Future Politics

National Public Radio's Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world's most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford's 20 years of observing first-hand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China's border with Kazakhstan. As he takes listeners on this journey, he also takes them through China's past and present while he tries to make sense of this complex nation's potential future.

From one of the most electric and consequential figures to emerge from the contemporary American labor movement, the remarkable story of his battle to create the first Amazon union in the U.S. and a powerful call to arms on behalf of the working class In the early days of the Covid pandemic...

Former physicist Andrew Maynard threads together his love of science-fiction movies with his expertise on emerging technologies to engage, entertain, and make you think about the relationship between technology and society. Through the imagination and creativity of science-fiction movies, Maynard introduces listeners to the profound capabilities presented by new and emerging technologies, and the complex personal and societal challenges they present.

The Internet and smartphone are just the latest in a 250-year-long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, the way we work, and the way we interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts, and changes that are unparalleled. While consumers today are camping outside of an Apple store waiting to be one of the first to score a new Apple Watch or iPhone, the next generation of wearables will be able to predict if we're likely to have a heart attack and recommend a course of action.

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" - one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery".

1944, England. Calum Auger can see 10 seconds into the future. Desperate not to die in the air over Germany, the Lancaster bombardier uses his unique gift to drop his payload more accurately and help the pilot avoid enemy fire. But when he can’t find a way through the flak and the damaged plane crash-lands in England, he’s stunned to discover two government agents waiting to recruit him. Drafted into a top-secret team of psychics, Calum and his new unit are tasked with tracking down spies who stole sensitive documents—papers containing information on how to build an atom bomb.

How would you like to be the center of a massive outpouring of wealth, innovation, success, and prosperity... the force behind a wave of abundance that rolls over your friends, family, and associates? Now you can be! Despite what the pessimists say, we live in an era of exponential growth and abundance. Astonishing new technologies are driving a new world where the unimaginable is being imagined and turned into reality.

What has happened to Cultural Studies in the last 50 years? This audiobook answers this question. Part biography, part polemic, Memories of the Future asks how - today - activism and courage can return to research, teaching, and citizenship.

In the 16th century, control of colonies and gold bullion gave Spain the edge; 17th-century Netherlands profited from trade and finance; 18th-century France gained from its larger population, while 19th-century British power rested on its primacy in the Industrial Revolution and its navy. In the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev, power resources were measured in terms of nuclear missiles, industrial capacity, and numbers of men under arms and tanks lined up ready to cross the plains of Eastern Europe. But the global information age of the 21st century is quickly rendering these traditional markers of power obsolete, remapping power relationships

Future Unveiled: The Societal Impact of Emerging Technologies reveals how fields like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology are reconfiguring industries and everyday life. This book examines both their transformative promise—addressing healthcare, climate, and economic disparities—and the ethical dilemmas they spark around data privacy, labor disruption, and responsible governance. Drawing parallels with past industrial revolutions, it underscores the importance of inclusive frameworks that guard against inequity and foster collaboration.

Justice Anthony Kennedy slipped out of the Supreme Court building on June 27, 2018, and traveled incognito to the White House to inform President Donald Trump that he was retiring, setting in motion a political process that his successor, Brett Kavanaugh, would denounce three months later as a...

Genius tech CEO Jeff Kim has just discovered that the ultrawealthy Hawkinson family stole his advanced AI prediction technology. This technology was his secret possession. A cornerstone in which he would rebuild his life’s work. But now he has serious competition. To solve his problem, Kim decides to reach out to a man he never thought he would speak to again. A Chinese intelligence officer named Liu.

Steven A. Cook charts the course of the United States' encounter with the Middle East from the mid-twentieth century through the present day. Looking back, Cook makes a bold claim: the US was—despite setbacks and moral costs—successful. That record of achievement began to unravel in the early 1990s when policymakers embarked upon a set of overly ambitious policies to remake the Middle East. Cook highlights that calls to withdraw from the region are rash given the important interests the US maintains in the region.

An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change breaking over today’s world, creating both opportunity and peril—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of...

The crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers marked the fourth systemic transformation of capitalism since the late 18th century. Capitalism was not destroyed by the crisis, but it was irrevocably changed. This provocative audiobook shows how the forces that precipitated the financial meltdown of 2007-2009 are now creating a new and stronger version of the global capitalist system. This system will continue to be led and shaped by the U.S. if its businesses and politicians play their cards well.

A vision of the first decade of socialism in the United States. The diverse multinational working class has achieved political supremacy and is actively eliminating bigotry, racism, and national oppression as it expands economic, social, and political democracy.

From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross - disciplinary study has existed - until now.

The human brain is perhaps the most powerful and mysterious arrangement of matter in the known universe. New discoveries that unravel this mystery and let us tap into this power offer almost limitless potential - the ability to reshape ourselves and our thought processes, to improve our health and extend our lives, and to enhance and augment the ways we interact with the world around us. In The NeuroGeneration, award-winning inventor Tan Le explores exciting advancements in brain science and neurotechnology that are revolutionizing the way we think, work, and heal.

Acclaimed futurist, author, and digital strategist Bernard Marr delivers a compelling and engaging discussion of the technologies driving the impending—and ongoing—transformation of the internet, including blockchain, augmented reality (AR), and more. In the book, you'll explore the risks and opportunities presented by these game-changing techs and how they might impact you, your organization, and community.

This Audiobook is not a blueprint for the future, but a philosophical exploration of the crisis of the present. It argues that capitalism, once animated by the promise of profit and endless growth, is now eroding from within. Profit has lost its legitimacy, work its meaning, and growth its aura of inevitability. Meanwhile, the historical alternatives—socialism, communism, anarchism—have been exhausted or discredited, leaving us in a void where the old is collapsing but the new has not yet emerged.