Science for the People is a long-format interview podcast that explores the connections between science, popular culture, history, and public policy, to help listeners understand the evidence and arguments behind what's in the news and on the shelves. Our hosts sit down with science researchers, writers, authors, journalists, and experts to discuss science from the past, the science that affects our lives today, and how science might change our future.
http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 27 days 1 hour
#633 An Ice History
Ice is one of those invisible little gears of the modern, westernized world. We don't notice it when we have it, and as soon as we can't get it we find ourselves desperate to get it back. It wasn't always like this: ice started as a luxury of more nort...
#632 We are what we eat
You are what you eat, right? Well then, who were the ancient Romans, and who were the people they colonized? And who are we? And why do we eat so much chicken? This week we're sitting down with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas to talk about how Roman colonizati...
#631 Tenacious Beasts
In his book Tenacious Beasts, philosopher and writer Christopher Preston explores creature comebacks. Some of these stories highlight the evolutionary advantages that animals have racked up over millennia, while others are marked by intensive human int...
#630 The Jewel Box
A lot of us learned basic ecology in primary school. Maybe we took a biology class in high school or secondary school and dug in a little more. We use terms like "niche" but do we really know what they mean? How much complexity does that little word co...
#629 How birds go the distance
Birds carry out some of the most amazing feats of athleticism in the world. Hummingbirds cross the entire Gulf of Mexico, their tiny wings beating continuously for three days straight. A single bird will fly across the entire Pacific ocean in one go. W...
#628 Brave the Wild River
In 1938, two botanists, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, made an ambitious voyage down the Colorado River driven by the desire to chronicle the plant life of the American Southwest. In her new book Brave the Wild River, science journalist Melissa Sevigny...
#627 Ancient Migrations
Humans are a roaming species. We've been traveling from continent to continent since our very earliest evolution. In fact, we've been doing it even before we were humans. This week, we're talking with archaeologist Radu Iovita about the ancient silk ro...
#626 Our Friend, the Wasp
Is there an insect more universally despised than the wasp? What have they done to incur so much of our ire? No one likes them. Well... almost no one. Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London and cofounder of the Bi...
#625 This one really is about aliens
Do you believe there's something Out There? What do our ideas of aliens say about what life is, how life could look and act? And what does it say about us, about what we think life needs, wants, and should be? We're talking with Jaime Green about her n...
#624 The Devil’s Element
With fertilizers that supply phosphorus–what Asimov called “life’s bottleneck”– people broke the circle of life. Dan Egan’s new book The Devil’s Element traces the history of this essential element from curiosi...