New Books in Science
745 episodes - English - Latest episode: 11 days ago - ★★★★ - 13 ratingsInterviews with Scientists about their New Books
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Episodes
Tom Mustill, "How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
July 13, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesWhat if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication. “When a whale is in the water, it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it and have no conception of its size.” On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California....
Quinn Eastman, "The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness" (Columbia UP, 2023)
July 07, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesSleep was taking over Anna's life. Despite multiple alarm clocks and powerful stimulants, the young Atlanta lawyer could sleep for thirty or even fifty hours at a stretch. She stopped working and began losing weight because she couldn't stay awake long enough to eat. Anna's doctors didn't know how to help her until they tried an oddball drug, connected with a hunch that something produced by her body was putting her to sleep. The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Slee...
Simon N. Whitney, "From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs--And How We Can Fix It" (Rivertowns Books, 2023)
July 04, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesMedical research saves lives-yet all too often, it is thwarted by a review system supposed to safeguard patients that instead creates needless delays and expense. Institutional Review Boards, which exist at every hospital and medical school that conducts medical research, have ended up imposing such complex, draconian conditions that research is frequently damaged, delayed, and distorted. This is why medical miracles like the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed at warp speed, are far too ...
Stephen Hauser, "The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
July 01, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesDr. Stephen L. Hauser and a patient named Andrea were both 27 years old when they met. He was an up-and-coming neurologist-in-training; she was a Harvard Law School graduate and White House aide whose brain was being ravaged by an explosive case of multiple sclerosis. It was the 1970s and Dr. Hauser had nothing to treat her with. She lost her ability to speak, swallow and breathe. At her bridal shower just before she was married, she was hooked up to a breathing tube and strapped in a wheelch...
Helle Porsdam, "Science as a Cultural Human Right" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
June 28, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesThe human right to science, outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, recognizes everyone's right to "share in scientific advancement and its benefits" and to "enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications." This right also requires state parties to develop and disseminate science, to respect the freedom of scientific research, and to recognize the benefits of internatio...
Tom Higham, "The World Before Us: The New Science Behind Our Human Origins" (Yale UP, 2021)
June 24, 2023 08:00 - 41 minutesFifty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was not the only species of humans in the world. There were also Neanderthals in what is now Europe, the Near East, and parts of Eurasia; Hobbits (H. floresiensis) on the island of Flores in Indonesia; Denisovans in Siberia and eastern Eurasia; and H. luzonensis in the Philippines. Tom Higham investigates what we know about these other human species and explores what can be learned from the genetic links between them and us. He also looks at whether H. e...
Andrew Jones, "How Kant Matters for Biology: A Philosophical History" (U Wales Press, 2023)
June 23, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourKant denied biology the status of a proper science, yet his account of the organism profoundly influenced a range of intellectual disciplines. Andrew Jones's How Kant Matters for Biology: A Philosophical History (University of Wales Press, 2023) examines Kant’s influence on biology in the British Isles by proposing that his influence owes to misunderstandings of his philosophy. Andrew Jones exposes the incompatibility between transcendental realism and scientific naturalism and charts how Ka...
John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should)" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 20, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesToday I talked to John L. Rudolph about his book Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should) (Oxford UP, 2023). Few people question the importance of science education in American schooling. The public readily accepts that it is the key to economic growth through innovation, develops the ability to reason more effectively, and enables us to solve the everyday problems we encounter through knowing how the world works. Good science teaching results in all these benefits and more -- or so we think....
Chris Impey, "Worlds Without End: Exoplanets, Habitability, and the Future of Humanity" (MIT Press, 2023)
June 16, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutesThe science of finding habitable planets beyond our solar system and the prospects for establishing human civilization away from our ever-less-habitable planetary home. Planet Earth, it turns out, may not be the best of all possible worlds—and lately humanity has been carelessly depleting resources, decimating species, and degrading everything needed for life. Meanwhile, human ingenuity has opened up a vista of habitable worlds well beyond our wildest dreams of outposts on Mars. Worlds Witho...
