Brian Clegg, "Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe" (MIT Press, 2021)
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 (MI...
2 Sep 202450min
Cyrus Mody on the Importance of Square (as in NOT COOL) Scientists and Engineers
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 Sq...
26 Aug 20241h 9min
Edward Shanks, "The People of the Ruins" (MIT Press, 2024)
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 opera...
6 Aug 202459min
Robert Baker, "Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics" (MIT Press, 2024)
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...
2 Aug 20241h
Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert, "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2024)
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? I...
10 Juli 202439min
Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)
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 con...
8 Juli 202423min
Anna Abraham, "The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths" (MIT Press, 2024)
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 ...
24 Juni 20241h 9min
Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, "Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools" (MIT Press, 2024)
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 pr...
24 Juni 20241h 1min
