We spend our 50th episode (the last of this season) with communication theorist Amit Pinchevski. Amit’s recent book Echo (MIT Press) explores its topic through mythology, etymology, history, technology, and philosophy. The book challenges the notion that echo is mere repetition. Instead, Pinchevski argues, echo is a generative medium that creativel…

Jetzt wo die Schuldenparty durch ist, müssen sich Union und SPD nur noch auf einen Koalitionsvertrag einigen. Aber der Frust dabei scheint auf beiden Seiten groß: „Die haben das schlechteste Wahlergebnis ihrer Geschichte und treten auf wie der Wahlsieger. Zum Kotzen“, sagt zB ein erfahrener CDU-Politiker. Ein führender Sozialdemokrat lässt sich die…

Friedrich Merz kann künftig alle Asylbewerber persönlich an der deutschen Grenze zurückweisen. Den Rest der deutschen Politik bestimmen nämlich SPD und Grüne, nach dem Motto: Ist uns doch egal, wer unter uns Kanzler ist. Und ob wir überhaupt Teil der Regierung sind. Alles Rot macht der Merz. Und alles Grün jetzt auch noch.Der Mann, der einst eine 1…

The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) Dr. Mia Consalvo, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse, and Dr. Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to …

This book is available open access here. The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazviita Chirimuuta argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the human brain to build models for their research purposes mislead us about how the brain actually works. The key issue, instead, i…

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we've been experiencing a revolution in the past few years, as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly common part of everyday life. Powerful AI tools are now integrated into our work, our schools, our creative industries, and our experiences of dating and companionship. This is a disorientating experience, one t…

Die Demütigung des ukrainischen Präsidenten Selenskyj im Weißen Haus durch Donald Trump und seinen Vize J.D. Vance ist jetzt eine Woche her. Seitdem haben die Amerikaner die Militärunterstützung für die Ukraine aufgekündigt. Sie haben auch die bislang unfassbar wichtigen Erkenntnisse der US-Geheimdienste für die ukrainische Kriegsführung zurückgeha…

Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose. What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meanin…

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pandemic.” In Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022), Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a globa…

Das Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht durchforstet dieser Tage alle Mülltonnen der Republik – auf der Suche nach den 13.4000 Stimmen, die zum Einzug in den Bundestag fehlten. Die könnten ihnen nämlich geklaut worden sein. Rein theoretisch. Also verschwörungstheoretisch. Der chronisch beleidigt wirkende Robert Habeck hat uns Wählenden noch mal vor Augen gef…

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2…

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, about their book, Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America (MIT Press, 2024) Politics Recoded examines the history and culture of Code for America, an organization that, as …

Donald Trump schubst alle vor den Bus, die bislang auf die USA gehofft hatten. Der neue Sheriff in Town hat keinen Bock auf Sheriff und will lieber Ganove sein. Unterdessen ist ein kleines zunehmend unbedeutendes germanisches Dorf auf der Suche nach einer Führung, die diesmal im Idealfalle sogar funktioniert. Aber es ist kompliziert. Denn: Der Frie…

Der deutsche Bundeskanzler stapft auf den wohl letzten Metern seiner Kanzlerschaft wie ein Rohrspatz durch den Wahlkampf.Der amerikanische Präsident will Ruhe in Europa haben – gern auch auf Kosten der Ukraine – um sich endlich den wichtigen Regionen der Welt widmen zu können.Und Robert Habeck kämpft gegen üble Nachrede – und nicht immer ganz so sa…

Olaf Scholz empfängt im Bundeskanzleramt rund 100 Karnevalisten. Das ist so, als würde Dieter Bohlen zum deutschen Philosophenkongress einladen.Scholz versuchte sich sogar an einer Art Büttenrede, ein eigentlich lustiges Genre. Seine endete dann aber so: «Dabei lass’ ich’s bewenden, denn schwer soll’s nicht enden. Gelassen und heiter, so machen wir…

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberha…

In dieser Woche hat Friedrich Merz mit seinem Zustrombegrenzungsgesetzt für ordentlich Aufruhe im Land und Bundestag gesorgt. Die Union hatte in dieser Woche zwei Anträge und ein Gesetz in den Bundestag eingebracht, von dem ein Antrag eine knappe Mehrheit bekommen hat - erstmals in der Geschichte des Bundestags mit Stimmen der AfD. Der Gesetzesentw…

Ein zweijähriges Kind und ein ihm zur Hilfe eilender Mann wurden am Mittwoch in einem Park in Aschaffenburg ermordet. Von einem 28 Jahre alten Flüchtling aus Afghanistan. Doch das Innehalten, die Trauer, das Mitgefühl mit den Angehörigen währte nicht lange. Nicht mal 24 Stunden nach dem Attentat präsentierte CDU-Kanzlerkandidat Friedrich Merz berei…

