A Good Science Read

Oct 15 2024 10 ep. 32 mins 16

A Good Science Read Podcast artwork

Interested in science and the people behind the science? Looking for an informative, entertaining, thought-provoking and accessible read? Join Professor Dame Frances Ashcroft and her guests as they discuss their favourite popular science books, share their love of science and the books they consider most enjoyable and that offer something to everyone. Episodes will be published fortnightly. Professor Ashcroft is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College Oxford. Her own books include Life at the Extremes: the science of survival and The Spark of Life: electricity in the human body.

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Why Sex Matters

Oct 15 2024 42 mins

Professor Russell Foster and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley and Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson. Series 2 Episode 9 The Red Queen is an excellent and accessible overview of sexual evolution. It discusses why sex matters, why most organisms have 2 genders, why we are not all hermaphrodit

A Good Science Read: A Walk on the Wild Side

Oct 15 2024 44 mins

Professor Richard Fortey joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and Wilding by Isabella Tree. Series 2 Episode 8 Entangled Life is fascinating journey into the world of fungi - what they are, how they evolved, their hyphal networks below the ground, their mycorrhizal relationships with plants, their symbiotic interactions with algae in lichen

A Good Science Read: On the Origin of Modern Humans

Oct 15 2024 20 mins

Professor Chris Miller and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Who We Are and How We Got Here' by the Harvard geneticist David Reich. Series 2 Episode 7: The book 'Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past' is a compelling account of the origin of modern humans. Reich explains how our recent ability to study ancient DNA has dramatically revis

A Good Science Read: How everything works

May 13 2024 34 mins

Dr Roger Highfield joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss Pain: A Ladybird Expert book by Irene Tracey and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Pain is a very short book but it encompasses everything you want to know about pain in a clear and informative way. What it is, how we measure it, why we need it, and how we can – and often alas, cannot – treat it.

A Good Science Read: How humans changed the landscape and ourselves

Apr 29 2024 39 mins

Professor Peter Burge joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles by Jay Owens and The Species that Changed Itself or How prosperity reshaped humanity by Edwin Gale. Dust is all around us and we breathe it in with every breath we take, but it is not something most of think much about. Yet it impacts all our lives in multiple ways, caus

A Good Science Read: Evolution - from Fossils to Finches

Apr 15 2024 37 mins

Professor Paul Smith and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould and The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Wonderful Life focuses on the weird and wonderful fossils found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies – their discovery, what they tell us about evolution and their re-evaluation many years later. The Beak of the Finch is also about

A Good Science Read: The Secret Life of the Cuckoo

Apr 01 2024 22 mins

Professor Richard Boyd joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss Cuckoo - Cheating by Nature by Nick Davies. The cuckoo is a ruthless parasite that lays its egg in another bird’s nest, tricks them into accepting the egg as its own and entices them to feed its chick. This book is a riveting account of an extraordinary bird and it reads like a detective story. Nick Davies asks ev

A Good Science Read: The importance of Mathematics and Engineering

Mar 18 2024 42 mins

Professor Marcus du Sautoy joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss A Mathematician’s Apology by GH Hardy and Exactly: How Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester. A Mathematician’s Apology is GH Hardy’s panegyric on pure mathematics in which he claims that pure maths is the pinnacle of the sciences and that it has an inherent beauty. Exactly tells the stori

A Good Science Read: The Story of Penicillin

Mar 04 2024 39 mins

Professor Matthew Freeman and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss "The Mould in Dr Florey's Coat" by Eric Lax This book tells the true story of the penicillin miracle – penicillin being the mould in Dr Florey’s coat. When most people are asked who discovered penicillin they invariably answer Alexander Fleming. But he was merely one of the people involved and arguably not even th

A Good Science Read

Professor Frances Ashcroft gives a short introduction to this exciting new series