We talk to Danna Staaf, a science writer with a PhD in invertebrate biology from Stanford University, about her new book Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods.

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This week: A study looking at how much actionable information pre-pregnancy genome sequencing can actually give you; the benefits and consequences of mass mass prescribing antibiotics; and a new study looking at the trolley problem and how peoples’ hypothetical judgment compares to their real-life behavior.

Links mentioned:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-catch-22-of-mass-prescribing-antibiotics/

https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(18)30136-8

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617752640

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We talk to science writer and neurobiologist Lone Frank about her latest book The Pleasure Shock: The Rise of Deep Brain Stimulation and Its Forgotten Inventor.

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University of Copenhagen scientists managed to genetically delete an enzyme in mice that made it impossible for them to get fat, even on a very fatty diet; Alan Turing wrote a paper in 1952 that is still having impacts on science today in ways you may not expect; and NASA sends the InSight Lander to Mars.

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We talk to astrophysicist Brian Keating about new his book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor.

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This week: Scott Pruitt’s fight against anonymous study subjects, a debate on should be regulating genetically engineered livestock, and new research that shows asteroids could have delivered water to the early Earth.

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We talk to biologist Kenneth R. Miller about his new book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will.

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This week: new research shows being a night owl might mean you’re at a greater risk of dying early, multiple interesting space launches are happening, and there’s new research into using phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors like Viagra and Cialis to help other drugs do their job better.

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We talk to the founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Jeremy Bailenson. Bailenson’s lab studies how virtual reality can affect empathy—how it makes you feel to virtually embody someone else. VR offers the ability to be in someone else’s shoes in a way that you can’t recreate in real life—and those immersive experiences, whether it be facing a day in the life of a person experiencing homelessness, or diving to the corals that are right now being bleached by climate change, have lingering effects on all of us.

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Kishore talks to Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti, authors of Does It Fart?: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence.

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