The Matter of Everything

Science for the People | 27 February 2023 | 1h 00m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Suzie Sheehy about her book The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World. Discusses seminal physics experiments that have discovered various particles and revealed the nature of the atom. Explains the ways that particle physics touches our everyday lives.

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Andrew Knoll – A Brief History of Earth

The Dissenter | 20 January 2023 | 0h 54m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Andrew Knoll about his book A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. Discusses the main events in the history of the Earth: its formation, the formation of its atmosphere, where water came from, plate tectonics, the origins of life, the rise of oxygen, evolution from the first unicellular organisms to animals, the colonization of land by plants and animals, the mass extinctions, the evolution of and ecological impact of humans, and the future of the Earth.

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The Mighty T-Rex Brain

Many Minds | 8 March 2023 | 0h 55m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Suzana Herculano-Houzel about her paper Theropod dinosaurs had primate-like numbers of telencephalic neurons. Backgrounds that the most revealing thing about a brain is not how big it is or how big it is relative to the body, but simply how many neurons it has. Argues a T-Rex’s brain was comparable to a baboon’s so that it was probably quite behaviorally flexible and long-lived and may even have had culture.

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Peter Frankopan – How a Changing Climate Shaped Civilisation

How To Academy | 14 March 2023 | 1h 22m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Peter Frankopan about his book The Earth Transformed. Discusses how the climate has shaped the rise and fall of civilisations across time: harvests built empires, drought fanned the flames of war, and storms and floods buried civilisations.

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The Tudor Who Hiked North America

History Extra | 2 March 2023 | 0h 35m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Dean Snow about his book The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America. Tells the story of David Ingram trekking 3,600 miles across North America in the 1560s after being shipwrecked, encountering sights and sounds that no other English people had ever experienced before. Explores how Ingram’s incredible journey across North America in the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign changed the course of the continent’s history.

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Diet: The New Science of Healthy Eating

The Next Big Idea | 12 January 2023 | 1h 01m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Tim Spector about his book Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well. Argues that food decisions are the single most important modifiable factor in preventing common diseases and staying healthy and digs into what science has learned about what we should eat – and why.

I’m pretty sceptical about dietary advice – but found this quite convincing.

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Josiah Osgood on Cato, Caesar and the Battle for Rome’s Legacy

The Daily Stoic | 7 December 2022 | 1h 04m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Josiah Osgood about his book Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic. Discusses the complicated legacy of Cato, how Caesar and Cato’s relationship can help inform our daily lives, and more.

 

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Liberty, Democracy, Piracy w/ Marcus Rediker

Novara Media | 23 February 2023 | 1h 07m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Marcus Rediker discussing the late David Graeber’s final book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, which argues that the Enlightenment contained a swashbuckling admixture of antiauthoritarianism and democracy from pirates. Discusses pirates and the radical history of the high seas. Also draws on Rediker’s book Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age.

 

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