New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Journalist Katherine Blunt, who writes about renewable energy and utilities for the Wall Street Journal, talks about her new book, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book tells the fascinating story of how declining performance at an electrical utility eventually led to wildfires and staggering loss of human life. Blunt and Vinsel also talk about what this story means for the future of electricity utilities in the face of global climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Catriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on climate ethics and environmental justice. Much of her recent work aims at addressing denialism about climate change. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Future of Truth project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long history of attempts to “fix” deaf people, including a great deal of quackery. Towards the end of the conversation, Virdi and Vinsel also talk about what a world beyond solutionist fantasies that disability can be “cured” would look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Historian Hanna Rose Shell, a professor at University of Colorado, Boulder, talks about her book Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Along the way, Shell raises a number of important and interesting things, including the long history of reuse and recycling and how forms of technology and work become tied to social status. With shoddy, it was the anxieties of low class, low social status work and poverty. Shell also discusses how individual technologies become mirrors for the worries, fears, hatreds, and other feelings of society – how when we look into the history of any technology we often see ourselves reflected back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Dr. Tim Hutchings is a sociologist of digital religion. His Ph.D. (Durham University, 2010) was an ethnographic study of five online Christian churches. Dr. Hutchings is interested in the relationship between religion, media and culture, with particular attention to digital forms of Christianity. His research has included studies of online worship; digital evangelism and formation; online community; digital publishing and e-reading; apps and games; and death and dying. His research led to the publication of his book Creating Church Online: Ritual, Community and New Media (Routledge, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Dr. Giulia Evolvi is the author of Blogging My Religion: Secular, Muslim, and Catholic Media Spaces in Europe, out now from Routledge. Evolvi is a Research Associate at the Centrum für Religionswissenshaftliche Studien (CERES) in Germany and she manages the Religion and Materiality Focus Group for the Käte Hamburger Kolleg project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Regia Rini is the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at the York University. Her research resides at the intersections of moral philosophy, psychology, and political epistemology. She also publishes popular work on topics concerning the social and political impacts of technology. She is currently working on a book about social media and democracy. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

How can we as consumers distinguish between the many different political medias? Eric Alterman is CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. Eric is also a columnist for The Nation, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and the World Policy Institute in New York. He is the author of several books, including When Presidents Lie (Penguin 2004),  Kabuki Democracy (Nation Books 2011), and most recently, Inequality and One City (Nation Books 2015). The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Joshua Cohen is a faculty member of Apple University, and is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the School of Law, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of Political Science at Berkeley. He is the author of several influential academic articles, many of which are collected in Philosophy, Politics, Democracy(Harvard 2009), and The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays (Harvard, 2011). Since 1991, Cohen has edited the Boston Review.  The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Social Media rewards snap judgments and blind conviction. Michael Lynch finds this troubling. Michael P. Lynch is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Institute a University of Connecticut. His research concerns truth, public discourse, and the impact of technology on democratic society.  The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny speaks with Alex Priou, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Austin, about how technology and ideology shape the modern soul. From Machiavelli’s “dikes and dams” to Odysseus’s struggle against the Sirens, Priou traces how modernity’s drive for control has left us materially fulfilled yet spiritually impoverished. The conversation explores liberalism’s crises, the moral stakes of AI, the American “technological republic,” and why revisiting Homer and Plato may be key to recovering wisdom and restraint in an age of restless innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules. You emerge from the cells of your body. Not since chaos has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines. Emergence can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there's more to the world than physics, that there is a holistic component to nature, an edge of mystery. