A Good Science Read

Professor Dame Uta Frith and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Our Brains Our Selves: what a neurologist’s patients taught him about the brain' by Masud Husain Masud Husain is a neurologist and a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. This book tells the stories of seven of his patients, whose personal and social identities were deeply affected by their neurological condition. He shows how their very different problems have illuminated our understanding of how our brains work and how they generate our sense of self. The book also illustrates how impaired brain function can lead to a loss of our social identity. It is written with great insight and compassion. Professor Dame Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She has a special interest in autism and dyslexia and pioneered much of the key research into these brain conditions. Her book 'Autism: Explaining the Enigma' provided the first account of what happens inside the mind of a person with autism.

Georgina Ferry and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'The Coming Plague' by Laurie Garrett, and 'Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story' by Jeremy Farrar and Anjana Ahuja. 'The Coming Plague' is an extremely well researched book that presents a history of old and new plagues such as TB, cholera, influenza, Ebola and hantavirus, and tells the stories of the scientists who study them. Garrett delivers a warning about how ill prepared we are to cope with emerging infectious disease and how politics, bureaucratic infighting and drug company competition make things worse. Written in 1995, she was remarkably prescient as the Covid 19 pandemic has clearly shown. 'Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story' is an account of the Covid19 pandemic written by an expert on infectious disease who was at the heart of the fight against the virus, together with science writer Anjana Ahuja. It vividly describes the conflict between UK scientists and politicians on how to contain the spread of the virus. It also tells of Farrar’s initial concerns that the virus could have been manufactured, explains why there are so many variants, and considers what we should have done differently. The book was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Royal Society book prize. Georgina Ferry is a science writer, biographer and broadcaster. She has a particular interest in women in science and her biography of the Nobel prize winning crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin was short-listed for both the Duff Cooper Prize and the March Biography Award. It has recently been reissued by Bloomsbury. Her next book, The Penicillin Century, will be published by OUP in 2026. She has also recorded a series of podcasts with people involved in Oxford’s response to the Covid19 pandemic. Websites: https://mgf.longferry.co.uk/ https://www.lauriegarrett.com/ https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

Professor Dinah Birch and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'The Faber Book of Science' edited by John Carey and 'The Golden Mole and other living treasures' by Katherine Rundell. Professor Dinah Birch and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss The Faber Book of Science edited by John Carey and The Golden Mole and other living treasures by Katherine Rundell. The Faber Book of Science is a wonderful anthology that showcases some of the very best bits of popular science writing. Each extract is introduced by comments and explanations by Carey and they cover topics as diverse as medieval lice, stardust, protons, butterfly collecting and the colour of radium. Carey also provides a marvellous introductory piece on popular science writing. The Golden Mole is a celebration of 22 endangered species, from the eponymous mole to the pangolin and the Greenland shark. It is written in beautiful prose and full of strange and fascinating facts. It was short-listed for numerous prizes, including the Wainwright prize for Nature Writing and both Waterstones’ and Foyles’ Book of the Year. Dinah Birch CBE is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, and until recently Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement. Her speciality is Victorian literature, especially the works of John Ruskin and Anthony Trollope, and she has a particular interest in prose style. She is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books and was a member of the Man Booker prize committee in 2012. She has recently published a book on Trollope in the Very Short Introduction Series. https://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/people/dinah-birch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Rundell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carey_(critic)

Professor Tim Coulsen and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Burn: the Misunderstood Science of Metabolism' by Herman Pontzer and 'Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death' by Nick Lane. Both these books are concerned with science of metabolism – the process by which food is burnt to produce energy – but they approach it from different perspectives. Burn is an engaging account of Herman Pontzer’s studies of human metabolism in different populations. He discusses the ways in which metabolism controls every aspect of our health, why exercise doesn’t increase result in weight loss, and why the only way to lose weight is to reduce your calorie intake. Transformer asks how did life originate? What is it that animates our cells, what are the metabolic reactions that power our cells, and how are they regulated?. At the heart of metabolism is a series of reactions known as the Krebs cycle and Nick Lane offers radical new insights into how this originated and evolved. Tim Coulsen is Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His research considers how ecosystems change in response to changes in the number of the top predator species. He has also recently published a popular science book The Universal History of Us. Websites: https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/tim-coulson https://nick-lane.net/ https://globalhealth.duke.edu/people/pontzer-herman

