New Books in Biology and Evolution

Jan 19 2025 415 ep. 55 mins 109
New Books in Biology and Evolution Podcast artwork

Interviews with biologists and evolutionary scientists about their new books

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Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, "Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Jan 19 2025 40 mins  
One of the twentieth century's great paleontologists and science writers, Stephen Jay Gould was, for Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, also a close colleague and friend. In Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould (Columbia UP, 2024), they take up the tradition of Gould's acclaimed essays on natural history, offering a series of

Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Jan 15 2025 65 mins  
Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to dogs' evolutionary becoming, suggest that they do. Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Mariam Motamedi Fraser dissects this story. This book offers a rich empirical analysis and critique

David Strayer, "Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

Jan 12 2025 36 mins  
Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024) is an exciting foray into Earth's inland waters, the remarkable species they contain, and the conservation challenges of protecting them. In Beyond the Sea, he introduces readers to the world's most remarkable and varied inland waters, including massive lakes that fill only once a century, grou

Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)

Jan 11 2025 75 mins  
Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures―women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female bra

Brandon Keim, "Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World" (Norton, 2024)

Jan 01 2025 96 mins  
What does the science of animal intelligence mean for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us? Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individua

Charles Foster, "Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)

Dec 29 2024 62 mins  
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousne

Michael Bresalier, "Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

Dec 27 2024 67 mins  
Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890—1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) by Dr. Michael Bresalier traces the history of this breakthrough and its implications for understanding and controlling influenza ever since. Examining how influenza came to be defined as a viral disease in the firs

Other Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith (EF, JP)

Dec 19 2024 50 mins  
Peter Godfrey-Smith knows his cephalopods. Once of CUNY and now a professor of history and philosophy of science at University of Sydney, his truly capacious career includes books such as Theory and Reality (2003; 2nd edition in 2020), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (2009) and most recently Metazoa. RtB--including two Brandeis undergraduates as guest hosts, Izzy Dupré

Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Dec 13 2024 66 mins  
Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and mode

Andrea Scarantino, "Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide" (Routledge, 2024)

Dec 10 2024 72 mins  
This interview is an exception to our “single author monographs” rule, because the edited collection that is its topic is an intellectual achievement worth making an exception for in over 12 years of New Books in Philosophy podcasts. Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide: Volume I and Volume II (Routledge, 2024) is a two-volume compendium of 62 chapters on emotion t