A little more than 70 percent of Planet Earth is ocean. So wouldn’t a better name for our global home be Planet Ocean? You may be surprised at just how closely YOU are connected to the ocean. Regardless of where you live, every breath you take and every drop of water you drink links you to the ocean. And because of this connection, the ocean’s health affects all of us. Dive in with author Patricia Newman and photographer Annie Crawley—visit the Coral Triangle near Indonesia, the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest, and the Arctic Ocean at the top of the world. Find out about problems including climate change, ocean acidification, and plastic pollution, and meet inspiring local people who are leading the way to reverse the ways in which humans have harmed the ocean. Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean (Millbrook Press, 2021) shows us how to stop thinking of ourselves as existing separate from the ocean and how to start taking better care of this precious resource. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

New Books in Science

Patricia Newman and Annie Crawley, "Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean" (Millbrook Press, 2021)

Katherine Chandler's Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare (Rutgers UP, 2020) studies the conditions that create unmanned platforms in the United States through a genealogy of experimental, pilotless planes flown between 1936 and 1992. Characteristics often attributed to the drone--including machine-like control, enmity and remoteness--are achieved by displacements between humans and machines that shape a mediated theater of war. Rather than primarily treating the drone as a result of the war on terror, this book examines contemporary targeted killing through a series of failed experiments to develop unmanned flight in the twentieth century. The human, machine and media parts of drone aircraft are organized to make an ostensibly not human framework for war that disavows its political underpinnings as technological advance. These experiments are tied to histories of global control, cybernetics, racism and colonialism. Drone crashes and failures call attention to the significance of human action in making technopolitics that comes to be opposed to "man" and the paradoxes at their basis. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Katherine Chandler, "Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

Based on twelve years of anthropological exploration, Vincent Ialenti's Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now (MIT Press, 2020) is an engaging guide on deep time learning to reorient our understanding of time and space. As each chapter begins with creative vignettes to capture the reader's imagination and empathy and concludes with five to six reflective "reckonings," the book focuses on Finland's nuclear waste experts whose daily lives revolve around considerations of the far-flung futures and deep pasts. The main goal of chapters one and two is to pursue independent, expert-inspired, long-termist learning. The book's second goal, captured in chapters three and four, is to encourage support for highly trained, too often ignored, long-termist experts. By combating the deflation of expertise by weaving together chains of generational knowledge, Deep Time Reckoning advocates for one route of spirited and adventurous learning to rescue hopes of a safe tomorrow from the Earth's current ecological death spiral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Vincent Ialenti, "Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now" (MIT Press, 2020)

Listen to this interview of Josh Schimel and Karl Ritz, Editors-in-Chief of Soil Biology and Biochemistry. We talk about the people who all scientists are, and we demonstrate why all that matters to your next submission. Karl Ritz : "It is definitely important that authors take seriously matters of text presentation and formatting. And one of the reasons, perhaps, people don't understand as to why it matters, as to why we need things in a specific format and following certain rules — the reason is that there are rules here that form the framework, and you can stick your creativity on top of that. Because if there's a consistency and coherence in the fonts and in the spacing and in the headings and in the structure of the manuscript — this makes the process for the editors and the reviewers considerably more straightforward, because then they know what they're dealing with in terms of the actual process part of the procedure versus the creative and the intellectual part of it. And if we have to mess around dealing with unusual formats or unusual colors or just a general lack of attention to formatting, then it just distracts us from being able to get to the nub of what needs to be assessed here in the manuscript." Daniel hosts Scholarly Communication, the podcast about how knowledge gets known. Email: writeyourresearch@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The Scholarly Journal: An Interview with Josh Schimel and Karl Ritz of "Soil Biology and Biochemistry"

Harnessing the Sun is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jenny Nelson, Professor of Physics and Head of the Climate Change mitigation team at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. After inspiring insights about Jenny Nelson’s academic journey, the conversation examines different solar energy processes, solar energy conversion technology, novel varieties of material for use in solar cells, and the materials used to build and improve photovoltaic, and other renewable, technologies, which convert energy from the sun into electricity. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Jenny Nelson, “Harnessing the Sun” (Open Agenda, 2021)

Race, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, an identifiable present, and an uncertain future. The concept of race has been at the center of both triumphs and tragedies in American history and has had a profound effect on the human experience. Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century (Columbia UP, 2018)revisits the origins of commonly held beliefs about the scientific nature of racial differences, examines the roots of the modern idea of race, and explains why race continues to generate controversy as a tool of classification even in our genomic age. Surveying the work of some of the twentieth century's most notable scientists, Race Unmasked reveals how genetics and related biological disciplines formed and preserved ideas of race and, at times, racism. A gripping history of science and scientists, Race Unmasked elucidates the limitations of a racial worldview and throws the contours of our current and evolving understanding of human diversity into sharp relief. About the author: Michael Yudell is a public health ethicist, award-winning historian, and professor and Vice Dean at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. He is the co-editor of the Columbia University Press Series Race, Inequality, and Health and the author of several books, including Race Unmasked, for which he won the Arthur J. Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. About the interviewer: Hussein Mohsen is a PhD/MA Candidate in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics/History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. His research interests include machine learning, cancer genomics, and the history of human genetics. For more about his work, visit http://www.husseinmohsen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Michael Yudell, "Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century" (Columbia UP, 2018)

