Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025)
Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and about the life-changing and sometimes life-saving experience of wearing them, as author Dan Roche has done for 15 years. Eye making is done by hand, for one person at a time, by a very small number of ocularists (fewer than 200 in the US); it is a slow, intricate, and unusually intimate process of molding, fitting, and painting that brings ocularist and patient together for many hours or even days.In Eyes by Hand, Dr. Roche describes the craft that goes into the making of an eye that looks uncannily real, as well as the psychological and emotional healing that such service brings to someone who has suffered the very visible trauma of eye loss—a loss that can go to the heart of self-identity.In an engaging, frankly fascinating fashion, Roche captures the intricacies of a profession whose techniques and culture have been remarkably consistent for 200 years. He explores, too, how that profession may now be facing a digital transformation in the form of scan-print-mail possibilities. Such a change might make prosthetic eyes more easily and cheaply available, though it may also risk the aesthetic qualities and intimate connection fundamental to the process of healing.
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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Bénédicte Meillon, "Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Ecopoetics of Reenchantment: Liminal Realism and Poetic Echoes of the Earth (Bloomsbury, 2022) tackles the reenchantment process at work in a part of contemporary ecoliterature that is marked by the resurfacing of the song of the earth topos and of Gaia images. Focusing on the postmodernist braiding of various indigenous and ecofeminist ontologies, close readings of the animistic and totemic dimensions of the stories at hand lead to the theorizing of liminal realism—a mode that shares much with magical realism but that is approached through an ecopoetic lens, specifically working an interspecies kind of magic, situating readers in-between human and other-than-human worlds. This book promotes a worldview based on relationships of reciprocity and symbiosis. It restores our capacity for wonder together with our sensitive intelligence. Liminal realism adopts a stance in-between scientific, mythical, and poetic worldviews as it calls attention to the soundscapes, odorscapes, feelscapes, and landscapes of the world. This monograph offers an original transdisciplinary and cross-Atlantic take on ecopoetics as it straddles the two academic worlds and sparks a conversation between artworks, theories, and studies emerging from the English-speaking world as well as from Francophone contexts. Entangling the materiality of language back within the flesh of the world, this book and the texts under study provide insight into the fundamentally sympoietic dimension of ecopoiesis. People interested in ecopoetics can check out the website run by Béné Meillon here.
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Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala’s book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives.
Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts.
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Anthony Bonato, "Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)
Can networks unlock secrets of AI or make sense of a social media mess? A behind-the-scenes look at how networks reveal reality.
According to mathematician Anthony Bonato, the hidden world of networks permeates our lives in astounding ways. From Bitcoin transactions to neural connections, Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025) explains how networks shape everything from political landscapes to climate patterns and how deceptively simple dots and lines can unveil the wonders of technology, society, and even nature.
From a fresh and startling look at the true impact of clever keywords in politicians' social media posts to a fun breakdown of survival strategies in reality TV shows, Bonato shows us how network theory operates everywhere. Each chapter focuses on a unique aspect of networks to reveal how they provide a captivating lens for bringing diverse phenomena into clearer focus.
The book offers an accessible snapshot of networks for anyone curious about what makes the modern world tick. Bonato's insights will give readers a deeper appreciation and understanding of networks and their relevance to our everyday lives.
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Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen, "The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination" (Reaktion, 2025)
In The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination (Reaktion, 2025), nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen set out in search of sounds beautiful and loathsome, melodious and disturbing, healing, strange and intimate. The phenomena of sound may be fleeting and evanescent, but the memory of it can open a window into the soul, deepening our connections with time, the environment and each other. From the edge of the solar system to the crackle of arctic sea ice, from the ancient oracle site of Dodona to the singing pillars of Hampi, each of these 36 essays explores stories of sound through the lens of history, science and culture, stylishly blending fantastical facts and unique anecdotes to create a compelling narrative.
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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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Over New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Interviews with Scholars of Science, Technology, and Society about their New Books
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Netherlands