Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRob Dunn and Monica Sanchez, "Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Episode 86
Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others ar…
4 years, 9 months ago
Athena Aktipis, "The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer" (Princeton UP, 2020)
Episode 1
When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historic…
4 years, 9 months ago
Joshua Schimel, "Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded" (Oxford UP, 2011)
Episode 88
Listen to this interview of Joshua Schimel, Professor of soil ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Writing Science: H…
4 years, 9 months ago
Daniel Gibbs, "A Tattoo on my Brain: A Neurologist's Personal Battle against Alzheimer's Disease" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Episode 85
Dr Daniel Gibbs is one of 50 million people worldwide with an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. Unlike most patients with Alzheimer's, however, Dr Gibbs…
4 years, 9 months ago
Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas, "Living with Robots: What Every Anxious Human Needs to Know" (MIT Press, 2021)
Episode 72
There's a lot of hype about robots; some of it is scary and some of it utopian. In this accessible book, two robotics experts reveal the truth about …
4 years, 9 months ago
Justin Khoury, “Cosmological Conundrums” (Open Agenda, 2021)
Episode 52
Cosmological Conundrums is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Justin Khoury, Professor of Physics at the University o…
4 years, 9 months ago
Princeton UP's "Pedia" Series: Beautiful, Short Books About Big, Important Subjects
Episode 24
Today I talked to Robert Kirk, the publisher of Princeton University Press's "Pedia" book series. Encyclopedic in nature and miniature in form, these…
4 years, 9 months ago
Bruce Clarke, "Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
Episode 35
Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock a…
4 years, 9 months ago
Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke, "The Plant-Based Athlete: A Game-Changing Approach to Peak Performance" (HarperOne, 2021)
Episode 84
The Plant-Based Athlete: A Game-Changing Approach to Peak Performance (HarperOne, 2021) by Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke reveals the incontrovertibl…
4 years, 9 months ago
Lauren Aguirre, "The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind How We Remember--A Medical Mystery" (Pegasus, 2021)
Episode 83
How could you lose your memory overnight, and what would it mean? The day neurologist Jed Barash sees the baffling brain scan of a young patient with…
4 years, 9 months ago