New Books in Science

Listen to this interview of Dashun Wang, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, and also with Albert-László Barabási, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University. We talk about their new book The Science of Science" (Cambridge UP, 2021) and science, squared. Albert-László Barabási : "There is, of course, the need that you grow professionally. If you're a mathematician, you need to perfect your math. If you're a physicist, you need to do your physics. If you're a biologist, you need to develop your lab techniques. But no matter the magnitude of any discovery you might make, it's not impactful unless you can actually communicate it. And I think that this is where science lacks significantly. I would even go so far as to say, there is a counter-selection: People who are not necessarily the best communicators tend to prefer science because there's the impression that that is not the skill that you need — you just need to be able to solve problems in a meaningful way. But if you're not able to write your ideas down, if you're not able to share your ideas with your community, then it's really as if you didn't have the ideas at all. And you know, I have experienced this in my own career. When I got interested in network science back in 1994/95, for the first few years my papers got rejected one after the other, and not because it wasn't good science (as I would later realize) — no, my papers were getting rejected because I could not communicate to the community at large and to my referees in particular why we should care about networks. And it took me about five years to find the way into people's minds, to learn how they write papers about networks. I needed to learn the hard way about how the community of scientists appreciated and did not appreciate research on networks. And it took me so long because I'd never been offered the opportunity to study the communication of science." Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The human brain undergoes massive changes during its development, from early childhood and the teenage years to adulthood and old age. Across a wide range of species, from C. elegans and fruit flies to mice, monkeys, and humans, information about brain connectivity (connectomes) at different stages is now becoming available. New approaches in network neuroscience can be used to analyze the topological, spatial, and dynamical organization of such connectomes. In Changing Connectomes: Evolution, Development, and Dynamics in Network Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2020), Marcus Kaiser provides an up-to-date overview of the field of connectomics and introduces concepts and mechanisms underlying brain network changes during evolution and development. Drawing on a range of results from experimental, clinical, and computational studies, Kaiser describes changes during healthy brain maturation and during brain network disorders (including such neurodevelopmental conditions as schizophrenia and depression), brain injury, and neurodegenerative disorders including dementia. He argues that brain stimulation is an area where understanding connectome development could help in assessing the long-term effects of interventions. Changing Connectomes is a suitable starting point for researchers who are new to the field of connectomics, and also for researchers who are interested in the link between brain network organization and brain and cognitive development in health and disease. Matlab/Octave code examples available at the MIT Press website will allow computational neuroscience researchers to understand and extend the shown mechanisms of connectome development. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Daniel Bolnick, Editor in Chief of The American Naturalist and Professor of evolution and ecology at the University of Connecticut. We talk about the role of research journals today and we talk about the location of research journals in the big endeavor that is called science. Daniel Bolnick : "Ultimately, research articles are technical. Articles have to deal with the mathematics or with the details of the physiology or the neurobiology that they're dealing with. But the authors can create a wrapper around that technical core that makes it digestible. I like to think of it as when you're taking a medicine. You have the actual pharmacological content that you're delivering to your body, but you can wrap it in something that makes it easier to swallow and hopefully that conveys the medicinal effect at just the time and in just the right dosage. And so, I think the same thing is true of the research article. You can have a deeply technical content, but if it's bracketed, bookended by a very clear exposition of 'What is it that we don't know right now?' Okay, and: 'Here's what I've done, and here's how it resolves that thing that we didn't know or the thing that we suspected but now know to be true.' And that can all be conveyed in a very accessible language ideally." Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other. Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society (Princeton University Press, 2021) offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists' judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial "science court" to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies. Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically. Zeynep Pamuk is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The accusation “you’re deluded” is often used as something of a cheap shot intended to silence an opponent in debate. But what is the nature of a delusion and how can we assess rationality and irrationality? In this podcast, Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Professor Lisa Bortolotti who studies the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry at Birmingham University and is the author of among many other things, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (Oxford UP, 2010) and most recently edited Delusions in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The All About Birds Regional Field-Guide Series brings birding enthusiasts the best information from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, AllAboutBirds.org, used by more than 21 million people each year. These definitive books provide the most up-to-date resources and expert coverage on bird species throughout North America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Hilary Glasman-Deal, teacher of STEMM communication at the Centre for Academic English, Imperial College London, and author ofScience Research Writing For Native and Non-Native Speakers of English (World Scientific Publishing Europe, 2020). We talk about researching, reading, and writing. Hilary Glasman-Deal : "One of the things I'm very often saying, particularly with early-career researchers, is this: 'Look, your reading is clearly effective, because you understand your field, okay, and you're an expert in your field. But your writing is operating at a different location from your reading. And what you need to be doing is bringing the two closer together so that they are, in a sense, a mirror image of each other, so that you're using your reading to feed your writing. You're using the reading as a bridge into the writing, rather than assuming that the two can exist in separate orbits.'" Visit the Centre for Academic English here. Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet. That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making—the uterus, ovaries, and vagina—and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient, and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage (W.W. Norton, 2022), an odyssey into a woman’s body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters. In Boston, a pair of biologists are growing artificial ovaries to counter the cascading health effects of menopause. In Melbourne, a urologist remaps the clitoris to fill in crucial gaps in female sexual anatomy. Given unparalleled access to labs and the latest research, journalist Rachel E. Gross takes readers on a scientific journey to the center of a wonderous world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs, and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves. This paradigm shift is made possible by the growing understanding that sex and gender are not binary; we all share the same universal body plan and origin in the womb. That’s why insights into the vaginal microbiome, ovarian stem cells, and the biology of menstruation don’t mean only a better understanding of female bodies, but a better understanding of male, non-binary, transgender, and intersex bodies—in other words, all bodies. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, and shocking, Vagina Obscura is a powerful testament to how the landscape of human knowledge can be rewritten to better serve everyone. Sine Yaganoglu: Having trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer, I switched to industry following my PhD at ETH Zurich and have been working in innovation management and diagnostics. Besides reading about science, innovation and entrepreneurship, I have become interested in the scientific and cultural aspects of parenting and motherhood since welcoming my first child. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

I spoke with Hannah Star Rogers, one of the editors of the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (Routledge, 2021). Art and science work is experiencing a dramatic rise coincident with burgeoning Science and Technology Studies (STS) interest in this area. Science has played the role of muse for the arts, inspiring imaginative reconfigurations of scientific themes and exploring their cultural resonance. Conversely, the arts are often deployed in the service of science communication, illustration, and popularization. STS scholars have sought to resist the instrumentalization of the arts by the sciences, emphasizing studies of theories and practices across disciplines and the distinctive and complementary contributions of each. The manifestation of this commonality of creative and epistemic practices is the emergence of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (ASTS) as the interdisciplinary exploration of art–science. This handbook defines the modes, practices, crucial literature, and research interests of this emerging field. It explores the questions, methodologies, and theoretical implications of scholarship and practice that arise at the intersection of art and STS. Further, ASTS demonstrates how the arts are intervening in STS. Drawing on methods and concepts derived from STS and allied fields including visual studies, performance studies, design studies, science communication, and aesthetics, and the knowledge of practicing artists and curators, ASTS is predicated on the capacity to see both art and science as constructions of human knowledge-making. Accordingly, it posits a new analytical vernacular, enabling new ways of seeing, understanding, and thinking critically about the world. This book provides scholars and practitioners already familiar with the themes and tensions of art–science with a means of connecting across disciplines. It proposes organizing principles for thinking about art–science across the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts. Encounters with art and science become meaningful in relation to practices and materials manifest as perceptual habits, background knowledge, and cultural norms. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, a variety of STS tools can be brought to bear on art–science so that systematic research can be conducted on this unique set of knowledge-making practices. Hannah Star Rogers is Visiting Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies (STIS) and lead editor of the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies. Frances Sacks is a journalist and graduate of Wesleyan University, where she studied in the Science and Society Program. She is also a drummer who has studied Gamelan in Bali, Berber in Morocco, and most traditional Ga patterns with master drummers in Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Lorraine Daston, director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin about a number of hugely relevant issues at the intriguing overlap between science and societal values. Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Bitch: On the Female of the Species (Basic Books, 2022) is a fierce, funny, and revolutionary look at the queens of the animal kingdom. Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun. Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is primarily for social coordination, not precisely transferring thoughts from one person to another. Drawing on empirical research, Enfield shows that human lexicons the world over are far more coarse-grained than our perceptual faculties. Yet, at the same time, languages vary in the structure and sophistication of their representations. This means that, for instance, how different languages carve up the world influences not only how their speakers talk about the world, but also how they think about it. The book explores a range of linguistic phenomena, from lexical diversity to linguistic framing to the effects of narrative. As a result of understanding how language shapes our understanding of reality, Enfield argues that we can make more informed—and more ethical—decisions about our own language use, as individuals and communities. Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Sanskrit philosophy of language and epistemology. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras (and stuff). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Howard Burton has been talking to very wise people for decades--scientists, historians, political thinkers, philosophers, etc. When Covid "hit" he was, like many of us, puzzled. Where did it come from? How should we respond to it? What does it say about us? So he did what he does: Had conversations with 32 very wise people about Covid. He filmed the discussions, and you can watch them here. Some of them will be released as podcasts on the Ideas Roadshow Podcast, which you can find here. He also wrote a book about his conversations: Pandemic Perspectives: A Filmmaker's Journey in 10 Essays (Open Agenda, 2022) . You can buy it here. Today I talked to Howard about the book, and what he learned in his discussions with these people. Enjoy. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Stephen Heard, Professor of Biology at the University of New Brunswick. We talk about his book The Scientist’s Guide to Writing: How to Write More Easily and Effectively Throughout Your Scientific Career, 2nd ed. (Princeton UP, 2022), we talk about writing when it's a verb, we talk about writing when it's a choice, and we talk about writing when it's the science. Stephen Heard : "Especially for early-career scientists there's a risk of their writing entering into a positive feedback loop with the writing as it is in the literature. And really, we do this to them, we professors and instructors. We say, 'Next week, you're going to hand in a lab report. Write out this experiment you did,' and we say, quote, 'and write like the scientific literature,' unquote. Well, that's a horrible thing to tell anyone to do, because unfortunately, much of our literature isn't particularly well written. We love our acronyms, we love really long noun phrases, we love the passive voice, and so on. And so, people who don't make conscious choices and just sort of model what they're writing on what's already out there — I think they sort of get locked into some of those bad decisions, like the five-noun noun phrase. So being aware of what you're doing, thinking about the language you're using, and being willing to use the language to its fullest — that's not an invitation to write your own Finnegans Wake — but it is an invitation to think carefully about the way of constructing your point that will resonate best with the reader." Readers may be interested in Heard's webpage for the book. Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021), Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fuelling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased racial, gender, and economic inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world. Matthew Jordan is a university instructor, funk musician, and clear writing enthusiast. He studies the history of science and technology, driven by the belief that we must understand the past in order to improve the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, Programming, Formulating (MIT Press, 2021) is a laboratory study that investigates how algorithms come into existence. Algorithms--often associated with the terms big data, machine learning, or artificial intelligence--underlie the technologies we use every day, and disputes over the consequences, actual or potential, of new algorithms arise regularly. In this book, Florian Jaton offers a new way to study computerized methods, providing an account of where algorithms come from and how they are constituted, investigating the practical activities by which algorithms are progressively assembled rather than what they may suggest or require once they are assembled. Florian Jaton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the STS Lab, a research unit of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Florian studied Philosophy, Mathematics, Literature, and Political Sciences before receiving his PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Lausanne. He also worked at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California Irvine and at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation at the École des Mines de Paris. His research interests are the sociology of algorithms, the philosophy of mathematics, and the history of computing. Austin Clyde is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. He researches artificial intelligence and high-performance computing for developing new scientific methods. He is also a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology, and Society program, where my research addresses the intersection of artificial intelligence, human rights, and democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Stephen Scherer, Chief of Research at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, about how lessons learned from the pandemic might be best harnessed to increase the likelihood of future breakthroughs in biomedical research. Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details. Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Packed with beautiful imagery, but also hard scientific facts, Jackie Higgins's book Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses (Atria Books, 2022) explores how we process the world around us by analyzing the incredible sensory capabilities of thirteen animals and reveals that we are not limited to merely five senses. There is a scientific revolution stirring in the field of human perception. Research has shown that the extraordinary sensory powers of our animal friends can help us better understand the same powers that lie dormant within us. From the harlequin mantis shrimp with its ability to see a vast range of colors, to the bloodhound and its hundreds of millions of scent receptors; from the orb-weaving spider whose eyes recognize not only space but time, to the cheetah whose ears are responsible for its perfect agility, these astonishing animals hold the key to better understanding how we make sense of the world around us. Eye-opening and captivating, Sentient will change the way you think about what it is to be human. Ana Georgescu is a Romanian transplant, astrophysics graduate, aspiring journalist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Annabel Streets' book 52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022) is a first-of-its-kind guide that blends cutting-edge research with an avid walker’s pragmatic how-to advice. This is the book for everyone—new walkers, seasoned walkers, and anyone who wants to boost the benefits of a daily constitutional. Inspirational and grounded in science, 52 Ways to Walk delivers the best kept secrets of healthy and happy walkers—people who have learned that you actually can get more from life, one footstep at a time. Welcoming and wise, it’s a one-stop resource to enhance and maximize any kind of walk, from a ten-minute stroll on rain-splashed urban streets to a long rural ramble beside a river or through the woods. @annabelabbs and @age_wellproject Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The science on race is clear. Common categories like “Black,” “white,” and “Asian” do not represent genetic differences among groups. But if race is a pernicious fiction according to natural science, it is all too significant in the day-to-day lives of racialized people across the globe. Inequities in health, wealth, and an array of other life outcomes cannot be explained without referring to “race”—but their true source is racism. What do we need to know about the pseudoscience of race in order to fight racism and fulfill human potential? In Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Columbia UP, 2021), two distinguished scientists tackle common misconceptions about race, human biology, and racism. Using an accessible question-and-answer format, Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman explain the differences between social and biological notions of race. Although there are many meaningful human genetic variations, they do not map onto socially constructed racial categories. Drawing on evidence from both natural and social science, Graves and Goodman dismantle the malignant myth of gene-based racial difference. They demonstrate that the ideology of racism created races and show why the inequalities ascribed to race are in fact caused by racism. Graves and Goodman provide persuasive and timely answers to key questions about race and racism for a moment when people of all backgrounds are striving for social justice. Racism, Not Race shows readers why antiracist principles are both just and backed by sound science. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Today’s episode of How To Be Wrong welcomes Glenn Sauer, who is Donald J. Ross Sr. Chair in Biology and Biochemistry and Professor of Biology at Fairfield University, where he also serves as Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences. Our conversation covers a range of topics related to the issue of intellectual humility, including the conflict between scientific and religious perspectives in the US and the politics of certainty that dominates much contemporary discourse about policy as well as ideas about being right or wrong. John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

What makes a living body conscious? What is consciousness and are there different types of it? These questions have been studied by Professor Eva Jablonka from the Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Much of her early work was on epigenetic inheritance which poses questions such as whether learned behaviour can be passed on from one generation to the next and that has led her to think about whether it’s possible to take an evolutionary approach to consciousness. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

A World without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet (Yale University Press, 2021) by celebrated biologist Jo Handelsman lays bare the complex connections among climate change, soil erosion, food and water security, and drug discovery. Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United States, China, and India, vast tracts of farmland will be barren of topsoil within this century. The combination of intensifying erosion caused by climate change and the increasing food needs of a growing world population is creating a desperate need for solutions to this crisis. Writing for a nonspecialist audience, Jo Handelsman celebrates the capacities of soil and explores the soil-related challenges of the near future. She begins by telling soil’s origin story, explains how it erodes and the subsequent repercussions worldwide, and offers solutions. She considers lessons learned from indigenous people who have sustainably farmed the same land for thousands of years, practices developed for large-scale agriculture, and proposals using technology and policy initiatives. Jo Handelsman is the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and a Vilas Research Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Handelsman previously served as a science advisor to President Barack Obama. Kayla Cohen provided research and creative contributions to A World Without Soil. She completed a master’s degree with distinction in Environment and Development at the London School of Economics. Eyad Houssami makes theatre and has participated in the revitalization of an ancient organic farm in southern Lebanon. He is editor of the Arabic-English book Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre (Pluto/Dar Al Adab) and was editor-at-large of Portal 9, a bilingual literary and academic journal about urbanism. His doctoral research project at the University of Leeds and this work are supported by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/R012733/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. A Syrian multinational, he studied at Yale and earned a certificate in beekeeping from SOILS Permaculture Association Lebanon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Many people, at some stage of their life, worry about sleep: are they getting enough of it? Or even, too much? Derk-Jan Dijk is Professor of Sleep and Physiology at University of Surrey. His current research interests include the contribution of sleep to brain function in healthy ageing and dementia; the role of circadian rhythms in sleep regulation; negative effects of sleep loss; understanding age and sex related differences in sleep physiology and developing tests to monitor sleep. In this podcast he discusses these issues and the future direction of the discipline with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Screen time. Daycare. Praise. Sleep training. Spanking and time-outs. Helicopter versus "old school" parenting. There are a lot of questions facing parents of young children but consistent and reliable science-based answers can be hard to find. Parenting Made Complicated: What Science Really Knows about the Greatest Debates of Early Childhood (Oxford UP, 2021), written by child psychiatrist Dr. David Rettew, tackles many of the biggest controversies facing new parents today and examines the science behind these issues with writing that is lively, personal, non-preachy, and even funny. This book doesn't assume that the "correct" answer for each parenting dilemma is the same for each child. Instead it describes how different approaches may be required based on a child's unique temperament or other important factors. Practical, informed, and entertaining, Parenting Made Complicated is a complete resource for parents and professionals alike who are looking for dependable information about today's parenting controversies. Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics. Besides reading about science, innovation and entrepreneurship, I have become interested in the scientific and cultural aspects of parenting and motherhood since welcoming my first child. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake. A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia. With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all. Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer's Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family's multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain (Norton, 2022) is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Christophe Bernard, Director of Research at INSERM and Editor-in-Chief of eNeuro. We talk about the review process, about education in the sciences, and again a little bit more about education in the sciences. Christophe Bernard : "Science is everything that a scientist does. But for many people, science is only the bench work — to them, that's what a scientist really does. And the publishing part — well, that's just something that others do. Even the review process, for too many people, is just not fully integrated into the work that scientists are doing. But there should not be a barrier between doing science and reviewing science. It should be the same world — a continuity between the two. Now, in institutions, they focus all their efforts on teaching people how to do science. But doing science also is knowing how to review a paper. Perhaps you know, but there is a crisis in the reviewing process. Many authors have commented on being mistreated by reviewers, and although there'll be many reasons why that happens, the main reason is that we are not taught how to review a paper. And this just leads to frustration, or worse, because when you're an author and you submit a paper and you receive comments which are aggressive and do not make sense and are just plain unhelpful, then you start to distrust the system." Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny. Most robots and smart devices are not known for their joke-telling abilities. And yet, as computer scientist Tony Veale explains in Your Wit Is My Command (MIT Press, 2021), machines are not inherently unfunny; they are just programmed that way. By examining the mechanisms of humor and jokes—how jokes actually works—Veale shows that computers can be built with a sense of humor, capable not only of producing a joke but also of appreciating one. Along the way, he explores the humor-generating capacities of fictional robots ranging from B-9 in Lost in Space to TARS in Interstellar, maps out possible scenarios for developing witty robots, and investigates such aspects of humor as puns, sarcasm, and offensiveness. In order for robots to be funny, Veale explains, we need to analyze humor computationally. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Veale shows that joke generation is a knowledge-based process—a sense of humor is blend of wit and wisdom. He notes that existing technologies can detect sarcasm in conversation, and explains how some jokes can be pre-scripted while others are generated algorithmically—all while making the technical aspects of AI accessible for the general reader. Of course, there's no single algorithm or technology that we can plug in to make our virtual assistants or GPS voice navigation funny, but Veale provides a computational roadmap for how we might get there. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it. So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World (Princeton UP, 2022) shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering. Raghuveer Parthasarathy explains how four basic principles—self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling—shape the machinery of life on scales ranging from microscopic molecules to gigantic elephants. He describes how biophysics is helping to unlock the secrets of a host of natural phenomena, such as how your limbs know to form at the proper places, and why humans need lungs but ants do not. Parthasarathy explores how the cutting-edge biotechnologies of tomorrow could enable us to alter living things in ways both subtle and profound. Featuring dozens of original watercolors and drawings by the author, this sweeping tour of biophysics offers astonishing new perspectives on how the wonders of life can arise from so simple a beginning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Americans are deeply polarized on many issues, including science and medicine. Where once was widespread agreement, today the differences are sharp: on one hand, posters announce, “I believe in science!” and on the other hand, dramatic videos show ICU patients affirming their anti-vax beliefs with their final breaths. What is going on? Science is supposed to be based on reason, not faith. We get into a pile of metal – our cars – every day without fear because we trust the engineers, who built cars based on science. Science is characterized by observation, empirical findings, and replication. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be. Not long ago, Americans and most people around the world trusted the integrity of science. But that trust has been in decline for years, to our collective detriment. Why did science lose so much of the public trust? How does that loss relate to the decline of trust in other institutions? What are the trust-related issues for minorities? What can the scientific enterprise do to regain our trust? Fran Kritz is a passionate journalist who has covered health and health policy for decades. Her reporting experience gives her a unique view of the changes in the relationship between the public and its medical and scientific experts. She has written for NPR, the Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, cofounders of Retraction Watch. We talk about lots of things, retracting very few. Ivan Oransky : "Accountability in science certainly does not come down to only retracting papers, because there are just lots of issues. And by the way, just to remind everyone, science is very much a human endeavor. It doesn't exist outside of humans doing the science. I mean, facts exist, and there is truth out there, and we'd very much appear to be getting close and closer to it — that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the actual process, like, how do we learn these things. How — as this podcast more generally looks at — how does knowledge get known. Basically, epistemology. But that requires human beings. It requires human beings interpreting, talking and listening, collaborating, and so that's one part of science that is really critical. Therefore, of course, the issue of accountability is multifactorial." The Retraction Watch database is here. You might also be interested in this article: "Repeat Offenders: When Scientific Fraudsters Slip Through the Cracks." You can learn more about retraction here. Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

