New Books Network

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, about his classic 2006 book, _From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism_. They briefly explore the arc of Fred’s career and revisit the book in the spirit of asking what has changed in digital ideology since the book’s publication, including with the role of Silicon Valley elites in the second Trump Administration, Elon Musk’s role in DOGE, and the (perhaps only brief) turn of digital technology elites moving from California to Texas. Since this conversation was recorded in April 2025, Fred’s essay, “The Texan Ideology,” has been published in The Baffler: Link here.

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In their book The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism (Columbia UP, 2025) Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman offer our beleaguered souls a breather. Together they tackle the question of what makes life worth living, and before you recoil at the sound of that question, which intentionally has a little neoliberal ring to it, emphasis mine, let me say that this book studies and challenges the neoliberal way of, if you will, “being” and does so beautifully. Lamenting how perfecting, polishing and pushing ourselves beyond the beyond has become de rigeur—(with our overfull email boxes, demands for more, more, more that keep piling in, and how we are doing it all proudly on our own, no side to fall into) Newman and Ruti plumb the works of Marion Milner and Donal Winnicott, two analytic thinkers, both members of the British Psychoanalytical Society, contemporaries in fact, in search of an escape hatch.

It is important to note that Ruti was dying, knew she was dying, when she wrote this book, in which she fearlessly lays some blame for her demise at the feet of neoliberal modes of relating. At one point she describes the pressures of academia to attend to too much outside the realm of the classroom and scholarship, driving her to want to exclaim “Stop just stop.” Who has not had this experience where we are called upon to be on all the time, available, responsive, game? 

Today I listened to a patient who was very ill with a cold moments before he trudged into work. Sure he has sick days but the new ethos is not to take them. We must not give in. His partner whose father died within the last six months is also back at work where she is expected to plow though her grief: “you must feel better by now right?’, her boss asks nervously. Not a one of us lives outside this realm. Ruti and Newman study the ways in which our loss of the ability to stop, feel emptiness, or seek isolation can foment a kind of psychic deformation that threatens to trounce our creativity.

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In 2024, Senegal faced a severe constitutional and electoral crisis. The presidential vote was postponed, tensions escalated, and fears of democratic breakdown intensified. Yet democracy held. Why?

In this episode of People Power Politics, Temitayo Odeyemi speaks with Catherine Lena Kelly and Ibrahima Fall and about their Journal of Democracy article, “Why Senegal’s Democracy Survived.” They examine how the Constitutional Council asserted its independence under executive pressure, how civil society mobilised to defend constitutional norms, and how what they call democratic “muscle memory” shaped citizen response.

The discussion situates Senegal’s experience within a wider regional context of coups and democratic regression. What explains Senegal’s divergence? Are its institutional safeguards transferable, or deeply context-specific? And what lessons does this case hold for democracies worldwide facing executive overreach?

Catherine Lena Kelly is Director of Engagement at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies and author of Party Proliferation and Political Contestation in Africa: Senegal in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Ibrahima Fall is Director of Studies at the School of International Commerce, Communications, and Business Techniques (ETICCA) in Dakar and a leading analyst of Senegalese governance and constitutional politics.

Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi is a Research Fellow in Democratic Resilience at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR). His research examines institutions, actors, and democratic engagement in Africa.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Election, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the forces that promote and undermine democratic government around the world. Transcript here.

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Wolf Hour (Knopf, 2026) When a small-time criminal and gun dealer is shot down in the street, all signs point to Tomas Gomez, a quiet man with a mysterious past—and deep connections to a notorious gang—who has seemingly vanished into thin air. Other murders soon follow, and it appears Gomez is only getting started. Meanwhile, Bob Oz, a down-and-out suspended police officer with a dubious past of his own, becomes fascinated by the case: he is obsessed with the notion of hunting down a serial killer who only he can understand, a killer with a story as tragic as his own. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2022. An enigmatic Norwegian man with ties to Minneapolis—a self-described crime writer—has traveled to the United States to research the Gomez case, in the hopes of writing a book about it. But as his investigation progresses, the writer’s seemingly neutral position reveals itself to be more complicated than the reader is initially led to believe. Wolf Hour is a twisty and unforgettable thriller in classic Jo Nesbø style, which bears out Vanity Fair’s observation that “Nesbø explores the darkest criminal minds with grim delight and puts his killers where you least expect to find them. . . . His novels are maddeningly addictive.”

