Gretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Gretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: ...

Up next

Hector Amaya, "The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification" (Stanford UP 2026)

We use avatars to play video games. We use pseudonyms on social media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital realm, anonymity is everywhere, a persistent option for those who wish to hide, experiment, and deceive. But we are anonymous in more contexts ...  Show more

Fenwick McKelvey, "SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers" (MIT Press, 2026)

This book is available open access. For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey t ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

The Strange and Beautiful Science Of Our Lives
Science Quickly

Nell Greenfieldboyce discusses her new book Transient and Strange, the intimacy of the essays and the science that inspired them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

149. The After Time: The Future of Civilization After COVID-19
The Michael Shermer Show

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast, the last of 2020, Dr. Michael Shermer offers some reflections on 2020, starting with race and the Black Lives Movement, putting it into perspective from other books he read this year, along with podcast guests who appeared ...

  Show more

Science's Revelations
In Our Time: Science

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether the mass of scientific understanding and knowledge we have accumulated has destroyed our sense of poetic wonder at the world. Has our sense of awe at how the world works obscured our desire to know why it works the way it does? With Richard ...  Show more

The Gentrification of Queer Desire
New Books in Gender

Writer Huw Lemmey (Chubz, Red Tory, Unknown Language) speaks with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore about her most recent book The Freezer Door and searching for connection in a world that enforces bland norms of gender, sexuality, and friendship. Produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samant ...  Show more