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
Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction
March 15, 2023 08:00 - 19 minutesMichael Gurevich, lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at the Queen’s University, Belfast School of Music and Sonic Arts, serves as guest editor of the Winter 2010 issue of Computer Music Journal. In this podcast, Michael discusses the fields of Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). He describes how these fields intersect and what they can learn from each other, touching on how the field of Computer Music has grown and how this affects performance and composition of elect...
The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War
March 14, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutesSean Lynn-Jones, editor of International Security, interviews author John Schuessler, whose article "The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War" appears in the Spring 2010 issue of the journal. Their conversation tackles the question of whether FDR willfully deceived the American public in order to persuade them to support WWII – and touches on perceptions of warring democracies as well as comparisons to the 2003 Iraq War. The conversation was recorded on May 21, 2010
Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of "The Catcher in the Rye"
March 13, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutesIn light of J.D. Salinger's recent passing and on reflection of his literary contributions, The New England Quarterly took a trip back to its December 1997 issue (70:4) and one of the journal's most popular articles. Pulitzer Prize-winner and NEQ editorial board member, Louis Menand interviews author Stephen J. Whitfield on his article "Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye." They discuss the impact of Salinger, the political and social climate during the tim...
"Prettier Than They Used to Be”: Femininity, Fashion, and the Recasting of Radcliffe's Reputation, 1900-1950
March 12, 2023 08:00 - 27 minutesMary Kelley, member of the NEQ editorial board, interviews Deirdre Clemente about her article "'Prettier Than They Used to Be': Femininity, Fashion, and the Recasting of Radcliffe's Reputation, 1900-1950" which appears in the December 2009 issue of The New England Quarterly. The conversation was recorded on December 21, 2009.
The Evolution of Language
March 11, 2023 21:00 - 37 minutesSamuel Jay Keyser, Editor-in-Chief of Linguistic Inquiry, has shared a campus with Noam Chomsky for 40-odd years via MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The two colleagues sat down in Mr. Chomsky's office to discuss ideas on language evolution and the human capacity for understanding the complexities of the universe. The unedited conversation was recorded on September 11, 2009.
A Yankee Rebellion? The Regulators, New England, and the New Nation
March 10, 2023 21:00 - 34 minutesBill Fowler, Chair of NEQ's Board of Directors, speaks with Bob Gross about the events leading up to Shays's Rebellion and how they relate to today's circumstances. Mr. Gross's article, "A Yankee Rebellion? The Regulators, New England, and the New Nation" appears in the March 2009 issue of The New England Quarterly. The discussion was recorded at Northeastern University on April 10, 2009.
Jan Harrison's “Animal Tongues”
March 09, 2023 21:00 - 25 minutesArtist Jan Harrison's work explores the connections between human and animal psyches and takes the form of painting, pastel, sculpture, and performance. Jan's essay in the current (January 2011) issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, called "Singing in Animal Tongues: An Inner Journey", describes the origins and scope of Jan's work, including her ability to speak and sing in "Animal Tongues." In this podcast, Jan and curator Linda Weintraub discuss Jan's work and the animal beings wh...
Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)
March 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age. Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture (MIT Press, 2023), Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weap...
The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army
March 08, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesBill Fowler, Chair of The New England Quarterly Board of Directors, and author David Naumec discuss his article "From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army". The article appears in the December 2008 issue of The New England Quarterly. The conversation was recorded at the MIT Press on December 12, 2008.
Once Upon an Algorithm: How Stories Explain Computing
March 07, 2023 21:00 - 16 minutesIn this episode, Martin Erwig show us how we can find computational concepts inside some of our favorite stories. Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that man...
Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity Through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play
March 06, 2023 09:00 - 15 minutesChris Gondek interviews Mitchel Resnick about his work at the MIT Media Lab, the foundation for his new book, Lifelong Kindergarten. In kindergartens these days, children spend more time with math worksheets and phonics flashcards than building blocks and finger paint. Kindergarten is becoming more like the rest of school. In Lifelong Kindergarten, learning expert Mitchel Resnick argues for exactly the opposite: the rest of school (even the rest of life) should be more like kindergarten. To t...
Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education
March 05, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutesIn this episode, Chris Gondek interviews author John Palfrey about how diversity and free expression can coexist on a modern campus. Safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions, the disinvitation of speakers, demands to rename campus landmarks—debate over these issues began in lecture halls and on college quads but ended up on op-ed pages in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, on cable news, and on social media. Some of these critiques had merit, but others took a series of ch...