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From the beginning of Galileo’s career, well before the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius, his contemporaries took pains to shape his reputation and fame. They were fully aware that their efforts would shape the course of his career; they also knew that they would profit from helping him. With Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025), Anna-Luna Post offers a welcome new perspective on the volatile dynamic between early modern fame and science in Italy, shifting the focus from the recipient of fame to its brokers. Galileo’s contemporaries knew his rise to fame was not a matter of course. Not only were his discoveries highly contested, he also was not the first to observe Jupiter’s four largest moons. Yet, of the three men who did so between the summer of 1609 and the winter of 1610, Galileo is the only one who achieved both widespread fame and posthumous glory. Post convincingly argues that fame is, rather than the direct result of merit or extraordinary achievements, shaped through human intervention.

Freddy Domínguez is a Historian or early modern European history at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. He is the author of Radicals in Exile (2020), Bob Dylan in the Attic (2022), and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (2025). He is also co-editor with William Bulman of Political and Religious Practice in the Early Modern British World (2022). Website here

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John Beyer is the founder and owner of Men on the Move, one of the East Coast's premier moving and self-storage companies. While although John's journey to the top of the moving game has brought him incredible success, the ride up was a bumpy one. From the dark stairwells of LeFrak City, to the Manhattan discos of 1970s, to the dive bars of Long Island and the truck cabs of a man on the move, Beyer's highs and lows have been as extreme as the personality that got him in and out of trouble along the way.
Live a Little Better: One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety, and Success (Worth, 2025) is the story of a talented kid in an alcoholic household, an alcoholic young adult himself turned entrepreneur, a recovering addict whose life was saved by AA, and the devoted parent of a child with special needs. Above all, it is a story of perseverance, discernment, and transformation.
If you have a child with special needs or have ever struggled with addiction, directly or indirectly, Live a Little Better speaks to you as a peer. Beyer will make you believe in success against the odds, in hope in the face of adversity, in rising above a broken home. You never know what crisis will teach you. No matter your circumstances or mistakes, John Beyer's incredible life is proof that you too have every chance to live a little better.

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A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office (U Chicago Press, 2024) anthropologist Ilana Gershon turns her attention to the US workplace and how it changed—and changed us—during the pandemic. She argues that the unprecedented organizational challenges of the pandemic forced us to radically reexamine our attitudes about work and to think more deeply about how values clash in the workplace. These changes also led us as workers to engage more with the contracts that bind us as we rethought when and how we allow others to tell us what to do. Based on over two hundred interviews, Gershon’s book reveals how negotiating these tensions during the pandemic made the workplace into a laboratory for democratic living—the key place where Americans are learning how to develop effective political strategies and think about the common good. Exploring the explicit and unspoken ways we are governed (and govern others) at work, this accessible book shows how the workplace teaches us to be democratic citizens.

Our guest Ilana Gershon is a US focused anthropologist with broad interests in political and legal anthropology, linguistic and media anthropology, science and technology studies, and the anthropology of work She is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair of Anthropology and the Co-Director of the Program in Science and Technology Studies at Rice University.

I am joined in this episode by my co-producer Julie Smith, a Master's student in the Department of Communication at Oakland University. 

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Each year, as many as 250 million Americans face civil legal problems like eviction, debt collection, and substandard housing. These problems are disproportionately shouldered by racially and economically marginalized people, particularly women of color. Civil courts and legal aid organizations are supposed to protect their rights, yet more than 90 percent of low-income people receive inadequate or no legal assistance. Instead, access to justice is reserved for those who can afford its high price. For those who can’t, the repercussions can be devastating, from homelessness and loss of public benefits to broken families and diminished health. Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power (Princeton UP, 2026) looks at the US civil justice system through the eyes of the people whose very citizenship is indelibly shaped by it. Jamila Michener and Mallory SoRelle show how civil legal problems, and the institutions meant to address them, greatly erode trust in the legal system among marginalized communities, undermining their broader sense of democratic citizenship and political standing. While legal representation offers vital protections, increased access to justice through an ever-growing supply of lawyers does not address the structural problems that generate demand for lawyers in the first place. Looking at cases involving unfair evictions and substandard housing, Michener and SoRelle demonstrate how community groups such as tenants’ unions can fill this justice gap and provide the means to build political power that transforms the conditions that create precarity. Drawing on eye-opening qualitative evidence and a wealth of historical and survey data, Uncivil Democracy explains why collective organizing holds the greatest promise for altering the systems that create civil legal problems and exercising the political power necessary for meaningful change.

