New Books in Physics and Chemistry

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us. Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013. Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that's everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post. Daniel Moran's writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in 2021, John and Elizabeth sat down with Brandeis string theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplines. They sink their teeth into the question, “Why do scientists seem to do collaboration and teamwork better than other kinds of scholars and academics?” The conversation ranges from the merits of collective biography to the influence of place and geographic location in scientific collaboration to mountaineering traditions in the sciences. As a Recallable Book, Elizabeth champions The People of Puerto Rico, an experiment in ethnography of a nation (in this case under colonial rule) from 1956, including a chapter by Robert Manners, founding chair of the Brandeis Department of Anthropology. Albion sings the praises of a collective biography of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, A Message to Our Folks. But John stays true to his Victorianist roots by praising the contrasting images of the withered humanist Casaubon and the dashing young scientist Lydgate in George Eliot's own take on collective biography, Middlemarch. Discussed in this episode: Richard Rhodes Making of the Atomic Bomb Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite James Gleick, The Information Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation Black Hole photographs win giant prize Adam Jaffe, “Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations“ Jamie Cohen-Cole, The Open Mind Julian Steward et al., The People of Puerto Rico Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks Jenny Uglow, Lunar Men George Eliot, Middlemarch Listen to and Read the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain (Bloomsbury, 2021) provides a multifaceted and approachable introduction to theoretical neuroscience. It discusses some major topics of the field, including both the milestones from their history and the currently open questions. It's accessible for a general audience, not expecting any previous knowledge of neuroscience or maths. At the same time, neuroscientists have described it as impressive. According to Gaute Einevoll, professor of brain physics, "this is a book that belongs on the bookshelf of any computational neuroscientist and lots of other people". In our conversation, we covered some of the overarching themes of the book. The constant push and pull between mathematics and biology: mathematical models simplifying complex phenomena and biology pointing out the importance of a specific detail. What efficiency means for a biological system, like the brain. Whether and how much we can assume that an evolved system is efficient. Dr. Grace Lindsay also talked about how science communication has helped her explore and discuss topics not directly related to her research. She started blogging and podcasting during her PhD, which has led to further writing opportunities, including this popular science book. Similar to Models of the Mind, the Lindsay Lab is multidisciplinary: It uses artificial neural networks for psychology, neuroscience, and climate change. In the interview, Dr. Grace Lindsay talked about her decision about the lab's profile She explains the overlap in technologies used for studying visual systems and satellite images. We also hear about examples of how scientists in various fields have taken on research topics related to climate change. Links:  Dr. Grace Lindsay's homepage Lindsay Lab Dr. Grace Lindsay's blog post about Models of the Mind Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When he was six years old, Roger Penrose discovered a sundial in a clearing near his house. Through that machine made of light, shadow, and time, Roger glimpsed a “world behind the world” of transcendently beautiful geometry. It spurred him on a journey to become one of the world's most influential mathematicians, philosophers, and physicists. Penrose would prove the limitations of general relativity, set a new agenda for theoretical physics, and astound colleagues and admirers with the elegance and beauty of his discoveries. However, as Patchen Barss documents in The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius (Basic Books, 2024), success came at a price: He was attuned to the secrets of the universe, but struggled to connect with loved ones, especially the women who care for or worked with him. Both erudite and poetic, The Impossible Man draws on years of research and interviews, as well as previously unopened archives to present a moving portrait of Penrose the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and Roger the human being. It reveals not just the extraordinary life of Roger Penrose, but asks who gets to be a genius, and who makes the sacrifices that allow one man to be one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and consequence. In Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe (MIT Press, 2021), Brian Clegg explores the phenomena that make up the very fabric of our world by examining ten essential sequenced systems. From diagrams that show the deep relationships between space and time to the quantum behaviors that rule the way that matter and light interact, Clegg shows how these patterns provide a unique view of the physical world and its fundamental workings. Guiding readers on a tour of our world and the universe beyond, Clegg describes the cosmic microwave background, sometimes called the "echo of the big bang," and how it offers clues to the universe's beginnings; the diagrams that illustrate Einstein's revelation of the intertwined nature of space and time; the particle trail patterns revealed by the Large Hadron Collider and other accelerators; and the simple-looking patterns that predict quantum behavior (and decorated Richard Feynman's van). Clegg explains how the periodic table reflects the underlying pattern of the configuration of atoms, discusses the power of the number line, demonstrates the explanatory uses of tree diagrams, and more. