The transcript for this segment is being processed. Before we go, we got a couple good suggestions here from listener Audrey Morosky, who says, “Here are two science books in 2020 that are on my list, but I haven’t read them yet, Camilla Pang’s Explaining Humans, which won the 2020 Royal Society Book Prize, and Bill Bryson’s The Body.”. And I feel like this book, Jane Hirshfield’s Ledger, is one that gets that across. The author of the deeply moving book H is for Hawk returns this month with Vesper Flights, a collection of essays about the relationship between humans and nature. And again, we might be sick of reading about the coronavirus. So Christakis is a physician and the director of Yale’s Human Nature Lab. A blistering and necessary look at how emerging technologies reproduce and, in some cases, deepen social inequality. It’s a book that tries to make the connection between the way we reason about others and how they think, maybe in exactly the same process about how we reason about ourselves. Oct 16, 2020, Part 2 Listen. July 3, 2020. JOHN DANKOSKY: Brian, you have the Black Hole Survival Guide on your list. I think if you’re someone who’s been kind of drinking from the fire hose since March, like I’m sure we all have, I don’t know that you’ll necessarily learn something new. But then it just seems to be so prescient, so exactly on-the-nose of what we’re thinking about. Brooklyn Public Library gives out a literary prize each year. She uses just a series of really fun analogies the whole time. Listen to full episode . This book by Ainissa Ramirez gives you a real sense of how to unlock some of that curiosity about just things that you didn’t really think about, probably, that are in your everyday life. We’re talking about the best science books of 2020 with Brian Muldoon from the Brooklyn Public Library and Valerie Thompson from Science Magazine. And it’s called The Alchemy of Us. And I was starting to notice a difference in just kind of the health of my hair and my skin. And this book really, really kind of highlights just how we owe absolutely everything to mushrooms. He’s based in Brooklyn, New York. })(); And this is a time when people are really maybe leaning heavily into the antimicrobial cleaners and things. He doesn’t necessarily say that everybody should just completely give up showering, but maybe re-examine some of your daily hygiene practices. Dec 11, 2020, Part 2 by Science Friday for free. } She talks to supervisors. This checks all the boxes for an enjoyable page turner I’ve really enjoyed. But there are a couple of science poetry books that I read last year, one that was kind of playful by Brenda Shaughnessy called The Octopus Museum. You can get them to us on Twitter and so many other ways. And one of the things that I found most interesting is that she even posits that race itself is a technology, that it’s a tool that we use in society to stratify and kind of codify some of these social inequalities. And so it’s focused on the behavioral implications of indoor design in a bunch of different contexts. Science journalist Angela Saini does an expert job investigating and debunking the pseudoscience of race. This is Nicholas Christakis’s Apollo’s Arrow. So for example, she spends a whole chapter talking about microbes in our homes. And it really makes it so you can really kind of get deep into the dirt. I can’t think of any books specifically from this year. She writes about some of the looming apocalypses that we have coming. VALERIE THOMPSON: Yeah. In this combination of natural history and memoir, Svensson traces our understanding of the secretive and solitary eel. Published: 01st March, 2020 at 00:01 . But her book is timely, paying special attention to the ways in which race and privilege and sex have played roles in the invention of certain materials or objects and their uses and influence. And one of the things that I really think elevates it above other books on fungi– I’m kind of one of these people who’s long been fascinated by it. These interviews create a portrait of how people in the LAPD are using and thinking about data. Tell us about Race After Technology– Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Matt? Take the physician who tried to save Alexander Hamilton after his fateful duel, put him in NYC where he would create America’s first botanical garden—smack dab where Rockefeller Center is now—and add his founding of Bellevue Hospital and the New York Historical Society. Thanks so much for that. senior editor Valerie Thompson to highlight some of the science books you may have missed this year. John Dankosky is a contributing editor with Science Friday, and occasional guest host. And so I think that for that reason– like I said, it’s just not something that can be easily conveyed in nonfiction. Also, it’s fine to have a huge stack of books and not get to half of them. Well, I’ve got a pretty easy solution for the doing away with too much buying of books, and that’s the library. So she’s just got these fun paintings and stuff like that that really illustrate, quite literally, these very kind of hard-to-grasp, mind-bending concepts. And they’re still trying to figure out how to clean it up. Weaving together heavy science with biographical narratives, this nuanced history illuminates the deep societal impact of the rush to mass manufacture this element at the core of the atomic bomb. Follow Science Friday to never miss another show. JOHN DANKOSKY: No, you just don’t have enough time for all that, right? And she kind of walks through everything, starting with gravity and theory of relativity, and brings you right up to kind of these hot controversies surrounding how black holes disappear and things like that. Crises in the biosphere—climate change, extinctions—collide with crises in human life. 10 of the best popular science books out in March 2020. We need more voices of Black science communicators like Ramirez to fill our bookshelves, and she is certain to inspire more. BRIAN MULDOON: Yeah, exactly. Subscribe to our preview newsletter. And we’re going to be hearing some of your suggestions throughout the segment, as well, because we’re joined by a live Zoom audience. This was actually probably my favorite book on my list. My name is Jeff and I’m in Northern California. Preview: The Science Friday Book Club Reads ‘Lost Feast’ Lenore Newman explores the history (and extinction) of some food favorites in ‘Lost Feast.’ We’ll read it together this spring. All rights reserved. And then another interesting way that it changed things is that because instruments like the cello and the violin and guitars produce these very soft tones that were hard for the phonograph to pick up, louder instruments like the piano or the trumpet or the trombone actually became more popular in recorded music, because they were easier to record. Gina de la Cerva tackles the question from a bunch of different perspectives and scales. So Valerie, I want to get back to your list. So it’s really interesting. Thanks so much for having me. The pandemic has nixed many summer vacation plans, but our summer science book list will help you still escape. Plus, how racism pervades public places meant for everyone, and how naked mole rats’ brains may have valuable clues for our own. But I would try reading more than one book at a time. Thank you both so much for sharing some of your best books of 2020 with us. When she’s not shelving books as a library assistant, she’s adding to her impressive Pez dispenser collection. I also think this is like– if you’re looking for Christmas gifts, this is a really great one, because in addition to it being really interesting, it’s also a very handsome volume. So Sarah Brayne, what she does is she went to spend five years interviewing folks at the LAPD, which is one of the most tech-savvy departments in America. And it’s funny because, like you said, this book was obviously written in pre-pandemic times. Listen to a SciFri interview with Ramirez back in April. And we can kind of flip the script on it. It’s never going to be the same way that it was before. What I think makes this book especially important for a scientific audience is its incisive indictment of the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—hypocrisies that pervade institutions that think of themselves as “progressive.”. He moves from his own stories of eel fishing with his father to stories of eel fishermen in Sweden and Japan, and how their lives have been impacted by their declining population. The Alchemy of Us is a brilliant historical examination of inventions that have changed society, and was recently recommended by Ed Yong. It will be posted within one week after the episode airs. This one is really, really amusing. Brian, welcome. https://t.co/FF8cpl2q37, — Meadhbh Dhommnail (@Meadhbh) December 8, 2020, Children’s Librarian at the Clinton Hill Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. But there’s no reason that needs to be the case. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. Listen to Anthes discuss the indoor microbiome on Science Friday. (Via Kyla from Seattle). https://pshoffman.com/writing-resources/2020-best-science-fiction-books And this really kind of illuminated a lot of exactly what was going on. JOHN DANKOSKY: And it made you feel what it’s like to be a mushroom. It includes a very nuanced discussion of bushmeat, which is useful as we try to figure out how to reduce the spread of zoonotic diseases. By showing how each species communicates, plays, parents, works, and thinks, she reminds us that there is no one way to be a bird.”. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. And the same thing is often used for algorithms that are used in determining whether somebody’s going to be eligible for parole or where police should patrol and things like that. But the book basically encourages readers to think about whether or not the built environment is really serving your needs. Her favorite stories involve space, sound, and strange animal discoveries. Zoology, climate change and a book about blood make our list of the best new science books out this month. So The Apocalypse Factory by Steve Olson, who is a journalist out of Seattle with a background in science– and so what this book does is it pretty much traces the history of plutonium, its discovery at UC Berkeley and then its mass production and use in the atomic bomb. Valerie, open-office floor plans weren’t people’s favorite thing. Katie Feather is a producer for Science Friday and the proud mother of two cats, Charleigh and Sadie. It is focused on a factor that’s set to play a larger and larger role moving forward: big data. This book is a really nice real-time synthesis of the COVID-19 pandemic that looks at the complex interactions at play, from the epidemiology, to the immunology, to human behavior, and social networks. But he also kind of shows what it was like for the machinists who were building the site, the farmers that were having to kind of deal with all the toxic material under the air and things like that, and just the long-running kind of legacy of this thing. My mom spent part of her childhood in the area and has a lot of stories about it. VALERIE THOMPSON: I would say one of the things that resonated with me about a particularly bad design, which you would not necessarily think about, would be open-office floor plans. And it continued on well into the Cold War, until it was discontinued in the ’70s. And I want to hear from Brian, too, on this, because this is a big problem for a lot of people who love books, maybe love science books. VALERIE THOMPSON: Yeah. Eagerly awaiting book 3 of the trilogy. VALERIE THOMPSON: Yeah. You kind of have to give a book a try. As the follow-up to Ackernan’s 2015 The Genius of Birds, this books is another detailed examination of bird behavior. So his supervisor is really condescending. So I thought the book Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake was a really great book about sort of how fungi affect all aspects of biology, but largely their relationship with forest and humans. The writing’s very visual. Ackerman brings scientific research alive with personal observations