Chemistry World Book Club

In this episode we’re reading United We Are Unstoppable: 60 Inspiring Young People Saving Our World, a book of short stories, told by the people who are fighting for their homes and their futures in the face of climate change.

Find out what we thought about the book, whether you should read it, and hear from editor Akshat Rathi about what it was like to work with and learn from young climate activists.

This month we’re reading Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium by historian Lucy Jane Santos. The book traces the story of a radioactive element, from its ascendance as a cure-all ingredient in the late 19th century to the gradual downfall and eventual discredit of the entire radium industry. 

Find out what we thought about the book, and hear from Santos herself as she talks about digging into forgotten history and taking a bath at a modern radioactive spa.

In this episode we’re tackling the coronavirus information overload by comparing three books on pandemics past and present: Outbreaks and Epidemics by Meera Senthilingam, Adam Kucharski’s The Rules of Contagion, and The Pandemic Century by Mark Honigsbaum (the only one written well before the current pandemic hit).

Find out what we thought about each of these titles, what readers might get out of them, and hear from Outbreaks and Epidemics author Meera Senthilingham about what it was like to write about pandemics while being in the middle of one.

From photographic film to scientific glassware, Ainissa Ramirez’s new book The Alchemy of Us offers a unique insight into our relationship with technology. Find out what we thought about the book, and hear from Ramirez herself as she talks about digging into archives around the world to uncover forgotten characters and intriguing stories.

This month, we take a peek behind the curtain with Gemma Milne’s Smoke & Mirrors. In her first book, the technology journalist looks at headline-grabbing science present and past – from cancer treatments to fusion energy and quantum computers. Will the book deliver on its promise to be a guide on how to recognise hype and how to cut through it? 

Find out what we thought about the book, and hear from Milne herself as she talks about the human experience of hype – and how it can be used as a tool for good as well as bad.

This time we're reading Ingredients, a book that promises to make chemistry more fun than Hogwarts. First-time author George Zaidan investigates the stuff inside stuff and tries to answer the question of whether you should eat that cheeto or not. 

Find out what we thought about the book, and hear from Zaidan himself as he reads an excerpt and talks about the strangest medical case studies and scientific uncertainty.

Why don't we think of coffee as a drug? Are you hooked on heroin the moment you take it...or is the answer more complicated? In Say Why to Drugs: Everything You Need to Know About the Drugs We Take and Why We Get High Suzi Gage looks at the misconceptions, theories and attitudes surrounding all kinds of drugs – and attempts to separate fact from fiction.

This 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.

This month, we’re delving deep into chemistry’s history as we discuss Peter Wothers' book Antimony, Gold, and Jupiter’s Wolf: How the Elements Were Named. Some chemists may know Wothers’ writing in the form of chemistry textbooks, but this is his first popular science book. As Wothers unearths the stories behind the elements’ names, he also explores our understanding of the nature of matter itself.

In her new book Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time Gaia Vince assembles everything you need to know about the world and how human beings have come to rule over so many aspects of it. If it sounds like a mammoth task...that's because it is! Vince skillfully breaks it down into five distinct sections, looking at everything from how humans have mastered energy expenditure for the benefit of the masses, to the pivotal role language has played in making us a species that stand entirely on our own in a whole host of things.

This month, we’re delving into the science of language as we’re discussing linguist David Adger’s book Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power. Adger takes on one of the most debated questions in the linguistics community: Do humans come up with languages because they are very good at recognising patterns and remembering things? Or do human brains have a built-in ability for the types of languages we speak (or sign)?

Have you ever considered the practicalities of building a swimming pool out of cheese? Or wondered what it would take to surround your house with a lava moat? Even if you have never thought about these outlandish questions, Randall Munroe has the answers in his new book How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems.

Enjoy a fast-paced thriller but wish they were a bit more believable when it comes to the science? In that case, Fiona Erskine’s chemical infused debut novel – which marks the start of her Jacqueline Silver Adventures series – should be on your radar.

