The MIT Press Podcast
584 episodes - English - Latest episode: 23 days ago - ★★★★ - 3 ratingsInterviews with authors of MIT Press books.
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Episodes
Episode 34 (Sept. '11): Richard A. DeMillo
August 07, 2017 00:13 - 15 minutes - 14.5 MBRichard A. DeMillo is Distinguished Professor of Computing and Professor of Management, former John P. Imlay Dean of Computing, and Director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Institute of Technology. Author of over 100 articles, books, and patents, he has held academic positions at Purdue University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Padua. He directed the Computer and Computation Research Division of the National Science Foundation and was Hewlett-Packa...
EPISODE 55 (MAY. '13): Tom Sito
August 07, 2017 00:09 - 18 minutes - 16.9 MBTom Sito has been a professional animator since 1975. One of the key players in Disney’s animation revival of the 1980s and 1990s, he worked on such classic Disney films as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994). He left Disney to help set up the Dreamworks Animation Unit in 1995. He is Professor of Cinema Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.
EPISODE 54 (MAR. '13): Finn Brunton
August 06, 2017 14:09 - 20 minutes - 19.2 MBFinn Brunton is Assistant Professor of Information in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.
EPISODE 53 (APR. '13): Malcolm McCullough
August 06, 2017 14:04 - 16 minutes - 15 MBMalcolm McCullough is Associate Professor of Architecture and Design at the University of Michigan.
EPISODE 52 (APR. '13): Richard Meyer
August 06, 2017 14:00 - 19 minutes - 17.5 MBRichard Meyer is Professor of Art History at Stanford University. He is the author of Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art and Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles.
EPISODE 51 (MAR. '13): Illah Reza Nourbakhsh
August 06, 2017 13:55 - 14 minutes - 13.9 MBIllah Reza Nourbakhsh is Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also directs the Community Robotics, Education, and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab. He is a coauthor of Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots (MIT Press).
EPISODE 50 (MAR. '13): Jesper Juul
August 06, 2017 13:51 - 15 minutes - 14.5 MBJesper Juul is Assistant Professor at the New York University Game Center. He is the author of Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds and A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players, both published by the MIT Press.
EPISODE 49 (JAN. '13): Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
August 06, 2017 13:47 - 14 minutes - 13.8 MBRodrigo Quian Quiroga, a native of Argentina, is Professor and Director of the Bioengineering Research Centre at the University of Leicester.
EPISODE 48 (DEC. '12): Yossi Sheffi
August 06, 2017 13:42 - 15 minutes - 18.1 MBYossi Sheffi is Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT and Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. He has worked with leading manufacturers and logistics service providers around the world on supply chain issues and is an active entrepreneur, having founded or cofounded five companies since 1987. He is the author of The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage (MIT Press) and Urban Transportation Networks.
EPISODE 47 (NOV. '12): Peter S. Wenz
August 06, 2017 13:37 - 18 minutes - 17 MBPeter S. Wenz is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Springfield and University Scholar at the University of Illinois. He is the author of Beyond Red and Blue: How Twelve Political Philosophies Shape American Debates (MIT Press) and other books.
EPISODE 46 (OCT. '12): William J. Clancey
August 06, 2017 13:33 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBWilliam J. Clancey is Chief Scientist of Human-Centered Computing in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center, and Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
EPISODE 45 (SEP. '12): Alan H. Lockwood
August 06, 2017 13:28 - 14 minutes - 13.2 MBAlan H. Lockwood, M.D. is Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the lead author of a Physicians for Social Responsibility report on coal’s adverse health effects.
Episode 37 (Dec. '11): Catherine Tumber
August 05, 2017 22:16 - 12 minutes - 11.7 MBCatherine Tumber, a journalist and historian, is the author of American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality: Searching for the Higher Self, 1875–1915. She is a Research Affiliate in the Community Innovators Lab in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Episode 38 (Jan. '12): B. Coleman
August 05, 2017 22:13 - 17 minutes - 16.1 MBB. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media in MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies. She is Faculty Director of the C3 Game Culture and Mobile Media initiative.
Episode 36 (Nov. '11): Leslie Paul Thiele
August 05, 2017 22:08 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBLeslie Paul Thiele is Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Director of Sustainability Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Environmentalism for a New Millennium: The Challenge of Coevolution, The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative, and other books.
Episode 35 (Oct. '11): Paul H. Patterson
August 05, 2017 22:04 - 16 minutes - 15.2 MBPaul H. Patterson, a developmental neurobiologist, is Anne P. and Benjamin R. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and a Research Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. He is the coauthor (with Alan Brown) of The Origins of Schizophrenia.
