Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Jan 26
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people have taken shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel r ... Show More
27m 9s
Jan 26
Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020)
Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities cope with generational systems of oppression. Prescription opioids are associated wi ... Show More
44m 56s
Nov 2023
Wendy H. Wong, "We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2023)
Our data-intensive world is here to stay, but does that come at the cost of our humanity in terms of autonomy, community, dignity, and equality? In We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023), Wendy H. Wong argues that we cannot allow that to happen. Exploring ... Show More
56m 51s
Jul 2017
Hansa Market takedown. Recovery from EternalBlue exploits is a long slog. Banking malware rising. Power grid vulnerabilities. Devil's Ivy and the IoT. A look at criminal markets.
In today's podcast we hear about an international raid that took down the illicit Hansa Market—which, it turns out, the Dutch National Police had covertly taken over for about a week. Recovery from WannaCry and NotPetya continues its long slog. Banking malware is on the rise in t ... Show More
23m 1s
Aug 2024
“Security is an Illusion” Ethical Hacker Exposes Child Predators & Tools To Protect Against Hackers | PBD Podcast | Ep. 460
<p>Patrick Bet-David sits down with Ryan Montgomery, a renowned ethical hacker known for his expertise in cybersecurity and passion for child safety. Montgomery, who has been at the forefront of exposing online predators, shares insights into his journey as a hacker, his motivati ... Show More
2h 4m
Aug 2024
Racism Rears its Ugly Head ... Again
Just as soon as Kamala Harris' presidential campaign began nearly four weeks ago, so too did the ugly, age-old racist attacks, with Donald Trump questioning his rival's race in a sit-down interview with Black journalists. Bianna speaks with Randall Kennedy, a law professor at Har ... Show More
59m 7s
Jul 2024
Is This the Death of Harvard? - Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author and Harvard College Professor. One of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind, he is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ... Show More
1h 2m
Oct 22
Critical Ponerology (WHAT IS “EVIL”?) with Kenneth MacKendrick
<p>What is evil? Who is evil? Does evil exist? Who decides? Can we scream over turkey at grandma’s house? Let’s chat Critical Ponerology with scholar, professor, author of <i>Evil: A Critical Primer,</i> and a gem of a person, Dr. Kenneth MacKendrick of the University of Manitoba ... Show More
1h 3m
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, interview Gabriella Coleman, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, about her long career studying hacker cultures. Topics include how hacking has changed over time, the different co ... Show More