When Fiona Erskine had a skiing accident on holiday and ended up with more time staying still than she’d bargained for, ideas started to flow and the frame-work behind a book series emerged. Erskine had written a lot about the Chernobyl disaster and, as a chemical engineer, understood the nuances of hard science that many thriller writers either eschewed for dramatic effect or just got plain wrong. The result was The Chemical Detective – an audacious, female-led thriller which took the disposable women of the James Bond franchise and flipped the concept entirely on its head.

While this book does stretch the believability factor, it’s an engaging and somewhat unusual read that should please chemists and have enough intrigue to attract readers who don’t consider science a joint first language.

In Superior: The Return of Race Science, Angela Saini examines the history of race science and the people who spend years studying it. Superior was influenced by Saini’s childhood, when experiences of every-day racism made her question the perceptions about race that she witnessed all around her, leading to a career as a science journalist and now three-time author. Both a historical account of how race science evolved into existence and the motivating factors that, Saini says, have led to its revival as a tool at the hands of various political groups, Superior will make you question your assumptions about others. It’ll also encourage you to process all future information through a more open-minded filter. One that says: forget about skin colour – we’re all much more similar than you might at first think.

This time in our Book Club podcast, we celebrate the 100 year anniversary of Primo Levi, the man behind The Periodic Table. In this collection of short stories, the Italian author of If this is a man and If not now, when? offers a startling insight into both fascist Italy, and the harrowing events of the second world war.

Filtered through the unique perspective of Levi – a man held back by his Jewish heritage, but saved on many occasions by his expert understanding of chemical processes – even the most mundane or ordinary of every-day events is given an authentic, scientific and sometimes disturbing twist. Instead of chapter names, each story – sometimes part of the overall narrative and other times a complete departure – is named after an element, sending the book off in different directions, before returning to its central theme.

For this month’s Book Club podcast, it’s a highly unusual review scenario, as we get to grips with Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table, written by none other than Kit Chapman (yes, the very same Kit Chapman who was, up until recently, Chemistry World’s cosplay loving Comment editor). 

We were in the privileged position to hear about Kit’s book from almost the moment he decided to write it. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a task which required him to travel around the globe in search of answers to some of chemistry’s greatest questions: where do elements actually come from and how are they made? And: What happens when what we know about the periodic table turns out to be…well…less right than we thought it was?

This time in Book Club, we follow sustainability journalist Tim Smedley as he pursues one of humankind’s greatest challenges and looks at the dangers posed by air pollution.

Intrigued by some casual facts and figures he’d stumbled across in a newspaper, Smedley investigated further, then decided to travel around the world to look at the factors affecting air quality in major cities. Along with examples of how air pollution occurs and some frightening statistics – some compiled from his own measurements using a hand-held air pollution monitor – he suggests practical ways individuals can make a tangible difference to the quality of air in their communities.

In this month’s book club podcast, Anthony Warner – ‘The Angry Chef’ behind the popular blog of the same name that then spawned a book – tackles the enormous problem of obesity and how our perception about it may be the key to minimising the problem. A veteran of the food industry, Warner introduces us to some intriguing and thought-provoking ideas about where obesity comes from and its causes, claiming that there’s much more to it than addressing issues with willpower and doing plenty of exercise. In Warner’s mind, shaming fat people is at the heart of the problem, directing us away from the real issues that we should be paying more attention to.

In this month’s podcast, Australian author Matt Parker looks at the unique relationship that exists between human beings and numbers, and how it inevitably leads to mistakes large and small. Using a series of examples sourced from mainly publicly available information, Parker explains how a simple misunderstanding between a human and a computer could lead to a catastrophic accident – or just a bizarre chain of events that a human being would never have otherwise made. As well as stories of how computers have got it wrong, the author also suggests ways that we can work with technology to avoid problems occurring.

This month's podcast features Inventing Ourselves by cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. The book explores the complex changes that take place in the human brain during adolescence and typical teenage behaviours such as risk-taking, impulsivity and self-consciousness.