Keith Cooper, "Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact" (Reaktion, 2025)

When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2026), Dr. Roland Betancourt tells the story of how the visionary engineers and designers at Disney transformed the technologies of the postwar assembly line into an entertainment experience unlike anything the world had ever seen.This book traces the origins and evolution of these technical innovations during the theme park’s first three decades in operation, exploring how engineers reimagined the systems and machines of industrial manufacturing and the military. The magnetic tape used to test ballistic missiles was repurposed to animate the talking macaws in the Enchanted Tiki Room. Programmable Logic Controllers, widely used on automotive assembly lines, brought to life the spectacular rides of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain. Dr. Betancourt shows how these and other attractions helped to allay fears about automation and job displacement in 1950s America. Along the way, he situates Disneyland’s remarkable creations within a broader history of the technologies that increasingly order and construct the world around us, from the Fordist factory to artificial intelligence.Essential reading for anyone interested in engineering, corporate histories, or popular culture, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation invites us to consider how technology and the logic of automation become integrated into our lives through entertainment. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged to create a new public‑private regime of control over information, attention, and consent. He discusses the intellectual roots of technocratic governance from Francis Bacon and Leibniz through progressivism, World War I propaganda, and cybernetics, and explains how the “information state” differs from classical authoritarianism. Finally, Siegel reflects on Trumpism, the tech counter‑elite around figures like Elon Musk, and how AI may usher in a more “Pharaonic” and quasi‑spiritual form of politics beyond traditional expert‑driven technocracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of products and platforms define smart as routine automation and friendly digital kinship. Yet smartness was not always so digital. Sarah Murray uncovers the century-long process through which smart became synonymous with seamless interaction between bodies and machines, showing how this intimate interfacing helped to normalize today’s algorithmic world.Offering a critical, feminist prehistory of everyday AI, Powered by Smart reveals how the pursuit of convenience, comfort, and efficiency has long been a gendered campaign. Smartness has often been associated with women — from early switchboard operators and industrial designer Lillian Gilbreth’s test kitchens to Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise empire and Disney’s computer-housewife PAT in Smart House. These moments illuminate how machine intelligence has already been made ordinary, and how the smart ideal was built over time through domesticity, discipline, and desirability.Moving across factory floors, suburban kitchens, exercise trends, and digital homes, Murray shows how twentieth-century innovations in wearability, solutionism, and recognition laid the groundwork for our contemporary tolerance of — and attachment to — AI. Far from a sudden technological revolution, everyday AI emerged through decades of cultural conditioning of smart life as a caring, attentive endeavor that cast human–machine harmony as both natural and necessary. Powered by Smart reframes artificial intelligence not as the next frontier of progress, but as the logical extension of a much older dream of efficiency made ordinary and personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are alive, clothing has opinions and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.To achieve this, says Adrian Woolfson, founder of the genome writing company Genyro, we must transform biology into a predictive, programmable engineering material. That means decoding the generative grammar of DNA: the language of life itself. We will then be able to author genomes—and, if we choose, even rewrite our own.In On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence (MIT Press, 2026), Woolfson describes how we are at the cusp of a technological revolution, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Currently at the scribbling phase—writing the genomes of viruses, bacteria and yeast—we will eventually author the genomes of extinct and never-before-realized species. Life will become computable, detached from its past and no longer bound by Darwinian evolution.While offering extraordinary opportunities, this power also carries great risk, and it is vital for everyone to understand what the future might hold. In this groundbreaking work, Woolfson provides a guide to this bold new world, offering a moral compass to help us do so safely, wisely and ethically. Adrian Woolfson is the cofounder of Genyro, a California-based biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genome design and construction. He studied medicine at Balliol College, Oxford, and was formerly the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks to Ben Mangrum about Generic. A curious term that denotes both the conventions and rules of genre, and the impersonal or nameless quality of things like generic drugs or generic devices; the generic structures many of our cultural codes. Ben uses both senses to talk about the history of computing. He tells us about the surprising role the genre of comedy has played in our interactions with computers. Ben suggested that we reference Spike Jones’s 2010 short film I’m Here as an example of computational comedy. In the episode Ben references Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s Modern Romance (Penguin Books 2016), a book of comedy and social critique about online dating, as well as classics like Agatha Christie’s Muder on the Orient Express (Collins Crime Club 1934), William Gibson’s Neuromancer (Ace Books 1984), and the film You’ve Got Mail (1998). He also talks about David Schumway’s writing on screwball comedies, “Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage” in Cinema Journal 30 no. 4 (Summer 1991): 7-23, doi: 0.2307/1224884, and