Science Friday - Science Books of 2020, ANWR Drilling, Science Diction. Dec 11, 2020, Part 2

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Trump Administration Rushes To Sell Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Land For Drilling In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it plans to auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. The sale, which is set for Jan. 6, could cap a bitter, decades-long battle over whether to drill in the refuge’s coastal plain, and it would seal the administration’s efforts to open the land to development. But conservation and tribal groups who oppose oil and gas development in the coastal plain strongly disagree. And they blasted the administration on Thursday, saying it’s cutting corners so it can hand over leases to oil companies before Biden, who opposes drilling in the refuge, is sworn in and can block it. Tegan Hanlon, Alaska energy desk reporter at Alaska Public Media, gives us the story and is joined by Sarah James, a Neetsa’ii Gwich’in elder and an anti-drilling advocate based in Arctic Village, Alaska. The Best Science Books Of 2020 As 2020 comes to a close, it’s hard to find ways to celebrate a year that brought so much frustration, loneliness, disappointment, and heartache.  But however difficult the world got, we at Science Friday could still find joy in awesome science stories and comfort in tales of remarkable science fiction.  And, given that science was so much at the center of our lives this year, it’s not a surprise that we saw so many interesting science books published in 2020. Books about the pandemic, about climate change, and about the algorithms that rule our lives. But also books about curiosity—those things about the human condition that you (maybe) finally had time to notice.   Guest host John Dankosky is joined by librarian Brian Muldoon and Science senior editor Valerie Thompson to highlight some of the science books you may have missed this year. Get the list of the books recommended by our guests!  What’s In A (Hurricane) Name? This year was the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record—we saw a whopping 30 named storms. In fact, there were so many storms that we exhausted the list of predetermined names for the season, and had to resort to using the Greek alphabet. The most recent hurricane (for now), was Hurricane Iota. But why do we name hurricanes in the first place? The practice of naming storms goes back to the 19th century, and it was a bumpy ride to land on the system we use today.  Science Diction host Johanna Mayer tells the story of a meteorologist in Australia, a novel, and a second-wave feminist from Florida—and how they brought us hurricane names. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. Ira Flato is away. Later this hour, we've got our annual roundup of the year's best science books. 2020 may have been a dud, but these science reads weren't duds. We'll make our list and we'll hear some of your picks. But first, it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KER News. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. In Alaska, a decades-long debate about oil and gas. drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has accelerated. The refuge is on Alaska's North Coast and was protected from drilling for nearly four decades. But in 2017, Congress approved

legislation to open the area to oil development. The Trump administration is now rushing to auction off drilling rights to oil and gas companies before he leaves office. So how could this impact both the state's economy and the people who live nearby? Joining us to break down what's happening is Tegan Hanlon, a reporter for Alaska. as Energy Desk in Anchorage. Teagan, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me on.

Why don't you walk us through the latest information we have about the potential sale of this land? Sure. So the Trump administration has now set an official date of a lease sale. It's January 6th. They say the auction will be live streamed online, and companies have to submit their sealed bids for the drilling rights on this land by the end of December.

And this timeline is really controversial. For one, the sale will be just two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, and Biden has said he opposes drilling in the coastal plane. And then two, the administration is breaking with its typical kind of protocol. So there's this step in the lead-up to the lease sale called the call for nominations. In this case, it started November 17th. It goes for 30 days. And it's a time when oil companies and other interested parties can basically tell the government

which tracks of land in the coastal plain they'd be interested in bidding on. So normally this call for nominations period closes, the government analyzes the comments, and then announces the date of the sale. In this case, that didn't happen. The sale notice was posted in the middle of the call for nominations, and that has generated a lot of pushback from environmental groups and others who opposed drilling in the refuge. Tell us a bit about who is opposed to this sale. Sure. So for decades and continuing today, environmental and conservation groups have tried to keep oil rigs out of the refuge. The refuge is home to migratory caribou and polar bears and other animals. And those conservation groups say there's no way oil development can happen without harming wild life, without harming the tundra, without exacerbating climate change in a place that's already warming fast. And among some of the most focal opponents, too, are the Gwichin, an indigenous group whose members hunt caribou that commonly give birth in the refuge and who say the land is sacred. I want to bring in, actually, a member of the Nisai Gwichin.

Sarah James, she's an elder of this First Nations community based in Arctic Village, Alaska. Arctic villages just south of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sarah, James, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for inviting me here. Sarah, why is protecting this land from oil and gas development so important to your community? We're about 100 miles south of a birthplace for Porcupine Keribu. We call that place, Ishikudson, Gonday, Godlet. That means sacred place where the life began.

And we always protect that area. We've been here for 20 to 40,000 years. So we always took care of the caribou and in return they took care of us. There's 15 villages are united on this issue since 1988, when it was threatened to our nation. At that time, nobody really knows about it. They don't know about the Kerrbo. They don't know about Hojian. They don't know about Arctic Village.

They said, how can we win? Oil is so huge. And they said, the only way is to educate. Make friends. Why we say no to oil? That was our direction. I was one of the elder that was appointed to teach the world why we say no to oil. We did that from 1988 to 2016, and we did well.

We overcame many battles with our friends, but Trump came on. 2016, Obama way out. And when Trump came in, everything went out of our hand. You said everything went out of your hands when the Trump administration came on in 2016. Why did everything change for you? Because they don't consider human rights. All that good work is not important anymore. They did things without public process.

