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PODCAST

New Books in Science

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

science natural sciences

All Episodes

33:28

Kurt D. Fausch, "A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/28

In A Reverence for Rivers: Imagining an Ethic for Running Waters (OSU Press, 2025), Kurt Fausch draws on his experience as a stream ecologist, his interest in Indigenous cultures, and a thoughtful consideration of environmental ethics to explore human values surrounding freshwater ecosystems. Focusing on seven rivers across the globe—from the Salmon River in Oregon to the Sarufutsu River in Japan—he examines the growing ethical dilemmas threatening our rivers, including increasing demands for

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37:59

Robert N. Spengler, "Nature's Greatest Success: How...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/22

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 invented. As Robert N. Spengler shows, domestication was the result of an evolutionary process in which people played a role only unwittingly and as actors in a numberless cast that spanned the plant and animal kingdoms. Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity (Univ of California

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42:01

Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T....

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/22

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, health, and the intersecting politics of gender, race, and reproduction. Always insightful and often provocative, the essays in this unprecedented collection cover a broad range of issues related to male reproductive and sexual health—including the latest technological developments for creating sperm;

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78:50

Paul Sen, "Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/17

Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe (Scribner, 2021) tells the incredible epic story of the scientists who, over two centuries, harnessed the power of heat and ice and formulated a theory essential to comprehending our universe. “Although thermodynamics has been studied for hundreds of years…few nonscientists appreciate how its principles have shaped the modern world” (Scientific American). Thermodynamics—the branch of physics that deals with energy and

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64:35

Savannah Mandel on an Argument for the End of Human...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/14

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with space anthropologist, writer, and Virginia Tech doctoral candidate, Savannah Mandel, about her book, Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration (Chicago Review Press, 2025). The book uses history, ethnography, participant observation in policy-making, and other forms of evidence to argue for the discontinuation of human space exploration until pressing forms of human suffering are brought to an end on Earth. The pair also talk

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32:55

Kevin J. Tracey, "The Great Nerve: The New Science of...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/12

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 200,000 fibers, the vagus nerve sends thousands of electrical signals every second between your brain and your most important organs. Yet despite its essential role in life, important vagus nerve functions have eluded centuries of scientific investigation. Now neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Kevin Tracey

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61:20

Edward Tenner, "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/11

How did the addition of lifeboats after the Titanic shipwreck contribute to another tragedy in Chicago harbor three years later? How efficient are wild animals as investors, and how do dog breeds become national symbols? Why have scientific breakthroughs so often originated in the study of shadows? How did the file card prepare scholarship and commerce for the rise of electronic data processing, and why did the visual metaphor of the tab survive into today's graphic interfaces? Why have Amish

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45:35

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/06

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cultural meanings attached to the notion of an "ideal" family size. When statistics revealed a sustained drop in France's birthrate, pronatalist activists pushed for financial benefits, propaganda, and punitive measures to

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74:22

Pooja Agarwal, Cynthia Nebel, Veronica Yan, "Smart...

New Books in Science ·

2025/07/06

How can I help my students not only learn my course material but also retain and transfer that information? This is a question that has plagued and intrigued teachers for centuries. In Smart Teaching Stronger Learning: Practical Tips for 10 Cognitive Scientists, the authors provide their readers with evidence-based practices for immediate classroom implementation. Their premise is that small changes can lead to powerful results.In this approachable book, each chapter is written by a cognitive

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61:29

Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper, "Battle of the Big...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/30

A thrilling exploration of competing cosmological origin stories, comparing new scientific ideas that upend our very notions of space, time, and reality.By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all? Here prominent cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities: bouncing and cyclic universes, time loops, creations from

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48:46

Elliot Lichtman, "The Computer Always Wins: A Playful...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/22

In The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games (MIT Press, 2025), Elliot Lichtman will teach you some of computer science’s most powerful concepts in a refreshingly accessible way: exploring them through word games, board games, and strategy games you already know. Learn recursion by playing tic-tac-toe, efficient search through puzzle games like sudoku and Wordle, and machine learning by way of the playground classic rock-paper-scissors. Finish

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57:01

Liam Graham, "Molecular Storms: The Physics of Stars,...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/22

Why is the universe the way it is? Wherever we look, we find ordered structures: from stars to planets to living cells. Molecular Storms: The Physics of Stars, Cells and the Origin of Life (Springer Nature, 2023) shows that the same driving force is behind structure everywhere: the incessant random motion of the components of matter. Physicists call it thermal noise. Let's call it the molecular storm.This storm drives the fusion reactions that make stars shine. It drives whirlpools and currents in

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46:47

Mary A. Armstrong and Susan L. Averett, "Disparate...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/16

An exploration of workplace participation and earnings patterns for diverse women in US STEM professions that upends the myth that STEM work benefits women economically. Seen as part economic driver, part social remedy, STEM work is commonly understood to benefit both the US economy and people—particularly women—from underrepresented groups. But what do diverse women find when they work in US STEM occupations? What do STEM jobs really deliver—and for whom? In Disparate Measures: The Intersectional

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33:58

Maggie M. Fink and Shahir S. Rizk, "The Color of...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/16

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 Gibraltar to her summer home in Central Europe. Nestled deep in her optic nerve, a tiny protein turns a lone electron into a compass, allowing her to see north in colors we can only dream of perceiving. Taking us beyond the confines of our own experiences, The Color of North: The Molecular Language of

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61:56

Alfonso Martinez Arias, "The Master Builder: How the...

New Books in Science ·

2025/06/04

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, biologist Alfonso Martinez Arias argues we’ve been missing the bigger picture. It’s not our genes that define who we are, but our cells. While genes are important, nothing in our DNA explains why the heart is on the left side of the body, how many fingers we have, or even how our cells manage to reproduce

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59:12

Jack Ashby, "Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at...

New Books in Science ·

2025/05/31

In Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums (Penguin, 2025), zoologist Jack Ashby shares hidden stories behind the world’s iconic natural history museums, from enormous mounted whale skeletons to cabinets of impossibly tiny insects.Look closely and all is not as it seems: these museums are not as natural, Ashby shows us, as we might think. Mammals dominate the displays, for example, even though they make up less than 1 percent of species; there are many more male

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45:10

Jaap de Roode, "Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes,...

New Books in Science ·

2025/05/29

Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves (Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the

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39:07

Mitchell Thomashow, "To Know the World: A New Vision...

New Books in Science ·

2025/05/28

Why we must rethink our residency on the planet to understand the connected challenges of tribalism, inequity, climate justice, and democracy. How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning (MIT Press, 2020), Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time--migration, race, inequity,

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75:09

Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in...

New Books in Science ·

2025/05/22

The first book to combine exquisite cartographical charts of the Moon with a thorough exploration of the Moon’s role in popular culture, science, and myth.President John F. Kennedy’s rousing “We will go to the Moon” speech in 1961 before the US Congress catalyzed the celebrated Apollo program, spurring the US Geological Survey’s scientists to map the Moon. Over the next eleven years a team of twenty-two, including a dozen illustrator-cartographers, created forty-four charts that forever changed

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28:44

Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal...

New Books in Science ·

2025/05/16

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (U Chicago

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142 results

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