and …
MIT Press Podcast July 5, 2023

Alelard to Apple

The Fate of American Colleges and Universities

Richard A. DeMillo

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so private and public institutions that might be described as the Middle—reputable educational institutions, but not considered equal to …
MIT Press Podcast July 4, 2023

The Outer Limits of Reason

What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us

Noson S. Yanofsky

Hosted by MIT Press
Listen:
Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to …