History & Philosophy

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology....

Listeners learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level - and then how each connects to the other....

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Find out....

The New York Times best-selling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology....

In this grand poetic vision of the universe, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world that underlies reality - and our place within it. Reality is not what you think or sense - it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive....

The authors of the best-selling Bold and The Rise of Superman explore altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving....

Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation....

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman....

In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities....

Why did once-stone-faced animals evolve to be so emotionally expressive—to be us? The answer, as evolutionary neurobiologist Mark Changizi and mathematician Tim Barber reveal, is that emotional expressions are our first and most important language....

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

A journey through history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages, from TikTok medical historian Dr Suzie Edge....

A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality.....

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants....

Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases.

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others....

In the final book of his astonishing career, Carl Sagan brilliantly examines the burning questions of our lives, our world, and the universe around us....

Now widely considered among the most important books in the history of philosophy of science, The Logic of Scientific Discovery remains essential listening for scholars, scientists, and anyone interested in what makes science, science.

The Physics of God describes the intersections of science and religion with colorful, easy-to-understand metaphors, making abstruse subjects within both science and religion easily accessible to the layman—no math, no dogma....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

It seems likely that scientists will someday discover how life can emerge on habitable planets like the early Earth and Mars. In Origin of Life: What Everyone Needs to Know, David W. Deamer has written a comprehensive guide to the origin of life that is organized in three sections....

From the Marginalian creator and bestselling author Maria Popova, a bold exploration of what makes a meaningful life.

Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is "safe" for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before....

Engaging, thought-provoking, and groundbreaking, The Immortal Mind shows here that some aspect of who we are is spiritual and immortal, transcending the physical body.

Alcune storie sono troppo assurde per non essere raccontate, come l'epico scontro Alessandro Volta VS Luigi Galvani, tra rane morte ed energia elettrica che ha ispirato la nascita del mostro di Frankenstein. O ancora Stephen Hawking e quella sua fissa per i buchi neri, Margherita Hack che pedalava verso l'osservatorio tra le bombe della seconda guerra mondiale, Richard Feynman che scassinava casseforti durante il progetto Manhattan, Lord Kelvin il barone della morte termica dell'Universo, Enrico Fermi che ha scisso l'atomo e dato il via all'era nucleare.

To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation.

Today it's routine to take photos from an airplane window, use a camera underwater, or watch a movie or view an X-ray. But the photographic innovations more than a century ago that made such things possible were experimental, revelatory, and sometimes dangerous. In Flashes of Brilliance, New York Times photo editor Anika Burgess engagingly blends art, science, and social history to reveal the most dramatic developments in photography from its birth in the 1830s to the early twentieth century.

From the author of The Moth in the Iron Lung comes a riveting exploration of how science, technology, and fear transformed our relationship with one of humanity's most ancient foods. Once revered as nature's perfect nourishment, milk became public enemy number one as germ theory unleashed collective panic about the invisible world within our food. Forrest Maready uncovers the fascinating, forgotten story of how this fear—epitomized by the notorious "swill milk" scandal—reshaped our food landscape forever.

A mother kisses her child's scraped knee. A father embraces his long-lost son. A dog greets its owner with desperate joy. Every culture, every species, every corner of the living world engages in these intimate acts of connection. We've been told these are merely displays of affection. But what if there’s something more? WHAT IF A KISS IS MORE THAN JUST A KISS? For the first time in human history, we are starting to see the hidden force that builds life through connection—not because we discovered something new, but because we have broken something ancient.