New Books Network

Alberto Galasso, economist studying innovation and IP, explains technology capital and how firms create and manage it. Short takes cover patents, tradeoffs between protecting vs creating tech, experimentation and portfolio choices, startup IP mistakes, and using patent analytics for competitive intelligence.

Flower Darby, associate director and veteran online instructor focused on joyful asynchronous teaching. She talks about designing clear, accessible courses. She explains small rapport-building moves, using emotion science to spark engagement, and practical ways to support instructor well-being while improving student persistence.

John Bechtold, veteran scholar and author, explores how the US military treats media and memory as contested terrain. He discusses Fallujah 2004, control of images and narratives, the making of heroic frames, embedded journalism as militarized practice, and how visual culture displaces civilian suffering. Short, provocative, and visually focused.

Katharina Wiedlack, assistant professor of Anglophone cultural studies at the University of Vienna, studies Russian-American relations, queer feminist activism, and racialization. She unpacks how Western media shapes Cold War narratives about LGBTQ+ people, gender and disability in Russia. Short takes explore Putin-centric fear framing, the queer martyr trope, Pussy Riot’s Western iconography, and racialized war reporting.

Kim Embrey, historian of Victorian Britain who studies drug histories, traces how South American coca moved into British medicine and policy. She recounts early explorer reactions, the rise of cocaine in medicine, global cultivation and trade networks, shifting public awareness, and the political turn toward regulation. Multiple short stories illuminate coca’s journey into British modernity.

Matthew Bothwell, an observational astronomer and science communicator, guides listeners through the hidden cosmos beyond visible light. He explores the full electromagnetic spectrum, infrared views that pierce dust, spectroscopy as a cosmic detective tool, black holes and pulsars seen indirectly, radio mapping of hydrogen, gravitational waves, dark matter and dark energy, and the next generation of telescopes.

Clifton Crais, a historian of Africa and comparative history at Emory University, presents his concept of the Mortecene, arguing violence and mass killing shaped modern global capitalism. He links slavery, weaponry, and commodity demands to ecological destruction. Short, provocative takes trace credit chains, animal slaughter, and the moral choices that shape our planetary crisis.

Jasper Bernes, a UC Berkeley lecturer and author who writes on Marxism and revolutionary history, discusses revolutionary forms from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd uprising. He traces workers’ councils, the limits of parties and unions, and the idea of immediate communization. He explores rethinking councils for neighborhoods, transparent technical inquiry, and conditions for revolutionary success.

Christian Henderson, a Leiden lecturer and author of Monarchies of Extraction, maps how Gulf states became 'inverted farms' dependent on massive food imports. He traces agrarian change, foreign-led technocratic farming, state agribusiness accumulation, transnational supply chains, land investments in Africa, and how food shapes politics, identity, and crisis responses in the region.

Jeremy Umansky, chef of Larder Delicatessen and author of Koji Alchemy, brings deep fermentation and foraging expertise. Ari Miller, chef of Muzi, champions seasonal, relationship-driven cooking. They talk about fermenting basics, wild yeast and bread, foraging traditions and offal, plus practical tips on salt, hygiene, and what to ferment now.