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" starts by taking you on a tour through a fascinating world of complexity, exploring phenomena from the inside of an atomic nucleus to bacterial behaviour to the ability of your thoughts to affect the world. These examples are used along with a thorough exploration of the philosophical literature to untangle the notoriously poorly defined concept of emergence. This reveals something surprising: the term emergence is redundant. In its weak form it is so weak that it applies to everything. In its strong form it is so restrictive that it is like the belief that there are pixies in your garden, impossible to exclude but not worth spending your time on. Emergence either applies to all systems or to none. Rather than telling us something about the nature of the world, it is an illusion, an artefact of our cognitive limitations. The past decade has seen a dozen or so monographs and collections about emergence, almost all resolutely supportive of the concept. This book aims to redress the balance. But it is more than just a campaign against the idea of emergence. Graham presents a framework called Austere Physicalism and argues that it is the only coherent way to view the world. He uses this framework to reinterpret so-called emergent phenomena and investigates its wider implications for science. In this radically materialist view, we are nothing but physical systems among others. "Physics Fixes All the Facts" ends by exploring what this means for our sense of free will and consciousness. The book will appeal to academics in fields which use the concepts of complexity or emergence. Scientists and philosophers alike will find unexpected and exciting ideas in these pages. But the target audience is much broader including students who want to add context to their studies and the intellectually curious with some scientific background. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In the fourth edition of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present, drawing on important feminist concepts -- social reproduction, the gender division of labor, and patriarchy -- Mimi Abramovitz exposes the gendered and racialized myths and stereotypes built into welfare state programs. The book explains the contextual conditions that contributed to the precursors of the modern welfare state, its rise and expansion after World War II, and the recent neoliberal effort to dismantle the cash assistance programs most likely to lift women out of poverty. This edition marks the most extensive overhaul to date. It revises the conceptual and background chapters, discusses cash assistance programs, and considers emerging ideas such as the role of economic crises in the development of the US welfare state. It also considers the future of the welfare state under the second Trump Presidency. Regulating the Lives of Women is an essential resource for all students of social work, sociology, history, political science, public policy, and gender studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, exploring how AI reshapes journalistic roles, organisational structures, and governance systems through the lens of China’s media landscape—while drawing comparisons with the US and EU. Dr. Joanne Kuai is a Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and holds a PhD from Karlstad University in Sweden. Her research focuses on digital journalism, the social implications of automation and algorithms, and the governance of data and AI. Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols. Episode producer: Ning Ao - - - - - - Links: Joanne’s article-based PhD dissertation: AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age Joanne’s recommendations: Julie E. Cohen’s Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism Kevin Xu’s bilingual newsletter - Interconnected Ghost in the Shell (1995) Detroit: Become Human Follow Joanne’s research on: Joanne Kuai at RMIT University ResearchGate Linkedin The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia) Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland) Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania) Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) Norwegian Network for Asian Studies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

On September 26, 1998, a video game made its debut in Japanese arcades. It was over seven feet tall and weighed just over 900 pounds. It had no characters, no story, no quests to fulfill or bosses to beat. What it had was a metal platform on which you were supposed to stand, put your feet into the right place at the right time, and dance. Join two music critics, long-ago players, and Sota Fujimori fans as they take you on the astonishing journey through the artists, influences, and innovators of Dance Dance Revolution, a game two and a half decades in the making and still going -- in homes, arcades, and expos. From its unexpected appearance to its social heyday to its reappearance in the American market, DDR has taken many forms -- not all of them sanctioned by Konami. It has spawned community, creativity, competition, lawsuits, 1,000+ songs that range from wacky to tacky to beautiful, and yes, a lot of dancing. While we were all leaning on the back bar, working up a sweat, DDR managed to change the world. Jessica Doyle has a Ph.D. in city planning and a love for writing about the connections between pop music, globalization, and the built environment. She cares for her family in the Atlanta suburbs. Jordan Ferguson is the author of J Dilla’s Donuts, #93 in the 33 1/3 series of record guides, and co-host of the Geekdown, a podcast about fandoms. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Find him online @jordan_ferguson. Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing (U Toronto Press, 2025) takes historiographic and sociological perspectives developed to understand large-scale scientific and technical systems and uses them to highlight the standardization that went into "standardized testing." Starting in the 1850s achievement tests became standardized in the British Isles, and were administered on an industrial scale. By the end of the century more than two million people had written mass exams, particularly in science, technology, and mathematics. Some candidates responded to this standardization by cramming or cheating; others embraced the hope that such tests rewarded not only knowledge but also merit. Written with humour, Making a Grade looks at how standardized testing practices quietly appeared, and then spread worldwide. This book situates mass exams, marks, and credentials in an emerging paper-based meritocracy, arguing that such exams often first appeared as "cameras" to neutrally record achievement, and then became "engines" to change education as people tailored their behaviour to fit these tests. Taking the perspectives of both examiners and examinees, Making a Grade claims that our own culture’s desire for accountability through objective testing has a long history. James Elwick is Associate Professor at the Department of Science, Technology and Society, for which he is also Chair. He has written on the history of the life sciences and scientists including John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and T.H. Huxley, and is currently writing a history of academic integrity, viewed through the lens of students who cheat on their tests and other school assessments. Jacob Ward is a historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written in the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In an age when digital media permeates every aspect of our lives, understanding its influence is more critical than ever. Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2025), serves as a compass, guiding readers through the complexities of our interconnected world. From the moment we wake to a flurry of notifications to the late-night scrolling that often accompanies our downtime, we find ourselves enmeshed in a digital landscape that shapes our perceptions, relationships, and routines. The journey ahead will illuminate the dual-edged nature of technology—its ability to connect and empower as well as its potential to isolate and overwhelm. By examining the algorithms that curate newsfeeds and the social media platforms that redefine communication, this book unpacks the intricacies of modern digital life. But beyond the challenges lie opportunities; this book also highlights the ways in which digital media fosters social activism and creative expression, showcasing the remarkable power of collective voices and innovative ideas. Whether digital natives or just beginning to explore this expansive realm, readers will be equipped by this exploration with insights and tools to navigate the digital age thoughtfully. Discover how to harness technology's potential, ensuring it enriches rather than diminishes our lives. Guest: Dr. Muhammad Atique holds a PhD in Public Administration with a specialization in Digital Governance and has over fifteen years of combined experience in academia and media. He has published several peer-reviewed research articles on digital media, technology adoption, and governance. His teaching and research explore the intersection of technology, media culture, and societal transformation in the AI age. He is also the founder of Atique Mindscape Publishing, an imprint of Digital Vista Ventures LLC (USA), and is based in Auckland, New Zealand. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the fight against terrorism and extremism. Yet despite mass content takedowns, account suspensions, and mounting pressure on technology companies to do more, hate thrives online. Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism (Princeton University Press, 2025) looks at how content moderation shapes the tactics of harmful content producers on a wide range of social media platforms.Drawing on a wealth of original data on more than a hundred militant and hate organizations around the world, Dr. Tamar Mitts shows how differing moderation standards across platforms create safe havens that allow these actors to organize, launch campaigns, and mobilize supporters. She reveals how the structure of the information environment shapes the cross-platform activity of extremist organizations and movements such as the Islamic State, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and QAnon, and highlights the need to consider the online ecosystem, not just individual platforms, when developing strategies to combat extremism.Taking readers to the frontlines of the digital battleground where dangerous organizations operate, Safe Havens for Hate sheds critical light on how governments and technology companies grapple with the tension between censorship and free speech when faced with violence, hate, and extremism. 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

War, and the threat of war, spurs governments to invest in secret military technologies and weapons. Imperial Japan, ahead of the Second World War, was no exception. After the First World War, Japan set up the Noborito Research Institute: a division of scientists and technicians to invest in overt and clandestine warfare. Stephen Mercado dives into this history in his new book Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons: How Noborito’s Scientists and Technicians Served in the Second World War and the Cold War (Pen & Sword Books: 2025). At Noborito, Japanese scientists researched fanciful weapons, like balloon bombs and death rays; covert techniques like poisons and counterfeiting—and more insidious activities, like biological weapons. Stephen Mercado, the author of The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School, has also written a dozen articles and several dozen book reviews on Asian and open-source intelligence. His writing has appeared in the journals Intelligence and National Security, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Studies in Intelligence and on the website 38 North of the Henry L. Stimson Center. His translations include numerous declassified Chinese and Japanese diplomatic documents published as part of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project. Retired from the CIA Open Source Enterprise, he has twice won a CIA Studies in Intelligence award for his writings. He is also a frequent contributor to the Asian Review of Books. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Japanese Spy Gear and Special Weapons. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

When we are trying to solve a problem, what happens? We find ourselves weighing arguments, or relying on intuition, then reaching a conscious decision about what to do. What is going on behind the scenes? In The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines (Basic Books, 2025), Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland show that our experience is the tip of an iceberg of brain activity that can be captured in an artificial neural network. Such networks--initially developed as models of ourselves--have become the engines of artificial neural intelligence. Suri and McClelland aren't reducing mankind to mere machines. Rather, they are showing how a data-driven neural network can create thoughts, emotions, and ideas--a mind--whether in humans or computers. The Emergent Mind provides a fascinating account of how we reach decisions, why we change our minds, and how we are affected by context and experience. Ultimately, the book gives a new answer to one of our oldest questions: Not just how do minds work, but what does it mean to be a mind at all? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society