Professor Sir Charles Godfray and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'The Fly Trap' by Fredrik Sjöberg and 'As if Human: AI and Artificial Intelligence' by Neil Shadbolt and Roger Hampson. Professor Charles Godfray and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg and As if Human: AI and Artificial Intelligence by Neil Shadbolt and Roger Hampson. The Fly Trap describes the life of the author on a remote island in the Swedish archipelago where he hunts for hoverflies. Partly autobiographical, partly a discourse on insects, collecting, and the life of some extraordinary butterfly collectors, it is an enchanting read, quite lyrical in some places and very funny in others. As if Human: AI and Artificial Intelligence discusses the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence. It addresses questions such as: what moral principles should we endow machines with?; who is accountable when things go wrong?; how do we use AI to empower rather than oppress people? How do we control privacy? It concludes with a set of guidelines (which the authors term ’proverbs’) on how a good citizen should approach the future. Sir Charles Godfray is Professor of Population Biology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Martin School and of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. He is also a Fellow of both the Royal Society and of Balliol College Oxford. His research interests include food security, biodiversity, and environmental science. He also has a passion for insects, particularly a group of tiny parasitic wasps.

Professor Russell Foster and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature' by Matt Ridley and 'Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation' by Olivia Judson. Series 2 Episode 9 The Red Queen is an excellent and accessible overview of sexual evolution. It discusses why sex matters, why most organisms have 2 genders, why we are not all hermaphrodite, what strategies animals employ to pass on their genes, and how sex influences the evolution of human nature. Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is written like agony aunt advice column in which all kinds of animals ask for help with their sex lives. This provides the framework for a highly entertaining and informative discussion of the evolutionary biology of sex and the extraordinary variety of ways of reproduction employed by organisms from stick insects to chimpanzees. Russell Foster is Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of both Brasenose College Oxford and the Royal Society of London. His research concerns our circadian rhythms – the 24-hour cycles that are part of our internal body clock - and how they are regulated by light. He is also an expert on sleep. Websites https://www.ndcn.ox.ac.uk/team/russell-foster https://www.mattridley.co.uk/

Professor Richard Fortey joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss 'Entangled Life' by Merlin Sheldrake and 'Wilding' by Isabella Tree. Series 2 Episode 8 Entangled Life is fascinating journey into the world of fungi - what they are, how they evolved, their hyphal networks below the ground, their mycorrhizal relationships with plants, their symbiotic interactions with algae in lichens, and the mind-altering chemicals they make. Wilding describes how the switch from intensive farming to minimal intervention led to a spectacular return of wildlife on the Knepp estate in Sussex, including rare species such as turtle doves, nightingales and purple emperor butterflies. Richard Fortey is a fellow of the both Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of numerous popular science books and has presented many radio and TV programmes on natural history. His research has focussed on trilobites but he also has a passion for fungi. His most recent book is Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind. Websites https://royalsociety.org/people/richard-fortey-11450/ https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/ https://knepp.co.uk/

Professor Chris Miller and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Who We Are and How We Got Here' by the Harvard geneticist David Reich. Series 2 Episode 7: The book 'Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past' is a compelling account of the origin of modern humans. Reich explains how our recent ability to study ancient DNA has dramatically revised our understanding of how humans spread all over the world. He describes evidence for interbreeding between ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans and shows how we carry in our genes indications that we are descended from ghost populations that no longer exist but must once have done so. He considers how modern human populations are related to each other in ways no-one expected and ponders the implications of the human genome revolution for society. Chris Miller is Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Websites https://www.brandeis.edu/biochemistry/faculty/miller-chris.html https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/

Dr Roger Highfield joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss 'Pain: A Ladybird Expert book' by Irene Tracey and 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson. Pain is a very short book but it encompasses everything you want to know about pain in a clear and informative way. What it is, how we measure it, why we need it, and how we can – and often alas, cannot – treat it. A Short History of Nearly Everything is a highly accessible and entertaining account that of the world we live on that ranges from the creation of the solar system, to the structure of the atom, plate tectonics, the rise of life, the development of modern humans and how your cells work. The book won the Royal Society Aventis Science Book Prize in 2004 and the Descartes Prize in 2005, and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of the decade. Roger is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group, a group of five museums that includes the Science Museum in London. He is also a Visiting Professor of Public engagement at the Universities of Oxford and University College London, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Honorary president of the Association of British Science Writers. Previously, Roger was the science editor of The Daily Telegraph for more than 20 years, and Editor of New Scientist for 4 years. He has written or co-authored nine books, most recently The Dance of Life, Symmetry Cells and How we become Human. Websites https://www.rogerhighfield.com/my-sites https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/university-officers/vice-chancellor

