Science for the People

Join the team of Science for the People for one last episode, where we interview... ourselves. We talk about our time as Skeptically Speaking and Science for the People, the rebranding, our favourite episodes, how the podcast has changed us, and what it's been like to be a science podcast from 2009 to 2023. To our listeners: thank you all for sticking with us all these years, for supporting us, and most importantly for listening. We hope you'll continue to ask questions, to support science, and to think critically about the world around you. It's been an honour and a...

For the last time, Joanne Manaster and John Dupuis talk us through their favourite science reads from the last year, and add a little "time travel" seasoning in to keep things interesting, harkening back to old favs as well as talking about the best of the best from 2023. As always, we've got our companion blog post ready with the full book list, including links to Amazon where you can find more information. Happy reading!

If you're plugged in to science news (and you, our listeners, definitely are) then you know that psychedelics like ketamine and LSD are having a moment in therapy. But what about Ecstasy (MDMA)? What makes it different, and what could it do? This week we talk with Rachel Nuwer about her new book I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World.

We might say climate change is coming for us. But really, it's here. Fires are worse in hotter, drier conditions. Hurricanes are powered up supersoaking storms. Even tides are now rising into the streets and the beautiful oceanfront property we always wanted isn't looking so good. It's easy to feel despair, because no one individual thing will solve this problem. But where individuals will collapse, communities can build. This week we're talking with Madeline Ostrander about her book, At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding refuge on a changed earth.

We all know that climate change is coming for us. It's already here. But it's really, really hard to change people's actions, especially when those actions don't benefit the here and now, but matter most for the future. They require long views of time, the ability to not just imagine, but to care about people in the future. Why don't we do that now, and how do we get there? We're talking with Richard Fisher, author of The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time.

You are what you eat, right? Well then, who were the ancient Romans, and who were the people they colonized? And who are we? And why do we eat so much chicken? This week we're sitting down with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas to talk about how Roman colonization changed both the animals people raised and how people ate them. We're also talking with Richard Thomas about chickens, and how our taste for it may be one of the most enduring things we leave behind.   Links: Richard Thomas: The Broiler Chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas:...

A lot of us learned basic ecology in primary school. Maybe we took a biology class in high school or secondary school and dug in a little more. We use terms like "niche" but do we really know what they mean? How much complexity does that little word cover, if you start to unpick it? We are joined by Tim Blackburn, Professor of Invasion Biology at University College London and author of the book "The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature's Hidden Rules", where he combines his years of working in the field of ecology with his love for catching...

In 1938, two botanists, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, made an ambitious voyage down the Colorado River driven by the desire to chronicle the plant life of the American Southwest. In her new book Brave the Wild River, science journalist Melissa Sevigny traces their expedition through the Grand Canyon, which led them through seething rapids and the occasional mishap. Journalists of the day gawked at their gender and the pair were forced to pick up chores labeled as “women’s work." Still, they managed to collect hundreds of plants that hadn't yet been catalogued by researchers. Their observations about desert ecosystems...

Is there an insect more universally despised than the wasp? What have they done to incur so much of our ire? No one likes them. Well... almost no one. Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London and cofounder of the Big Wasp Survey, is on a mission to improve the wasp's PR with her book "Endless Forms: Why We Should Love Wasps". She joins us to talk about the fascinating biology and behaviour of wasps and their societies, and how we can learn to better coexist with the wasp, thinking of it less as pest and more...

With fertilizers that supply phosphorus–what Asimov called “life’s bottleneck”– people broke the circle of life. Dan Egan’s new book The Devil’s Element traces the history of this essential element from curiosity to crop miracle. Egan documents the mayhem unleashed by a flood of phosphorus, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and discusses how people can act to stop phosphorus-fueled blooms of algae that are closing beaches, killing animals and sickening people.

Give a cluck about chickens. The most popular meat actually has a 3,500 year history of cockfighting, backyard keeping, incubation invention, and a lot of scrambled eggs. And now, people are keeping them in their backyards as pets. How did we get here, and what changes have we made to the bird formerly known as the Asian Jungle Fowl? We're talking with Tove Danovich, author of the new book Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them. For more on the rise of the domestic chicken, make sure to check out our previous...

In the past 120 years, physicists have revamped our understanding of matter — of everything that makes up the world. This week on the show, particle physicist Suzie Sheehy takes us on a tour through a cosmos of physics experiments that have revealed the nature of the atom and unveiled particles that exist outside of it. We’ll hear the tales of adventurous experiments and intrepid experimenters, including ones who didn’t receive their due. And along the way, we’ll learn about the ways that particle physics touches our everyday lives.

Humans are musical. Really, really musical. But why? What is it for, how did it come about, and what do we get from it? Let's get between the science and the hype (Mozart is not going to make you smarter) with Adriana Barton and her book: Wired for Music: A search for Health and Joy through the Science of Sound.