Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJaap de Roode, "Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants,…
1 year, 1 month ago
Mitchell Thomashow, "To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning" (MIT Press, 2020)
Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How ca…
1 year, 1 month ago
Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 36
The first book to combine exquisite cartographical charts of the Moon with a thorough exploration of the Moon’s role in popular culture, science, and…
1 year, 1 month ago
Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Episode 388
Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help u…
1 year, 1 month ago
Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves
Episode 261
Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature’s pharmacy to heal themselves. In Doctors by Nature (Prince…
1 year, 2 months ago
Scientists Cooperate while Humanists Ruminate (EF, JP)
Back in 2021, John and Elizabeth sat down with Brandeis string theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplin…
1 year, 2 months ago
Ian Boyd, "Science and Politics" (Polity, 2024)
Episode 207
The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. B…
1 year, 2 months ago
Rebecca Heisman, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration" (Harper, 2025)
Episode 386
In Flight Paths (HarperCollins, 2023), Rebecca Heisman illuminates the stories and methods of the scientists who unlocked the secrets of bird migrati…
1 year, 2 months ago
Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy, "Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Episode 116
Today I’m speaking with Ciara Greene, co-author with Gillian Murphy of the new book, Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember (Princeton…
1 year, 2 months ago
Grace Lindsay, "Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Episode 31
Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain (Bloomsbury, 2021) provides a multifaceted an…
1 year, 3 months ago