Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchShannon Mattern, "A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Episode 38
Computational models of urbanism—smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration—promise to deliver new urban efficiencies …
1 year, 2 months ago
Ben Highmore, "Playgrounds: The Experimental Years" (Reaktion, 2024)
Episode 503
After World War II, a new kind of playground emerged in Northern Europe and North America. Rather than slides, swings, and roundabouts, these new pla…
1 year, 2 months ago
Leah Downey, "Our Money: Monetary Policy as If Democracy Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Episode 111
How the creation of money and monetary policy can be more democratic.
The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, th…
1 year, 2 months ago
Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Episode 501
In a world filled with both enormous wealth and pockets of great devastation, how should the well-off respond to the world's needy?
This is the urgent…
1 year, 2 months ago
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)
Episode 165
The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increa…
1 year, 2 months ago
Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 378
In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are g…
1 year, 2 months ago
Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, "Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 199
American democracy is in trouble. At the heart of the contemporary crisis is a mismatch between America's Constitution and today's nationalized, part…
1 year, 3 months ago
Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)
Episode 235
In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to pr…
1 year, 3 months ago
Leslie Beth Ribovich, "Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools" (NYU Press, 2024)
Episode 1521
The processes of secularization and desegregation were among the two most radical transformations of the American public school system in all its his…
1 year, 3 months ago
Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway
Episode 130
In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press,…
1 year, 3 months ago