Host Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the US. A former British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, she is the author of the award-winning book,America’s Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Jamila Michener is Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University and inaugural director of the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures. She is the author of the award-winning book,  Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Mallory SoRelle is the Tony and Teddie Brown Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is the author of Democracy Declined: The Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection (University of Chicago Press, 2020), based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation.

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In this episode of Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah talks to Dr. Laura Rademaker (Australian National University), the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission.

The conversation explores the distinctive historical context of Australia’s Northern Territory as a location for Christian missionary activity. Tazin and Laura talk about the multiple tensions and elements involved in language interactions between monolingual English-speaking missionaries and multilingual Indigenous communities, against the background of settler colonialism.

Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission was published by University of Hawai’i Press in 2018.

About the book

Found in Translation is a rich account of language and shifting cross-cultural relations on a Christian mission in northern Australia during the mid-twentieth century. It explores how translation shaped interactions between missionaries and the Anindilyakwa-speaking people of the Groote Eylandt archipelago and how each group used language to influence, evade, or engage with the other in a series of selective “mistranslations.”

In particular, this work traces the Angurugu mission from its establishment by the Church Missionary Society in 1943, through Australia’s era of assimilation policy in the 1950s and 1960s, to the introduction of a self-determination policy and bilingual education in 1973. While translation has typically been an instrument of colonization, this book shows that the ambiguities it creates have given Indigenous people opportunities to reinterpret colonization’s position in their lives.

Laura Rademaker combines oral history interviews with careful archival research and innovative interdisciplinary findings to present a fresh, cross-cultural perspective on Angurugu mission life. Exploring spoken language and sound, the translation of Christian scripture and songs, the imposition of English literacy, and Aboriginal singing traditions, she reveals the complexities of the encounters between the missionaries and Aboriginal people in a subtle and sophisticated analysis.

Rademaker uses language as a lens, delving into issues of identity and the competition to name, own, and control. In its efforts to shape the Anindilyakwa people’s beliefs, the Church Missionary Society utilized language both by teaching English and by translating Biblical texts into the native tongue. Yet missionaries relied heavily on Anindilyakwa interpreters, whose varied translation styles and choices resulted in an unforeseen Indigenous impact on how the mission’s messages were received. From Groote Eylandt and the peculiarities of the Australian settler-colonial context, Found in Translation broadens its scope to cast light on themes common throughout Pacific mission history such as assimilation policies, cultural exchanges, and the phenomenon of colonization itself.

This book will appeal to Indigenous studies scholars across the Pacific as well as scholars of Australian history, religion, linguistics, anthropology, and missiology.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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In this conversation we hear about Kola’s journey as self-taught coder, business school, learning by doing, and how he is self-funding one person AI company for doctors: Kola Tytler’s parallel journey as an NHS Doctor while building pioneering and potentially world changing business is inspiring.

Listen in on a remarkable conversation between host Richard Lucas and Kola Tytler, now a qualified doctor who taught himself to code.

We explore

Kola's journey is a masterclass in calculated risk and relentless drive, Kola shares the critical lessons he has learned from his triumphs and challenges. Through insightful questions, Richard draws out the key takeaways on finding balance, the importance of a strong team, understanding domain expertise, and the necessity of continuous business education. This episode is packed with inspiration for anyone looking to bridge diverse passions and build a high-impact venture.

About Kola

Dr Kola Tytler – Doctor/MBA & full-stack developer

MBBS @ King’s College London

Certificates in Law & Business (LSE & Imperial)

MBA (with merit) @ University of Birmingham

MSt Entrepreneurship @ University of Cambridge ‘26

Forbes 30 under 30 Europe, Forbes 100 under 30 Italy

IBM-certified AI Engineer & MENSA member

Founder of YEEZY Mafia, dropout, & HypeAnalyzer

Links

iatroX is a UKCA-marked, MHRA-registered medical device. It acts as an AI‑driven assistant that centralizes clinical guidelines offering: 1 quick Q&A, 2 structured brainstorming, and 3 an adaptive quiz engine for medical students.

Kola Tytler's Linkedin

Kola Tytler's personal website
Drop Out Milano
Hype Analyzer

CAMentrepreneurs

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