Athene Donald, "Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 07, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesWhy are girls discouraged from doing science? Why do so many promising women leave science in early and mid-career? Why do women not prosper in the scientific workforce? Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science (Oxford UP, 2023) looks back at how society has historically excluded women from the scientific sphere and discourse, what progress has been made, and how more is still needed. Athene Donald, herself a distinguished physicist, explores societal expectations during both ...
Gender and Equality in Art and Exploration
June 03, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutesFeatured episode from Between Art and Science, a new podcast from Leonardo. This episode, hosted by Erica Hruby, features a conversation between two authors published in the Leonardo special issue “Cosmos and Chaos:” Bettina Forget and Lindy Elkins-Tanton. Listen as these authors discuss the connection between art and science, the flawed idea of the hero, exploration of both land and space, and the complexities of being a woman in male dominated fields. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...
Jaime Green, "The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination and Our Vision of the Cosmos" (Hanover Square Press, 2023)
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesIn this episode we talk to Jaime Green about her superb cultural and scientific exploration of alien life and the cosmos. It examines how the possibility of life on other planets shapes our understanding of humanity. Fans of Leslie Jamison, Carl Zimmer and Carlo Rovelli will find a lot to think about. One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? Yet this very question is inevitably reduced to yes or no, to odds and probabilities that posit answers through c...
John D. Aber, "Less Heat, More Light: A Guided Tour of Weather, Climate, and Climate Change" (Yale UP, 2023)
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesClimate change is one of the most hotly contested environmental topics of our day. To answer criticisms and synthesize available information, scientists have been driven to devise increasingly complex models of the climate system. John D. Aber's Less Heat, More Light: A Guided Tour of Weather, Climate, and Climate Change (Yale UP, 2023) conveys that the basics of climate and climate change have been known for decades, and that relatively simple descriptions can capture the major features of t...
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, "Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
May 20, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesIn Split & Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, investigates the “underworld” of experimentation and suggests new avenues for telling the history of experimental sciences. Divided in two parts, respectively titled “Infra-Experimentality” and “Supra-Experimentality,” Split & Splice is an attempt at defining the phenomenological and historical con...
The Future of the Human Heart: A Discussion with Vincent M. Figueredo
May 19, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesLong considered the most important of all organs, the human heart has fascinated artists and scientists alike. Listen to cardiologist Vincent Figueredo discuss knowledge of and attitudes towards the heart in societies ancient and modern. Figueredo is the author of The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey (Columbia UP, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent ...
Hasok Chang, "Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022)
May 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourFor a certain kind of standard realist, science aims at getting the absolute truth about the universe. For Hasok Chang, this view is unrealistic because we have no way of judging whether we are getting at that truth. In his new book, Realism for Realistic People: A New Pragmatist Philosophy of Science (Cambridge UP, 2022), Chang argues that we should understand scientific inquiry and its epistemic fruits in terms of what we do to acquire, justify, and use scientific knowledge. Drawing on Dewe...
Pharmacological Histories Ep. 2: Mikkael A. Sekeres on the Drugs Fighting Leukemia
May 09, 2023 20:31 - 33 minutesThis episode offers an insight into the work of leading cancer specialist and author of When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael A. Sekeres. 1 in 2 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, but thankfully treatment for the disease is rapidly changing and improving. I ask Mikkael about the drugs that allow people to beat cancer and live better with it. When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immedi...
Jan Recker, "Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner's Guide" (Springer, 2021)
May 03, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesListen to this interview of Jan Recker, Professor for Information Systems and Digital Innovation at the University of Hamburg, Germany and author of Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner's Guide (Springer, 2021). We talk about how your research is what you write. Jan Recker : "Very few of us scientists are gifted readers, and very few of us are gifted writers, but those who are, I do think that they have an advantage in science. It's not that they're the better scientists, bu...
Felix Flicker, "The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesIf you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. In The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life (Simon & Schuster, 2023) theoretical physicist Dr. Felix Flicker proves that they are indeed magic—just familiar magic. The name for this magic is “condensed matter physics.” Most people haven’t heard of the field, yet more than a third of physicists identify as condensed matter researchers, m...
