Read Science!

Streamed live on 14 Oct 2015.

The Red Planet was on our mind today when we talked to Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN Mission Principal Investigator and author of "Science, Society, and the Search for Life in the Universe"; and James Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Sciences Division, and consultant for Ridley Scott's "The Martian".

We talked about Mars, missions to Mars, "The Martian", what it means to search for life in our Solar System and the universe, and the urge to explore in humans, along with how science can engage the interest of the non-scientist public.

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Streamed live on 17 September 2015.

For this fast-paced and wide-ranging discussion our guest was Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes : The Legacy of Autism and the Furute of Neurodiversity.

The history of understanding -- and misunderstanding -- autism and Asperger's Syndrome, reaching today's comprehension of them as a "spectrum", is over a century long, at times convoluted, and sometimes alarmingly cruel. During the 8 years that he worked on this book, Silberman collected a remarkable number of stories that he tells to remarkably good effect in this comprehensive book. We tried our best to sort our some of those while recounting our reactions to the book, and what we learned from reading it.

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Streamed live on 25 June 2015.

Cynthia Barnett wrote that poet Conrad Aiken called rain "the syllables of water". Today's conversation was all about water and rain and all of the syllables we could fit into one tiny hour.

Our guests were Cynthia Barnett, author of "Rain : A Natural and Cultural History", and Alok Jha, author of "The Water Book : The Extraordinary Story of our Most Ordinary Substance". Do I even need to say by now that the discussion was wide ranging and filled with interesting facts and ideas?

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Streamed live on 9 June 2015.

Nicola Davies is a prolific author of picture books for children, and non-picture books for older kids. She likes telling stories about science to younger people, and she does it very well.

We discussed her recent book, Tiny Creatures : The World of Microbes, beautifully illustrated by Emily Sutton, and used it as a jumping-off point to talk about her other books, the joy of writing about science for kids, and the sometimes mysterious process of writing itself.

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Streamed live on 14 May 2015.

Humans are complicated things, but we are understanding our human-cell biology better with each passing year. How our DNA works becomes clearer, the role of epigenetics becomes clearer, and so does our microbiological relationship with the enormous number of bacteria and viruses that inhabit our bodies. With increased understanding comes increased potential for altering those interactions, and potential taking a role in our own evolution as a species.

That was the framework for our conversation today with Steve Gullans, co-author with Juan Enriquez of the book Evolving Ourselves : How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth.

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Streamed live on 30 April 2015.

For the first episode of our third year, our subject was cancer, a topic we've discussed before and we'll likely discuss again.

Our guests are the authors of two notable recent books on the topic: Sue Armstrong, author of p53 : The Gene that Cracked the Cancer Code, and George Johnson, author of The Cancer Chronicles : Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery.

We enjoyed a fast-paced, engaging conversation filled with interesting stories and insight into the complicated workings of cancer, and the remarkable advances in understanding that have come from cancer research in the last few decades. Sometimes an hour is just not long enough for everything that comes to mind to talk about.

Sue Armstrong on Twitter: @armstrong_sue .

George Johnson on Twitter: @byGeorgeJohnson .

George Johnson's website: http://talaya.net/ .

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