Read Science!

Streamed live on 4 August 2021. Joanne and Jeff talked with historian Lucy Jane Santos about her new book, Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Joanne and Jeff talked with returning “Read Science!” guest, Cynthia Barnett about her book, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Recorded on 1 July for release on 6 July 2021. Joanne and Jeff talked with marine biologist & author Helen Scales about her new book, The Brilliant Abyss : Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean and the Looming Threat that Imperils It. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, […]

Streamed live on 18 June 2021. Joanne and Jeff welcomed back Liz Lee Heinecke as guest to talk about her new experiment and learning book for kids, Biology for Kids : Science Experiments and Science Activities Inspired by Awesome Biologists, Past and Present. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links […]

Streamed live on 28 May 2021. Joanne and Jeff talked with Dr. David Robert Grimes about his book, Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! […]

Streamed live on 28 April 2021. Joanne and Jeff spoke with physicist, author, and ailurophile extraordinaire, Greg Gbur about his book, Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics: A Headlong Dive into the Science of How Cats Land on Their Feet. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and […]

Streamed live on 13 July 2020. Joanne and Jeff talked with Marta Zaraska, author of Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Streamed live on 29 June 2020. Joanne and Jeff talked with returning guest, Emily Anthes about her new book, The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health and Happiness. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Streamed live on 7 May 2020. Joanne and Jeff spoke with author Mario Livio about his latest book, Galileo and the Science Deniers. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Streamed live on 9 April 2020. Joanne and Jeff spoke with Dr. Ainissa Ramirez about her new book, The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another. Like “Read Science!” on Facebook to hear about upcoming programs, easy links to the archive, and news about RS! guests: https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience/.

Streamed live on 30 July 2019. Since forever, it seems, people have been trying to decide what unique characteristic separates mammals from all other animals–and what unique characteristic separates humans from all other mammals. And yet, no one seems to have a definitive answer. Liam Drew, in his book I, Mammal: The Story of What […]

Streamed live on 11 July 2019. From Egyptology to satellites in space, from archaeological sites in Peru to remote sensing, we found an abundance of fascinating and exciting topics of discussion with our guest, archaeologist Sarah Parcak, author of Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past. While she writes about projects that she […]

Streamed live on 18 June 2019. Our guest today takes on some big ideas in his book, but the biggest may be the conundrum that has confounded physicists ever since Newton wrote down his Law of Universal Gravitation: why does mathematics seem to work so well at describing the universe that physicists try to explain? […]

Streamed live on 20 March 2019. Sports recovery–making the most of your workouts with less pain and/or more gain–was the topic in this episode of “Read Science!” when our guest was Christie Aschwanden, a science journalist and elite athlete herself, and author of Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn […]

Streamed live on 11 February 2019. Theoretical physicists often will talk about their favorite theories as “beautiful”, and many will use criteria of what they call “beauty” to judge the likely veracity of competing theories, as well as the success of their own work. Most physicists are aware of this–but where does this idea come […]

Streamed live on 15 November 2018. The details of just how our Solar System came to be, starting with a large, rotating solar nebula and ending with our Sun, our planetary companions, and moons and asteroids and comets, have been vague up until recent decades when scientists turned their deductive attention toward those unassuming asteroids […]

Streamed live on 8 November 2018. Probability, statistics, and math–oh my! For some, it’s the stuff of nightmares, but reading Ben’s book makes it all more of a dream. Who ever thought math could be such fun! Our guest in this episode was Ben Orlin, mathematician, bad artist, and author of Math with Bad Drawings: […]

Streamed live on 4 October 2018. By the end of nineteenth century, buying food in American was dangerous–sometimes deadly. “Milk” might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This didn’t happen by accident; […]

Streamed live on 6 September 2018. David Quammen returned to “Read Science!” to discuss his latest book with us, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. When the subject is the entire history of life on Earth, you know we had lots to talk about: the discovery of Archaea as the (contentious) “Third […]

Streamed live on 18 June 2018. We love dinosaurs, and their story is a big one. In this episode we talked with paleontologist Steve Brusatte about his new book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World. Dinosaurs were, by a huge margin, the most successful group of animals […]