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New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Leuven UP, 2026)

77 hours 36 mins; April 04, 2026

Eivind Røssaak, "The Cory Arcangel Hack: Digital Culture and Aesthetic Practice" (MIT Press, 2025)

43 mins; April 04, 2026

Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies" (Duke UP, 2026)

52 mins; April 03, 2026

Caste and Tech with Murali Shanmugavelan and Sareeta Amrute

66 hours 0 mins; March 30, 2026

Vojta Hybl, "Rocks: A Guide to the Stones Around Us and the Stories They Tell" (Frances Lincoln, 2026)

37 mins; March 30, 2026

Ben Collier on Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

60 hours 38 mins; March 30, 2026

Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)

44 mins; March 23, 2026

Sidra Hamidi, "After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

56 mins; March 21, 2026

Karima Moyer-Nocchi, "The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America" (Columbia UP, 2026)

74 hours 24 mins; March 20, 2026

Charles G. Curtin, "Place-Based Solutions: The Power of Regenerative Thinking in the Face of Crisis" (JHU Press, 2026)

46 mins; March 19, 2026

Lisa Nakamura, "The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

43 mins; March 18, 2026

P. Thirumal and K. A. Nuaiman eds., "Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia" (Orient BlackSwan, 2025)

80 hours 10 mins; March 17, 2026

Sam Illingworth and Rachel Forsyth, "GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

35 mins; March 17, 2026

Courtney Humphries, "Climate Change and the Future of Boston" (Anthem Press, 2026)

36 mins; March 16, 2026

César A. Hidalgo, "The Infinite Alphabet: And the Laws of Knowledge" (Allen Lane, 2026)

66 hours 35 mins; March 16, 2026

Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

51 mins; March 15, 2026

Marianna Dudley, "Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain by Marianna Dudley" (Manchester UP, 2025)

44 mins; March 14, 2026

Michael Bycroft, "Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

53 mins; March 11, 2026

Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)

52 mins; March 09, 2026

Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)

41 mins; March 08, 2026

Rebecca Sharpless, "People of the Wheat: Culture and Cultivation in North Texas" (U Texas Press, 2026)

70 hours 11 mins; March 07, 2026

Patrick Chung, "Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

61 hours 53 mins; March 06, 2026

Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)

46 mins; March 04, 2026

Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)

61 hours 13 mins; March 02, 2026

Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

41 mins; March 02, 2026

Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)

61 hours 13 mins; March 02, 2026

Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)

72 hours 3 mins; February 26, 2026

Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and Californian and Texan Ideologies

79 hours 2 mins; February 25, 2026

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs" (Stanford UP, 2026)

48 mins; February 23, 2026

Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape" (UNC Press, 2023)

55 mins; February 22, 2026

Joe Williams, "Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

50 mins; February 21, 2026

David King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

39 mins; February 19, 2026

W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)

48 mins; February 19, 2026

Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet" (Columbia UP, 2023)

58 mins; February 18, 2026

Vanessa Rampton, "Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

34 mins; February 15, 2026

Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium" (MIT Press, 2026)

54 mins; February 13, 2026

Howard Alan Israel, "Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2026)

47 mins; February 13, 2026

Yi-Ling Liu, "The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet" (Knopf, 2026)

44 mins; February 12, 2026

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations" (Strange Attractor, 2025)

54 mins; February 11, 2026

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital China" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

58 mins; February 11, 2026

Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)

35 mins; February 08, 2026

Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)

38 mins; February 07, 2026

Polina Dimova, "At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism" (Penn State UP, 2024)

62 hours 35 mins; February 06, 2026

Rob Gallagher, "Artgames after GamerGate" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

27 mins; February 06, 2026

Tom Griffiths, "The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind" (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)

68 hours 37 mins; February 04, 2026

Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP, 2026)

34 mins; February 03, 2026

John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should)" (Oxford UP, 2023)

36 mins; January 31, 2026

LiLi Johnson, "Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racialization and the Making of Family" (NYU Press, 2025)

71 hours 59 mins; January 28, 2026

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)

62 hours 7 mins; January 26, 2026

Michelle Henning, "A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

57 mins; January 22, 2026

Alex Wellerstein, "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" (Harper, 2025)

64 hours 20 mins; January 21, 2026

Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek, "The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

73 hours 39 mins; January 21, 2026

The Friends of Attention, "Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement" (Crown, 2026)

67 hours 40 mins; January 20, 2026

Robert Dorschel, "The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism" (MIT Press, 2025)

40 mins; January 20, 2026

Emily Hund, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media" (Princeton UP, 2023)

49 mins; January 19, 2026

Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)

61 hours 8 mins; January 19, 2026

Steve Ramirez, "How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past" (Princeton UP, 2025)

50 mins; January 19, 2026

Ines Prodöhl, "Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950" (Routledge, 2023)

51 mins; January 18, 2026

Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)

58 mins; January 18, 2026

Caroline Peyton, "Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History of the American South" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

51 mins; January 17, 2026

Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)

59 mins; January 13, 2026

Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

45 mins; January 10, 2026

Heino Falcke and Jörg Römer, "Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us" (HarperCollins, 2021)

73 hours 36 mins; January 09, 2026

Marc Berman, "Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

33 mins; January 08, 2026

Peter Frankopan, "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History" (Knopf, 2023)

53 mins; January 07, 2026

Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)

41 mins; January 07, 2026

Aaron Bateman. "Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative" (MIT Press, 2024)

20 mins; January 06, 2026

Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)

63 hours 54 mins; January 06, 2026

David Morris, "Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia" (Watkins Media, 2025)

59 mins; January 05, 2026

Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)

42 mins; January 05, 2026

Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)

44 mins; January 01, 2026

Dagmar Schafer, "Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property" (MIT Press, 2023)

41 mins; January 01, 2026

James Welsh et al., "Weathering Space" (American Scientist 114:1 2026)

47 mins; December 31, 2025

Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

77 hours 4 mins; December 31, 2025

Jeremy Black, "A History of Artillery" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

38 mins; December 29, 2025

Colin Williamson, "Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

51 mins; December 25, 2025

Emanuel Deutschmann, "Mapping the Transnational World: How We Move and Communicate Across Borders, and Why It Matters" (Princeton UP, 2022)

37 mins; December 23, 2025

Jennifer Ott, "Where the City Meets the Sound: The Story of Seattle's Waterfront" (HistoryLink, 2025) This

72 hours 32 mins; December 19, 2025

Erik Lin-Greenberg, "The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)

25 mins; December 19, 2025

Luis Felipe Murillo, "Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures" (Stanford UP, 2025)

41 mins; December 17, 2025

Matthew A. Tattar, "Innovation and Adaptation in War" (MIT Press, 2025)

60 hours 4 mins; December 15, 2025

Chaim Gingold, "Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine" (MIT Press, 2024)

20 mins; December 15, 2025

Graham Harman, "Waves and Stones: The Continuous and the Discontinuous in Human Thought" (Allen Lane, 2025)

67 hours 58 mins; December 15, 2025

Edward McPherson, "Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View" (Astra House, 2025)

38 mins; December 13, 2025

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen, "Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley" (Harvard UP, 2025)

61 hours 53 mins; December 10, 2025

Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand

102 hours 6 mins; December 08, 2025

Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

43 mins; December 04, 2025

Reading the Bible with AI?: A Conversation with John Kaag, Philosopher and Co-Founder of Rebind AI

42 mins; December 03, 2025

Paulette F. C. Steeves, "The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

40 mins; November 30, 2025

Elisabetta Ferrari, "Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies" (U California Press, 2024)

42 mins; November 29, 2025

Meg Bernhard, "Wine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

58 mins; November 28, 2025

Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

40 mins; November 27, 2025

Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)

39 mins; November 23, 2025

Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)

61 hours 4 mins; November 23, 2025

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

44 mins; November 22, 2025

Ivan Franceschini et al., "Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds" (Verso Books, 2025)

50 mins; November 20, 2025

Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

54 mins; November 19, 2025

Cory Doctorow on Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

96 hours 34 mins; November 17, 2025

Hilary Allen, "Fintech Dystopia: A Summer Beach Read about Silicon Valley Ruining Things" (2025)

52 mins; November 11, 2025

Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021)

52 mins; November 09, 2025

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