Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSimon Baron-Cohen, "The Pattern Seekers: A New Theory of Human Invention" (Allen Lane, 2020)
Episode 35
Why are humans alone capable of invention? This question is relevant to every human invention, from music to mathematics, sculpture and science, dati…
5 years, 5 months ago
J. Rosenhouse, "Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles" (Princeton UP, 2020)
Episode 59
Jason Rosenhouse's Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles (Princeton UP, 2020) is about a panoply of logic puzzles. You’ll find…
5 years, 5 months ago
J. Beineke and J. Rosenhouse, eds., "The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects: Research in Recreational Math" (Princeton UP, 2015)
Episode 59
Jennifer Beineke and Jason Rosenhouse's new book The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects: Research in Recreational Math (Princeton Universit…
5 years, 5 months ago
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
Episode 35
A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century.
The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hosp…
5 years, 5 months ago
David Sepkoski, "Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Episode 275
We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We’re…
5 years, 5 months ago
Andrew Jewett, "Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Episode 111
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing tha…
5 years, 5 months ago
R. Douglas Fields, "Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better" (BenBella, 2020)
Episode 6
In Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better (BenBella, 2020), eminent…
5 years, 5 months ago
Rob DeSalle, "A Natural History of Color: The Science Behind What We See and How We See it" (Pegasus Books, 2020)
Episode 33
Is color a phenomenon of science or a thing of art? Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see, embraced through the…
5 years, 5 months ago
Daniel Oberhaus, "Extraterrestrial Languages" (MIT Press, 2019)
Episode 92
In Extraterrestrial Languages (MIT Press 2020), Daniel Oberhaus tells the history of human efforts to talk to aliens, but in doing so, the book refle…
5 years, 5 months ago
Can we Bring Extinct Species Back?: A Conversation with Beth Shapiro
Episode 6
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of …
5 years, 5 months ago