Tracing uranium’s past, and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements, this book aims to disentangle our attitudes and to unpick the atomic mindset. Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten, stories that can be found throughout the history of the element. Ranging from glassworks to penny stocks; medicines to weapons; something to be feared to a powerful source of energy. This global history explores the scientific history of the element, but also shines a light on its cultural and social impact. By understanding our nuclear past, we can move beyond the ideological opposition to technologies and encourage a more nuanced dialogue about whether it is feasible – and desirable – to have a genuinely nuclear-powered future. Lucy Jane Santos’s upcoming book Chain Reactions: A Hopeful History of Uranium will no doubt be a “glowing” success! Lucy looks beyond the familiar narratives to explore an alternative history of uranium in a lively, accessible way. Her previous work includes Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium.

Episode was recorded live September 26, 2024.

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You asked and we delivered! Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist Deborah Blum—author of The Poisoner’s Handbook—returns to PBC! This time, she comes to us as HOST! Two additional authors will be joining us, picked by Deborah herself: Amit Katwala as author of TREMORS IN THE BLOOD and Patti McCracken for ANGEL MAKERS. Where did lie detectors come from? Are they really accurate? The history isn’t just fascinating, it’s evocative—and bears an interesting connection to artificial intelligence. Everyone wants a machine that tells the truth. But chillingly, it turns out that machines can lie, too. Our next thrilling true-crime narrative takes us to a small town in Hungary. McCracken follows a trail of white powder—the colorless, odorless, deadly poison arsenic. Distributed by a wily midwife to women who needed a ‘cure’ for abusive spouses, the little vials emptied and the grave yards started filling up. What caused a group of housewives to become a murder ring? Who were these “angel-makers” and how did their crimes (at least 160 dead) go so long undiscovered?

Episode was recorded live September 12, 2024.

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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book A Gentleman and a Thief, we are discussing our own gentleman conman with The Music Man.

Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this classic Hollywood (and Broadway) musical to discuss our favorite songs, finding our someone, and seeing the good in someone else.

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Suave and movie-star handsome, Arthur Barry charmed New York celebrities as he planned and executed some of the most brazen and lucrative heists of the 1920s. Think Cary Grant’s character was clever and slick in the Hitchcock classic To Catch a Thief ? This gentleman thief was smarter, smoother. It sounds like fiction. But it isn’t. Barry was real-life con artist who donned a tuxedo to crash the parties of the rich and famous as he planned his burglaries. Known as a “second-story man,” he could even slip in and out of bedrooms undetected as his victims slept only inches away! “I know he’s terrible, but isn’t he charming?” – wrote Robbery victim Dorothea Livermore. Barry was, shall we say, the aristocrat of crime—and a modern day Robin Hood. Well, except for the giving it to the poor part. In a span of seven years he stole diamonds, pearls and other precious gems worth almost $60 million today—in a whirlwind of roaring 20s decadence. Don your dapper attire, raise a coup cocktail glass—and join us for the latest by the brilliant Dean Jobb: A Gentleman and a Thief!

Episode was recorded live August 22, 2024.

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Welcome to the Peculiar Movie Club, a bonus podcast linked to our main show the Peculiar Book Club through common themes in media. This week, in honor of the book Whalefall, we are discussing the greatest tale of Whales ever told, the classic Moby Dick.

Join Davey Berris and Darren Cross as we take a deep dive into this classic tale of temptation, obsession, was Gregory Peck right for the role of Ahab (he didn't think so), and what are our white whales.

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Just imagine for a moment—you are swimming in the cold dark of the Pacific Ocean, trying to find the lost remains of your father. But you aren’t alone. There are shapes moving in the gloom, great, dark shapes. Shapes with mouths. That’s what happens to Jay Gardiner in the latest novel by award winning author (and collaborator with Guillermo del Toro) Daniel Kraus. Caught first by a giant squid, then swallowed whole by a Sperm whale, Jay has one hour to get out alive. If he can get out of his own head, first. The thing is, If you were swallowed by a whale… it would be a VERY big GULP. And you know who can tell us about gulps, right? Mary Roach. Because on tonight’s special VIP edition of Authors Hosting Authors, Mary will talk to Daniel about the ins and outs of being, well, in—and out. Because while the story might be fiction, the trial of our protagonist is based in scientific FACT. Join us for a wild night and learn the best possible escape routes out of an 80 ft, 60 ton whale. You never know when that will come in handy!

Episode was recorded live July 25, 2024.

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How much do looks really matter? In society, whether we like it or not, how we look affects how we are treated—and even what opportunities we might have in life. A one-time New York prison commissioner, Henry Solomon, once stated that “physical defects…might conduce to crime” because a man with a poor physical appearance would have an easier time stealing a dollar than getting hired to earn one. That outlook wasn’t new then, and it hasn’t really gone away. In Zara Stone’s amazing book KILLER LOOKS, she writes that “people have instinctively understood the societal benefits of conventional beauty” as a kind of social currency. It’s literally like having money in the bank. “Beauty privilege is real,” she writes, “and it’s real uncomfortable.” By the early 1980s, cosmetic surgery was firmly established as a path to economic success. Looks were so important that a new branch of therapy was created: cosmetic behavior therapy. If that sounds strange, just wait. Imagine a program that offers cosmetic changes to inmates as a means of lowering the crime rate—that instead of teaching us to lose out biases about looks, society is pretty willing to give in to it. Do looks really affect crime rates? More likely, appearance bias instead creates a situation where a person is both less likely to have opportunities AND more likely to be accused or arrested for a crime. What does appearance bias mean for us now, or for the future? Find out on July 11th, live with Zara Stone only on the Peculiar book club!

Episode was recorded live July 11, 2024.

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What happens when racism is not a bug in the system—but in fact IS the system? And the Health System, at that. Imagine being a high-achieving person of color, courted by prestigious medical institutions, but then denied the support you needed when you got there? Fighting through burnout and the grueling pace of residency, only to wind up a cog in a bureaucracy that sees patients as broken bits on an assembly line. “With] ninety-ninth percentile MCAT and Step and Board scores as entrance keys to the profession,” writes author Anthony Chin-Quee, “we too often neglect to screen for traits that truly matter: the self-awareness and strength of character necessary to weather the devastating emotional trials that are sure to come; the humility and grace required to be an effective, collaborative, and avid lifelong learner.” Chin-Quee’s memoir, I CAN’T SAVE YOU, doesn’t just present the trauma of our medical education system, but the trauma of living and of caring in a narrative described by NPR as “messy” but provocative—an “assemblage of shifting narrative perspectives, poetry, anecdotes, and hallucinatory performance, represents the structural equivalent of a mixtape.” Guess what, y’all, it’s Medical Humanities. Yes, like that journal I happen to be the editor in chief of… and I cannot WAIT to chat live with Anthony about how we have lost—and how to regain—the human at the center of medicine. Don’t miss this livestream on Jun 27th, only on the Peculiar Book Club.

Episode was recorded live June 27, 2024.

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