New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

How queer men in Kazakhstan navigate dating apps in a context of stigma, surveillance, and limited legal protections. It shows how platforms like Grindr, Hornet, Tinder, and VKontakte function as spaces where trust, visibility, and safety must be continuously negotiated.

This episode explores how queer men in Kazakhstan navigate dating apps in contexts shaped by stigma, surveillance, and limited legal protections. Drawing on interviews and platform analysis in Shymkent and Almaty, the research challenges the idea of dating apps as neutral or purely liberating spaces, showing instead how they function as ‘ambivalent infrastructures’ where connection is always intertwined with risk. Rather than simple tools for meeting partners, apps like VKontakte, Grindr, Hornet, and Tinder are used as distinct social environments that require careful interpretation and strategy. Users constantly assess authenticity, safety, and potential harm, often moving across multiple platforms, starting with apps, then shifting to messaging services like WhatsApp or Telegram, and using calls and additional checks to verify identity before meeting offline. Set against Kazakhstan’s broader socio-political context, where queer visibility can lead to harassment, outing, or violence, the episode highlights how digital intimacy becomes a form of ongoing risk management. It ultimately reframes dating apps not as spaces of free connection, but as complex systems where trust, visibility, and safety must be continuously negotiated.

Yerkebulan Sairambay is a scholar at risk based at the Centre for Oriental studies in the University of Tartu (Estonia). His research interests involve, but are not limited to, the following areas of expertise: political participation, new media, civil society, climate change, clan politics, democratisation, queer studies, academic freedom, transitional justice, and nation- and state- building with a particular focus on the countries of post-communist Europe and former Soviet Union. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, and IMRCEES Erasmus Mundus Master’s Double Degrees in Russian, Central and East European studies (University of Glasgow) and political science (Corvinus University of Budapest).

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.
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We were joined by Professor Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, who had a front row seat to the Clinton campaign and went on to become an expert in the history of information technology and Silicon Valley.
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Los Angeles and smog have been synonymous for decades. From the 1940s
through the 1980s, children breathed air so heavy with lead that their
blood was poisoned with it. In 1970, officials declared smog alerts on
235 days. But the last smog alert happened in 2003, and lead has
virtually disappeared from the air. This is the story of how Los Angeles
cleaned up its air.

In Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air (University of California Press, 2026), environmental law expert and LA native Ann Carlson recounts the dramatic policy fights and the
determined scientists, lawyers, and community members who worked
alongside public officials to face off against major polluters and save
their city. In a time of unprecedented climate change and skepticism
about government and science, this book is an inspiring reminder of
what concerned residents, individual leaders, and all levels of
government can achieve by working together.

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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Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion of scientific
and environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US.

Ashok Malhotra examines how imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped
dietary and agricultural research carried out in the 1920s in British
India, from soil protection initiatives to studies of diet and healthy
living. It also discusses how a selective interpretation of this
research, which focused on the supposed vigor of one community, the
Hunzas, influenced the organic and lifestyles movements that later
emerged in Britain and the US from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Ashok Malhotra is a senior lecturer in British imperial history at Queen's University Belfast.

Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast.
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Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily
lives has been comparatively gradual – so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to
forget just how much we take it for granted. As explored in Microphone (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Ralph Jones, every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are surrounded by microphones.

The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're 'on mic' we aren't just powerful, we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard. This book takes a curious, always humorous look at this object as a metaphor for power and how the fulfillment of our desire to be heard has created a multi-headed beast we are still learning how to tame.

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society