Science et al Daniel Barron

This episode of Science et al. was recorded at New Haven’s Baobab Tree Studios. Daniel sits down with Paula Croxson (@paulacroxson) to discuss storytelling, science, and how doctors and scientists can engage the public with their work. Paula is the senior manager for education programs at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, the senior producer for The Story Collider, and an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

In this episode of Science et al., Daniel speaks with Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) about the intersection of science writing and communications, a subject that continues to be of local, national, and global importance. Carl writes the Matter column for the New York Times, and is the author of thirteen books about science. When we spoke, Carl was touring the world for his recent book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, which won the 2019 National Academies Communication Award. The Guardian named it the best science book of 2018. He’s a frequent guest on Radiolab and adjunct professor at Yale University. He is, to his knowledge, the only writer after whom a species of tapeworm has been named.

Daniel talks with Nicholas Christakis (@NAChristakis), Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale, where he directs the Human Nature Lab and is Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. Nicholas had just published Blueprint: the Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society when the two spoke, and they discuss various aspects of the book including the phenomenon of “social suites” present in academic communities—how evolutionary pressures like grant funding have steered academic culture, and how to navigate a changing climate.

The co-founder of the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry and director of the Laboratory for Functional Neuroimaging and Bioinformatics at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Justin Baker (@JustinBakerMD) joins Daniel on Science et al. to talk about how he came to be so passionate about and interested in the human brain, and the two discuss some of his more innovative work posing questions about conditions like schizophrenia.

A longstanding science blogger for Discover magazine and Twitter influencer, Neuroskeptic (@Neuro_Skeptic), sits down in a pub to chat with Daniel about the “generalizability crisis,” blogging, and social media in this episode of Science et al.

The inaugural episode of Science et al. features author, journalist, and chief opinion editor at Scientific American Michael (Mike) Lemonick (@MLemonick), in conversation with Daniel. The episode’s big question—whether Mike feels that science writing has had a substantial impact on society—gets a very interesting and in-depth answer. The two also discuss the tensions between science and journalism.