There is a logical flaw in the statistical methods used across experimental science. This fault is not a minor academic quibble: it underlies a reproducibility crisis now threatening entire disciplines. In an increasingly statistics-reliant society, this same deeply rooted error shapes decisions in medicine, law, and public policy with profound consequences. The foundation of the problem is a misunderstanding of probability and its role in making inferences from observations. Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the seventeenth-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it. He highlights how influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures developed a statistical methodology they claimed was purely objective in order to silence critics of their political agendas, including eugenics. Clayton provides a clear account of the mathematics and logic of probability, conveying complex concepts accessibly for readers interested in the statistical methods that frame our understanding of the world. He contends that we need to take a Bayesian approach--that is, to incorporate prior knowledge when reasoning with incomplete information--in order to resolve the crisis. Ranging across math, philosophy, and culture, Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science (Columbia UP, 2021) explains why something has gone wrong with how we use data--and how to fix it. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Welcome to the first Systems and Cybernetics episode of 2022! After a short break over the holidays to rest and spend time with family (and, of course, read!), it’s time to jump back into conversations with authors of exciting new works in systems thinking. We have a great lineup, and to kick things off I am thrilled to share my recent conversation with Fritjof Capra. Capra is a scientist, educator and activist. He has also been a best-selling author since his first book, The Tao of Physics, encouraged—rather captivated—the world to explore the parallels between modern physics and Eastern philosophies nearly 50 years ago. Many listeners will recall the one Capra book that challenged their worldview and got them asking new questions. For me, The Turning Point (1982) was that turning point. Capra’s new book Patterns of Connection: Essential Essays from Five Decades (High Road Books, 2021) presents the evolution of his thought over five decades, inviting the reader to go back to the beginning of the author’s inquiry and join him in his journey—to experience those milestone moments that represented a new development in his theory. A systems thinker from his youth, Capra’s scientific training combined with a spiritual awakening in the late 1960s/early 1970s, led him to notice inherent connections between seemingly disparate disciplines. This led to a systemic questioning that compelled him to seek out and collaborate with—even build bridges between—thinkers across many realms. The result is a synthesis—or “systems view”—of life that serves as a “systemic framework for the understanding of biological and social phenomena” and informs “the design principles of our future social institutions… consistent with the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life”. This conversation made me want to go back and (re)immerse myself in Capra’s previous works and I have a feeling it might make you want to do the same. If you’re new to Capra, Patterns of Connection is a great place to start. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation (Basic Book, 2021), physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them. Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right. Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Humans from the earliest civilizations through today have craned their necks each night, using the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers in this new nonfiction release, the people willing to adventure across high mountaintops and to some of the most remote corners of the planet, all in the name of science. From the lonely quiet of midnight stargazing to tall tales of wild bears loose in the observatory, The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers (Sourcebooks, 2021) is a love letter to astronomy and an affirmation of the crucial role that humans can and must play in the future of scientific discovery. In this sweeping work of narrative science, Levesque shows how astronomers in this scrappy and evolving field are going beyond the machines to infuse creativity and passion into the stars and space and inspires us all to peer skyward in pursuit of the universe's secrets. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment (Routledge, 2021) provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity.’ By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories. Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on ‘Anthropology of Religion’ at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap! Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we've created to do so--from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today--has also done considerable damage to the earth's ecology. Now scientists tell us: we've been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and much more. In The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health (U Chicago Press, 2021), Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of poop upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle climate change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. Don't just sit there and let it go to waste. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Today I talked to Leonard Mdlodinow about his new book Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking (Pantheon, 2022). "On or around December 1910, human character changed,” Virginia Woolf memorably wrote, citing the rise of Modernism. Take things ahead a century, and Leonard Mdlodinow is making a similarly striking statement that advances in how neuroscientists can trace the connectivity of neurons has led to another striking advancement in intellectual life since approximately 2010. From the 1980s until that date, psychologists and neuroscientists were both appreciating and refining the concept of emotions as inherited from Charles Darwin. Since then, what emotions are and how they operate has undergone a conceptual revolution. This episode follows Mlodinow’s guidance as he outlines how scientists today focus on emotions as functional agents, thoroughly emmeshed in how we selectively perceive and adapt to the circumstances we find ourselves in. One tangible example of the revolution: now we know that childhood can literally change our DNA as we react and adjust to emotionally-laden experiences that leave their emotional fingerprint on us all. Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and has been on the faculty at CalTech. His previous, award-winning books include two written with Stephen Hawking, and another written with Deepak Chopra. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of nine books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His new book is Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Walter Tschinkel has spent much of his career investigating the hidden subterranean realm of ant nests. This wonderfully illustrated book takes you inside an unseen world where thousands of ants build intricate homes in the soil beneath our feet. Tschinkel describes the ingenious methods he has devised to study ant nests, showing how he fills a nest with plaster, molten metal, or wax and painstakingly excavates the cast. He guides you through living ant nests chamber by chamber, revealing how nests are created and how colonies function. How does nest architecture vary across species? Do ants have “architectural plans”? How do nests affect our environment? As he delves into these and other questions, Tschinkel provides a one-of-a-kind natural history of the planet’s most successful creatures and a compelling firsthand account of a life of scientific discovery. Offering a unique look at how simple methods can lead to pioneering science, Ant Architecture: The Wonder, Beauty, and Science of Underground Nests (Princeton UP, 2021) addresses the unsolved mysteries of underground ant nests while charting new directions for tomorrow’s research, and reflects on the role of beauty in nature and the joys of shoestring science. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have―older than language. In Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation (Norton, 2022), Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do. Fueled by his own spatial shortcomings, Kemp describes the brain regions that orient us in space and the specialized neurons that do it. Place cells. Grid cells. He examines how the brain plans routes, recognizes landmarks, and makes sure we leave a room through a door instead of trying to leave through a painting. From the secrets of supernavigators like the indigenous hunters of the Bolivian rainforest to the confusing environments inhabited by people with place blindness, Kemp charts the myriad ways in which we find our way and explains the cutting-edge neuroscience behind them. How did Neanderthals navigate? Why do even seasoned hikers stray from the trail? What spatial skills do we inherit from our parents? How can smartphones and our reliance on GPS devices impact our brains? In engaging, engrossing language, Kemp unravels the mysteries of navigating and links the brain’s complex functions to the effects that diseases like Alzheimer’s, types of amnesia, and traumatic brain injuries have on our perception of the world around us. A book for anyone who has ever felt compelled to venture off the beaten path, Dark and Magical Places is a stirring reminder of the beauty in losing yourself to your surroundings. And the beauty in understanding how our brains can guide us home. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

From mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to chronic bacterial infections such as yaws, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tropical diseases. For a long time, the arrival in the region of these and other dangerous tropical diseases was believed to be connected to the introduction of agriculture. But how long have these diseases really been around for? How are they connected to the region’s fluctuating social and environmental conditions? And how have they impacted the human populations of Southeast Asia over time? Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, bioarchaeologist Dr Melandri Vlok sheds light on the complex science of paleoepidemiology and its use of advanced analytical practices such as DNA ancestry, skeletal studies, and teeth calculus to uncover ancient stories of illness and disease. She explains that far from being mere remnants of the past, archaeological human remains can help us understand the evolution and spread of pathogens, and inform strategies to curb the spread of infectious diseases in human populations. About Melandri Vlok: Dr Melandri Vlok is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Melandri specialises in palaeopathology/ bioarchaeology and researches the implications for migration and trade on the presence of infectious and nutritional diseases in past populations in Asia. Melandri's work, funded by grant bodies including National Geographic and the Royal Society of New Zealand, has involved the analysis of human skeletal remains from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and the Philippines. She is also involved with repatriation efforts focused on returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains to iwi and imi (tribes) in New Zealand. For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history's mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how people and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are those that plan ahead. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani's Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors (PublicAffairs, 2021) is a book about saving ourselves. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani show in remarkable detail what it was like to battle our climate over centuries and offer us a path to a safer and healthier future. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly (Cornell UP, 2021) explores the tangled history of weeds and their relationship to humans. Through eight interwoven stories, John Cardina offers a fresh perspective on how these tenacious plants came about, why they are both inevitable and essential, and how their ecological success is ensured by determined efforts to eradicate them. Linking botany, history, ecology, and evolutionary biology to the social dimensions of humanity's ancient struggle with feral flora, Cardina shows how weeds have shaped—and are shaped by—the way we live in the natural world. Weeds and attempts to control them drove nomads toward settled communities, encouraged social stratification, caused environmental disruptions, and have motivated the development of GMO crops. They have snared us in social inequality and economic instability, infested social norms of suburbia, caused rage in the American heartland, and played a part in perpetuating pesticide use worldwide. Lives of Weeds reveals how the technologies directed against weeds underlie ethical questions about agriculture and the environment, and leaves readers with a deeper understanding of how the weeds around us are entangled in our daily choices. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Heroic science. Chaotic politics. Billionaire entrepreneurs. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive through compulsively readable, first-time reporting on the players leading the fight against a vicious virus. The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine (Mariner Books, 2021), soon to be the subject of an HBO limited series with superstar director and producer Adam McKay (Succession, Vice, The Big Short), draws on exclusive, high-level access to weave together the intense vaccine-race conflicts among hard-driving, heroic scientists and the epic rivalries among Washington power players that shaped 18 months of fear, resolve, and triumph. From infectious disease expert Michael Callahan, an American doctor secretly on the ground in Wuhan in January 2020 to gauge the terrifying ravages of Disease X; to Robert (Dr. Bob) Kadlec, one of Operation Warp Speed’s architects, whose audacious plans for the American people run straight into the buzz saw of the Trump White House factions; to Stéphane Bancel of upstart Moderna Therapeutics going toe-to-toe with pharma behemoth Pfizer, The First Shots lays bare, in a way we have not seen, the full stunning story behind the medical science “moon shot” of our lifetimes. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate (Basic Books, 2021), just decades ago its mere mention caused sparks to fly. At the center of the debate were Russian American physicist George Gamow and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Gamow insisted that a fiery explosion explained how the elements of the universe were created. Attacking the idea as half-baked, Hoyle countered that the universe was engaged in a never-ending process of creation. The battle was fierce. In the end, Gamow turned out to be right -- mostly -- and Hoyle, despite his many achievements, is remembered for giving the theory the silliest possible name: "The Big Bang." Halpern captures the brilliance of both thinkers and reminds us that even those proved wrong have much to teach us about boldness, imagination, and the universe itself. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