Episode 44 (Jun. '12): Lee Rainie
August 05, 2017 21:59 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBLee Rainie is Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and former managing editor of U.S. News and World Report.
Episode 43 (May. '12): Jimmy Maher
August 05, 2017 17:28 - 18 minutes - 17 MBJimmy Maher is an independent scholar and writer living in Norway.
Episode 41 (April 2012) Howard Rheingold
August 05, 2017 17:22 - 15 minutes - 14.1 MBHoward Rheingold, an influential writer and thinker on social media, is the author ofTools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (both published by the MIT Press), and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.
Episode 40 (Mar. '12): Christof Koch
August 05, 2017 17:16 - 17 minutes - 15.9 MBChristof Koch is Professor of Biology and of Engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He is the author of The Quest for Consciousness and other books.
Kees van Deemter, “Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
June 22, 2017 21:46 - 54 minutesSometimes we have to depend on philosophy to explain to us why something apparently simple is in fact extremely complicated. The way we use referring expressions – things that pick out the entities we want to talk about, such as “Mary”, or “that guy over there” – falls into this category, but is no longer just a matter for the philosophers; it’s complicated enough to require highly interdisciplinary explanation. In his book, Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science (MIT...
David Danks, “Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models” (MIT Press, 2014)
May 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourFor many cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of mind, the best current theory of cognition holds that thinking is in some sense computation “in some sense,” because that core idea can and has been elaborated in a number of different ways that are or at least seem to be incompatible in at least some respects. In Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models (MIT Press, 2014), David Danks proposes a version of this basic theory that links the mind closely wi...
Tara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
May 11, 2017 10:00 - 35 minutesFueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, Warren Sturgis McCulloch is best known for his foundational contributions to cybernetics but led a career that spanned psychiatry, philosophy, neurophysiology, and engineering. Tara H. Abraham‘s new book Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science (MIT Press, 2016) is the first scholarly biography of this towering figure o...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
April 18, 2017 10:36 - 58 minutesAmit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT, 2014), Prasad looks at the linked histories of MRI research and development in India, UK, the USA to show how the patterns of exclusions created by imperialism continue to shape the topography of high-tech medicine. Pushing back against diffusion of science narratives, ...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
April 18, 2017 10:36 - 58 minutesAmit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT, 2014), Prasad looks at the linked histories of MRI research and development in India, UK, the USA to show how the patterns of exclusions created by imperialism continue to shape the topography of high-tech medicine. Pushing back against diffusion of science narratives, ...
Benjamin Hale, “The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature” (MIT Press, 2016)
April 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourMany environmentalists approach the problem of motivating environmentally friendly behavior from the perspective that nature is good and that we ought to act so as to maximize the good environmental consequences of our actions and minimize the bad ones. An environmental activist turned academic philosopher, Benjamin Hale argues against this dominant consequentialist approach towards environmentalism in favor of a Kantian view. In The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature (MIT Press,...
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017)
March 28, 2017 10:00 - 30 minutesHow did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry by the 1970s? In Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2017). Marie Hicks, an Assistant Professor of History at the Illinois Institute of Technology, offers a detailed and comprehensive overview of this radical social change. Based on rich and detailed archival and interview ...
Jennifer Greenwood, “Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality” (MIT, 2016)
January 18, 2017 18:55 - 1 hourPsychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories: the basic emotions, like fear or happiness, and the higher cognitive emotions, like shame or pride. In her new book, Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality (MIT Press, 2016), Jennifer Greenwood challenges this standar...
Sharon Rotbard, “White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa” (MIT Press, 2015)
December 26, 2016 10:00 - 40 minutesIn White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (MIT Press, 2015), Sharon Rotbard, Senior Lecturer in the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, examines the dual histories of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. He offers a nuanced and compelling deconstruction of the myth of the White City and the erasure of what he deems the Black City. This book is a compelling contribution, bringing critical urban studies into conversation with critical histories of Zionism in inno...
James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)
August 26, 2016 14:07 - 1 hourThis is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned it in the first part of the twentieth century. James Rodger Fleming’s new book is a big picture history of atmospheric science that follows the lives and careers of three men who worked at the center of meteorological research in roughly the first half of the 20th century: Vilhelm Bjerknes, Carl-Gustav Rossby, and Harry Wexler. Though it takes th...