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Einstein's Dreams (Vintage, 1992) by Alan Lightman, set in Albert Einstein's “miracle year” of 1905, is a novel about the cultural interconnection of time, relativity and life. As the young genius creates his theory of relativity, in a series of dreams, he imagines other worlds, each with a different conceptualization of time. In one, time is circular, and people are destined to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, time stands still. In yet another, time is a nightingale, trapped by a bell jar. Translated into over thirty languages, Einstein's Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians and artists around the world. In poetic vignettes, Alan Lightman explores the connections between science and art, creativity and the rhythms of life, and ultimately the fragility of human existence. This conversation includes Alan Lightman (MIT), Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Annette Martínez-Iñesta, of the Departamento de Humanidades at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM), and Joshua Chaparro Mata, a UPRM graduate and doctoral student in Applied Physics at Yale. They discuss dreaming as a scientific and creative resource; the importance of Berne, Switzerland, in the thought of Einstein and Lightman; Lightman's precise and harmonious poetics; the role of technology in contemporary life; and the course Lightman's life, experiences and creative process. This is the second of two episodes about Einstein's Dreams. The first, in Spanish, appeared on the New Books Network en español. The series is sponsored by the Lenguaje focal group at Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at UPRM, a group of scholars who consider how translanguaging ​​can provide unique dimensions to knowledge.  This episode and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at the UPRM have been supported by the Mellon Foundation. The conversation is part of the “STEM to STEAM” project of the “Cornerstone” initiative, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, which stresses the importance of integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences. Books, scholars, articles and podcasts mentioned in this conversation include: In Praise of Wasting Time, Alan Lightman. Mr g, Alan Lightman. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino. Cities I've Never Lived In, Sara Majka. “Academic Life without a Smartphone,” Inside Higher Ed, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera. The Hemingway Society Podcast. Carlos Alberto Peón Casas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the surface of the Sun, spots appear and fade in a predictable cycle, like a great clock in the sky. In medieval Russia, China, and Korea, monks and court astronomers recorded the appearance of these dark shapes, interpreting them as omens of things to come. In Western Europe, by contrast, where a cosmology originating with Aristotle prevailed, the Sun was regarded as part of the unchanging celestial realm, and it took observations through telescopes by Galileo and others to establish the reality of solar imperfections. In the nineteenth century, amateur astronomers discovered that sunspots ebb and flow about every eleven years—spurring speculation about their influence on the weather and even the stock market. Exploring these and many other crucial developments, Pierre Sokolsky provides a history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle. He ranges widely across cultures and throughout history, from the earliest recorded observations of sunspots in Chinese annals to satellites orbiting the Sun today, and from worship of the Sun as a deity in ancient times to present-day scientific understandings of stars and their magnetic fields. Considering how various thinkers sought to solve the puzzle of sunspots, Sokolsky sheds new light on key discoveries and the people who made them, as well as their historical and cultural contexts. Fast-paced, comprehensive, and learned, Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star (Columbia UP, 2024) shows readers our closest star from many new angles. Garima Garg is a New Delhi based journalist and author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke UP, 2024) Siobhan Angus tells the history of photography through the minerals upon which the medium depends. Challenging the emphasis on immateriality in discourses on photography, Angus focuses on the inextricable links between image-making and resource extraction, revealing how the mining of bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements is a precondition of photography. Through a materials-driven analysis of visual culture, she illustrates histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation to expose the ways in which photography is enmeshed within and enables global extractive capitalism.  This conversation discusses the meta-narrative and performative aspects of some of the photographs shown in the text, dives into some of the stories and examples from Ann Atkin's cyanotypes of the 1800s to Warren Cariou's contemporary bitumin prints, and asks what ethical photography looks like given the resource extraction required.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is reality more than the material? Raj Balkaran holds a fascinating interview with philosopher Bernardo Kastrup on this topic. At the vanguard of the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, Bernardo presents cogent argumentation that reality is essentially mental, and examines the proper place of the scientific method in this deliberation. Bernardo's research exhibits some astonishing parallels with ancient Indic thought.  Bernardo Kastrup is the author of Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A Straightforward Summary of the 21st Century's Only Plausible Metaphysics" (Iff Books, 2024). About the book: As the failures of physicalism begin to shake the confidence of even the most biased of its supporters, a new view on the nature of reality is establishing itself as the only tenable alternative: Analytic Idealism. According to it, there is a world out there independent of our individual minds, but such world is - just like ourselves - also mental or experiential. While being a realist, naturalist, rationalist, and even reductionist view, Analytic Idealism flips our culture-bound intuitions on their head, revealing that only through understanding our own inner nature can we understand the nature of the world. This book embodies its author's years-long experience on how best to explain Analytic Idealism to someone who has never studied it before, and has no background in the technical fields involved. It meets the readers where they are, holding their hand as they are shown - through a series of evocative metaphors - how to see through their own unexamined assumptions, so to realize how the impossible dilemas of physicalism disappear when nature is regarded from a slightly different slant. The conclusions have tremendous implications for our values and way of life, as well as our understanding of purpose, self, identity, and death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stereotype of the solitary mathematician is widespread, but practicing users and producers of mathematics know well that our work depends heavily on our historical and contemporary fellow travelers. Yet we may not appreciate how our work also extends beyond us into our physical and societal environments. Kevin Lambert takes what might be a first crack at this perspective in his book Symbols and Things: Material