Professor Peter Burge joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss 'Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles' by Jay Owens and 'The Species that Changed Itself or How prosperity reshaped humanity' by Edwin Gale. Dust is all around us and we breathe it in with every breath we take, but it is not something most of think much about. Yet it impacts all our lives in multiple ways, causing environmental disaster and damaging our health. In Dust, Jay Owens combines history, politics, travel writing and science to tell the story of dust, from particulates that cause air pollution, to toxic dust from dried up seas, radioactive nuclear fallout and the role of dust in shaping the climate. The Species that Changed Itself combines biology, anthropology, history, epidemiology, and science with fascinating stories and literary references to tell the story of our phenotype. Our phenotype – the way we look and behave – things like height, weight, skin colour and so on, is determined by the interaction between our genes and our environment. But unlike all other species we have created our own environment and in doing so, Gale argues, we have reshaped ourselves - both our physical bodies and our behaviour. Peter Burge is an Honorary Consultant at the Oxford University Hospitals, a Departmental Lecturer in orthopaedic surgery at the University of Oxford and a past President of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand.

Professor Paul Smith and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'Wonderful Life' by Stephen Jay Gould and 'The Beak of the Finch' by Jonathan Weiner. Wonderful Life focuses on the weird and wonderful fossils found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies – their discovery, what they tell us about evolution and their re-evaluation many years later. The Beak of the Finch is also about evolution but rather than fossils it is about evolution in action on a tiny volcanic island in the Galapagos. It describes the painstaking work of Peter and Rosemary Grant who studied Darwin’s famous finches for over 40 years and showed that evolution can take place in real time. Their story is interwoven with that of Darwin and his studies of the Galapagos finches. Professor Paul Smith is Director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Professor of Natural History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Kellogg College Oxford. He is both a geologist and a palaeontologist whose research has focussed on the origin of vertebrates. He has worked extensively in the Arctic and in 2017 he was awarded the Polar medal for outstanding achievements in the field of polar research Websites https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/people/paul-smith https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/ https://eeb.princeton.edu/people/b-rosemary-grant

Professor Richard Boyd joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss 'Cuckoo - Cheating by Nature' by Nick Davies. The cuckoo is a ruthless parasite that lays its egg in another bird’s nest, tricks them into accepting the egg as its own and entices them to feed its chick. This book is a riveting account of an extraordinary bird and it reads like a detective story. Nick Davies asks every question you can possibly imagine about how the female cuckoo and the cuckoo chick itself manage to deceive their host, and he describes the intricate experiments he and his colleagues have conducted to unravel the answers. He interweaves this with stories of naturalists from the past who have studied the cuckoo. He writes beautifully and his passion for the cuckoo and the natural world shines through. Richard Boyd, Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Brasenose College is a distinguished physiologist and an Honorary Fellow of the Physiological Society. He also happens to have a passion for birds. Website: https://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/directory/nick-davies

Professor Marcus du Sautoy joins Professor Frances Ashcroft to discuss 'A Mathematician’s Apology' by GH Hardy and 'Exactly: How Engineers Created the Modern World' by Simon Winchester. A Mathematician’s Apology is GH Hardy’s panegyric on pure mathematics in which he claims that pure maths is the pinnacle of the sciences and that it has an inherent beauty. Exactly tells the stories of the pioneering engineers who developed the precision tools and machinery that underpin the modern world. Along the way, the author addresses questions like why is precision important, how do we measure it, can we be too precise? Marcus du Sautoy is Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. A distinguished mathematician with a particular interest in symmetry and number theory, he is also the author of several popular science books about mathematics, including the critically acclaimed The Music of the Primes, and he has presented numerous TV programmes. Website: https://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/

Professor Matthew Freeman and Professor Frances Ashcroft discuss 'The Mould in Dr Florey's Coat' by Eric Lax This book tells the true story of the penicillin miracle – penicillin being the mould in Dr Florey’s coat. When most people are asked who discovered penicillin they invariably answer Alexander Fleming. But he was merely one of the people involved and arguably not even the most important. This book sets the record straight and tells the story of how it was 3 Oxford scientists, Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley who isolated penicillin and turned it into a life-saving drug. It is a remarkable story, very well told, about a scientific breakthrough conducted on a shoestring budget in the middle of the second world war, that has benefitted all humanity. Matthew Freeman is Professor of Pathology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of both Lincoln College Oxford and the Royal Society of London. He is also Head of the Dunn School of Pathology which plays a very special part in the story the book tells about the discovery of penicillin. Website: https://www.path.ox.ac.uk/research-group/matthew-freeman/

Professor Frances Ashcroft gives a short introduction to this exciting new series