Lauren Berlant’s on genre, “Genre Flailing” in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry 1 no. 2 (2018). If you want to learn more, check out Ben’s book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford 2025). In this cultural history of the computer, Ben shows that comedy has been central to how we've made sense of the technology's sweeping effects on public life and private experience. From the first Broadway play to include a computer in the 1950s to popular films and joke-telling digital assistants, many have used comedy to make the computer seem ordinary. Others have tried to stage the assimilation of computers within corporate life as a kind of comic drama. Mangrum describes these and many other ways in which comedy and computation have come together as a new genre of experience: the comedy of computation. Ben Mangrum works as an Associate Professor of Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research examines topics ranging from the environmental humanities to twentieth-century “world literature” and the history of ideas and media underlying contemporary methods in the digital humanities. His first book, Land of Tomorrow: Postwar Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press. The transcript of this episode lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF. The image for this episode shows a happy computer, drawn in a few pixels on a blue background. It was made for High Theory by Lili Epstein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Kristan Stoddart's Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West (de Gruyter, 2025) is a timely and systematic analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a particular focus on Russian cyberespionage and cyberwarfare. It especially analyzes Russian policy from the election of President Vladmir Putin in 2000 to date. It takes a long term, long lens, view of Russian policies and actions internationally and domestically, fundamentally questioning the relationship and boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare. The most up-to-date and systematic analysis of Russia’s hybrid warfare. Draws on a wide range of multi-disciplinary literature. Questions the boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare. Dr. Kristan Stoddart is an Associate Professor at Swansea University where he is director of the Geopolitical Challenges Research Institute. Previously he was a Reader in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. From 2014 to 2017, Kristan was part of a £1.2 million project examining Cyber Security Lifecycles funded by Airbus Group and the Welsh Government. He also was a member of the UK’s Independent Digital Ethics in Policing Panel for around four years through to 2018. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of eight books and many articles and book chapters.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Automata examines how AI and advanced robotics are rapidly surpassing human abilities in fields once thought uniquely ours – from playing chess to discovering new antibiotics to fraud detection. The question is no longer if machines will replace workers, but how we can stay relevant in a world shaped by intelligent automation. This book explores the profound transformation ahead, drawing on real-world trends and technologies already beginning to reshape our lives. With most of these changes expected within the next decade or two, Automata: The Power of AI Integrated with Advanced Robotics (U Toronto Press, 2026) offers timely use cases and practical strategies to help individuals and organizations navigate this new era. It highlights needed changes in education – such as the importance of learning-to-learn and emotional intelligence – to help society prepare for this new age. Automata is a vital guide for anyone seeking to thrive – rather than just survive – as human work, society, and daily life are redefined by the rise of machine intelligence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch a double sunset on Tatooine, stand among the sand dunes of Arrakis or gaze at the gas-giant planet Polyphemus from the moon Pandora? In Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact (Reaktion, 2025), Keith Cooper explores the fictional planets of films such as Star Wars, Dune and Avatar, and discusses how realistic they are based on our current scientific understanding and astronomical observations. The real exoplanets astronomers are now discovering are truly stranger than fiction, as the author shows. Featuring insights from over a dozen scientists and award-winning science-fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact is perfect for readers of popular science and fans of science fiction. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Flowering currant, ivy, Portuguese laurel, and woad might all have grown in a medieval garden, but it would have taken special expertise to extract and create rich blue and purple pigments from them. Humans have been extracting dyes and inks from natural materials for millennia, and the practice was firmly established during the medieval era, recorded in manuscripts that survive today. Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes (Princeton UP, 2026) by Nabil Ali brings together recipes for making natural colors according to season, method, and ingredients.This unique book takes its title from an ink recipe derived from a descendant of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree, in which ingredients extracted from the bark are transformed, seemingly by magic, from brown to a yellow gold. But gold pigments can also be extracted from cornflower, crocus, greater celandine, myrrh, and turmeric. Ali shares his own accessible adaptations for preparing these and other recipes rooted in medieval craft traditions. Along the way, he provides an engaging and informative natural history of the plants used, alongside the broad spectrum of marvelous colors they produce.Presenting original translations of medieval recipes taken from painters’ and illuminators’ technical manuscripts from the third century BCE through to the twenty-first century, alongside stunning botanical illustrations, Gold from Newton’s Apple Tree is a captivating celebration of colors derived from nature. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society