New Books in Science

New Books in Science

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: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Episodes

Kenneth Aizawa, "Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

January 10, 2026 • 60 mins
How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a double-helix structure when they observed Franklin’s image 51, or how did Hodgkin and Huxley reason that sodium ions carried the current flowing into the membrane of a voltage-clamped giant squid axon? In Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A granular approach (Camb...
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Heino Falcke and Jörg Römer, "Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us" (HarperCollins, 2021)

January 9, 2026 • 73 mins
An astrophysicist chronicles his quest to photograph a black hole and reflects on its spiritual ramifications in this international-bestselling memoir. On April 10, 2019, award-winning astrophysicist Heino Falcke presented the first image ever captured of a black hole at an international press conference—a turning point in astronomy that Science magazine called the scientific breakthrough of the year. That photo was captured with ...
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Marc Berman, "Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

January 8, 2026 • 33 mins
Dr. Marc Berman, the pioneering creator of the field of environmental neuroscience, has discovered the surprising connection between mind, body, and environment, with a special emphasis on the natural environment. He has devoted his life to studying it. If you sometimes feel drained, distracted, or depressed, Dr. Berman has identified the elements of a “nature prescription” that can boost your energy, sharpen your focus, change you...
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Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)

January 6, 2026 • 63 mins
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongsi...
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Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)

January 1, 2026 • 32 mins
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency--or free will--is an illusion. In Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton UP, 2023), leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that w...
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James Welsh et al., "Weathering Space" (American Scientist 114:1 2026)

December 31, 2025 • 47 mins
Past human space missions were protected by Earth’s magnetic field and a measure of luck, but future missions beyond the Earth–Moon system will face far greater and longer-lasting radiation risks that cannot be managed by route planning alone. The authors argue that safe deep-space exploration will require major advances in understanding radiation, developing effective shielding, and mitigating both acute and long-term health effec...
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James Franklin and Jeremiah Joven Joaquin eds., "The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

December 24, 2025 • 55 mins
The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability (Bloomsbury, 2025) is an open access book that covers four decades of work by the leading Australian philosopher, mathematician and historian of ideas, James Franklin.These interlinking essays are connected by a core theme: the necessary structures in reality that allow certain knowledge of absolute truths. Franklin's Aristotelian re...
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Yossi Yovel, "The Genius Bat: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

December 16, 2025 • 64 mins
With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, from the tiny bumblebee bat to the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Some bats eat fruit and nectar; others eat frogs, scorpions, or fish. Vampire bats feed on blood. Bats are the only mammals that can fly; their fingers have elongated throu...
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Jeremy Bernstein 11–2007

December 10, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode from the Institute’s vault, we revisit an October 2007 presentation by theoretical physicist and Institute Fellow Jeremy Bernstein on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb, and the nuclear arms race that followed. As a physicist, Bernstein made contributions to elementary particle physics and cosmology, working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New York University, and Stevens Institute of Technolo...
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Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand

December 8, 2025 • 102 mins
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Thomas Haigh, Professor and Chair of History and affiliate of the Department of Computer Science at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about his forthcoming book on the history of artificial intelligence. The book, which has had the working title _Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand_ with the final title to be determined, examines how and why historical actors have decided t...
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Jon Willis, "The Pale Blue Data Point: An Earth-Based Perspective on the Search for Alien Life" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

December 3, 2025 • 78 mins
A thrilling tour of Earth that shows the search for extraterrestrial life starts in our own backyard.Is there life off Earth? Bound by the limitations of spaceflight, a growing number of astrobiologists investigate the question by studying life on our planet. Astronomer and author Jon Willis shows us how it’s done, allowing readers to envision extraterrestrial landscapes by exploring their closest Earth analogs in The Pale Blue Da...
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Andrew H. Jaffe, "The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help Us Make Sense of the Cosmos" (Yale UP, 2025)

November 25, 2025 • 89 mins
An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos All of us understand the world around us by constructing models, comparing them to observations, and drawing conclusions. Scientists create, test, and replace these models by applying the twinned concepts of probability and randomness. Exploring how this process has refined our knowle...
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Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

November 19, 2025 • 54 mins
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies--the United States and China--have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate w...
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Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth

November 13, 2025 • 55 mins
Humanity’s relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if there are objects in space that are so large and heavy that not even light can escape them? Almost 250 years later, in April 2019, scientists presented the first picture of a black hole. Profoundly inspired by that image, physicist Jonas Enander has traveled the world to investigate how ...
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Craig Hogan, "The Unlikely Primeval Sky" (American Scientist, November-December)

November 13, 2025 • 30 mins
Of all the patterns that could possibly be preserved in the post–Big Bang radiation, the one we see is surprisingly smooth on large angular scales. Sitting by a campfire on a dark night, looking up at the Milky Way, a curious child asks, “What does the sky tell us? Where does it all come from? Does space go on forever?” A caring adult might share a little awe and humility about humanity’s place in the grand scheme or perhaps rela...
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Eduardo Mercado III, "Why Whales Sing" (JHU Press, 2025)

November 11, 2025 • 65 mins
With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing continuously for ten hours or more, changing the unique songs they sing every year. In Why Whales Sing (JHU Press, 2025), bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges dec...
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Marcus Chown, "A Crack in Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage" (Apollo, 2025)

November 7, 2025 • 77 mins
What is space? What is time? Where did the universe come from? The answers to mankind's most enduring questions may lie in science's greatest enigma: black holes.A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. This can occur when a star approaches the end of its life. Unable to generate enough heat to maintain its outer layers, it shrinks catastrophically down to an infinitely ...
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James Trefil and Shobita Satyapal, "Supermassive: Black Holes at the Beginning and End of the Universe" (Smithsonian Books, 2025)

November 7, 2025 • 61 mins
Black holes, demystified: follow along the quest to understand the history and influence of one of space science's most fascinating and confounding phenomenaLed by physicist James Trefil and astrophysicist Shobita Satyapal, Supermassive: Black Holes at the Beginning and End of the Universe (Smithsonian Books, 2025) traverses the incredible history of black holes and introduces contemporary developments and theories on still unanswe...
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Liam Graham, "Physics Fixes All the Facts" (Springer Nature, 2025)

November 5, 2025 • 46 mins
Complex systems seem to magically emerge from the interactions of their parts. A whirlpool emerges from water molecules. A living cell from organic molecules. You emerge from the cells of your body. Not since chaos has a concept from physics spread like wildfire to other disciplines. Emergence can be found from chemistry to economics; from psychology to ecology. At its heart is the alluring idea that there's more to the world than ...
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Vlatko Vedral, "Portals to a New Reality: Five Pathways to the Future of Physics" (Basic Books, 2025)

October 31, 2025 • 74 mins
For the last century, physics has been treading along the paths set by the same two theories--quantum theory and general relativity--and, let's face it, it's getting pretty boring. Most scientists are simply chasing decimal points in laboratories, unable to explore the theories at large scales, where serious discrepancies could emerge. The situation is a lot like the one physics was in in 1890, right before Planck, Einstein, and B...
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