Interviews with Scientists about their New Books
https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/science-technology/science/
episode 19: Wade Roush, "Extraterrestrials" (MIT Press, 2020)
Roush examines one of the great unsolved problems in science: is there life, intelligent or otherwise, on other planets?
episode 247: Wenfei Tong, "Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds" (Princeton UP, 2020)
Tong looks at the extraordinary range of mating systems in the avian world, exploring all the stages from courtship and nest-building to protecting eggs and raising chicks...
episode 18: Ray Dorsey, "Ending Parkinson's Disease: A Prescription for Action" (Public Affairs, 2020)
Brain diseases are now the world's leading source of disability...
episode 46: Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
According to Cook, a paradox paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick...
episode 246: Adrian Currie, "Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences" (MIT Press, 2018)
Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory...
episode 36: Andrew Leigh, "Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Are Changing Our World" (Yale UP, 2018)
Randomized control trials, called RCT’s, have a logic so simple that anyone can understand how they work and even run them themselves...
episode 213: Kareem Khalifa, "Understanding, Explanation and Scientific Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
What is the relation between understanding and knowledge in science? Can we understand a scientific theory if it is false? Do we understand a scientific proposition we can’t elaborate or do anything with?
episode 154: Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
How does the world of book reviews work?
episode 214: Amy Shira Teitel, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA" (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history.
episode 213: Alistair Sponsel, "Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist...