Critical Wit Podcast

Bill Castanier from MittenLit.com returns to Critical Wit to give us some suggestions on books to pick up as either gift ideas or to read during the holidays.  We start with three books about Ernest Hemingway; “The Paris Wife” by Paula McClain; “Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved In Life & Lost 1934-1961” by Paul Hendrickson; […]

Jill Adams returns to Critical Wit to talk about her experience attending the National Science Writers Convention, and it’s complementary sessions with the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.  She also describes her IGNITE speech on how cell biology helped her to become a better science writer.  And then we discuss a couple of […]

Jill Twiss is a theater actress and stand-up comedian who according to her website is “creating world peace through stand-up comedy.”  In this episode we talk a bit about her work as both a performer in theater and comedy.  You can find her website at jilltwiss.blogspot.com, where there are videos of some of her performances.  […]

Mark Stevenson is the author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer “What’s Next?”, a funny, informative story about the technologies and innovations that’s driving humanity.  Mark interviews the brightest minds researching things, such as transhumanism, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, carbon capture, and more.  This book is ideal for science enthusiasts who want to be pragmatically optimistic […]

Emily Willingham is a biologist, science writer, and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology.  She is also the blogger at ‘The Biology Files.’  In this episode we talk about a short book that Emily wrote called When Worlds Collide: The Troubled History of Bears and People in Texas, which is available as […]

In the second of this special two-part episode, I provide some more audio clips of interviews from the previous ten episodes.  Clips like whether “transgenic” is the same as “genetically engineered”, the similarities between Alfred Wegner and Charles Darwin, and comparing the United States to the rest of the world as it relates to capital punishment.  And also, […]

In this special two-part episode, I provide some audio clips from interviews that were not included in their respective episodes due to time constraints.  But I saved them because I thought they were informative and interesting.  Clips like “rules of thumb” when buying a car, is Alfred Wegner a good example of a “one man […]

Holly Moeller is a graduate student of Ecology and Evolution at Stanford University and author of the Seeing Green blog.  In this episode, we talk about sustainable fisheries.  And we also talk about an aquatic organism that Holly has studied, which has a very interesting adaptation. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider ‘liking’ the Critical Wit page […]

Chris McDonald is a professor of music studies, with a phD in ethnomusicology.  He is also the author of Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown, a book that explores the music and lyric themes in the music of Rush, the progressive rock band from Canada.  We talk about these things, as […]

Kristin Rose is a graduate student at Harvard, and blogger at Try Nerdy, a website that discusses interesting and cool science, and unabashedly promotes nerdiness.  In this episode we talk about synesthesia, a neurological condition that causes one sensory experience to create another sensory experience, such as seeing colors when hearing a specific sounds.  I very much recommend bookmarking her […]