Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThinking Machines: The First AI Takeover Story
Episode 19
It’s the UConn Popcast, and in the second of our series on Thinking Machines we consider Karel Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920). Čapek’s pl…
1 year, 7 months ago
Richard Moss, "Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games" (Bitmap Books, 2024)
Episode 22
Painstakingly researched and written by football-obsessed writer and experienced game journalist, historian, and documentarian Richard Moss – author …
1 year, 7 months ago
When We Prioritize Data and Metrics, What Happens to Human Connections?
Episode 238
Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton University Press, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which ex…
1 year, 7 months ago
Jamie Hakim, "Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Episode 29
Queer men's cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, sa…
1 year, 7 months ago
Greg Epstein, "Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation" (MIT Press, 2024)
Episode 80
Technology has surpassed religion as the central focus of our lives, from our dependence on smartphones to the way that tech has infused almost every…
1 year, 8 months ago
Jia Tan, "Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China" (NYU Press, 2023)
Episode 69
Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China (NYU Press, 2023) offers a trenchant and singular analysis of the convergence of digital…
1 year, 8 months ago
Kostas Kampourakis, "Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Episode 490
Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essenti…
1 year, 8 months ago
Ian Milligan, "Averting the Digital Dark Age: How Archivists, Librarians, and Technologists Built the Web a Memory" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
Episode 75
In early 1996, the web was ephemeral. But by 2001, the internet was forever. How did websites transform from having a brief life to becoming long-las…
1 year, 8 months ago
Dolores Albarracin et al., "Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Episode 389
Conspiracy theories spread more widely and faster than ever before. Fear and uncertainty prompt people to believe false narratives of danger and hidd…
1 year, 8 months ago
Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)
Episode 263
Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major Amer…
1 year, 8 months ago