Mathematics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). An historian of science, Dr. Lambert has shifted in his view of mathematics as a language of science to one as a material practice. Expanding on ideas from historians, archeologists, philosophers, and other scholars of human activity, and through several interweaving vignettes of mathematical work during a technologically dynamic period in British history, he argues that mathematical practice, communication, and even thought occur to a large degree outside the bodies of the persons performing them. In this interview, we explore Kevin's journal to and through this book project. We discuss how such ideas as Andy Clark's extended mind informed his approach, and we review several of the lively stories—the co-creation of the long-distance mathematical community with the research journal, Peacock's museological argument for the adoption of symbolic algebra, and the foundational entanglement of electromagnetism, quaternions, and the philosophy of space, among others—he drew out of historical and archival sources. (Here i cannot resist mentioning Tait's collection of his intensive correspondence with Hamilton that transformed how quaternions were applied in physics and even conceptualized as mathematical objects.) We close with some thoughts on our own materially extended cognitive work and where Kevin's interests are currently driving him. Suggested companion works: • ChatGPT, as a cutting-edge extension of human thought • work by Courtney Ann Roby, including the forthcoming The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria: Strategies of Reading from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period • Algorithmic Modernity: Mechanizing Thought and Action, 1500-2000, edited by Morgan G. Ames and Massimo Mazzotti • work by Emily Miller Bonney, for example "A Reconsideration of Depositional Practices in Early Bronze Age Crete" Kevin Lambert is a historian of science and mathematics in the early modern and modern periods and professor in the liberal studies department at California State University, Fullerton. His recent book Symbols and Things explores mathematics as a way of thinking outside the body and through the material environment. He also recently published a chapter in the volume Algorithmic Modernity that traces the genealogy of algorithmic practices. He is now working on the problem of writing longue durée histories of science. He is close to completing a paper called “Malthus in the Landscape” that investigates the temporalities of global histories. He is also exploring the problem of writing a global history of the early modern sciences without the prism of the so called “Scientific Revolution.” His work can be found on ResearchGate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth's pull. And as a physicist, discovering new sides to gravity's irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein's general theory of relativity.  In The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity (Princeton UP, 2024), de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity, to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life's pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics. While many of us presume to know gravity quite well, the brightest scientists in history have yet to fully answer the simple question: what exactly is gravity? De Rham reveals how great minds--from Newton and Einstein to Stephen Hawking, Andrea Ghez, and Roger Penrose--led her to the edge of knowledge about this fundamental force. She found hints of a hidden side to gravity at the particle level where Einstein's theory breaks down, leading her to develop a new theory of "massive gravity." De Rham shares how her life's path turned from a precipitous fall to an exquisite flight toward the discovery of something entirely new about our surprising, gravity-driven universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does the universe have a purpose? If it does, how is this connected to the meaningfulness that we seek in our lives? In Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023), Philip Goff argues for cosmic purposivism, the idea that the universe does have a purpose – although this is not because there is an all-powerful God who provides it with one. Instead, Goff argues, fundamental physics provides us with reason to think it is probable there is a cosmic purpose – and, moreover, the best explanation of these reasons is to posit cosmopsychism: the idea that there are fundamental forms of consciousness such that the universe itself is a conscious mind. Goff, who is professor of philosophy at Durham University, argues that these claims are not as extravagant as they may initially seem, and that his view provides a way for understanding human purposes that lies between secular humanism and religious or spiritual perspectives. Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The inspiration for Christopher Nolan's major motion picture, Oppenheimer, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography explores the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” – who, like the mythological Prometheus, brought atomic fire to mankind. In deep detail, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage, 2006) explores Oppenheimer's early career at the forefront of quantum physics, his associations with left-wing politics and the Communist Party, his leadership of the Manhattan Project, and his confrontations with the moral and political consequences of scientific progress during the Cold War. Twenty-five years in the making, this definitive biography charts the rise and fall of one of the twentieth century's most iconic and paradoxical characters and restores Oppenheimer's legacy and his humanity. Andrew O. Pace is a historian of moral dilemmas of US foreign relations and an adjunct professor of history at Salt Lake Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.  Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An intimate collection of portraits of internationally renowned scientists and Nobel Prize winners, paired with interviews and personal stories. What makes a brilliant scientist? Who are the people behind the greatest discoveries of our time? Connecting art and science, photographer Herlinde Koelbl seeks the answers in this English translation of the German book Fascination of Science: 60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time (MIT Press, 2023), an indelible collection of portraits of and interviews with sixty pioneering scientists of the twenty-first century. Koelbl's approach is intimate and accessible, and her highly personal interviews with her subjects reveal the forces (as well as the personal quirks) that motivate the scientists' work; for example, one wakes up at 3 am because her mind is calm then, another says his best ideas come to him in the shower. These glimpses into the scientists' lives and thinking add untold texture in this up-to-the-minute survey of the activities and progress that are currently taking place in the broad field of the natural sciences. Koelbl's interview subjects include Nobel Prize winners Dan Shechtman, Frances Arnold, Carolyn Bertozzi, and cover scientific fields from astronomy, biochemistry, and quantum physics to stem-cell research and AI. Beautifully bringing together art, science, and the written word, Fascination of Science is an inspiring read that shows how creativity, obsession, persistence, and passion drive the pioneering researchers of our time. Herlinde Koelbl is a German photographic artist, author, and documentary filmmaker. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barbara M. Sattler's book The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics (Cambridge UP, 2020) examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motion. It investigates which logical tools and methodological principles had to be in place to give a consistent account of motion, and which mathematical notions were introduced to gain control over conceptual problems of motion. It shows how the idea of motion raised two fundamental problems in the 5th and 4th century BCE: bringing together being and non-being, and bringing together time and space. The first problem leads to the exclusion of motion from the realm of rational investigation in Parmenides, the second to Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Methodological and logical developments reacting to these puzzles are shown to be present implicitly in the atomists, and explicitly in Plato who also employs mathematical structures to make motion intelligible. With Aristotle we finally see the first outline of the fundamental framework with which we conceptualise motion today. Professor Barbara Sattler is Chair in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the Ruhr University Bochum. The main area of her research is metaphysics and natural philosophy in the ancient Greek world. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Geologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and their tools, sensors, and cameras, these scientists reported that they felt as if they were on Mars themselves, doing field science. The MER created a virtual experience of being on Mars. In Working on Mars, William Clancey examines how the MER has changed the nature of planetary field science. Drawing on his extensive observations of scientists in the field and at the JPL, Clancey investigates how the design of the rover mission enables field science on Mars, explaining how the scientists and rover engineers manipulate the vehicle and why the programmable tools and analytic instruments work so well for them. He shows how the scientists felt not as if they were issuing commands to a machine but rather as if they were working on the red planet, riding together in the rover on a voyage of discovery. William J. Clancey is Chief Scientist of Human-Centered Computing in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center, and Senior Research Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vincanne Adams's book Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move (Duke UP, 2023) is part of a broader trend in anthropology that is developing new methods and techniques to study our increasingly polluted and toxic world. Adams takes Glyphosate as a case study and follows this chemical as it moves from the past to the present, from the lab to the dinner table, from outside our bodies, to within our cells to grapple with what it is to live in such an entangled world.   Adams explores the chemical glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup and a pervasive agricultural herbicide—as a predicament of contested science and chemically saturated life. Adams traces the history of glyphosate's invention and its multiple uses as activists, regulators, scientists, clinicians, consumers, and sick people try to determine its safety and harm. Scientific and political debates over glyphosate's toxicity are agitated into a swirl—a condition in which certainty is continually contested, divided, and multiplied. This movement replicates the chemical's movement in soils, foods, bodies, archives, labs, and legislative bodies, settling in some places here and in other places there, its potencies changing and altering what it touches with different scales and kinds of impact. The swirl is both an artifact of academic capitalism, activist tactics, and contested scientific facts and a way to capture the complexity of contemporary life with chemicals. Prof. Vincanne Adams, is professor Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Elliott M. Reichardt, MPhil, is a PhD Candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. Elliott's research interests are in capitalism, colonialism, and socio-ecological health in North America. Elliott also has long standing interests in medical anthropology and the history of science and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, cosmologist Janna Levin announces the central theme of this book, which established her as one of the most direct, unorthodox, and creative voices in contemporary science. As Levin sets out to determine how big "really big" may be, she offers a rare intimate look at the daily life of an innovative physicist, complete with jet lag and the tensions between personal relationships and the extreme demands of scientific exploration. Nimbly explaining geometry, topology, chaos, and string theory, Levin shows how the pattern of hot and cold spots left over from the big bang may one day reveal the size of the cosmos. How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space (Princeton UP, 2023) is a thrilling story of cosmology by one of its leading thinkers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The science of finding habitable planets beyond our solar system and the prospects for establishing human civilization away from our ever-less-habitable planetary home. Planet Earth, it turns out, may not be the best of all possible worlds—and lately humanity has been carelessly depleting resources, decimating species, and degrading everything needed for life. Meanwhile, human ingenuity has opened up a vista of habitable worlds well beyond our wildest dreams of outposts on Mars.  