The Future of Germs: A Discussion with Jonathan Kennedy
April 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourHave germs or humans done the most to shape the world’s history? Did Homo Sapiens get the better of the Neanderthals because of superior brainpower or because of better resistance to some infectious disease? And are germs part of the story behind the fall of Rome and rise of Islam? Owen Bennett Jones talks germs with Jonathan Kennedy of London University. Kennedy is the author of Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues (Crown Publishing, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance ...
Elaine H. Ecklund and David R. Johnson, "Varieties of Atheism in Science" (Oxford UP, 2021)
April 27, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourNot all atheists are New Atheists, but thanks in large part to the prominence and influence of New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism has claimed the pulpit of secularity in Western society. New Atheists have given voice to marginalized nonreligious individuals and underscored the importance of science in society. They have also advanced a derisive view of religion and forcefully argued that science and religion are intrinsicall...
Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem
April 25, 2023 19:36 - 14 minutesA discussion with the the author of Free Will (from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem, Mark Balaguer, in which we discuss the scientific arguments for and against the possibility of free will. In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the cou...
What Do Bees, Ants, and Dragonflies Get up to All Day?
April 13, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesBugs are everywhere: in every corner of the world, even the Artic. But of the estimated 10 million species of bugs worldwide, only a million have been studied or described. Given the increasing rate of extinction, can scientists hope to learn about them all? What do bugs do all day? Where do they live? How do they communicate? This episode explores: How Dr. Jessica Ware became a curator and professor at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ware’s travels around the world, to study bu...
Seeing Truth in Physics
April 06, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutesStephon Alexander talks about a better way of thinking about the interconnections between music, physics, and creativity and how as someone often seen as “outside” the field, he has found freedom to think harder, pursue ideas, and carve a place for himself in the story of science. Alexander and Alexis Boylan discuss how we should be thinking about physics, art, and the meaning of life all together, all the time. Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website. Follow us on Twitter...
Brian Villmoare, "The Evolution of Everything: The Patterns and Causes of Big History" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
April 03, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBig History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. Brian Villmoare's book The Evolution of Everything: The Patterns and Causes of Big History (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the world, focusing on humanity's origins. It also ex...
Moheb Costandi, "Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness" (MIT Press, 2022)
April 03, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesHow the way we perceive our bodies plays a critical role in the way we perceive ourselves: stories of phantom limbs, rubber hands, anorexia, and other phenomena. The body is central to our sense of identity. It can be a canvas for self-expression, decorated with clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, tattoos, and piercings. But the body is more than that. Bodily awareness, says scientist-writer Moheb Costandi, is key to self-consciousness. In Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press...
Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)
April 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones...
Olaf Sporns on Network Neuroscience
April 02, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutesThe intersection between cutting-edge neuroscience and the emerging field of network science has been growing tremendously over the past decade. Olaf Sporns, editor of Network Neuroscience, and Distinguished Professor, Provost Professor of Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, discusses the applications of network science technology to neuroscience. Dr. Sporns hopes the launch of Network Neuroscience will contribute to the creation of a common langu...
Life Extension Therapies
March 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe story of the Fountain of Youth is as old as history itself. Herodotus, the father of ancient Greek history, wrote of a mythical spring that extended the life of its bathers. Today, biotech entrepreneurs, scientists, and health influencers are still searching for that mythical spring. Longevity and anti-aging research has recently blossomed, with a number of tantalizing discoveries. Still, this research hasn't delivered any magic bullets. Yet, that hasn't stopped a cottage industry of folk...
Winning & Losing in the Emerging EV Wars/The Aftershocks of the EV Transition Could Be Ugly
March 27, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourRobert Charette, engineer, consultant, and contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum magazine, talks about his twelve-part series, “The Electric Vehicle Transition Explained,” with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The series takes a systems perspective on electric vehicles, and talks about all of the potential barriers – from a lack of minerals, to stressing out the electricity grid, to being short on consumers or workers – that face EVs, which are too often cast as a climate change cure-all. Ch...
