New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

This inaugural podcast for the Voices of Discovery podcast from the University of Houston Clear Lake features a discussion of Team MAPPS, a federally-funded program that is available online to help people increase collaboration within teams. The Team Methods to Advance Processes and Performance in Science (Team MAPPS) training program was specifically designed to help scientific teams develop and master the skills of Team Science so that collaboration is more effective as scientific teams tackle the complex challenges of our world today. Listen as Dr. Kevin Wooten, professor at UHCL, and Cynde Ferris, adjunct professor at UHCL and director of educational technology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, explain the origins of TeamMAPPS and how the science of Team Science can be helpful for teamwork. 
Dr. Kay L. Colley is executive director of the Center for Faculty Development at the University of Houston Clear Lake and host of its Voices of Discovery podcast.

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As law enforcement agencies deploy increasingly advanced technologies to suppress dissent, hunt migrants, and target marginalized communities, The Carceral Surround (U Minnesota Press, 2026) offers a powerful new theory of police and prison power in the digital age. Making sense of the rapid expansion of digital carceral infrastructure in a nation that claims to value freedom and individual rights, R. Joshua Scannell moves beyond familiar debates over privacy to show that understanding digital policing requires confronting the political and racial logics that sustain police power. Drawing on digital media theory, science and technology studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and carceral theory, The Carceral Surround reveals how twenty-first-century policing is less about managing crime than about governing possibility. Carceral power now operates across every register of daily life through predictive analytics, risk modeling, and algorithmic systems that track, sort, and preempt. From social media archives and facial recognition software to satellite mapping and radiation sensors, Scannell charts how seemingly disparate media converge into an environment of control that links technocratic governance to the maintenance of racial hierarchy and capitalist order. Tracing today?s technoauthoritarian regime from the NYPD?s assault on Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition?s campaign to end predictive policing contracts, The Carceral Surround is a rare hybrid of critique and refusal, illuminating the digital logic of US authoritarianism while imagining pathways for collective resistance beyond its grasp. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
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In Nary a Horse Left Standing: How a Nineteenth-Century Epidemic Transformed Medicine, Animal Welfare, and the Modern City (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Lee Dugatkin chronicles this little-known crisis, revealing how the epidemic disrupted nearly every aspect of urban life. From coast to coast, livelihoods collapsed as horses lay sick, or worse dying, on stable floors, fires raged unchecked without horse-drawn wagons, and city development stalled for lack of horsepower. Just as the Gilded Age was dawning and industrialists were poised to amass fortunes, the flu slowed progress to a crawl.

Yet the tragedy also catalyzed revolutions in medicine, animal rights, and transportation. Veterinary science in the U.S. was still emerging, but detailed medical reports from the epidemic helped validate germ theory and discredit outdated beliefs. The crisis also spotlighted early animal welfare efforts, with fledgling groups like the ASPCA advocating for sick horses forced to work. Finally, the sheer vulnerability of relying on animals for transport spurred a shift toward mechanized systems.

As illuminating as it is humbling, the book brings to life a critical account of a crisis that still speaks to the complex public health and transportation challenges we face today.

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.
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We live in a fragile world. This much is evident as stories abound of
natural disasters that wipe out communities in an instant. How can we
survive the future on such a planet, amid intensifying climate change?
This question is particularly poignant along the Ring of Fire, a
tectonic belt in the Pacific region that routinely faces some of the
most devastating disasters in the world. Based on ethnographic research
spanning seven years, Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire
(Stanford University Press, 2026) examines the work of preparedness
training in Japan and Chile, two primary nations along the Ring of Fire
that experience frequent and intense disasters. Experts from these
countries have often collaborated to create some of the most advanced
disaster preparedness systems in the world. Dr. Chika Watanabe traces
how local city officials, NGOs, and members of neighborhood and
grassroots organizations are, counterintuitively, using fun, playful
methods to teach preparation for our darkest hours.

While there
are many important studies of post-disaster response, much less is
written about the future-orientation of disaster preparedness. This book
shows how a transnational group of preparedness experts orient people
toward potential disasters in gentle and hopeful ways, focusing on
improvisation and repair. In a time of political and environmental
destabilization globally, this book offers a unique look at how playful
preparedness can reset relationships to environments, to the future, and
to each other.

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.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

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I spoke with Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington about her 2026 book Artificial Historians, co-authored with Anne Martin and Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien. A distinguished historian, philosopher, academic leader, and Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) based at the University of Adelaide, my guest explores how the logic of history, defined around trivalent logic (the “maybes,” the “ifs,” the ontological uncertainties), intersects with and challenges the logic of dominant AI algorithms.

The book raises urgent questions about the changing status of human agency, the ethics of AI-powered data collection about us, and the de facto histories that AI is writing about us every second—histories that may decide whether we can travel, access education, or receive medical care. We talk about the opportunities that this perspective on AI presents to humans (and historians in particular!), how some non-Western conceptions of history—for instance, those of the Indigenous nations of Australia—complicate the dominant Western understanding of what history is, and the challenges we must address as we hand over more and more data and delegate the writing of actual human histories to AI.

Aristotle makes a cameo, and my guest talks about how the economy might be shifting from knowledge bias to ethics bias.
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