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New Books in Science: Daily Summaries Delivered
by 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: 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
Latest Episodes
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- 1 weeks ago59 min
Georgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond" (U Edinburgh Press, 2025)
Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable development, and marine conservation to meet the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) and beyond. Ocean Heritage—spanning tangible sites, such as shipwrecks or submerged harbours, and intangible connections such as traditional practices and knowledge systems—remains underrepresented in ocean governance. Yet it offers critical insights for more effective policy and research. Its inclusion is essential to ensuring science is informed by human–ocean relationships and responsive to the needs of communities. Led by the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP), the Ocean Decade’s only programme focused on Ocean Heritage, this text demonstrates how heritage supports all 10 Ocean Decade Challenges. Ocean Heritage strengthens climate adaptation, improves spatial planning, and supports equitable governance by grounding decisions in historical context and lived experience. The paper draws on more than 20 CHFP-endorsed initiatives, offering clear case studies and actionable recommendations for policy alignment, institutional support, and multidisciplinary collaboration. As the Ocean Decade reaches its midpoint, this book offers a path forward: one where science draws on the full range of human—ocean relationships to guide sustainable, equitable action. Ocean Heritage is not a symbolic gesture—it is a fundamental human right. Rather than treating culture as an add-on to marine conservation, this paper calls for its broad integration into ocean science and decision-making. Athena Trakadas is a maritime archeologist who studies underwater and coastal marine cultural heritage and advises international and national heritage, marine science and governmental organizations. Helen Dewar is an historian of the Atlantic World and French colonization in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. She is a professor of history at the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada) and the author of Disputing New France: Companies, Sovereignty and Law in the French Atlantic, 1598-1663 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). helen.dewar[at]umontreal.ca Helen’s institutional website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- 2 weeks ago56 min
Philippa Gander, "Life in Sync: The Science of Internal Clocks and How We’re Disrupting Them" (Princeton UP, 2025)
All of life is profoundly shaped by the daily, monthly, and yearly cycles of our planet, and all creatures have internal timekeeping systems that rely on cues from the surrounding environment. With modern technology, we are changing our environments—and by proxy, the ecosystems around us—to override these innate rhythms of life. But at what cost? Life in Sync: The Science of Internal Clocks and How We're Disrupting Them (Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals how Earth’s rotations shape our biology, what human sleep cycles looked like before the advent of artificial light, and why technology can’t free us from the constraints of our circadian clocks. Philippa Gander explores the science behind the biological rhythms that animate us and our world, blending captivating storytelling with illuminating examples ranging from migratory birds and hibernating squirrels to jet-lagged pilots and astronauts in space. She shows how genetic circadian clocks are an ancient evolutionary adaptation that we share with all life on the planet, and how our rapidly expanding use of artificial light at night disrupts the time cues for entire ecosystems. Gander explains why cutting back on sleep adversely affects our well-being, safety, and longevity, and how breakthroughs in sleep science offer solutions to bring our lives more in harmony with nature’s rhythms. An astonishing journey of scientific discovery, Life in Sync unlocks the mysteries of biological time—and offers new perspectives for anyone who has ever given up a good night’s sleep for the sake of their hectic waking hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- 2 weeks ago1h 18m
Kit Chapman, "The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry" (Profile Books, 2026)
The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers. The Enlightenment is usually credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science blossomed gradually. As early innovators distilled, smelted, forged and fermented their way through the centuries, they blurred science and mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries. In reading The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry (Profile Books, 2026), join Kit Chapman on a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease and transmute lead into gold as he reveals the illuminating stories of how the alchemists first broke new ground and shaped the scientific method. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- 3 weeks ago52 min
Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #3 with Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a day-long conference titled Audio and Ideas: Exploring the Possibilities for Scholarly Podcasting. It was co-sponsored by Princeton’s Journalism program, and the NYU Podcast Initiative. Over the course of four panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In the third panel, Allison Carruth and Ellen Horne discussed the relationship between podcasting and science. Carruth is a professor at Princeton’s Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. At Princeton, she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads Blue Lab, an environmental media and storytelling studio. Her research and teaching areas include climate storytelling, environmental art and narrative, contemporary food movements and the evolving relationships between technology and environmentalism in American culture. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food. Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her research is focused on performance, documentation, the perception of authority in voice, labor and production in audio and podcasting. Horne was producer for Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, a 13-episode investigative podcast that told the story of shocking misconduct at a Virginia state crime lab. Admissible won the Gold Award for Best Documentary at the Signal Awards; an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the Public Media Award NETA for Best Podcast. Horne was an executive producer at Audible and an executive producer for WNYC’s Radiolab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- Jun 28, 202651 min
