Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchOren Harman, "Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World" (FSG, 2018)
Episode 217
“There are only two ways to live your life,” said Albert Einstein, “One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a mir…
6 years, 8 months ago
Thomas Hager, "Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine" (Abrams Press, 2019)
Episode 14
Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be a researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough tec…
6 years, 8 months ago
Justin Garson, "What Biological Functions are and Why They Matter" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Episode 199
Why do zebras have stripes? One way to answer that question is ask what function stripes play in the lives of zebras – for example, to deter disease-…
6 years, 8 months ago
David Sinclair, "LifeSpan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
Episode 69
Today's guest is David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul Glenn Center Biological Mechanisms of Ag…
6 years, 8 months ago
E. H. Ecklund and D. R. Johnson, "Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think of Religion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Episode 38
It is common to see science and religion portrayed as mutually exclusive and warring ways of viewing the world, but is that how actual scientists see…
6 years, 9 months ago
Emily Lakdawalla, "The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job" (Springer, 2018)
Episode 16
Emily Lakdawalla talks about the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated m…
6 years, 9 months ago
Michael Kodas, "Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
Episode 39
In the 1980s, fires burned an average of two million acres per year. Today the average is eight million acres and growing. Scientists believe that we…
6 years, 10 months ago
David Philip Miller, "The Life and Legend of James Watt" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
Episode 151
For all of his fame as one of the seminal figures of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt is a person around whom many misconceptions congregate. In…
6 years, 10 months ago
Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Episode 18
Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippo…
6 years, 10 months ago
Samir Okasha, "Agents and Goals in Evolution" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Episode 192
Evolutionary biologists standardly treat organisms as agents: they have goals and purposes and preferences, and their behaviors and adaptive traits c…
6 years, 10 months ago