New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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

  1. 17h ago

    Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka with Vivian Y Choi (Duke UP, 2025)

    In Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka (Duke UP, 2025), Vivian Y. Choi examines how the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami fostered new forms of governance and militarization during Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war that led to enduring forms of precarity and insecurity. Tracing the development of disaster management projects following the tsunami, Choi demonstrates how these projects rest on a logic that treats natural disasters and terrorism as inevitable risks in need of management. The tsunami’s destruction foreclosed the possibility of political resolution to the war, as the state leveraged these projects to justify its militarized aggression in the war against the Tamil Tigers and a new construction of the Sri Lankan nation. Choi reveals how, paradoxically, state-sponsored disaster management projects—from new buffer and border zones to early warning systems—created more insecurity. Choi amplifies the experiences of those affected by the tsunami, particularly Tamil and Muslim communities. In so doing, Choi shows how life perseveres against perpetual uncertainty and danger—caused by natural disasters and state-sanctioned violence alike. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 17h ago

    AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex with Anthony King (Princeton UP, 2025)

    Will artificial intelligence soon be fighting our wars for us? Could a machine ever command an army? Anthony King is skeptical. In AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex (Princeton University Press, 2025), he argues that AI is changing war less by replacing soldiers than by bringing civilian tech experts into the headquarters where wars are run. The conversation begins with how the September 11 attacks turned King toward war, and with his quarter-century of tracing changes in warfare. Then, drawing on 126 interviews across the United States, Britain, and Israel, King explains why AI can be intelligent without being an agent. King takes us inside his research, from Palantir's London office to confidential interviews with Israeli officers. He also previews his next project, a five-year, EU-funded study of the teams forming around AI software in military headquarters. The machines are not taking over, King insists. Whether that is reassuring depends on how much we trust the humans still in charge. Our guest is Anthony King, Professor of War Studies and Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 5d ago

    Emotions in Digital Heritage Language Use

    In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah chats with Dr. Priyanka Bose. Priyanka is a lecturer in English Literacy Education at the School of Education at Western Sydney University, Australia and winner of the 2026 Michael Clyne Prize for outstanding postgraduate research into immigrant bilingualism and language contact. Tazin and Priyanka talk about Priyanka’s research into heritage language maintenance amongst Bengali speakers in Australia and how emotions play a decisive role in sustaining heritage language use via digital means. Their conversation about Bengali transnational families explores how grandparents and grandchildren use all the resources in their linguistic repertoire in combination with the affordances of digital mediums to communicate in and maintain Bengali. In these exchanges, emotional factors play a crucial role, setting the scene for the continued use of Bengali between generations. Reference Bose, P., Starfield, S., & Perera, N. (2025). ‘Ōlē bābālē!!!’ – Exploring emotions and digital language practices in family language policy among Bengali transnational families: A multimodal approach. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13670069251336173. DOI here For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Oct 18

    In Defence of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology with Thomas Fuchs (Oxford UP, 2021)

    At a time when artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and digital technologies increasingly shape our understanding of what it means to be human, Fuchs argues that we need to recover a richer conception of the human person. Rather than viewing ourselves as information-processing systems or collections of neural mechanisms, he develops a philosophical vision centred on embodiment, relationality, and lived experience. The result is a compelling defence of human agency, dignity, and freedom against contemporary forms of reductionism and transhumanism. Today we'll be discussing In Defence of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology (Oxford UP, 2021). We discuss central arguments and their implications for philosophy, psychiatry, technology, and the future of human self-understanding. Prof. Thomas Fuchs holds the Karl Jaspers Professorship for Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry and is head of the section “Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy” at Heidelberg University Psychiatric Hospital. He is also coordinator of the Marsilius Project “Embodiment as a Paradigm of an Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology” as well as research unit leader of the Karl Jaspers Edition. His main scientific interests include phenomenological anthropology and psychopathology on the one hand, and the theory and ethics of psychiatry and neuroscience on the other. Dr. Anya Daly is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics in the School of Arts and Society, University of Tasmania. Interdisciplinary collaborations are at the core of Anya’s research interests. She investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of psychiatry, embodied and social cognition, enactivism, ethics, aesthetics and Buddhist Philosophy.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Oct 16

    Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life with Mona Sloane (U California Press, 2026)

    How AI is rewiring our social fabric—and how we can better shape our future. The age of AI is not what you think. Rather than ushering in a fourth Industrial Revolution, AI has become a crucial social infrastructure of everyday life. It's embedded in the tools, platforms, and systems that organize our most intimate lives and our interactions with the most fundamental institutions of society, from government agencies to banks and schools. In these linkages are embedded assumptions about who we are, what we can do, and where we belong. In Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life (U California Press, 2026), Mona Sloane offers a pragmatic framework for understanding these transformations around prediction, classification, and linearity, proposing that we think about AI as a social arrangement that we coproduce. Drawing on over a decade of empirical research and real-world examples, this book invites us to see AI for what it is: deeply social, deeply political, and open to change. Clear-eyed and provocative, Predicted is a call to reclaim deliberations about progress and innovation as a public good and to ensure that the futures we chart are the ones we choose—together. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Oct 14

    Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability with Moritz A. Schramm (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    Social media giants like Meta and transnational regulators such as the European Union are transforming private governance by creatively emulating public law frameworks. Drawing on exclusive interviews and in-depth analysis of Meta's Oversight Board and the EU's Digital Services Act, Governance by Emulation: The Oversight Board, the Digital Services Act, and the Struggle for Platform Accountability (Cambridge UP, 2026) explores how these approaches blend European and American perspectives, bridging distinct legal traditions to address the challenges of platform governance. Analysis of content moderation practices and their implications uncovers a critical pattern in the evolution of governance for industries that will define the future, from digital platforms to emerging technologies. Combining public and private law in innovative ways, the book sheds light on bold governance experiments that will shape the digital world-for better or worse. This study offers crucial insights for understanding the next chapter of global governance in an increasingly interconnected and privatized world. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. Find Moritz here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Oct 12

    "The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines" with Yasmín Hernández and Baruch Vergara

    This is the first episode in a series that explores the intersections of science and the humanities in university life. In today’s conversation, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is joined by artists Yasmín Hernández and Baruch Vergara for a discussion about Herlihy-Mera's article “The humanities should really matter to STEM disciplines.” They explore the relationship that art and the humanities have with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and consider why that relationship matters more than ever. The discussion begins with a central question: What can the arts and humanities contribute to STEM education? If art cultivates forms of observation, experimentation, imagination, interpretation, and creative problem-solving that are essential to scientific and technological work, how can educators work within institutions that separate the Humanities from STEM experiences? What might change if scientists used art and visual thinking as approaches to problem solving? How would science change if art became a tool for empirical inquiry? And, looking in the other direction, what can science teach the humanities about the mind, perception and the boundaries of what we know? These questions become especially urgent in the age of artificial intelligence. This series asks us to reconsider the boundaries between disciplines. At stake is more than the future of the university. It is what kinds of intelligence we want our universities to cultivate - and also, what kinds of experiences we want students to have as they learn, explore, and make sense of their worlds. The Instituto Nuevos Horizontes is housed at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Quotes, themes, and ideas from this conversation:  • The STEM-ification of the university, expansion of majors and programs • Decline and elimination of humanities, arts, and language programs • When engineering is a model for other disciplines • “STEAM” initiatives that add Arts to STEM • Emphasis on technical skills over interpretive faculties • “Career readiness” over “citizenship” as an institutional objective • The STEM-ification of the university   “Painting is solving a problem on canvas.” -Yasmín Hernández “Children are conditioned to make that division (between STEM and the Arts) since elementary school.” -Yasmín Hernández  “Experimentation is what brings curiosity. It is not a precise thing. Art is a new way to look.” -Baruch Vergara “An image can express a pre-linguistic relationship that we have with the idea.” -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera “Play is the first form of experimentation...you free yourself from the expected outcome.” -Yasmín Hernández “From art comes a new level of awareness, freeing ourselves from the expected outcome to access something that is beyond.” -Yasmín Hernández “Music is an activity that can access concepts that are beyond consciousness.” -Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Oct 7

    Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions with Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

    What does it mean to learn when algorithms increasingly shape how knowledge is produced, organized, and interpreted? Editors Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román join Shreya Urvashi to talk about their book Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions (U Minnesota Press, 2026), a collection that examines how artificial intelligence and computational systems are changing education, cognition, and ideas of human intelligence. The editors discuss the complexities of algorithm, training data as curriculum, AI bias, and the concept of more-than-human learning. They also explore the relationship between contemporary technologies and colonial forms of reason, the limits of treating bias as a purely technical problem, and what happens to human agency as learning becomes increasingly entangled with algorithmic systems. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

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