Science for the People

The thing about humans is that, as a social species, we work with other people. And this means we often, consciously or unconsciously, end up being awful to each other. If you are someone who is marginalized in the workplace--something that often happens to people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities and white women--how do you deal? The advice to lean in, put your head down and do the work, it's just not working. This week, we're talking with Alan Henry about his new guide to getting ahead as a marginalized person at work with his new book, Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized.

Most people know how the age of dinosaurs ended. An asteroid hit and all the dinosaurs died out. But it's never quite that simple. In her newest book, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, Riley Black describes what the immediate post-impact world looked like, and what it would become.

Vagina. Clitoris. Uterus. Ovary. These are body parts that about half the population is born with. And yet, there are so many questions about them that scientists have never answered. But there's also more new science about the vagina than you've ever, ever dreamed. We're talking with Rachel Gross about her new book Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Journey.

Mental illness is being discussed openly and publicly more than it ever has been, but our understanding of what it is and its impacts are still a work-in-progress. What is mental illness and how do we distinguish it from the expected suffering that comes from being human? How has the public discussion around mental illness impacted our language, sometimes mixing together clinical language and colloquial language in complicated, confusing ways? We speak with academic psychologist Lucy Foulkes about her book "Losing Our Minds: What Mental Illness Really Is - And Isn't" and dig into the complexity of what mental illness is, how our concept of it is changing, and how the way we talk about it often makes things better and sometimes makes things harder.

I'm sure we've all heard the phrase 'supply chain disruption' by now. It might bring to mind ships floating outside LA or trucks jackknifed across a highway in the snow. But it's far, far more than that. Get ready for miles of conveyor belts and the largest robot in the world. Christopher Mims is here to talk about his book Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy.

Choosing a career path is a big decision. In the modern western world a career is practically synonymous with identity: whether we like it our not, what we do is a big part of who we are. And we are told to choose a career carefully, to find and follow our passion. But what is passion in this context? And why should we follow it? Does following passion into a career path leave us happier? Leave us on more sturdy footing in our life and career? Who gets ahead and who gets left behind when we all chase passion to the exclusion of other considerations? We talk with University of Michigan Sociology Associate Professor Erin Cech about her research and her book "The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality" to better understand why and how passion has become the primary decision-making point in chosing our career paths, and where that choice can lead us - individually and collectively - astray.

Intent on improving your creativity or focus? Want to raise your IQ? What does that even mean? This week, we've got Emily Willingham back on the show to talk about tailoring the brain with science: The good, the bad, and the totally not proven. We're talking about her new book The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship: A user's guide to feeling better and thinking smarter.

In Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making, author Anna Ploszajski takes her experience of materials science out of the lab and into the world of craftspeople. Ploszajski's quest to fashion a broader perspective on stuff surpasses the dry and academic. In her book, Anna brings readers along through an exploration of materials ancient and modern, bringing out the ways that matter intersects with society and identity. On the show, we’ll talk about matter from glass to human hair, and we'll hear about the entwined history of some materials and how they have shaped history.

2021 has vanished, sucked into the black hole created by 2020. But while the pandemic continues, we are steadily climbing our way out. And what better way to gain momentum than to look forward at where science might be going? We’ve looking from the tiniest parts of the human body to the vast expanse of space to find out where we are going. Related Links: Floods Have Swamped the US. The Next Health Problem: Mold Covid Protections Kept Other Viruses at Bay. Now They’re Back As Covid Cases Rise, So Do Hospital-Related Infections Another Global Pandemic is Spreading - Among Pigs When James Webb launches, it will have a bigger to-do list than 1980s researchers suspected Here’s what the next 10 years of space science could look like 5 cool things to know about NASA’s Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids Single-cell analysis enters the multiomics age Starfish enterprise: finding RNA patterns in single cells

We often think the practices of science and academics as a western-European invention, and while both science and the academy have created a lot of positive knowledge, it's important to take a step back and recognize the blind spots of science that come from European ways of thinking about the world, and to see how academics can disadvantage people who don't align with that worldview. We speak to Ray Pierotti, Associate Professor in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas, about his book "Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology" to help us better understand how contrasting ways of understanding the world influence our approaches to practicing science. And we talk with Tara McAllister, post-doctoral fellow with Te Punaha Matatini at the University of Auckland, about indigenous peoples' experiences and challenges trying to break into - and stay inside - academic careers. Related links: Native American Sciecne Curriculum website of which Ray Pierotti is a faculty member Why aren't universities made for people like me, article on E-tangata by Sereana Naepi and Tara McAllister Understanding Indigenous Exploitation Through Performance Based Research Funding Reviews in Colonial States, on Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics by Tyron Love and C. Michael Hall Disturbing the Discipline: Reflections on Nga Kete Matauranga on The Pantograph Punch by Tara McAllister The underserving and under-representation of Maori scientists in New Zealand's science system on New Zealand Ecological Society by Tara McAllister