The Chinese Typewriter: A History
March 04, 2023 09:00 - 26 minutesIn this episode Chris Gondek speaks with author Tom Mullaney on the invention of the Chinese typewriter, and how the characters originally utilized are still the ones available on modern keyboards. Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other sys...
Gravity's Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves
March 03, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutesThe detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the science community. In this episode, Chris Gondek spoke with author Harry Collins, whose book Gravity's Kiss centers around the incredible discovery. Scientists have been trying to confirm the existence of gravitational waves for fifty years. Then, in September 2015, came a "very interesting event" (as the cautious subject line in a physicist's email read) that proved to be the first detection of gravitational waves. In Gravity's Kiss, Ha...
What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing
March 02, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutesIn this episode Chris Gondek interviews Ed Finn, author of the new book What Algorithms Want. Tune in for an interesting discussion on algorithm disconnect revolving around things humans regularly use, like Siri. And listen in for a definition of the phrase "culture machines". We depend on--we believe in--algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even...
The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media
March 01, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesIn this episode, author Ryan Milner talks to Chris Gondak about the rise of the internet meme, and the five logics that factor into the foundation, growth, and success of a meme. Internet memes--digital snippets that can make a joke, make a point, or make a connection--are now a lingua franca of online life. They are collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless users across vast networks. Most of us have seen the cat playing the piano, Kanye interrupting, Kanye interrupting ...
What a City Is for: Remaking the Politics of Displacement
February 28, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutesMatt Hern began to examine urban displacement when he first encountered an empty lot in the northeast sector of Portland, OR. This corner was the site of a community resisting against gentrification. In this episode, Chris Gondak speaks with Matt Hern about the inspiration for his book, and the battles that many urban communities are fighting across North America. Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beautiful, livable cities in the United States. It has walkable neighborhoods, bike lanes, lo...
Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy
February 27, 2023 12:56 - 17 minutesIn the United States, elements of the religious right fuel fears of an existential Islamic threat, spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric into mainstream politics. In Indonesia, Muslim absolutists urge suppression of churches and minority sects, fostering a climate of rising intolerance. In India, Narendra Modi's radical supporters instigate communal riots and academic censorship in pursuit of their Hindu nationalist vision. Outbreaks of religious intolerance are usually assumed to be visceral and sp...
Philippe Schlenker, "What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything" (MIT Press, 2022)
February 25, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything (MIT Press, 2022), Philippe Schlenker takes readers on tour of meaning, from the animal kingdom to human culture, arguing that semantics should be taken to have a wide range of applications. He takes on bird song and primate calls, classical music and sign language, predicate logic and scalar implicatures. Throughout, he demonstrates the success of the field of semantics in explaining how human languages—spoken and signed—have rules for ...
Nicholas Mirzoeff, "White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness" (MIT Press, 2023)
February 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourFrom the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing—and a strategy for dismantling them. White supremacy is not only perpetuated by laws and police but also by visual culture and distinctive ways of seeing. Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that this form of “white sight” has a history. By understanding that it was not always a common practice, we can devise better ways to dismantle it. Spanning centuries across this wide-ranging text, Mirzoeff connects Ren...
Fabio Duarte and Ricardo Alvarez, "Urban Play: Make-Believe, Technology, and Space" (MIT Press, 2021)
February 18, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWhy technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers. In Urban Play: Make-Believe, Technology, and Space (MIT Press, 2021), Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play—in the ...
Alan Meades, "Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade" (MIT Press, 2022)
February 18, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesThe story of the British amusement arcade from the 1800s to the present. Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions of them tend to be based on American models. Alan Meades, who spent his childhood happily playing in British seaside arcades, presents the history of the arcade from its origins in traveling fairs of the 1800s to the present. Drawing on firsthand accounts of industry members and archival sources, including rare photographs and trade publications...
Shahzad Bashir, "A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures" (MIT Press, 2022)
February 10, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn his innovative and conceptually ingenious new online, open-access, interactive book A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022), Shahzad Bashir invites his readers to rethink and reimagine Islam and time as unbounded, non-linear, and abundantly capacious beyond the confines of text, theology, and normative confessional projects limited to Muslims. Bashir presents this argument through a beautifully presented and lyrically written digital book that traverses an extraordinar...
Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione, "Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities" (MIT Press, 2022)
February 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourA new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services. The majority of the world’s inhabitants live in cities, but even with the vast wealth and resources these cities generate, their most vulnerable populations live without adequate or affordable housing, safe water, healthy food, and other essentials. And yet, cities also often harbor the solutions to the inequalities they create, as this book makes clear. With examples dr...
Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett, "Game Theory and Behavior" (MIT Press, 2022)
January 14, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutesJeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett's book Game Theory and Behavior (MIT Press, 2022) is an introduction to game theory that offers not only theoretical tools but also the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. This introductory text on game theory provides students with both the theoretical tools to analyze situations through the logic of game theory and the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. It is uniqu...
Mathew Gandy, "Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space" (MIT Press, 2022)
December 30, 2022 09:00 - 32 minutesIn his new book, Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space (MIT Press, 2022), Mathew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity. The book examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse. The book is driven by Dr. Gandy’s long-standing fascination with ...
Heather Ford, "Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2022)
December 21, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutesA close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far. Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri distribute Wikipedia's facts widely, further burnishing its veneer of impartiality. But as Heather Ford demonstrates in Writing the Revolution: Wiki...
Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)
December 20, 2022 09:00 - 38 minutesTechnologies are intrinsically social. They reflect human values and affect human behavior. The social dynamics of technology materialize through design features that shape how a technology functions and to what effect. The shaping effects of technology are represented in scholarly fields by the concept of “affordances.” Affordances are the ways design features enable and constrain user engagement and social action. This has been a central construct for designers and technology theorists sinc...
Nancy J. Nersessian, "Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science" (MIT Press, 2022)
December 10, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourBased on examining physics and the practices of physicists, philosophers of science often see models in science as representational intermediaries between scientific theories and the world. But what do scientists do when they don’t yet have the models or the theories? In Interdisciplinarity in the Making: Models and Methods in Frontier Science (MIT Press, 2022), Nancy Nersessian reveals the bootstrapping creation of models in two biomedical engineering and two integrated system biology labs....
Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett, "Curious Minds: The Power of Connection" (MIT Press, 2022)
December 09, 2022 09:00 - 51 minutesCurious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what's left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems--the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection: it connects ideas into netw...
Melissa Kagen, "Wandering Games" (MIT Press, 2022)
December 04, 2022 09:00 - 52 minutesIn Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism, gender, and death. Wandering in games can be a theme, a formal mode, an aesthetic metaphor, or a player action. It can mean walking, escaping, traversing, meandering, or returning. Kagen introduces the concept of “wandering games,” exploring the uses of wandering in a variety of game worlds. She shows how the much-derided Walking Simulator—a term...
Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 18, 2022 09:00 - 55 minutesIn 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a world-class, Nobel Prize-winning lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science and one of the world's finest research facilities. The leak, harmless to health, came from a storage pool rather than the reactor. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor's shutdown, and even attempts ...
Janaki Srinivasan, "The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 15, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourThe Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India (MIT Press, 2022), written by Janaki Srinivasan and published by MIT Press in October 2022, examines how the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender, and the implications of this for development. Information, says Srinivasan, has fundamentally reshaped development discourse and practice. In this study, she examines the history of the idea of “informa...
Steven N. Austad, "Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Healthier Lives" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 15, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourOpossums in the wild don't make it to the age of three; our pet cats can live for a decade and a half; cicadas live for seventeen years (spending most of them underground). Whales, however, can live for two centuries and tubeworms for several millennia. Meanwhile, human life expectancy tops out around the mid-eighties, with some outliers living past 100 or even 110. Is there anything humans can learn from the exceptional longevity of some animals in the wild? In Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature ...
Alexandr Draganov, "Mathematical Tools for Real-World Applications: A Gentle Introduction for Students and Practitioners" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 11, 2022 09:00 - 54 minutesI’ve never read a book like Mathematical Tools for Real-World Applications: A Gentle Introduction for Students and Practitioners (MIT Press, 2022) – it’s a book about how engineers and scientists see math, and I found it fascinating. What intrigued me about this book was not that it just presents and solves a bunch of interesting problems, it shows how scientists and engineers differ in their approach to problem solving from mathematicians. Shame on me, but as a mathematician, I’ve always bee...