For decades, some of our best and brightest medical scientists have dedicated themselves to finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease. What happened? Where is the cure? The biggest breakthroughs occurred twenty-five years ago, with little progress since. In How Not to Study a Disease: The Story of Alzheimer's (MIT Press, 2021), neurobiologist Karl Herrup explains why the Alzheimer's discoveries of the 1990s didn't bear fruit and maps a direction for future research. Herrup describes the research, explains what's taking so long, and offers an approach for resetting future research. Herrup offers a unique insider's perspective, describing the red flags that science ignored in the rush to find a cure. He is unsparing in calling out the stubbornness, greed, and bad advice that has hamstrung the field, but his final message is a largely optimistic one. Herrup presents a new and sweeping vision of the field that includes a redefinition of the disease and a fresh conceptualization of aging and dementia that asks us to imagine the brain as a series of interconnected neighborhoods. He calls for changes in virtually every aspect of the Alzheimer's disease research effort, from the drug development process, to the mechanisms of support for basic research, to the often-overlooked role of the scientific media, and more. With How Not to Study a Disease, Herrup provides a roadmap that points us in a new direction in our journey to a cure for Alzheimer's. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Aro Velmet's Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford UP, 2020) is a complex history of the Pasteur Institutes, a network of scientific laboratories established in France and throughout the French empire, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The book examines the crucial roles Pastorians and Pasteurization played in the imperial project in and between different locations, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa. Participating in the "civilizing mission," helping to establish and maintain industrial monopolies, and the control of colonial bodies through public health regulation and disease management, the institutes had a tremendous political impact. Attentive to the experiences and perspectives of the Vietnamese and African peoples in the sites the book focuses on, Pasteur's Empire examines a range of scientific responses and measures, from the study and containment of infectious and epidemic disease to the microbiological aspects of industry. The book's chapters move from "Indochina" to North and West Africa, tracing the way that Pastorians and Pasteurization worked with(in) and sometimes pushed against colonial structures and assumptions. French modernity and the "civilizing mission" had profound and practical biological dimensions. A history that pursues ideas about modernity and the meanings of scientific and other forms of mobility, Pasteur's Empire moves from the local to the global while bringing together science, medicine, and politics. Enjoy the episode! Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email ([email protected]). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Listen to this interview of Ayelet Baram-Tsabari. We talk about the accessibility of science using Google to scholars and students in languages beyond English and how scholars can de-jargonize their research to ensure increase their reach. Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Why does a clarinet play at lower pitches than a flute? What does it mean for sounds to be in or out of tune? How are emotions carried by music? Do other animals perceive sound like we do? How might a musician use math to come up with new ideas? This book offers a lively exploration of the mathematics, physics, and neuroscience that underlie music in a way that readers without scientific background can follow. David Sulzer, also known in the musical world as Dave Soldier, explains why the perception of music encompasses the physics of sound, the functions of the ear and deep-brain auditory pathways, and the physiology of emotion. He delves into topics such as the math by which musical scales, rhythms, tuning, and harmonies are derived, from the days of Pythagoras to technological manipulation of sound waves. Sulzer ranges from styles from around the world to canonical composers to hip-hop, the history of experimental music, and animal sound by songbirds, cetaceans, bats, and insects. He makes accessible a vast range of material, helping readers discover the universal principles behind the music they find meaningful. Written for musicians and music lovers with any level of science and math proficiency, including none, Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music (Columbia UP, 2021) demystifies how music works while testifying to its beauty and wonder. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

In Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces (Bloomsbury, 2022), physicist Laurie Winkless brings the amazing world of surface science to the popular science market for the first time. Atoms and molecules like to stick together--take friction, for example. This force keeps our cars on the road, trains on the tracks and our feet on the ground; similarly, anything moving through water or air encounters drag, a force caused by the viscous nature of fluids. In other words, there's a lot of stickiness going on, all the time. But what do we actually know about the physics of stickiness? What's really going on? How has nature evolved to make use of it, and what technological advances has it enabled the human race to create? Using her characteristic fun and relaxed tone, Laurie Winkless introduces readers to the glues, adhesives and textures that rule and improve stickiness to give plants and animals an advantage, as well as uncovering the physics behind our sense of touch. Sticky also shows how our understanding of slipperiness opened the door to high-speed flight and space travel, and asks why friction and other surface interactions can cause machinery to literally grind to a halt. This is fundamentally a materials science book, but it touches on topics as broad as medicine, robotics and geology. And, as we'll discover, there are still many great mysteries. By exploring the tiniest of interactions, Laurie Winkless shows how civilization owes a great deal to our knowledge of the science of stickiness. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science