Ijeoma Uchegbu, "Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)
By one of the world's leading chemists, an entertaining and revealing tour of the chemical bonds that shape our everyday lives and provide the infrastructure for our chaotic world. We all have a relationship with chemistry. Bonds between molecules, forged and broken in the blink of an eye, underpin everything from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the ways we treat illnesses and construct our homes. It’s a relationship we nurture, whether we know it or not, and for leading chemist Ijeoma Uchegbu, it was serious from the beginning. In Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World (HarperCollins, 2026) Uchegbu shows us the world through a chemist’s eyes, revealing the intricate science we take for granted: how our body’s most fundamental chemical structure, our DNA, is estimated to be two meters long, resting tightly within each of our cells; how egg yolks are held together by weak chemical bonds that make them primed for emulsifying our salad dressings; and how the chemical makeup of PFAs, or “forever chemicals,” makes them so good at sticking around. Along the way, we travel from Uchegbu’s home in London to Nigeria, where cooking experiments go awry in her family kitchen, and to Italy, where the chemically inert compounds that make up stained glass keep medieval windows shining. The careful interplay of bonds and molecules brings a sense of order and wonder to the chaos of our lives, she shows, and we don’t have to wear a lab coat or study solutions in beakers to appreciate it. For readers of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and anyone who wanted to be like Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry, Chain Reaction is a lively and intimate portrait of the wondrous and under-explored field that shapes our everyday lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- May 30, 20261h 11m
Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" (Basic Books, 2018)
In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (Basic Books, 2018), Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible. Pedro Domingos is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington. He is a winner of the SIGKDD Innovation Award, the highest honor in data science. A fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, he lives near Seattle. Gregory McNiff is a Managing Director in the New York office of the Blueshirt Group, an IR firm focused on technology; he has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book review). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- May 30, 202653 min
Janani Balasubramanian and Natalie Gosnell, "Art-Science Undisciplined: A Playbook for Transformative Collaboration" (U California Press, 2026)
Art-Science Undisciplined invites us into a collaborative journey grounded in mutual exploration and transformation. Moving beyond transactional exchanges of expertise, artist Janani Balasubramanian and astrophysicist Natalie Gosnell draw on their own experiences, as well as stories from other art-science collaborators, to offer an imaginative guide for developing a values-based and joyful undisciplined practice. This playbook offers practical and conceptual tools for co-creation that foster new, powerful alliances among artists, scientists, and their supporters. While attentive to the everyday reality of busy schedules and institutional demands, Balasubramanian and Gosnell illuminate strategies to change our current ways of working and dare us to imagine a more expansive future. The projects, potentials, and possibilities resulting from undisciplined creation will reshape not only the practitioners but their worlds altogether. Janani Balasubramanian is an artist, director, and founder based at Stanford University. Natalie Gosnell is an astrophysicist, artist, and Associate Professor of Physics at Colorado College. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
- May 24, 202658 min
Samuel Markind, "Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain" (JHU Press, 2025)
Explores the profound power of music to influence brain function and well-being. IPA 2026 Distinguished Favorite in the Music Category Why does music influence how we feel so deeply--and what are the scientific mechanisms behind this phenomenon? In M usic Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain (JHU Press, 2025) Dr. Samuel Markind explores the intriguing relationship between music and brain function. Using evolutionary theory, he illuminates the pivotal role that music plays in human survival and procreation. From communication and caregiving to social bonding and partner selection, music has molded the human species and continues to shape our lives in remarkable ways. This book combines insights from neuroscience and psychology with helpful drawings and vivid examples to present compelling evidence for music's life-enhancing potential. Dr. Markind highlights the brain's instinctive capacity for music: from newborns' natural affinity for rhythm and melody to the effect that music has on brain development throughout the lifespan. Music also helps people learn at any age and in any condition, so it can improve speech, movement, and memory in both healthy individuals and those suffering from illness or injury. Dr. Markind encourages readers to engage actively with music. Whether through singing, dancing, or instrument playing, the benefits of active participation are profound and accessible to everyone, regardless of musical background. This book, filled with straightforward and practical suggestions, is an inspiring guide for anyone seeking to enrich their life through music. Music Between Your Ears shows how the act of engaging with music can profoundly impact your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. And the benefits of music go far beyond entertainment--they're essential to the very fabric of what makes us human. Samuel Markind's website here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science
About 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
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