Science for the People

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:...

In his book Tenacious Beasts, philosopher and writer Christopher Preston explores creature comebacks. Some of these stories highlight the evolutionary advantages that animals have racked up over millennia, while others are marked by intensive human intervention. Along the way, Preston opens some big questions about conservation dilemmas, such as what to do when helping one species means harming another. Amidst the bad news about biodiversity loss, Tenacious Beasts brings snippets of hope and lessons learned from animals such as beavers, bison and humpback whales. On this week’s show, Christopher shares about these animal recoveries, insights collected from Indigenous communities and...

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...

Birds carry out some of the most amazing feats of athleticism in the world. Hummingbirds cross the entire Gulf of Mexico, their tiny wings beating continuously for three days straight. A single bird will fly across the entire Pacific ocean in one go. What do we really know about bird migration, and how do we know it? This week we're talking with Rebecca Heisman about her new book: Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration.

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...

Humans are a roaming species. We've been traveling from continent to continent since our very earliest evolution. In fact, we've been doing it even before we were humans. This week, we're talking with archaeologist Radu Iovita about the ancient silk road, a travel network that was in use tens of thousands of years ago, and we speak with archaeologist Elroy White and anthropologist Alisha Gauvreau about what the oral histories of Indigenous people have to say about North American settlement and how archaeologists are working with First Nations to confirm those histories. REFERENCES Rodriguez A, Yanamandra K, Witek L, Wang...

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...

Do you believe there's something Out There? What do our ideas of aliens say about what life is, how life could look and act? And what does it say about us, about what we think life needs, wants, and should be? We're talking with Jaime Green about her new book: The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos.

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.

Thousands of years ago, people crossed a land bridge from Siberia to Western Alaska and dispersed southward into what we now call the Americas. The story of exactly when that was, how they did it, and who they were has fascinated us for a long time as excavations have uncovered pieces of those stories. University of Kansas Associate Professor of Anthropology Jennifer Raff joins us to talk about her book "Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas", digging into the ways modern genetics is being used to help us understand the history of people dispersing across the Americas. Along the...