Illuminations Episode 2: Beyond Belief
March 13, 2023 08:00 - 26 minutesDo scientists ever reject science? Research data on the controversial topic of extraterrestrial life has met with resistance from some in the scientific community and openness from communities of faith. Guests Avi Loeb, professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Harvard University, where he serves as the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science. Author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. Kate Dorsch, associate director of Philosophy, Politics and Economics a...
Illuminations Episode 1: Experimental Methods
March 12, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutesHave faith and science always been enemies? The story of Robert Hooke, a revolutionary working in the Scientific Revolution, exemplifies the ways in which Christianity has actually provoked scientific inquiry. Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Patricia Fara, director of studies and affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Department of the History and Philosoph...
Publishing Science: A Discussion with Tiffany Gasbarrini, Senior Science Editor, Johns Hopkins University Press
March 11, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutes"It is not only for science to give to publishing, but the time has come for publishing to start giving back to science." Tiffany Gasbarrini clarifies the difference between commercial and mission-driven publishers and how publishers who aren't bound by commercial interests alone can make brave ideological publishing decisions. She also makes a passionate case for why telling stories in science can make all the difference in the way we perceive and trust science as a community and society. Av...
Measure for Measure Episode 8: Star Ladder
March 09, 2023 09:00 - 19 minutesScientists discovered that some stars have heartbeats and that some of them can be used to measure the longest distances that exist. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Measure for Measure Episode 3: Mohs
March 04, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutesWe’re hitting up against the very nature of measurement: How can we best describe the world around us, in its infinite complexity, with finite measures? In other words, how hard are rocks? This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Measure for Measure is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
Gravity's Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves
March 03, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutesThe detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the science community. In this episode, Chris Gondek spoke with author Harry Collins, whose book Gravity's Kiss centers around the incredible discovery. Scientists have been trying to confirm the existence of gravitational waves for fifty years. Then, in September 2015, came a "very interesting event" (as the cautious subject line in a physicist's email read) that proved to be the first detection of gravitational waves. In Gravity's Kiss, Ha...
Measure for Measure Episode 0: Birds
March 01, 2023 09:00 - 6 minutesCould you pick a white-breasted nuthatch out of a lineup? We explore the value - and limits - of birdwatching, categorization, and measurement. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Measure for Measure is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas. The show is executive produced by Liya Rechtman, created by Andrew Middleton, and sound engineered by Greg Fredle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member...
Adrian Bejan, "Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies" (World Scientific, 2022)
February 26, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutesPoets and philosophers are fascinated by time and beauty. They are two of our most visceral perceptions. In Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies (World Scientific, 2022), Adrian Bejan — a physicist — explains the scientific basis for the perception of time (“mind time”) and beauty. His is an evolutionary argument for understanding both perceptions, based on visual processing and change. To observe our immediate surroundings and to understand them faster is highly advantageous...
Philippe Schlenker, "What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything" (MIT Press, 2022)
February 25, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIn What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything (MIT Press, 2022), Philippe Schlenker takes readers on tour of meaning, from the animal kingdom to human culture, arguing that semantics should be taken to have a wide range of applications. He takes on bird song and primate calls, classical music and sign language, predicate logic and scalar implicatures. Throughout, he demonstrates the success of the field of semantics in explaining how human languages—spoken and signed—have rules for ...
Making Meaning Episode 21: Throbbing with Life
February 24, 2023 09:00 - 9 minutesScience often draws a picture of the world as a giant machine, a meaningless mechanical clock ticking and tocking forever. But religion and poetry offer a different view, one that is teeming with life and overflowing with spirit. Guest: Michael Ruse is a British-born Canadian philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion. Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be liv...
