Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJeremy Black, "A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 1548
Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how peop…
1 year, 3 months ago
Luis F. Alvarez Leon, "The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism" (U California Press, 2024)
Episode 123
Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, …
1 year, 3 months ago
Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)
Episode 147
Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi…
1 year, 3 months ago
Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
Episode 241
In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnolo…
1 year, 3 months ago
Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Episode 382
Succinct and eloquent, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025) is an essential primer on how to face the threats to privacy in today's age of dig…
1 year, 3 months ago
Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)
Episode 159
The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconst…
1 year, 3 months ago
Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023)
Episode 39
If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle…
1 year, 3 months ago
Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)
Episode 38
Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that…
1 year, 3 months ago
Sonic AI
Episode 48
Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which provi…
1 year, 3 months ago
Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Episode 349
Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted Ch…
1 year, 3 months ago