Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJeffrey D. Sharon, "The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System" (Columbia UP, 2025)
What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors …
8 months, 1 week ago
David Bressoud, "Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Episode 77
Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas (Princeton UP, 2019) takes readers on a remarkable journey through hundreds of years to tell the story…
8 months, 1 week ago
Caleb Scharf, "The Giant Leap: Why Space Is the Next Frontier in the Evolution of Life" (Hachette UK, 2025)
A leading astrobiologist "demonstrates how becoming a true space-faring species is more than just humanity's future" (Adam Frank, author of The Littl…
8 months, 1 week ago
Allen B. Downey, "Probably Overthinking It: How to Use Data to Answer Questions, Avoid Statistical Traps, and Make Better Decisions" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Statistics are everywhere: in news reports, at the doctor's office, and in every sort of forecast, from the stock market to the weather. Blogger, tea…
8 months, 2 weeks ago
Gerta Keller, "The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs" (Diversion Books, 2025)
The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by v…
8 months, 3 weeks ago
Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map…
8 months, 3 weeks ago
157 Mangrum's Comical Computation (JP)
When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop…
8 months, 3 weeks ago
Mark Vellend, "Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics" (Princeton UP, 2025)
How the science of evolution explains how everything came to be, from bacteria and blue whales to cell phones, cities, and artificial intelligence
Ev…
9 months ago
J. Doyne Farmer, "Making Sense of Chaos" (Yale UP, 2024)
We live in an age of increasing complexity--an era of accelerating technology and global interconnection that holds more promise, and more peril, tha…
9 months ago
Jonas Enander, "Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth" (The Experiment Press, 2025)
Humanity's relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if th…
9 months ago