99* Gael McGill Visualizes Intracellular Data (JP, GT)
February 16, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesWhat’s actually going on in a cell–or on the spiky outside of an invading virus? Gael McGill, Director of Molecular Visualization at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Harvard Medical School is founder and CEO of Digizyme and has spent his career exploring and developing different modes for visualizing evidence. For this scientific conversation taped back in 2021, Recall this Book host John is joined once again by Brandeis neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano (think ep 4 Madeline Mil...
Seeing Truth in the Archives
February 09, 2023 09:00 - 50 minutesJoel Sweimler, Exhibition Specialist at the American Museum of Natural History, talks about his career at the museum, working on Seeing Truth, and what his favorite object in the collection happen to be this week. Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website. Follow us on Twitter @WhyArguePod and on Instagram @WhyWeArguePod Alexis L. Boylan is the director of academic affairs of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and an associate professor with a joint ap...
The Future of Nuclear Fusion: A Discussion with Sharon Ann Holgate
February 04, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutesHow useful will nuclear fusion be? In a major breakthrough last year at the National Ignition Facility in California, 192 lasers achieved fusion – and created energy - for the first time. It was clearly an important moment. But might the development of fusion technology come too late? Owen Bennett Jones speaks with Sharon Ann Holgate, author of Nuclear Fusion: The Race to Build a Mini Sun on Earth (Icon Books, 2022). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC corre...
Dissecting Morality: What do Scientists Have To Say About Ethics? (Part 2)
January 28, 2023 09:00 - 29 minutesLinking morality and science can conjure up disturbing histories around social Darwinism, eugenics, and genetically engineered humans. But scientists today are making discoveries that moral agents shouldn’t ignore: how to overcome aggression and tribalism, and how to sustain cooperation in a modern pluralist world. Guests: Diane Paul, professor emerita of the University of Massachusetts, Boston and research associate at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. Ben Allen, associ...
Dissecting Morality: What do Scientists Have To Say About Ethics? (Part 1)
January 27, 2023 09:00 - 32 minutesLinking morality and science can conjure up disturbing histories around social Darwinism, eugenics, and genetically engineered humans. But scientists today are making discoveries that moral agents shouldn’t ignore: how to overcome aggression and tribalism, and how to sustain cooperation in a modern pluralist world. Guests: Diane Paul, professor emerita of the University of Massachusetts, Boston and research associate at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. Ben Allen, associ...
Justin Gregg, "If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity" (Little, Brown, 2022)
January 26, 2023 09:00 - 31 minutesWhat if human intelligence is actually more of a liability than a gift? After all, the animal kingdom, in all its diversity, gets by just fine without it. At first glance, human history is full of remarkable feats of intelligence, yet human exceptionalism can be a double-edged sword. With our unique cognitive prowess comes severe consequences, including existential angst, violence, discrimination, and the creation of a world teetering towards climate catastrophe. What if human exceptionalism ...
The Climate Change Scientist: A Conversation with Dr. Shuang-Yu Wu
January 12, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWhat is the difference between global warming and climate change? This episode explores: What led Dr. Wu into STEM, and to the study of climate change. Why the term global warming is misleading, and potentially confusing. Why weather around the world is getting more extreme. What she foresees for the future, and what we can do to change that. Why human choices matter on much a larger scale than most people realize. A discussion of the article “Looking Back on America’s Summer of Heat, F...
Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America
January 12, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourAndrew Jewett is the author of Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (2020) and Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War (2012). He has taught at Harvard, Yale, NYU, Vanderbilt, and Boston College and held fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the National Academy of Education, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
Write it Down: Writing as a Step Toward Better Research
January 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Gang Wang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We talk about using the writing to research better. Gang Wang : "I personally view writing as a very useful process to polish my own thinking. For example, when my group are on a project, until we actually put things in writing, we won't find little flaws in the design, or jumped steps in the argumentation, or missing experiments in the study. But when ...
Samantha Muka, "Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
January 04, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesIn Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Stevens Institute of Technology, dives into the unexpected world of tank crafting. Throughout the book, Muka tells the stories behind the development of various kinds of aquariums, such as photography tanks and reef tanks. She explains how the knowledge and ingenuity of a variety of actors have been contributing to further...