The MIT Press Podcast

Mar 10 2025 507 ep. 47 mins 939
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Interviews with authors of MIT Press books.

  Education
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Lessons on Living with AI from the Home Computer Revolution: Revisiting Sherry Turkle’s “The Second Self”

Mar 10 2025 58 mins  
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 that changes not only our views o

M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)

Mar 10 2025 52 mins  
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, is to figure out which details of

Chris Higgins, "Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education" (MIT Press, 2024)

Mar 04 2025 65 mins  
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 meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chri

Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)

Mar 02 2025 77 mins  
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 global pandemic of bubonic plague

Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery" (MIT Press, 2025)

Feb 27 2025 22 mins  
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, 2025), Jeff Yoshimi proposes a

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America

Feb 24 2025 96 mins  
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 one of its leaders put it, aimed �

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

Feb 04 2025 59 mins  
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 Oberhaus tells the inside story of how t

Jesper Juul, "Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer" (MIT Press, 2024)

Jan 14 2025 36 mins  
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 video games were made. But alth

James Malazita, "Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine" (MIT Press, 2024)

Jan 12 2025 40 mins  
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 of technology and media, revealing

Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)

Dec 22 2024 51 mins  
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 Bank Group Pinelopi Koujianou Gold