Peter Godfrey-Smith knows his cephalopods. Once of CUNY and now a professor of history and philosophy of science at University of Sydney, his truly capacious career includes books such as Theory and Reality (2003; 2nd edition in 2020), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (2009) and most recently Metazoa. RtB--including two Brandeis undergraduates as guest hosts, Izzy Dupré and Miriam Fisch-- loves his astonishing book on the fundamental alterity of octopus intelligence and experience of the world, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Another equally descriptive title for that book, and for the discussion we share with you here (after Thomas Nagel's "What is it like to be a Bat?") might be What is it Like to be an Octopus? As always, below you will find helpful links for the works referenced in the episode, and a transcript for those who prefer or require a print version of the conversation. Please visit us at Recallthisbook.org (or even subscribe there) if you are interested in helpful bonus items like related short original articles, reading lists, visual supplements and past episodes grouped into categories for easy browsing. Mentioned in the Episode: --Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin --"Open the pod bay doors, Hal": a chilling line from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) --District Nine (2009, dir. Neill Bloomkamp) in which giant intelligent shrimp from outer space play the role of octopus-like alien intelligence, and prompt a complex but unmistakably racist reaction on their arrival in South Africa. --Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) --Erik Linklater, Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (1949) Transcript Finally, all listeners and readers who are interested in the gentle art of podcasting are cordially invited to the inaugural Humanities Podcasting Symposium, held over Zoom, October 15-16. Latif Nasser of Radiolab will headline two days of workshops, seminars and discussions among scholars students and amateurs who have fallen in love with the pedagogical and intellectual possibilities the medium affords. Elizabeth and John will both be presenting. Join us. RSVP here Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

65 Octopus World: Other Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith (EF, JP)

Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound (University of Washington Press, 2021) tells a story about exploitation and a story of hope. Focusing on the life histories of both humans and the natural world, Williams  presents an account of how people and place are connected by demonstrating the transformation of the landscape through geologic, ecological, and cultural lenses. Through conversations with archaeologists, biologists, and tribal authorities, and getting out in the field himself, Williams traces how humans have developed their infrastructure around Puget Sound while documenting the human interaction with species as geoducks, salmon, orcas, rockfish, and herring. While addressing critical issues linked to iconic species like salmon and orca, the book works to capture the complexities of ecosystems through in-depth dives into the life histories of rockfish, herring, kelp, and oysters. Williams contends how it is not too late to right the wrongs through responsible action and scientific innovation if we recognize the issues created by a colonial legacy, including social injustice towards native peoples, pollution, and exploitation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

David B. Williams, "Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound" (U Washington Press, 2021)

We are tethered to our devices all day, every day, leaving data trails of our searches, posts, clicks, and communications. Meanwhile, governments and businesses collect our data and use it to monitor us without our knowledge. So we have resigned ourselves to the belief that privacy is hard--choosing to believe that websites do not share our information, for example, and declaring that we have nothing to hide anyway. In Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design (MIT Press, 2021), a computer privacy and security expert argues that privacy is not that hard if we build it into the design of systems from the start. Along the way, Jaap-Henk Hoepman debunks eight persistent myths surrounding computer privacy. The website that claims it doesn't collect personal data, for example; Hoepman explains that most data is personal, capturing location, preferences, and other information. You don't have anything to hide? There's nothing wrong with wanting to keep personal information--even if it's not incriminating or embarrassing--private. Hoepman shows that just as technology can be used to invade our privacy, it can be used to protect it, when we apply privacy by design. Hoepman suggests technical fixes, discussing pseudonyms, leaky design, encryption, metadata, and the benefits of keeping your data local (on your own device only), and outlines privacy design strategies that system designers can apply now. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Jaap-Henk Hoepman, "Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design" (MIT Press, 2021)

The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales' entanglement and slow death in rope and nets, and the global shipping routes that bring us readily available goods often lead to death by collision. We--all of us--are whalers, marine scientist and veterinarian Michael J. Moore contends. But we do not have to be. Drawing on over forty years of fieldwork with humpback, pilot, fin, and in particular, North Atlantic right whales--a species whose population has declined more than twenty percent since 2017--Moore takes us with him as he performs whale necropsies on animals stranded on beaches, in his independent research alongside whalers using explosive harpoons, and as he tracks injured whales to deliver sedatives. The whales' plight is a complex, confounding, and disturbing one. We learn of existing but poorly enforced conservation laws and of perennial (and often failed) efforts to balance the push for fisheries profit versus the protection of endangered species caught by accident. But despite these challenges, Moore's We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an optimistic one. He shows us how technologies for rope-less fishing and the acoustic tracking of whale migrations make a dramatic difference. And he looks ahead with hope as our growing understanding of these extraordinary creatures fuels an ever-stronger drive for change. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Michael Moore, "We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

Interviews with Scientists about their New Books

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New Books in Science

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