New Books in Biology and Evolution
Interviews with biologists and evolutionary scientists about their new books
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 54 minutes
- Episodes
- 445
- Years Active
- 2009 - 2025
Andrew Jewett, "Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that "tenured radicals" have coopted the sciences and…
00:38:36 |
Tue 19 Jan 2021
Rob DeSalle, "A Natural History of Color: The Science Behind What We See and How We See it" (Pegasus Books, 2020)
Is color a phenomenon of science or a thing of art? Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see, embraced through the experimental palettes of painting, the advent of …
01:04:12 |
Wed 13 Jan 2021
Robert Baker, "The Structure of Moral Revolutions: Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion, Death, and the Bioethics Revolution" (MIT Press, 2019)
We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love…
01:09:02 |
Wed 06 Jan 2021
Can we Bring Extinct Species Back?: A Conversation with Beth Shapiro
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction (Princeton UP, 2020), Beth Shapiro, …
00:40:16 |
Mon 04 Jan 2021
Daniel Lieberman, "Exercised: How We Did Not Evolve to Exercise and What to Do about It" (Pantheon, 2021)
Today I talked to Daniel Lieberman about his book Exercised: How We Did Not Evolve to Exercise and What to Do about It (Pantheon, 2021). In the book Lieberman explodes 12 different myths, chief among…
00:29:08 |
Thu 31 Dec 2020
Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that…
01:15:40 |
Thu 24 Dec 2020
Eben Kirksey, "The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans" (St. Martin's Press, 2020)
In The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin's Press, 2020), anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: W…
01:01:54 |
Wed 23 Dec 2020
Louise M. Pryke, "Turtle" (Reaction Books, 2020)
As ancient creatures that once shared the Earth with dinosaurs, turtles have played a crucial role in maintaining healthy terrestrial and marine ecosystems for more than one hundred million years. Wh…
00:46:38 |
Wed 16 Dec 2020
Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without butterflies. And yet their populations are declin…
00:57:01 |
Wed 16 Dec 2020
Trevor Pearce, "Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
In Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enorm…
00:48:55 |
Tue 15 Dec 2020
A. Espay and B. Stecher, "Brain Fables: The Hidden History of Neurodegenerative Diseases and a Blueprint to Conquer Them" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
An estimated 80 million people live with a neurodegenerative disease, with this number expected to double by 2050. Despite decades of research and billions in funding, there are no medications that c…
01:19:28 |
Fri 04 Dec 2020
Soraya de Chadarevian, "Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
“What are chromosomes? And what does it mean to treat them as visual objects?” asks Soraya de Chadarevian in her new book, Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome…
00:49:51 |
Tue 24 Nov 2020
K. C. Smith and C. Mariscal, "Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology (Oxford University Press, 2020) focuses on the emerging scientific discipline of astrobiology, exploring many of the humanistic issues this multidisciplin…
01:11:10 |
Mon 23 Nov 2020
Gina Rippon, "Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds" (Vintage, 2020)
For decades if not centuries, science has backed up society’s simple dictum that men and women are hardwired differently, that the world is divided by two different kinds of brains—male and female. H…
01:07:30 |
Tue 27 Oct 2020
Robert Plomin, "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" (MIT Press, 2019)
Have you ever felt, “Oh my God, I’m turning into my mother (or father)!” ? Robert Plomin explains why that happens in Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (MIT Press, 2019).
A century of genetic re…
01:08:14 |
Thu 22 Oct 2020
Michael E. McCullough, "The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code" (Basic Books, 2020)
Why Give a Damn About Strangers? In his book The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code (Basic Books, 2020), Michael E. McCullough explains.
McCullough is a professor of p…
00:35:08 |
Thu 22 Oct 2020
Boel Berner, "Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th-Century Medicine and Beyond" (Transcript Verlag, 2020)
In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it a…
00:56:28 |
Mon 12 Oct 2020
Morality in Nature: What Honeybees and Flowers Can Tell Us about its Origin
Is morality solely a human creation? Or can we find evidence of morality in other parts of nature? Honeybees and flowers have co-evolved to form a mutualistic relationship. This means that these crea…
00:17:31 |
Wed 07 Oct 2020
Jeremy England, "Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things" (Basic Books, 2020)
“How did life begin? Most things in the universe aren't alive, and yet if you trace the evolutionary history of plants and animals back far enough, you will find that, at some point, neither were we.…
01:39:09 |
Mon 05 Oct 2020
Frans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" (Norton, 2019)
Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (W. W. Norton & Company) is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals, beginning with Mama, a chimpanzee …
00:59:30 |
Thu 01 Oct 2020
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