of colorful and fascinating birds, from the kea parrot to the raven to the brush turkey, among others. And other members of his cohort are questioning the basis for his admission. Read More . Daniel Peterschmidt is a digital producer and composes music for Science Friday’s podcasts, including Science Diction and Undiscovered. Yeah, I’m really not surprised that this is on your list, as well. This is Science Friday. And we’re talking about the best science books of the year, but this doesn’t and shouldn’t exclude works of fiction. Embed. VALERIE THOMPSON: Yeah. Guest host John Dankosky is joined by librarian Brian Muldoon and Science senior editor Valerie Thompson to highlight some of the science books you may have missed this year. On a personal note, I was drawn to this book because it focuses on the Hanford nuclear facility in southern Washington state where my grandfather worked as a mechanical engineer. And the Scifri Book Club tackles chicanafuturism with ‘Burn the Ships.’ A list of our sites NYPR Network ... U.S. COVID Spikes, Blockchain Chicken Farm, Book Club: Chicanafuturism. But this is something that persists to this day. This is a real-life story for real-life people who are living right now. But I think what was nice about it for me is that, like I said, every day, there’s just an insane amount of new information to kind of digest. One of the most illuminating chapters in the book discusses how racial discrimination was baked into early photographic film, which failed to capture people with darker skin tones, and how this phenomenon re-emerged with digital facial recognition. We’re recapping some of the best science books that came out this year with my guests, Brian Muldoon, Children’s Librarian at the Clinton Hill Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and Valerie Thompson, Senior Editor at Science Magazine in Washington, DC. JOHN DANKOSKY: Now, Valerie, you said you’d like to do more escapism. JOHN DANKOSKY: Brian, let’s get to one of the books on your list. See the full list below, or browse all of the best books of 2020. And I think, much like what you were saying, sometimes poetry is the only form to get across some very big ideas that are almost too scary to talk about in real life, right? But the difference today is that the data that they employ and the platforms they use to mine it often comes from private firms. And Wallace is exploring kind of his ambivalence about completing his degree and this kind of larger struggle about where he fits into the broader world. Ira and a panel of guests round up their favorite science books from 2018, 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 BRIAN MULDOON: Yeah. And just it’s something we don’t necessarily need to use in such a malevolent way, that tech, like race, like algorithms and things like that, are really only as good as what we imbue in them and that she offers a lot of solutions to these problems, saying that we can take these things, because technology is just a tool. It was also picked in Science Friday’s Best Summer Science Books of 2020 list, but it’s worth highlighting again. Starting from a place of despair and ending in one of radical optimism, this book is a bold call for a sweeping social and economic revolution to combat the threat of climate change. I’m John Dankosky. Best science books of 2020. But I’m not afraid to just kind of cast one aside if I’m really know not into it or if it’s not the right time to read it. This book examines how a number of notable materials (steel, telegraph wires, photographic materials, etc.) It was just at the start of the pandemic. https://t.co/GWSPqTLpcY https://t.co/XfKOHMyZOt, — Lauren Slanker (@MsSlanker307) December 8, 2020, Harrow the Ninth. Yeah, there’s just not enough time. “It changed the way I think about something as simple as breathing.”. I want to thank our guests, Brian Muldoon, the Children’s Librarian at the Clinton hill Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and Valerie Thompson, Senior Editor at Science Magazine in Washington, DC. And this book is not a book fully about science poems, but she uses science as her sort of through line and touch point for so much. It’s a great historical examination of the role race has played in white people’s seemingly never-ending quest for supremacy, and every scientist should take the time to understand the unethical studies Saini explores. This book, Valerie, is on my list in part because Ainissa Ramirez is someone I know who I’ve worked with. And just the title alone– I think a lot of people are thinking an awful lot about the great indoors, especially as weather gets colder. You can keep the suggestions coming in, of course. If you’re looking for something at the intersection of science and our world’s current conversation about race, Superior hits the mark as both a good and necessary read. And so when we’re cleaning them very thoroughly with all these antimicrobial agents, we could be disrupting the good part of the microbiome. JOHN DANKOSKY: Oh, boy. Books about the pandemic, about climate change, and about the algorithms that rule our lives. Given that science was so much of the center of our lives throughout this year, it’s not a surprise that we saw so many interesting science books published in 2020– books about the pandemic, about climate change, and about the algorithms that rule our lives, to be sure, but also books about curiosity, those things about the human condition that you maybe finally had time to notice. We do have to take a break right now, but we’re going to come back right after this. Beach read for any level, I just kind of sliding because of the proceeds from purchase. Out in March 2020 by his program for being the only Black.! Fun to read that I think from a design perspective, that ’ s ’! Today is that the data that they employ and the platforms they use to mine often! Materials, etc. at its best so can we improve surgical outcomes with better-designed rooms! The case, it seems Focus Magazine stories about it book recommendations sent us! 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