Worlds Without End: Exoplanets, Habitability, and the Future of Humanity (MIT Press, 2023) is an expertly guided tour of this thrilling frontier in astronomy: the search for planets with the potential to host life. With the approachable style that has made him a leading interpreter of astronomy and space science, Chris Impey conducts readers across the vast, fast-developing field of astrobiology, surveying the dizzying advances carrying us ever closer to the discovery of life beyond Earth—and the prospect of humans living on another planet. Since the first exoplanet, or planet beyond our solar system, was discovered in 1995, over 4,000 more have been pinpointed, including hundreds of Earth-like planets, many of them habitable, detected by the Kepler satellite. With a view spanning astronomy, planetary science, geology, chemistry, and biology, Impey provides a state-of-the-art account of what's behind this accelerating progress, what's next, and what it might mean for humanity's future. The existential threats that we face here on Earth lend urgency to this search, raising the question: Could space be our salvation? From the definition of habitability to the changing shape of space exploration—as it expands beyond the interests of government to the pursuits of private industry—Worlds without End shows us the science, on horizons near and far, that may hold the answers. Chris Impey is University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why are girls discouraged from doing science? Why do so many promising women leave science in early and mid-career? Why do women not prosper in the scientific workforce? Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science (Oxford UP, 2023) looks back at how society has historically excluded women from the scientific sphere and discourse, what progress has been made, and how more is still needed. Athene Donald, herself a distinguished physicist, explores societal expectations during both childhood and working life using evidence of the systemic disadvantages women operate under, from the developing science of how our brains are―and more importantly aren't―gendered, to social science evidence around attitudes towards girls and women doing science. It also discusses how science is done in practice, in order to dispel common myths: for example, the perception that science is not creative, or that it is carried out by a lone genius in an ivory tower, myths that can be very off-putting to many sections of the population. A better appreciation of the collaborative, creative, and multi-disciplinary nature of science is likely to lead to its appeal to a far wider swathe of people, especially women. This book examines the modern way of working in scientific research, and how gender bias operates in various ways within it, drawing on the voices of leading women in science describing their feelings and experiences. It argues the moral and business case for greater diversity in modern research, the better to improve science and tackle the great challenges we face today. Athene Donald is Professor Emerita in Experimental Physics and Master of Churchill College, University of Cambridge. Other than four years postdoctoral research in the USA, she has spent her career in Cambridge, specializing in soft matter physics and physics at the interface with biology. She was the University of Cambridge's first Gender Equality Champion, and has been involved in numerous initiatives concerning women in science. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and appointed DBE for services to Physics in 2010. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Split & Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, investigates the “underworld” of experimentation and suggests new avenues for telling the history of experimental sciences. Divided in two parts, respectively titled “Infra-Experimentality” and “Supra-Experimentality,” Split & Splice is an attempt at defining the phenomenological and historical contours of “experimentation as a knowledge-generating procedure.” The first part explores how researchers mix and match a variety of mediums, technological tools, and visualization techniques to produce new opportunities of knowledge-making. From nucleic acid sequence gels to structural models and experiment sheets, the reader is introduced to the contingency of the experimentation process and the series of fragmentation and mediation it requires. It is this realization that motivates the author's historiographical considerations in the second part of the book. If the experimental process consists in a complex and changing interplay between various mediums, trace-generating techniques, and modes of visualization, then the narratives of the history of experimental sciences ought to be built around more or less extensive ensembles of experimental apparatus, rather than around retrospectively or abstractly-defined “objects” and “fields.” In this new book, Rheinberger describes and makes visible the different layers and moving parts of the experimentation process in order to provide historians with new threads to follow and new ways of weaving their stories together. Victor Monnin, Ph.D. is an historian of science specialized in the history of Earth sciences. He is also teaching French language and literature to undergraduates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. In The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life (Simon & Schuster, 2023) theoretical physicist Dr. Felix Flicker proves that they are indeed magic—just familiar magic. The name for this magic is “condensed matter physics.” Most people haven't heard of the field, yet more than a third of physicists identify as condensed matter researchers, making it the most active area in the subject—with good reason. Condensed matter is the solids, liquids, and gasses that surround us—and the more exotic matters—which dictate every aspect of our present existence, and hold the keys to a brighter future, from quantum computing to real-life invisibility cloaks. Dr. Flicker teases out the magical threads that run through our daily lives. Condensed matter physics allows you to create anything abiding by the laws of reality—and often, we find that those laws can be bent. Dr. Flicker explains how to create new particles which never existed before, how to make crystals shoot out such intense light they can cut through metal, how to separate the poles of a magnet. And more. The book's endearing conceit is that you, the reader, are an aspiring wizard whose ability to cast spells (i.e. to do science) is dependent on your grasp of the fundamentals of our universe. This book contains no equations or charts—instead, it's full of owls and mountains and infinite libraries, and staffs and wands, and martial arts and mythical islands ruled by sage knot-makers. Part of the book's magic is that, for all these fanciful trappings, it still feels practical and applicable. The Magick of Physics will open your eyes to the miracles that surround us. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephon Alexander talks about a better way of thinking about the interconnections between music, physics, and creativity and how as someone often seen as “outside” the field, he has found freedom to think harder, pursue ideas, and carve a place for himself in the story of science. Alexander and Alexis Boylan discuss how we should be thinking about physics, art, and the meaning of life all together, all the time. Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website. Follow us on Twitter @WhyArguePod and on Instagram @WhyWeArguePod Alexis L. Boylan is the director of academic affairs of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and the Africana Studies Institute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. Brian Villmoare's book The Evolution of Everything: The Patterns and Causes of Big History (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the world, focusing on humanity's origins. It also explores the many natural forces shaping humanity, especially the evolution of the brain and behaviour. Moving through time, the causes of such important transformations as agriculture, complex societies, the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, and modernity are placed in the context of underlying changes in demography, learning, and social organization. Humans are biological creatures, operating with instincts evolved millions of years ago, but in the context of a rapidly changing world, and as we try to adapt to new circumstances, we must regularly reckon with our deep past. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our contributors discuss their work in the arts and sciences, which is showcased in the new article collection, Water Is in the Air: Physics, Politics, and Poetics of Water in the Arts. Water Is in the Air explores the ways that artists, from all over the world, working at the cutting edge of science and engineering, create work that addresses critical issues of water in culture and society. This conversation was recorded on March 19, 2014. Jean-Marc Chomaz, CNRS research director at the École Polytechnique Hydrodynamics Laboratory (Ladhyx) and professor at École Polytechnique. He is a member of the artist group Labofactory. Mikael Fernström and Sean Taylor, the art-science collaborators behind Softday. Fernström and Taylor teach at the University of Limerick. Listen to their sound art piece, "Hypoxia Hibernalis," a shortened version of "Marbh Chrios.” Annick Bureaud, independent art critic, curator and event organizer, researcher and teacher in art and technosciences. She is the director of Leonardo/OLATS, European sister organization to Leonardo/ISAST. Roger Malina, physicist, astronomer, editor-in-chief of Leonardo, and distinguished professor at the University of Texas, Dallas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists discovered that some stars have heartbeats and that some of them can be used to measure the longest distances that exist. This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton  and Liya Rechtman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're hitting up against the very nature of measurement: How can we best describe the world around us, in its infinite complexity, with finite measures? In other words, how hard are rocks? This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman. Measure for Measure is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the science community. In this episode, Chris Gondek spoke with author Harry Collins, whose book Gravity's Kiss centers around the incredible discovery. Scientists have been trying to confirm the existence of gravitational waves for fifty years. Then, in September 2015, came a "very interesting event" (as the cautious subject line in a physicist's email read) that proved to be the first detection of gravitational waves. In Gravity's Kiss, Harry Collins--who has been watching the science of gravitational wave detection for forty-three of those fifty years and has written three previous books about it--offers a final, fascinating account, written in real time, of the unfolding of one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries ever made. Predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves carry energy from the collision or explosion of stars. Dying binary stars, for example, rotate faster and faster around each other until they merge, emitting a burst of gravitational waves. It is only with the development of extraordinarily sensitive, highly sophisticated detectors that physicists can now confirm Einstein's prediction. This is the story that Collins tells. Collins, a sociologist of science who has been embedded in the gravitational wave community since 1972, traces the detection, the analysis, the confirmation, and the public presentation and the reception of the discovery--from the first email to the final published paper and the response of professionals and the public. Collins shows that science today is collaborative, far-flung (with the physical location of the participants hardly mattering), and sometimes secretive, but still one of the few institutions that has integrity built into it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How useful will nuclear fusion be? In a major breakthrough last year at the National Ignition Facility in California, 192 lasers achieved fusion – and created energy - for the first time. It was clearly an important moment. But might the development of fusion technology come too late? Owen Bennett Jones speaks with Sharon Ann Holgate, author of Nuclear Fusion: The Race to Build a Mini Sun on Earth (Icon Books, 2022). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What human qualities are needed to make scientific discoveries, and which to make great art? Many would point to 'imagination' and 'creativity' in the second case but not the first. Tom McLeish's The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art (Oxford UP, 2021) challenges the assumption that doing science is in any sense less creative than art, music or fictional writing and poetry, and treads a historical and contemporary path through common territories of the creative process. The methodological process called the 'scientific method' tells us how to test ideas when we have had them, but not how to arrive at hypotheses in the first place. Hearing the stories that scientists and artists tell about their projects reveals commonalities: the desire for a goal, the experience of frustration and failure, the incubation of the problem, moments of sudden insight, and the experience of the beautiful or sublime. Selected themes weave the practice of science and art together: visual thinking and metaphor, the transcendence of music and mathematics, the contemporary rise of the English novel and experimental science, and the role of aesthetics and desire in the creative process. Artists and scientists make salient comparisons: Defoe and Boyle; Emmerson and Humboldt, Monet and Einstein, Schumann and Hadamard. The book draws on medieval philosophy at many points as the product of the last age that spent time in inner contemplation of the mystery of how something is mentally brought out from nothing. Taking the phenomenon of the rainbow as an example, the principles of creativity within constraint point to the scientific imagination as a parallel of poetry. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of David Lindsay, emeritus professor of the University of Western Australia. We talk about his book Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words (CSIRO Publishing, 2020) and how your hypothesis can save the communication of your research. David Lindsay : "It's quite unfortunate that we're training our undergraduates in science this way. I mean, undergraduates know that when they write something, for example, a protocol to be graded—undergraduates know that their professors are seeking to find out whether the student knows something about the subject. So, as long as there's any semblance at all in the text that the student knows something about the subject, well, then the professor ticks a box and marks the student accordingly. This just encourages undergraduates to dump knowledge, to be writing any sort of rubbish just so long as something substantial-like bubbles out of it that seems to suggest that they have a reasonable understanding of the subject. But when these same undergrads get to the point of writing this way for scientific publication, well, then it all comes crashing down, because they can't just throw information together and hope that reviewers or editors will say, 'Oh, yeah, I think I can see what you mean. You know stuff.'" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just over half a century since Neil Armstrong first stepped foot on the lunar surface, a new space race to the Moon is well underway and rapidly gaining momentum. Laying out a vision for the next fifty years, Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind (Princeton UP, 2022) is astrophysicist Joseph Silk's persuasive and impassioned case for putting scientific discovery at the forefront of lunar exploration. The Moon offers opportunities beyond our wildest imaginings, and plans to return are rapidly gaining momentum around the world. NASA aims to build a habitable orbiting space station to coordinate lunar development and exploration, while European and Chinese space agencies are planning lunar villages and the mining of precious resources dwindling here on Earth. Powerful international and commercial interests are driving the race to revisit the Moon, but lunar infrastructures could also open breathtaking vistas onto the cosmos. Silk describes how the colonization of the Moon could usher in a thrilling new age of scientific exploration, and lays out what the next fifty years of lunar science might look like. With lunar telescopes of unprecedented size situated in permanently dark polar craters and on the far side of the Moon, we could finally be poised to answer some of the most profound questions confronting humankind, including whether we are alone in the Universe and what our cosmic origins are. Addressing both the daunting challenges and the immense promise of lunar exploration and exploitation, Back to the Moon reveals how prioritizing science, and in particular lunar astronomy, will enable us to address the deepest cosmic mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Freeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he went on to explore foundational topics in mathematics, astrophysics, and the origin of life. General readers were introduced to Dyson's roving mind and heterodox approach in his 1979 book Disturbing the Universe, a poignant autobiographical reflection on life and science.  "Well, Doc, You're In": Freeman Dyson's Journey through the Universe (MIT Press, 2022) (the title quotes Richard Feynman's remark to Dyson at a physics conference) offers a fresh examination of Dyson's life and work, exploring his particular way of thinking about deep questions that range from the nature of matter to the ultimate fate of the universe. The chapters—written by leading scientists, historians, and science journalists, including some of Dyson's colleagues—trace Dyson's formative years, his budding interests and curiosities, and his wide-ranging work across the natural sciences, technology, and public policy. They describe Dyson's innovations at the intersection of quantum theory and relativity, his novel nuclear reactor design (and his never-realized idea of a spacecraft powered by nuclear weapons), his years at the Institute for Advanced Study, and his foray into cosmology. In the coda, Dyson's daughter Esther reflects on growing up in the Dyson household. “Well, Doc, You're In” assesses Dyson's successes, blind spots, and influence, assembling a portrait of a scientist's outsized legacy. Contributors: Jeremy Bernstein, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Esther Dyson, George Dyson, Ann Finkbeiner, Amanda Gefter, Ashutosh Jogalekar, David Kaiser, Caleb Scharf, William Thomas. Matthew Jordan is a university instructor, funk musician, and clear writing enthusiast. He studies the history of science and technology, driven by the belief that we must understand the past in order to improve the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim talks with George Gibson about Schrödinger's cat. This cat is a thought experiment proposed by Erwin Schrödinger, and taken up in correspondence with Albert Einstein, in the 1930s. Schrödinger's original paper on the subject, “Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik” (Naturwissenschaften 23 no. 48 (November 1935): 807–812) doi: 10.1007/BF01491891 was translated by John D. Trimmer and published as “The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics: A Translation of Schrödinger's ‘Cat Paradox' Paper.” (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124, No. 5 (Oct. 1980): 323-338) . Schrödinger presents the cat as something of a joke. George Gibson is a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut and an excellent pianist. Image: “Leo was rescued off the streets of Harlem 3.5 years ago and has lived comfortably in a town house with two humans ever since.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Albert Einstein, our understanding of space, time, and gravity hadn't really shifted from the theories that Sir Isaac Newton developed in the 1700s. But in 1905, Einstein published his theory of special relativity; he'd discovered that time can warp in the universe. Then, he published his theory of general relativity and gave us a completely new understanding of gravity. These theories liberated scientists, artists, and the public to think in radical new ways.  Peter Galison is a professor at Harvard University in Physics, History of Science, and related areas of Philosophy. Some of his works include the film Ultimate Weapon: The H-bomb Dilemma (2000, Director), and books Einstein's Clocks and Poincaré's Maps. His current work focuses on the relationship between the self and modern technologies. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Join the conversation on the Lyceum app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plants have long harnessed the chemical characteristics of aromatic compounds to shape the world around them. Frankincense resin from the genus Boswellia seals injured tissues and protects trees from invading pathogens. Jasmine produces a molecule called linalool that attracts pollinating moths with its flowery scent. Tobacco uses a similarly sweet-smelling compound called benzyl acetone to attract pollinators. Only recently in the evolutionary history of plants, however, have humans learned to co-opt their fragrances to seduce, heal, protect, and alter moods themselves. In this wide-ranging and accessible Scent: A Natural History (Yale University Press, 2022), biologist-turned-perfumer Dr. Elise Vernon Pearlstine turns our human-centered perception of fragrance on its head and investigates plants' evolutionary reasons for creating aromatic molecules. Delving into themes of spirituality, wealth, power, addiction, royalty, fantasy, and more, Pearlstine uncovers the natural history of aromatic substances and their intersection with human culture and civilization. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Until the publication of Edwin Hubble's 1936 book, The Realm of the Nebulae, astronomers believed that the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the universe. Hubble infinitely expanded our understanding of the cosmos and showed that what scientists thought was everything, was really just the beginning. In this episode, MIT professor emeritus Marcia Bartusiak unpacks Hubble's findings and discusses how they impact the field of astronomy to this day. Marica Bartusiak is Professor of the Practice Emeritus of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She writes on physics and astronomy and her work has been published in National Geographic Magazine, Discover Magazine, Science Magazine, and many others. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the final day of our weeklong deep dive into the politics of education. Today, we've got another episode of Cited for you. If you haven't heard a Cited episode before, it's the documentary show that came before Darts and Letters and it specialised in immersive storytelling. This piece takes us on a journey through a little-known, long-past set of debates on the nature of science in democratic society: the Science Wars. They may seem lost to time, but some scholars say the Science Wars might just explain how we got our 'post-truth' moment. Learn about the bold hoax that became a determining factor in the Science Wars and how that moment in history might have foretold the wars on science to come. Next week, we'll be bringing you episodes on a whole new theme - activism and academia. You won't want to miss it. And you really won't want to miss our brand-new episodes, launching on the New Books Network from September 18th. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we'd really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there's bonus material on there too. —————————-CONTACT US————————- To stay up to date, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you'd like to write to us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweet Gordon directly. ———-CREDITS———- Today's episode was produced by Gordon Katic, and edited by Cited's Sam Fenn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of DDT as you've never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporations have stoked the flames of science denialism for their own benefit In the 1940s, DDT helped the Allies win the Second World War by wiping out the insects that caused malaria, with seemingly no ill effects on humans. After the war, it was sprayed willy-nilly across fields, in dairy barns, and even in people's homes. Thirty years later the U.S. would ban the use of DDT—only to reverse the ban in the 1990s when calls arose to bring it back to fight West Nile and malaria. What changed?  How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT (Bold Type Books, 2022) traces the surprising history of DDT's rapid rise, infamous fall, and controversial revival to reveal to show that we've been taking the wrong lesson from DDT's cautionary tale. Historian Elena Conis uncovers new evidence that it was not the shift in public opinion following the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring that led to the ban but in fact the behind-the-scenes political machinations of Big Business. She makes a compelling case that the real threat was not DDT itself but the prioritization of profits over public health. ​ If we don't change the ways we make decisions about new scientific discoveries and technologies, Conis argues, we're doomed to keep making the same mistakes and putting people at risk—both by withholding technologies that could help them and by exposing them to dangerous chemicals without their knowledge or consent. In an age when corporations and politicians are shaping our world behind closed doors and deliberately stoking misinformation around public health issues, from pesticides to vaccines to COVID-19 to climate change, we need greater transparency and a new way of communicating about science—as a discipline of discovery that's constantly evolving, rather than a finite and immutable collection of facts—in order to combat the war on facts and protect ourselves and our environment. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky's College of Medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in understanding why particles have mass, had finally been discovered. On the rostrum, surrounded by jostling physicists and media, was the particle's retiring namesake--the only person in history to have an existing single particle named for them. Why Peter Higgs? Drawing on years of conversations with Higgs and others, Close illuminates how an unprolific man became one of the world's most famous scientists. Close finds that scientific competition between people, institutions, and states played as much of a role in making Higgs famous as Higgs's work did. A revelatory study of both a scientist and his era, Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass (Basic Book, 2022) will remake our understanding of modern physics. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Niels Bohr was a central figure in quantum physics, well known for his work on atomic structure and his contributions to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In From Data to Quanta: Niels Bohr's Vision of Physics (U Chicago Press, 2021), philosopher of science Slobodan Perović explores the way Bohr practiced and understood physics, and analyzes its implications for our understanding of modern science. Perović develops a novel approach to Bohr's understanding of physics and his method of inquiry, presenting an exploratory symbiosis of historical and philosophical analysis that uncovers the key aspects of Bohr's philosophical vision of physics within a given historical context. Ana Georgescu studied astrophysics and physics at Harvard University and is now a science consultant and writer based in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices