Podcast
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Hosted by New Books Network · EN
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.
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107episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Adam Geczy, "Glasses" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
2w ago00:34:09Tap to summarizeGlasses are among the oldest and most commonplace prosthetics we have invented. But what does it mean to wear glasses? There is more to the answer than correcting vision. Glasses alter, enhance, and shield the way that we view the world, and the way the world sees us. Everyone has encounters with glasses, passively or actively, from reading glasses to sunglasses. At times they are the main identifiers in a face (think John Lennon), and they signify extremes from nerdy and brainy to cool and sleazy. They are alternately the most mundane of things on our bodies and potentially the most glamorous. In this edition of the Object Lessons series, Glasses (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Adam Geczy explores this most pervasive and accessible accessory and shows that it is both a conduit to and a barrier between ourselves and the world outside. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)
2w ago01:06:35Tap to summarizeTechnothriller: 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →The Emerging Anocracy: AI, Tech Oligarchs, and the Future of Democracy with Alexis Cruz
2w ago01:00:00Tap to summarizeIn this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny sits down with Alexis Cruz, founder of Enough Consulting and former strategic advisor for governance at Meta. Cruz explores how the proliferation of AI and digital platforms has shifted global politics into an "anocracy"—a precarious gray zone situated between traditional democracy and authoritarianism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
3w ago00:43:17Tap to summarizeSince the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments. Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses, Dr. Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the growing economies of data extraction. Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Kit Chapman, "The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry" (Profile Books, 2026)
3w ago01:18:49Tap to summarizeThe first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers. The Enlightenment is usually credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science blossomed gradually. As early innovators distilled, smelted, forged and fermented their way through the centuries, they blurred science and mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries. In reading The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry (Profile Books, 2026), join Kit Chapman on a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease and transmute lead into gold as he reveals the illuminating stories of how the alchemists first broke new ground and shaped the scientific method. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
3w ago01:01:50Tap to summarizeStove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options? Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India (University of Arizona Press, 2024) by Dr. Meena Khandelwal argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself technology. Dr. Khandelwal, a feminist anthropologist, describes her collaboration with engineers, archaeologists, and others. She employs critical social theory and reflections from fieldwork to bring together research from a range of fields, including history, geography, anthropology, energy and environmental studies, public health, and science and technology studies (STS). In so doing she not only demystifies multidisciplinary research but also highlights the messy reality of actual behavior. Cookstove Chronicles critically examines why, despite extensive development efforts, use of the chulha persists. It offers an important new framework for looking at development, technology, environmental change, and human behavior. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Roberta J. Magnusson, "Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
3w ago01:10:51Tap to summarizeIn the bustling market towns and growing cities of medieval England between 1200 and 1600, public works were the lifelines of urban society. In Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. Roberta J. Magnusson offers the first comprehensive study of how medieval towns built, financed, and sustained their defenses, bridges, streets, water systems, and harbors. Dr. Magnusson reveals how even modest communities, like the Warwickshire town of Atherstone, boldly pursued projects that reshaped their futures. Grants of tolls and taxes funded paving initiatives, bridge repairs, and fortified walls, while enterprising lords and abbots sponsored sluices, conduits, and quays. These efforts were not confined to England's great cities; small towns with limited means also sought to enhance their competitive edge, even when such investments strained their resources. Drawing on royal records, municipal archives, and archaeological evidence, Dr. Magnusson situates these civic undertakings in their broader social and environmental contexts. She shows how townsmen adapted traditional obligations of labor and charity alongside innovative fiscal tools to sustain projects that could span generations. Yet the balance was fragile. The crises of the fourteenth century—famine, plague, and the harsher climate of the Little Ice Age—undermined local resources, leaving many communities to struggle with maintenance or watch their infrastructures decline. At once a history of engineering, economy, and community, this study illuminates how medieval people conceived of security, health, and prosperity through the material fabric of their towns. By tracing the rise, transformation, and survival of these infrastructures, Dr. Magnusson demonstrates how urban communities navigated centuries of change while shaping the very landscapes in which they lived. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Aswin Punathambekar, Adrienne Shaw and Jonathan Gray eds., "Planet Digital: A Global Media Cultures Reader" (NYU Press, 2026)
3w ago01:01:23Tap to summarizeIn the three decades since the rise of the global internet, digitalization has transformed how media are made, circulated, and consumed, reshaping culture on a planetary scale. Yet the story of global media is not one of seamless connection or cultural homogenization. Planet Digital: A Global Media Cultures Reader (NYU Press, 2026) challenges the myth of a “global village,” revealing instead how regional histories, infrastructures, economies, and power relations shape the uneven terrains of our digital world. Edited by the series editors of Critical Cultural Communication, this field-defining anthology gathers leading scholars to examine the texts, genres, platforms, and industries that define today’s global entertainment landscape. From TikTok to Squid Game, K-Pop to Marvel, Bluey to Nollywood, each chapter offers a focused case study that illuminates how digital media both reflect and remake global cultural life. Spanning influencer culture, streaming platforms, esports, and beyond, Planet Digital shows how digital technologies and global media flows continually reshape one another, producing hybrid forms of creativity, circulation, and control. Together, these essays provide a vital framework for understanding how the world’s screens, sounds, and networks are rewriting the relationship between culture and power in the twenty-first century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Hayagreeva Rao and Henrich R Greve, "Ctrl+Alt+Doubt: Decoding the Language of Online Conspiracy Talk" (Oxford UP, 2026)
3w ago01:07:08Tap to summarizeCtrl+Alt+Doubt: Decoding the Language of Online Conspiracy Talk (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a new way to understand why conspiracy theories grow and persist. Rather than treating them as cognitive errors, psychological pathologies, or products of echo chambers, Rao and Greve analyze conspiracy theories as linguistic constructions, that is as stories built from recognizable semantic patterns. Drawing on cases from COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, Rao and Greve show that conspiracy theorizing is a form of bricolage. People tinker with cultural fragments to craft explanations that reduce uncertainty and threat. New conspiracy beliefs are most likely to take hold when they are linguistically close to beliefs people already hold. The book traces how conspiracy theories spread through superspreaders, fear-laden language, bots, and shared hashtags, revealing conspiracy theorizing as a form of proto-coordination that generates community, amplifies outrage, and enables collective sensemaking among opponents of social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Transcribe →Joseph Turow, "The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
4w ago01:07:04Tap to summarizeA respected voice on technology shows how seemingly simple ads help dismantle democracy and public discourse. Whether you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media, something is following you: ads. Their creators seem to know your income bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets, tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here, and how to change direction.The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age (University of Chicago Press, 2026) shatters common beliefs about advertising history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality. Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground necessary for a functioning democracy. A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
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