Andrew Bomback, "Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting" (MIT Press, 2022)
When did "parenting" become a verb? Why is it so hard to parent, and so rife with the possibility of failure? Sitcom families of the past--the Cleavers, the Bradys, the Conners--didn't seem to lose an...
23 Sep 202232min
Georg Striedter, "Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns" (MIT Press, 2022)
Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Pra...
7 Sep 202246min
Igor Douven, "The Art of Abduction" (MIT Press, 2022)
How should we form new beliefs? In particular, what inferential strategies are epistemically justified for forming new beliefs? Nowadays the dominant theory is Bayesianism, whereby we ought to reason ...
10 Aug 20221h 9min
Mark Solovey, "Social Science for What? Battles over Public Funding for the 'Other Sciences' at the National Science Foundation" (MIT Press, 2020)
This is part two of a two part interview. Mark Solovey’s ‘Social Science for What?’ is essential reading for anyone in either the history of science policy or the history of the social sciences in the...
1 Aug 202249min
Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, "The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be" (MIT Press, 2022)
For The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (MIT Press, 2022), Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, facu...
22 Juli 20221h 12min
Marc F. Bellemare, "Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School—But Didn’t" (MIT Press, 2022)
Graduate students and newly-minted economists often find that while their time in graduate school taught them a lot about great research of the past and the methods needed to do their own research, th...
21 Juli 202245min
Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, "Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image" (MIT Press, 2022)
Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg's edited volume Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2022) offers intersectional, intergenerational, and international perspectives on nonfiction film- and...
20 Juli 202242min
Andrew Witt, "Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture" (MIT Press, 2022)
In Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture (MIT Press, 2022), Andrew Witt examines the visual, methodological, and cultural intersections between architecture and mathematics. The linkages Wi...
8 Juli 202218min
