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
Jan 2025
James Malazita, "Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine" (MIT Press, 2024)
An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself.
In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary ... Show More
38m 1s
Jul 2025
#475 – Demis Hassabis: Future of AI, Simulating Reality, Physics and Video Games
Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel Prize winner for his groundbreaking work in protein structure prediction using AI. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep475-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give f ... Show More
2h 34m
Aug 2024
Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle, "Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us" (Duke UP, 2024)
Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us (Duke UP, 2024) explores the key role video games play within the race makings of Asia/America. Its fourteen critical essays on games, ranging from Death Stranding to Animal Crossing, and five roundtables with twe ... Show More
38m 34s
Jan 2025
WIM Svitlana Demchenko - Insights on Imbalances and Her Dynamic Chess Life
111 She does it all. WIM Svitlana Demchenko is a course creator, coach, streamer, and high-level chess competitor. Born in Ukraine and a long-time Canadian citizen, Svitlana proved herself early in chess, becoming a five-time Canadian girls champion. In more recent years, she’s c ... Show More
43m 10s
May 2024
Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)
What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Press, 2024), Tiziano Bonini, Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Siena, and Emiliano Tr ... Show More
39m 38s
May 2024
Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)
What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Press, 2024), Tiziano Bonini, Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Siena, and Emiliano Tr ... Show More
39m 38s
May 2023
C3E59 Somewhere Out There
<p>Orym, Ashton, and Laudna find themselves in an unfamiliar land, meeting unfamiliar people, as they attempt to piece together why they were separated from their friends and where exactly they are in the world...</p><p> </p><p>Due to the improv nature of Critical Role and other ... Show More
3h 59m
Jul 2023
Suk-Young Kim, "Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars" (Applause Books, 2023)
In Surviving Squid Game: A Guide to K-Drama, Netflix, and Global Streaming Wars (Applause Books, 2023), scholar Suk-Young Kim reflects on Netflix's most-viewed series and one of the most influential Korean dramas, Squid Game. The series premiered in September 2021, when the pande ... Show More
48m 9s
The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) Dr. Mia Consalvo, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse, and Dr. Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to understand ... Show More