Thom van Dooren, "A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 07, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn this time of extinctions, the humble snail rarely gets a mention. And yet snails are disappearing faster than any other species. In A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT Press, 2022), Thom van Dooren offers a collection of snail stories from Hawai'i--once home to more than 750 species of land snails, almost two-thirds of which are now gone. Following snail trails through forests, laboratories, museums, and even a military training facility, and meeting with scien...
Mikkael A. Sekeres, "Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 04, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutesHow the FDA was shaped by public health crises and patient advocacy, told against a background of the contentious hearings on the breast cancer drug Avastin. Food and Drug Administration approval for COVID-19 vaccines and the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm made headlines, but few of us know much about how the agency does its work. Why is the FDA the ultimate US authority on a drug's safety and efficacy? In Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust (MIT Press, 2022), ...
Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett, "Curious Minds: The Power of Connection" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourCurious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what's left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems--the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection: it connects ideas into netw...
Gerd Gigerenzer, "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourDoomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacing people with software might make the world a better place--while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. In How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms (MIT Press, 2022)...
David Kaiser, "Well, Doc, You're In: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourFreeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he went on to explore foundational topics in mathematics, astrophysics, and the origin of life. General readers were introduced to Dyson’s roving mind and heterodox approach in his 1979 book Disturbing the Universe, a poignant autobiographical reflection on life and science. "Well, Doc, You're In": Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe (MIT Press, ...
Laura A. Frahm, "Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourDesign in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus (MIT Press, 2022) provides the first comprehensive history of film experiments at the Bauhaus, the famous art school that operated between 1919 and 1933 and was located in Weimar, before moving to Dessau and later to Berlin. While the Bauhaus is commonly associated with the development of modern architecture and industrial design, Design in Motion focuses on film, and demonstrates how the cinematic medium became a proving ground for some of th...
Joanna Ebenstein, "Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 02, 2022 04:00 - 54 minutesFrederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was a celebrated Dutch anatomist, master embalmer, and museologist. He is best remembered today for strange tableaux, crafted from fetal skeletons and other human remains, that flicker provocatively at the edges of science, art, and memento mori. Ruysch exhibited these pieces, along with hundreds of other artful specimens, in his home museum and catalogued them in his lavishly illustrated Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus (MIT Press, 2022). This book off...
Chris Salter, "Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 01, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourSensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, count our steps, change the orientation of an image when we rotate our phones. There are more of these electronic devices in the world than there are people--in 2020, thirty to fifty billion of them (versus 7.8 billion people), with more than a trillion expected in the next decade. In Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life (MIT Pr...
Robert Gottlieb, "Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet" (MIT Press, 2022)
November 01, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThis agenda-setting book presents a framework for creating a more just and equitable care-centered world. Climate change, pandemic events, systemic racism, and deep inequalities have all underscored the centrality of care in our lives. Yet care work is, for the most part, undervalued and exploited. In Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Gottlieb examines how a care economy and care politics can influence and remake health, climate, and environmental p...
Sian E. Harding, "The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 31, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourYour heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day--if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decades of effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart's perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart (MIT Press, 2022), new scientific developments are opening up ...
Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, "Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing)" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 31, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious to the afterlife of what they post, or missing out on personal connection. They are just trying to navigate a networked world. In Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing) (MIT Press, 2022), Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, Harvard researchers who are experts on teens and technology, explore the complexities that teens...
Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly, "Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 28, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesIn this episode, we discuss a book that will be appealing to a general audience and which helps to bridge the gap of the story of communication in the broad history of computer technology. In Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry (MIT Press, 2022), Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly make a splendid job to portray the evolution of this industry from the times of Marconi all the way to 5G networks, while considering developments in ...
Jay Baruch, "Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesTo be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor’s most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won’t work if doctors get the story wrong. Empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care. In Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER (MIT Press, 2022), ER physician Jay Baruch offers a series of short, powerfu...
Robert P. Crease, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 18, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a world-class, Nobel Prize-winning lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science and one of the world's finest research facilities. The leak, harmless to health, came from a storage pool rather than the reactor. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor's shutdown, and even attempts ...
Gabriel Levy, "Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion" (MIT Press, 2022)
October 10, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesIn Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (MIT Press, 2022), Gabriel Levy argues that collective religious narratives and beliefs are part of nature; they are the basis for the formation of the narratives and beliefs of individuals. Religion grows out of the universe, but to make sense of it, we have to recognize the paradox that the universe is both mental and material (or neither). Levy contends that we need both humanities and natural science approaches to study religion a...