A Taste for Poison
Chemistry World Book Club
If you really want to develop an appreciation for those early pathologists who went so far as to taste-tested truly horrible samples from corpses to establish a system for detecting poisons, read a new book by US-based physiology and biophysics professor Neil Bradbury. We discuss Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers who used them: A Taste for Poison in our final episode of the Chemistry World Book Club podcast series. Combining chemistry and biology with true crime, this book is ripped from news headlines and is also based on historical records. Bradbury recounts for us...
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Book club – Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez
Chemistry World Book Club
Indigenous communities are among the most affected by climate change, yet their work and knowledge has long been dismissed as unscientific. In her first book Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science, Maya Ch’orti’ and Zapotec environmental scientist Jessica Hernandez recounts case studies, personal stories and family histories that focus on the knowledge of Indigenous Latin American women and land protectors. Hernandez’s book envisions a future in which Indigenous people are given autonomy over their lands and are treated as prominent leaders in the...
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Book Club - Racing Green
Chemistry World Book Club
This episode examines the science behind auto racing by digging into Racing Green: How Motorsports Became Smarter, Safer, Cleaner and Faster, by science journalist and science historian Kit Chapman. In this his second book, following Superheavy in 2019, the former Chemistry World comment editor chronicles how motorsport science is advancing and becoming more environmentally friendly, and he describes that ways in which these developments on the track are changing the world for the better. Chapman uses exclusive interviews with folks at NASCAR’s Research and Development...
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Book club – Sticky by Laurie Winkless
Chemistry World Book Club
Why is duct tape the answer to fixing everything? How do geckos cling to walls? And what, exactly, keeps our car tyres rolling down the road? In Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, physicist and science writer Laurie Winkless paints a vivid picture of the vast array of surfaces we interact with every day – and explores the mysteries we’re still unravelling about how those interactions work. We talk to Winkless about earthquakes and geckos, and discuss why even the things we sometimes take for granted (like that...
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Her Hidden Genius
Chemistry World Book Club
In this episode, we discuss Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict, a best-selling author who writes about women who have left important legacies. In this book, Benedict chronicles the life of Rosalind Franklin, an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who laboured for years to uncover the structure of DNA but whose research was secretly shared with two male scientists from a different institution – the famous Watson and Crick.
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Book club – Murder isn’t Easy
Chemistry World Book Club
We’re delving deep into the science of one of the best-selling fiction writers of all times: Agatha Christie. We look for evidence of her pioneering forensic writing with Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie, the second book by pathology technician and medical historian Carla Valentine. Together with special guests Raychelle Burks and Kathryn Harkup (both huge Christie fans) we consider Christie’s knack for science communication as well as her problematic selection of stereotyped char
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Life as We Made It
Chemistry World Book Club
This episode is for anybody interested in how human beings have altered the world around us since we came on the scene tens of thousands of years ago. University of California Santa Cruz evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro weaves fascinating and fun personal anecdotes from her own life and research on ancient DNA to tell the story of the evolution of Earth and the life-forms it hosts.
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Book club – The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean
Chemistry World Book Club
This month, we’re reading The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean. With wit and humour (where appropriate), Kean brings to life characters throughout history who found themselves on a slippery slope that took them from small concessions all the way to horrific acts.
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Book club – Deep Sniff by Adam Zmith
Chemistry World Book Club
In this episode, we’ll tackle Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures by Adam Zmith. Zmith blends historical research with wry observation to tell the story of how amyl nitrites wafted out of the lab and into gay bars, corner shops and bedrooms. Zmith leads readers through the 19th century discovery of nitrites and its 20th century reimagination as a drug for the queer community. But his focus on people and cultural forces means this book goes far beyond a simple history lesson.
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Book club – Lessons from Plants by Beronda Montgomery
Chemistry World Book Club
This episode is for all those people who have turned to gardening or amassed houseplants during the Covid lockdowns as we’ll be talking about Lessons from Plants. In it, the biochemist Beronda Montgomery explores the vigorous and creative life of organisms often treated as static and predictable. Writing about plants’ fascinating ability to perceive, adapt, communicate, decision-make and collaborate, Montgomery asks us to consider the question: What would a plant do?
info_outlineThis month, we’re talking about giraffes, a magic sandwich hole and the question of whether robots will take over the world. All of these things come up in Janelle Shane’s You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, a book about the wonderful and often weird world of artificial intelligence. The title, incidentally, is an AI-generated pickup line, though maybe one of the less successful ones.
Find out what we thought about the book, listen to an extract, and hear from Shane herself as she talks to us about why algorithms are not not as smart as they seem and the perils of following an AI-generated brownie recipe.