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
Insects as a Natural and Cultural Resource across Southeast Asia
Every year, World Wildlife Conservation Day is observed on 4 December. It reminds us of the importance of protecting our biodiversity, a message that is all the more urgent in the face of polycrises …
00:34:07 |
Tue 15 Apr 2025
Insects as a Natural and Cultural Resource across Southeast Asia
Every year, World Wildlife Conservation Day is observed on 4 December. It reminds us of the importance of protecting our biodiversity, a message that is all the more urgent in the face of polycrises …
00:34:07 |
Tue 15 Apr 2025
Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Coordinator of the Media Studies Initiative at Cornell University, about his book, Fir…
01:07:10 |
Wed 09 Apr 2025
John Trowsdale, "What the Body Knows: A Guide to the New Science of Our Immune System" (Yale UP, 2024)
What is our immune system, and how does it work? A vast array of cells, proteins and chemicals spring into action whenever our bodies are damaged, but immunity is not something you can see, touch, or…
00:37:17 |
Tue 18 Mar 2025
Leigh Ann Henion, "Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark" (Algonquin, 2024)
“Almost every storyline we’re familiar with suggests that we should banish [darkness] as quickly as possible—because darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that n…
00:43:05 |
Tue 11 Mar 2025
Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnology meets patent law. With a background as a molecu…
01:04:29 |
Fri 07 Mar 2025
Eliot Schrefer, "Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality" (Clarion Books, 2022)
In this episode, I talk to Eliot Schrefer about his book Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality (Katherine Tegen Books, 2022).
A quiet revolution has been underway in …
01:09:37 |
Thu 06 Mar 2025
Steven Lesk, "Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness" (Prometheus, 2023)
Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. No matter the strides scientists have made in neurological research nor doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remain…
01:02:12 |
Wed 26 Feb 2025
Ethan Tapper, "How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World" (Broadleaf Books, 2024)
For more than a decade, Ethan Tapper has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the worlds of forestry, conservation, and ecosystem stewardship.
He has many years of experience managi…
00:46:12 |
Sat 22 Feb 2025
Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)
Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to common fallacies about human difference.
Well-meanin…
00:57:39 |
Mon 10 Feb 2025
Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, "Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould" (Columbia UP, 2024)
One of the twentieth century's great paleontologists and science writers, Stephen Jay Gould was, for Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, also a close colleague and friend. In Macroevolutionaries: …
00:38:54 |
Sun 19 Jan 2025
Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)
Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to dogs' evolutionary becoming, suggest that they do…
01:02:34 |
Wed 15 Jan 2025
David Strayer, "Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024) is an exciting foray into Earth's inland waters, the remarkable species they contain, and the conservation cha…
00:34:11 |
Sun 12 Jan 2025
Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)
Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past…
01:12:44 |
Sat 11 Jan 2025
Brandon Keim, "Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World" (Norton, 2024)
What does the science of animal intelligence mean for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us?
Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends.…
01:32:37 |
Wed 01 Jan 2025
Charles Foster, "Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to und…
00:59:18 |
Sun 29 Dec 2024
Michael Bresalier, "Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890—1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) by Dr. Michael Bresalier traces …
01:05:43 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Other Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith (EF, JP)
Peter Godfrey-Smith knows his cephalopods. Once of CUNY and now a professor of history and philosophy of science at University of Sydney, his truly capacious career includes books such as Theory and …
00:48:09 |
Thu 19 Dec 2024
Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began t…
01:03:40 |
Fri 13 Dec 2024
Andrea Scarantino, "Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide" (Routledge, 2024)
This interview is an exception to our “single author monographs” rule, because the edited collection that is its topic is an intellectual achievement worth making an exception for in over 12 years of…
01:09:06 |
Tue 10 Dec 2024
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