Jonas Staal, "Propaganda Art in the 21st Century" (MIT Press, 2019)
How to understand propaganda art in the post-truth era—and how to create a new kind of emancipatory propaganda art. Propaganda art — whether a depiction of joyous workers in the style of socialist rea...
4 Feb 20211h 5min
Daniel Oberhaus, "Extraterrestrial Languages" (MIT Press, 2019)
In Extraterrestrial Languages (MIT Press 2020), Daniel Oberhaus tells the history of human efforts to talk to aliens, but in doing so, the book reflects on the relationship between communication and c...
6 Jan 202156min
Robert Baker, "The Structure of Moral Revolutions: Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion, Death, and the Bioethics Revolution" (MIT Press, 2019)
We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love,...
6 Jan 20211h 9min
Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts, "Changing Minds: How Aging Affects Language and How Language Affects Aging" (MIT Press, 2019)
Everyone ages, and just about everyone uses language, making Changing Minds: How Aging Affects Language and How Language Affects Aging (MIT Press, 2019) a book with practically universal relevance. Th...
5 Jan 202158min
Howard Gardner, "A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory" (MIT Press, 2021)
The synthesizing mind is one that identifies a program or asks a question, pulls together information from across disciplines or creates new data through experimentation, and integrates everything int...
30 Dec 202029min
Johanna Drucker, "Visualization and Interpretation: Humanistic Approaches to Display" (MIT Press, 2020)
In the several decades since scholars in the humanities have taken up computational tools, they have borrowed many techniques from other fields, including visualization methods to create charts, graph...
23 Dec 202051min
Joshua Gans, "The Pandemic Information Gap and the Brutal Economics of Covid-19" (MIT Press, 2020)
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March, a self-isolating and easily distracted economist resolved to take himself in hand. "I decided I would do what I was good at: I would write a book" about th...
17 Nov 202038min
Ido Hartogsohn, "American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century" (MIT Press, 2020)
Are psychedelics invaluable therapeutic medicines, or dangerously unpredictable drugs that precipitate psychosis? Tools for spiritual communion or cognitive enhancers that spark innovation? Activators...
13 Nov 20201h 6min