Friedrich Merz versteckt sich weiter in seinem Hobbykeller im Sauerland, sein Motto im laufenden Bundestagswahlkampf: Keine Experimente Die AfD unterbietet sich niveaumäßig noch mal selbst und verteilt Abschiebe-Flugtickets wahllos an Menschen, deren Namen irgendwie nach Migrationshintergrund klingen. Und Robert Habeck schwimmt mit seinem neuen Buc…

Willkommen beim Apokalypse & Filterkaffee Presseklub, wo Markus Feldenkirchen, gemeinsam mit renommierten Journalist*innen, ab dem 18.Januar, jeden Samstag durch eine spannende und tiefgründige Diskussion zu dem wichtigsten Thema der Woche führt. Der perfekte Wochenabschluss und die ideale Ergänzung zu den täglichen Apokalypse & Filterkaffee Folgen…

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most…

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself. In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories …

The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased inequality within countries. Is this phenomenon a small hiccup in the overall wave of globalization, or are we at the beginning of a new era of deglobalization? Former Chief Economist of the World …

A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers. Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game, from French shelves in 2014? Why was Vodka Drunkenski, a character in Nintendo-Japan’s Punch-Out!, renamed Soda Popinski in the US and then in Western Europe, where the pun made no sense? Why was a Du…

Data has become a defining issue of current times. Our everyday lives are shaped by the data that is produced about us (and by us) through digital technologies. In Critical Data Literacies: Rethinking Data and Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2023), Luci Pangrazio and Neil Selwyn introduce readers to the central concepts, ideas, and arguments required to …

To meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels must occur, as quickly as possible. But there are many unknowns when it comes to moving from theory to implementation for such a large-scale energy transition, to say nothing of whether this transition will be…

Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernisation, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) examines the history of the computer industry in socialist Bulgaria. Combining the histories of technology and political economy with that of the Cold War and the modern Balkans, Balkan Cyberia challenges the notions of bac…

From the U.S. lead negotiator on climate change, an inside account of the seven-year negotiation that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015—and where the international climate effort needs to go from here. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the twenty-first century: 195 n…

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 aspect of our lives including our homes, our relationships, and even our bodies. Beyond these practical matters, Tech has become a religion with multiple sects who follow their own beliefs, practices,…

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, about her recent book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023). In addition to being a professor, Alper is also an educational researcher who has worked over the past 20 year…

Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and wide range of emotions and strategies people develop to respond to toxicity in everyday life. An examination of the daily grind of living with pollution in rural China and of the varying forms of acti…

Francisco Aboitiz is a professor at the Medical School and the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. A History of Bodies, Brains, and Minds: The Evolution of Life and Consciousness (MIT Press, 2024) tells the story of life and nervous systems. It introduces the conceptual framework an…

Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (2021), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; the critical essay collection Carceral Capital…

Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs and drudgery, leaving humans to a life of leisure. This hasn’t happened. Instead, humans are still doing boring jobs, and even worse, AI researchers have built technology that is creative, self-aware, …

An expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging. Where would you take someone on a guided tour of your neighborhood? In The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places (MIT Press, 2024), photographer and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani introduces us to the comple…

What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the place has maintained a unique hold on our collective imagination? In Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change (MIT Press, 2023), which comes twenty years after her widely acclaimed Times Squ…

Why do we assume that computers always get it right? Today’s book is: Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press, 2019), in which Professor Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems.…

When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimensional no-man's-land that is populated by supernatural beings. From there, they go on to an alternate-future version of Philadelphia—a frightening dystopian nation-state in which citizens are numbered,…

Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and consequence. In Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe (MIT Press, 2021), Brian Clegg explores the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagra…

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Cyrus Mody, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation and Director of the STS Program at Maastricht University, about his book, The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s (MIT Press, 2022). Many narratives about contemporary technologies, especially digital…

In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a ce…

The little-known stories of the people responsible for what we know today as modern medical ethics. In Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics (MIT Press, 2024), Robert Baker tells the counter history of the birth of bioethics, bringing to the …

What is data, and why does it matter for us to care about the data traces we leave behind? What are the implications for our lives of how this data is used by other people in other times and places? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, authors Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert introduce their new book and talk about how we can rethink our relationshi…

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In Contracep…

A nuanced, science-based understanding of the creative mind that dispels the pervasive myths we hold about the human brain—but also uncovers the truth at their cores. What is the relationship between creativity and madness? Creativity and intelligence? Do psychedelics truly enhance creativity? How should we understand the left and right hemispheres…

A probing examination of the dynamic history of predictive methods and values in science and engineering that helps us better understand today's cultures of prediction. The ability to make reliable predictions based on robust and replicable methods is a defining feature of the scientific endeavor, allowing engineers to determine whether a building …

Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology reinforces inequality, it's not just a glitch—it's a signal that we need to redesign our systems to create a more equitable world. The word “glitch” implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it …

In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how profes…

Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationship of eighteenth-century England to late-capitalist modernity. It traces the multiple strands in the life of the ceramic entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) to propose an alternative view of eightee…

What isn't counted doesn't count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas …