New Books in Biology and Evolution

Interviews with biologists and evolutionary scientists about their new books

Science Books Arts Life Sciences

Update frequency: every 6 days
Average duration: 54 minutes
Episodes: 445
Years Active: 2009 - 2025

Armin W. Schulz, "Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences" (Springer, 2025)

Humans live in richly normatively structured social environments: there are ways of doing things that are appropriate, and we are aware of what these ways are. For many social scientists, social inst…

01:05:06 | Wed 10 Sep 2025

Christopher Kemp, "Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation" (Norton, 2022)

Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have―older than language. In Dark and Magical Places: …

00:50:51 | Sun 24 Aug 2025

Eugene Rosenberg and Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, "Where Did We Come From?: The Origin and Evolution of Life" (Austin Macauley, 2025)

In this intimate interview, Mel Rosenberg speaks with Prof. Eugene Rosenberg and his partner in life and in science, Dr. Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg on their new book for the general public on how life st…

00:34:56 | Sat 23 Aug 2025

Mario Livio and Jack Szostak, "Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life" (Basic Books, 2024)

For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning i…

00:55:44 | Thu 21 Aug 2025

Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021)

Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines reall…

00:59:54 | Sat 09 Aug 2025

Athena Aktipis, "The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer" (Princeton UP, 2020)

When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historical processes that created life also created cancer…

00:57:38 | Fri 08 Aug 2025

Heather Browning and Walter Veit, "What Are Zoos For?" (Policy Press, 2024)

Are zoos an anachronism in the 21st century when we can watch animals in their natural habitat, close-up from our couches without worrying about cruelty? Should they go the way of other bygone era ‘s…

01:30:35 | Tue 05 Aug 2025

Christa Kuljian, "Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race, and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

When Christa Kuljian arrived on the Harvard College campus as a first-year student in the fall of 1980 with copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. magazine, she was concerned that the women's moveme…

01:01:03 | Wed 30 Jul 2025

Aline Nardo, "Evolutionary Theory and Education" (Brill, 2025)

How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolutionary Thinking on Educational Theory and Philosophy’ (…

01:06:16 | Tue 29 Jul 2025

Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T. Nguyen eds., "Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics" (NYU Press, 2025)

In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics, Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen come together across disciplines to offer a kaleidoscopic view of the relationship between sperm,…

00:40:01 | Tue 22 Jul 2025

Robert N. Spengler, "Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

The 15,000-year story of how grass seduced humanity into being its unwitting labor force--and the science behind it. Domesticated crops were not human creations, and agriculture was not simply inven…

00:35:59 | Tue 22 Jul 2025

Kevin J. Tracey, "The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes" (Penguin, 2025)

The vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to the balance of appetite and digestion. Made up of …

00:30:55 | Sat 12 Jul 2025

Maggie M. Fink and Shahir S. Rizk, "The Color of North: The Molecular Language of Proteins and the Future of Life" (Belknap Press, 2025)

An awe-inspiring journey into the world of proteins--how they shape life, and their remarkable potential to heal our bodies and our planet. Each fall, a robin begins the long trek north from Gibralt…

00:30:58 | Mon 16 Jun 2025

Alfonso Martinez Arias, "The Master Builder: How the New Science of the Cell Is Rewriting the Story of Life" (Basic Books, 2023)

What defines who we are? For decades, the answer has seemed obvious: our genes, the “blueprint of life.” In The Master Builder: How the New Science of the Cell Is Rewriting the Story of Life, biolo…

00:58:56 | Wed 04 Jun 2025

Agustín Fuentes, "Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may r…

00:45:11 | Tue 03 Jun 2025

Robert Chernomas, Gregory Chernomas, and Ian Hudson, "The American Gene: Unnatural Selection Along Class, Race, and Gender Lines" (Routledge, 2025)

Biological justification for all forms of inequality has a long history, with the claim that particular groups suffer disproportionately from inherited flaws of ability and character used to explain …

00:24:31 | Mon 02 Jun 2025

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