Best MIT Press Podcasts (2025)

1
Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025) 52:05

23h ago52:05

52:05

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of ho…

1
Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:04:57

8d ago1:04:57

1:04:57

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Although agricultural inputs are a huge sector of the global economy, the lion's share of that market is controlled by a relatively small number of very large transnational corporations. The high degree of co…

1
Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023) 57:00

4h ago57:00

57:00

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa…

1
Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022) 49:23

4h ago49:23

49:23

Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimension of Roman arboriculture and the associated movement of plants from one corner of the empire to the other. It uses the convergent perspectives offered by textual and archaeological sources to sketch …

1
Ted Levin, "The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World" (Green Writers Press, 2025) 30:51

4h ago30:51

30:51

In The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World (Green Writers Press, 2025), a former Bronx Zoo zoologist and award-winning nature writer, Ted Levin, spent Covid rediscovering his valley and the joys of watching the season pass, day by day by day. The book is a chronicle of his rediscovery of the Thetford, Vermont hillside on which he l…

1
Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry 1:14:53

4h ago1:14:53

1:14:53

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformati…

1
Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023) 57:00

6h ago57:00

57:00

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa…

1
Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023) 57:00

3h ago57:00

57:00

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa…

1
Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023) 57:00

4h ago57:00

57:00

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa…

1
Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025) 52:05

3d ago52:05

52:05

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of ho…

1
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023) 56:32

3d ago56:32

56:32

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with scholars about recent books engaging with different aspects of global corporations – with a focus on the role of law and legal forms. Our guest today is Professor Philip J. Stern, Professor of History at…

1
Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP) 50:52

2d ago50:52

50:52

In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space a…

1
Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025) 33:16

3d ago33:16

33:16

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Draw…

1
Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018) 1:12:47

3d ago1:12:47

1:12:47

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018) guides readers through the history of eunuchs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the techniques of visualization t…

1
Bianca Murillo, "Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2017) 1:14:48

4d ago1:14:48

1:14:48

In Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Ohio UP, 2017), Bianca Murillo explores the shifting social terrains that made the buying and selling of goods in modern Ghana possible. Fusing economic and business history with social and cultural history, she traces the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and ind…

1
Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025) 33:16

4d ago33:16

33:16

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Draw…

1
Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (6) 39:02

4d ago39:02

39:02

Drs. Messina and Gill talked about cognitive offloading in our digital age—how smartphones, AI, and other technologies are reshaping our mental habits, our memory, our capacity for attention, and ultimately, our emotional lives. Cognitive offloading refers to the process of using tools and technologies to take over mental functions we used to perfo…

1
Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025) 52:05

5d ago52:05

52:05

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of ho…

1
Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry 1:14:53

5d ago1:14:53

1:14:53

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformati…

1
Katie Rose Hejtmanek, "The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:08:28

5d ago1:08:28

1:08:28

CrossFit in the United States has become increasingly popular, around which a fascinating culture has developed which shapes everyday life for the people devoted to it. CrossFit claims to be many things: a business, a brand, a tremendously difficult fitness regimen, a community, a way to gain salvation, and a method to survive the apocalypse. In Th…

1
Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry 1:14:53

5d ago1:14:53

1:14:53

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformati…

1
Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025) 52:05

5d ago52:05

52:05

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of ho…

1
Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024) 46:19

5d ago46:19

46:19

The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sustainability' of human societies. The term's common usage can be traced back to the advent of the Earth Summit in 1992 when 'sustainable development' was broadly embraced by the international community a…

1
Margherita Zanasi, "Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937" (Cambridge UP, 2020) 1:29:25

6d ago1:29:25

1:29:25

In Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Margherita Zanasi argues that basic notions of a free market economy emerged in China a century and half earlier than in Europe. In response to the commercial revolutions of the late 1500s, Chinese intellectuals and officials called for the …

1
Will AI Transform What it Means to be Human in the Next Ten Years? 1:01:16

6d ago1:01:16

1:01:16

It’s the UConn Popcast, and what impact will AI have on being human in the next decade? Elon University’s Center for Imagining the Digital Future just released a big report on this question, based on a survey of nearly 300 global tech experts. These insiders predict major changes in the very near future to the way we think about work, life, and our…

1
Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024) 46:19

5d ago46:19

46:19

The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sustainability' of human societies. The term's common usage can be traced back to the advent of the Earth Summit in 1992 when 'sustainable development' was broadly embraced by the international community a…

1
Cosmic Visions in Sound 24:27

6d ago24:27

24:27

Today we share a podcast episode on the visual epistemology of astronomy by our friends at The World According to Sound. What kind of knowledge do we really gain when we look at images from space? Longtime listeners to this show will remember The World According to Sound. As we referred to them two years ago, WATS is a team of two rogue audionauts …

1
Enrique C. Ochoa, "México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality" (U Arizona Press, 2025) 1:10:28

7d ago1:10:28

1:10:28

As the birthplace of maize and a celebrated culinary destination, Mexico stands at the crossroads of gastronomic richness and stark social disparities. In México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality (University of Arizona Press, 2025), Dr. Enrique C. Ochoa unveils the historical and contemporary forces behind Mexico’s pol…

1
Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 52:53

7d ago52:53

52:53

What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression? How are the relatively recent concepts of person, self, and subject implicated in these forms of oppression? And what theorizations are already available within trans communities for thinking through…

1
Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025) 59:01

7d ago59:01

59:01

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion…

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