Benjamin Peters, “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” (MIT Press, 2016)
July 16, 2016 21:31 - 1 hourSomething we might think of as the Soviet internet once existed, according to Benjamin Peters‘ new book, and its failure was neither natural nor inevitable. How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (MIT Press, 2016) traces the history of early efforts to network the Soviet state, from the global spread of cybernetics in the middle of the 20th century (paying careful attention to the different ways that cybernetic thought was articulated in different international...
Arianna Betti, “Against Facts” (MIT Press, 2015)
July 15, 2016 00:00 - 1 hourThe British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell claimed it is a truism that there are facts: the planets revolve around the sun, 2 + 2 = 4, elephants are bigger than mice. In Against Facts (MIT Press, 2015), Arianna Betti argues that not only is it not a truism that there are facts, but that on either of the basic views of what facts are, there aren’t any. Betti, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, argues that we don’t need to posit facts as truthmakers or as ...
Jonathan Donner, “After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet” (MIT Press, 2015)
March 14, 2016 17:55 - 1 hourThanks to mobile phones, getting online is easier and cheaper than ever. In After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet (MIT Press, 2015), Jonathan Donner challenges the optimistic narrative that mobile phone will finally close the digital divide. How we log on, how long we stay, what we choose to do, what we can do – all are shaped by our environments, resources and digital literacies. After Access examines the implications of the shift to a more mobile, more available I...
Phillip Penix-Tadsen, “Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America” (MIT Press, 2016)
March 14, 2016 13:11 - 46 minutesSymbols have meanings that change depending upon the cultural context. But how do we discuss symbols, their meanings, and their cultural contexts without an adequate vocabulary? Phillip Penix-Tadsen, assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Delaware and author of the new book Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America (MIT Press, 2016), offers insight in to how culture is signified in video games, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. In Cultural Code, Penix-Tadsen examine...
Jeffery Pomerantz, “Metadata” (MIT, 2015)
February 22, 2016 14:10 - 42 minutesWhat is the “stuff” that fuels the information society in which we live? In his new book, Metadata (MIT 2015), information scientist Jeffrey Pomerantz asserts that metadata powers our digital society. After defining metadata-data that has the potential to provide information about an object-Pomerantz considers the various kind of metadata. This raw material provides descriptions about individuals and most every other thing in the world. This data allows people, places, and things to be found....
Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)
February 16, 2016 15:32 - 59 minutesFinn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our attention for the purposes of exploiting it. From pranks on early computer networks in the 1970s to commercial nuisances in the 1990s to the global criminal infrastructure of today driven by botnets and algorithms, spam’s history surfaces and shifts with the Internet itself. Spam is a lively book packed with tales of the people responsible for sharing ...
Colin Klein, “What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain” (MIT Press, 2015)
January 15, 2016 06:00 - 1 hourNothing seems so obviously true as the claim that pains feel bad, that pain and suffering go together. Almost as obviously, it seems that the function of pain is to inform us of tissue damage. In What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain (The MIT Press, 2015), Colin Klein denies both apparently obvious claims. On his view, pain is a “protective imperative” whose content is to protect the body or body part: for example, “Don’t put weight on that left ankle!” Klein, Lecturer in the ...
Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machines” (MIT 2015)
January 06, 2016 06:00 - 34 minutesWhen we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, became popular in the West in the late 1940s and early 1950s and was seen as a form of entertainment and enjoyment for the family. Other “technology” that assists with leisure include things like rubber-soled shoes, books, and other digital devices. In their new book, Enjoying Machines (MIT 2015), Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, both scholars in the Stockh...
Nathan Altice, “I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer-Entertainment System Platform” (MIT Press, 2015)
December 23, 2015 13:03 - 38 minutesThe genre of “platform studies” offers both researchers and readers more than an examination of the technical machinations of a computing system. Instead, the family of methodologies presents a humanist exploration of digital media from the perspective of the platform itself. That is, this approach contemplates the social, economic and cultural influence and significance of the technology. Although more formally identified by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort in 2007 at the Digital Arts and Cultur...
Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder, “Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities” (MIT Press, 2015)
November 15, 2015 18:04 - 38 minutesBy now it is incontrovertible that new technology has had an effect on how regular people get information. Whether in the form of an online newspaper or a Google search, new technology has allowed individuals to access masses of information faster than ever before. What, then, has been the effect of digital tools on research practices? In their new book Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities (MIT Press, 2015), Eric T. Meyer, Associate Professor and Senior R...
Joseph M. Reagle, “Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web” (MIT Press, 2015)
October 02, 2015 14:25 - 32 minutesWhat do we know about the individuals who make comments on online news stories, blogs, videos and other media? What kind of people take the time to post all manner of information and context to material created by others? Joseph M. Reagle, assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University and a faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, examines these online pontificators and provocateurs in his new book Reading the Comments: Liker...
M. Chirimuuta, “Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy” (MIT Press, 2015)
September 15, 2015 06:00 - 1 hourWhat is color? On the one hand it seems obvious that it is a property of objects – roses are red, violets are blue, and so on. On the other hand, even the red of a single petal of a rose differs in different lighting conditions or when seen from different angles, and the basic physical elements that make up the rose don’t have colors. So is color instead a property of a mental state, or a relation between a perceiving mind and an object? In Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of ...
Chad Engelland, “Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind” (MIT Press, 2015)
August 14, 2015 06:00 - 1 hourHow do we learn our first words? What is it that makes the linguistic intentions of others manifest to us, when our eyes follow a pointing finger to an object and associate that object with a word? Chad Engelland addresses these and related questions in Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT Press, 2015). Engelland, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, explores the way in which ostension crosses the Cartesian boundary between body and mind. Drawing on...
Helen de Cruz and Johan de Smedt, “A Natural History of Natural Theology” (MIT Press, 2015)
June 15, 2015 06:00 - 1 hourIn A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion (MIT Press, 2015), Helen de Cruz of the VU University Amsterdam and Johan de Smedt of Ghent University examine how the findings of cognitive science can and cannot be used to draw conclusions about the rationality of religious belief. They examine the types and role of the cognitive processes at work in these arguments, such as cause and effect and inference to the best explanation. They als...
Charis Thompson, “Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research” (MIT Press, 2013)
June 08, 2015 14:50 - 1 hourCharis Thompson‘s Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (MIT Press, 2013) is an important book. Good Science explores the “ethical choreography” of the consolidation of human embryonic stem cell research in the first decade of the twenty-first century, drawing important implications for the possible futures of stem cell research by looking carefully at its past and developing an approach to what Thompson calls “good science.” The book compellingly argues that “a high le...
John Sharp, “Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art” (MIT Press, 2015)
June 01, 2015 06:00 - 39 minutesThat games, particularly video games, could be viewed as art should come as no surprise. And yet, a debate exists over what is and should be considered art with respect to games. In his new book, Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art (MIT Press, 2015), John Sharp offers context for the discussion of games and art. To do so, Sharp presents case studies of “Game Art,” “Art Games,” and “Artists’ Games” in an explication of three communities of practice that provide the foundation for...
Colin McGinn, “Philosophy of Language: the Classics Explained” (MIT Press, 2015)
May 28, 2015 11:45 - 1 hourI must admit that my relationship to philosophy of language is a bit like my relationship to classic literature: I tend to admire it from afar, and rely on the opinions of people who have read it. The danger is that the received wisdom can sometimes be unreliable, for one reason or another, either making something accessible sound rarefied, or making something subtle and elusive sound banal, or both. In his book, Philosophy of Language: the Classics Explained (MIT Press, 2015), Colin McGinn s...
Myles W. Jackson, “The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race” (MIT Press, 2015)
May 18, 2015 13:33 - 39 minutesWhat happens when you allow human materials to become property? More specifically, how does granting monopoly rights over genetic material affect the potential for innovation and research on treatments of disease related to those genes? In his new book, The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race (MIT Press, 2015), Myles W. Jackson (NYU) considers this question by examining the history of the sequencing and patenting of the CCR5 gene, which was found to have an important role in HIV/...
Christine L. Borgman, “Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World” (MIT Press, 2015)
April 20, 2015 16:14 - 37 minutesSocial media and digital technology now allow researchers to collect vast amounts of a variety data quickly. This so-called “big data,” and the practices that surround its collection, is all the rage in both the media and in research circles. What makes data “big,” is described by the v’s: volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Volume refers to the massive scale of the data that can be collected, velocity, the speed of streaming analysis. Variety refers to the different forms of data availa...
Casey O’Donnell, “Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators” (MIT Press, 2014)
April 06, 2015 22:38 - 40 minutesIn his new book, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (MIT Press, 2014), Casey O’Donnell, an assistant professor in the department of Media and Information in the College of Communication Arts at Michigan State University, takes the reader inside the game development process. An ethnographic study of the people and the process of videogame creation, Developer’s Dilemma considers the interactions between engineers and designers, publishers and executives, all motivated t...