The MIT Press Podcast

A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively known as “Star Wars,” a space-based missile defense program aimed at protecting the US from nuclear attack. In Weapons in Space, Aaron Bateman draws on recently declassified American, European, and Soviet documents to provide an insightful account of SDI, situating it within a new phase in the militarization of space following the collapse of superpower détente in the 1970s. In doing so, Bateman reveals the largely secret role of military space technologies in late–Cold War US defense strategy and foreign relations.In contrast to existing narratives, Weapons in Space shows how tension over the role of military space technologies in American statecraft was a central source of SDI's controversy, even more so than questions of technical feasibility. By detailing the participation of Western European countries in SDI research and development, Bateman reframes the militarization of space in the 1970s and 1980s as an international phenomenon. He further reveals that even though SDI did not come to fruition, it obstructed diplomatic efforts to create new arms control limits in space. Consequently, Weapons in Space carries the legacy of SDI into the post–Cold War era and shows how this controversial program continues to shape the global discourse about instability in space—and the growing anxieties about a twenty-first-century space arms race. Our guest is Aaron Bateman, an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at GWU. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society.Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership.Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other's limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Borrowing from the traditional alphabet book genre for children, An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Sharon Sliwinski provides adult readers with a new grammar for dreams, or what neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro calls “oracles of the night.” In this book, Dr. Sliwinski restores dreaming to its proper place as an important worldmaking activity, one that offers a gateway to another way of seeing. Each of the short chapters engages a dream from the historical record—from both the recent and distant past—to show how these experiences can help make sense of profound social conflicts and transform our shared reality.Thinking alongside the dreams of powerful exemplars—from Harriet Tubman to contemporary Indigenous activist Abigail Echo-Hawk—readers come to understand how dream life is a crucial resource for generating new worlds and new ways of being. The book brings together urgent concerns from the domains of critical theory, visual culture, and mental health to show how dreaming serves as a vital source of knowledge and a critical mode of thinking.As with traditional alphabet books, illustrations provide an integral voice. Each chapter of the book is accompanied by an original watercolor painting by Melinda Josie that visually underscores the way dreams serve as a unique medium for processing our lived experience. Together, the images and text form a delicate dialogue, drawing attention to the details of the central scenes, extending the book’s special mode of thinking in painted form.By working alongside dreamers from the past and present, An Alphabet for Dreamers begins a new and much-needed conversation about the social and political importance of dream life. 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.

An analysis of advances in military technology that illustrates the importance of organizational flexibility in both an attacker’s innovations and an opponent’s adaptations.How important is military innovation in determining outcomes during armed conflict? In Innovation and Adaptation in War, Matthew Tattar questions the conventional wisdom that, to succeed, military organizations must innovate early and often. Because successful methods of warfare are soon widely imitated or countered on the international stage, the advantages of a particular innovation quickly evaporate. Therefore, Tattar argues, large-scale innovations at the cost of organizational flexibility and the ability to adapt to an adversary’s innovations may not be the optimal path—not just because force readiness is vital but also because innovation does not provide as long-lasting and decisive an advantage as may have been previously thought.Although other scholars have analyzed the sources of military innovation, Tattar is the first to focus on the relationship between innovation and specific military outcomes. Looking at several different types of military organizations and many different types of battles, he draws on theoretical works, in-depth historical research, and case studies, and finds that the initial advantages that are generated by innovation disappear far too rapidly in wartime for militaries to depend on them for victory. Furthermore, as Tattar demonstrates, emphasizing innovation in defense planning at the expense of organizational flexibility can have significant negative consequences. The decisive factor in successful adaptation, more often than not, is a well-positioned and flexible organization. Providing both a new framework for studying military innovation and a comprehensive review of the current literature in this field, Innovation and Adaptation in War offers crucial policymaking insights into when and under what circumstances militaries should innovate and adapt.

Thomas Princen explores issues of social and ecological sustainability at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. He works on principles for sustainability, overconsumption, the language and ethics of resource use, and the transition out of fossil fuels. His latest book is Fire and Flood: Extreme Events and Social Change Past, Present, Future (MIT Press, 2025). Princen is the author of Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order (2010), author of The Logic of Sufficiency (2005), and lead editor of Confronting Consumption (2002), all three published by MIT Press. The last two were awarded the International Studies Association's Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for the best book in the study of international environmental problems. He is co-editor of The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift (MIT Press, 2012), co-author of Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global (Routledge, 1994) and author of Intermediaries in International Conflict (Princeton University Press, 1992/1995).  Princen was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, sponsored by the Packard Foundation, and before that was a Pew Faculty Fellow for International Affairs. Princen received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University in 1988 and a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Pomona College in 1975. He was a MacArthur Foundation Post-Doctoral Visiting Research Fellow in International Peace & Security at Princeton University from 1988 to 1989. He now serves as an Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan.

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen’s Chicago (MIT Press, 2024), Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen's famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she explores Veblen's position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago's historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen's home city on his work and ideas. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century architecture, focusing on cultural techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023).

Christopher Ali, an Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of Virginia and author of "Farm Fresh Broadband," explores the critical issue of rural broadband in America. He discusses the stark urban-rural digital divide and critiques national broadband policies for their inadequacies. Ali draws parallels with rural electrification, advocates for a multi-stakeholder approach to broadband deployment, and emphasizes the need for local competition to drive down costs. He also touches on the impact of COVID-19 and explores the emerging idea of internet access as a human right.

In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitable crowdfunding for healthcare in the United States—and the consequences of allowing healthcare access to be decided by the digital crowd. Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe, which now boasts a “global community of over 100 million” users, have transformed the ways we seek and offer help. When faced with crises—especially medical ones—Americans are turning to online platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. What does this new phenomenon reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide healthcare? In Crowded Out, Dr. Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly overtook public life, where it is taking us, and who gets left behind by this new platformed economy.Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness” of strangers, crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing the way Americans think about and access healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, Crowded Out demonstrates how crowdfunding for health is fueled by—and further reinforces—financial and moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms and helps to foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises both small and large. 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.

Nathan E. Sanders, a data scientist and Berkman Klein Center affiliate, teams up with renowned security technologist Bruce Schneier to explore the transformative power of AI on democracy. They discuss how AI is reshaping government operations and citizen engagement, like improving access to legislative info through civic projects. The duo dives into the biases in AI that can impact political persuasion and highlights the contrasting approaches of the EU and US in AI policy. They emphasize the importance of steering AI development to enhance democratic values and avoid centralizing power.

Lily Hsueh, an Associate Professor at Arizona State University and expert in corporate environmentalism, shares insights on her new book. She discusses the evolution of corporate responsibility and explains proactive measures like emissions targets. Hsueh explores the significance of carbon ratings for investors and outlines how regulations influence corporate behavior. She emphasizes the role of managerial actions and consumer choices in advancing sustainability, while also addressing the challenges posed by globalization and corporate responsibility in developing nations.