This is a public interest land. And they put it in the tax bill year 2017, and they put the refuge in there to bring the money for the nation into tax bill. And that needs to be repeal. And also, our tribe, our leaders, they felt like it's out of their hand because we always govern ourselves. We always have the sovereignty of rights

to take care of our land, take care of our resource, and manage our people, our tribal people. So we depend on that care of. for food, it's a food security, it's our song, it's our dance, it's our language.

Everything we say and do pertaining to a caribou, because we always live with a caribou. And it's our tools, it's our shelter. And even today, a lot of our labor is making clothes or crafts,

and that's how we bring in some cash and it's our diet, you know, 75% or more, it's Wyoming. It's mainly curable when it comes through our tribal land. When it gets on our tribal land, we own it because everything on tribal land is ours. So we have a right and kind to it. That's how we make it every day to day. And that's what we are. Tegan, Sarah's made reference to the tax bill.

And I'm wondering if you can talk through what exactly that means how this 2017 tax bill allowed for drilling in the Arctic National Refuge. Sure. So in 2017, we saw this pretty dramatic shift in this decades-long fight over whether to drill in the coastal plane. And that was this massive tax act. And there was a provision in the Tax Act that basically opened the coastal plane to oil and gas drilling. And it required the government to hold two lease sales in the coastal plane the first by the end of 2021. There are some lawsuits out there against this development currently. What right now is heading into court? Right. There are several lawsuits working their way through the court system right now. The plaintiffs include the Gwichan tribes as well as environmental groups.

One of the lawsuits was filed by a coalition of 15 states. Alaska not included who said the government's environmental review of the proposed oil drilling, underestimated the damage to habitat, to the climate, and they want to judge to over. overturn the Interior Department's plan to auction off drilling rights and the refuge. You've mentioned, Tegan, that the Trump administration obviously is interested in this. Who else is interested in this? Are there oil companies that have specifically said they want to drill here? Are there others in the state who are behind this and say, we want to make sure that this sale happens? That's a good question. So for a long time, Republican lawmakers have fought to open the coastal plane to drilling,

that includes Alaska's current congressional delegation. Oil and gas industry groups have also, you know, celebrated this news. As far as which oil companies might bid on the drilling rights, we don't really know for sure. Companies aren't saying publicly whether they're in or whether they're out. And that's not really surprising. These lease sales are typically, you know, pretty competitive and companies kind of hold their cards close. So what we do know, is that there's just kind of thick layers of uncertainty and risk to a January 6 lease sale. From the lawsuits to money, oil prices are still low, and oil price war really hit the industry hard, and there's some major banks that have said they won't fund drilling in the refuge.

So I guess that was the long way to say we don't know for sure. And, you know, industry analysts have said we probably won't know the extent of interest until January 6 when bids are actually unsealed. And if bids come in and a sale is completed before January 20th, could the Biden administration actually come in and just reverse it? I mean, is there a chance that none of this really matters if the Biden administration takes office and says, we don't want drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? There are a few things that the Biden administration could do. Some industry observers have theorized that perhaps the most likely is that the Biden administration intervenes during the permitting process. So just because an oil company, you know, holds the drilling rights, they still need to get permitting for building infrastructure, everything from like an ice road to a drill pad. So there's been speculation that the Biden administration could delay that permitting process or make it so onerous that companies decide to put their money elsewhere.

Sarah, I asked Tegan about the lawsuits. Why do you think it's so important to take legal action at this time? Because all our hands are tight. We did everything right. and we always govern ourselves. We have our own expertise. We have our own lawyers, anthropologists, oil expert, our own next-a-co-consultant, we got our own leaders, and we got our own land.

We manage our own land. And we have the right to use our sovereignty rights to say, no, this is our life. We filed a suit on June 9 at the same time, a 15 state, suit under their sovereignty. So we ask all the state to come through because most of the national banks are refusing to fund the development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So we're asking people to support Netsite tribal government and your state to get involved because they do have a sovereignty right to say no to a development, own a public interest land, which is belong to all the Americans, belong to all the state.

So you have a stake in there. That's all the time we have. I'd like to thank my guests. Tegan Hanlon, a reporter for Alaska's Energy Desk based in Anchorage, and Sarah James, a Nisi I Gwichan elder, an advocate against oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Thank you both so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, John. Thank you. Sarah told us she was inspired to sing us a song. about the importance of the caribou in this land to her people. When we come back, it's a celebration of 2020, we can all get behind. We're rounding up the year's best science books. If you've got a bookworm on your holiday gift list or just need a good read to curl up with this winter, stay with us.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankosky. Well, it's been a year, hasn't it? a lot of frustration, disappointment, and heartache. But there were a few bright spots, too. I know I got to spend a lot more time outdoors this year, and I even got to do some reading.

Given that science was so much at the center of our lives throughout this year, it's not a surprise that we saw so many interesting science books published in 2020. Books about the pandemic, about climate change, and about the algorithms that rule our lives, to be sure, but also books about curiosity, those things about the human condition that you maybe finally had time to notice. For instance, on Twitter, Lauren Slanker shared this book selection with us. She said that her selection was Breath, the new science of a lost art.

It changed the way I think about something as simple as breathing. Today we'd like to highlight some of the science books you may have missed while you were out getting fresh air or helping your kids with distance learning. And we're going to be hearing some of your suggestions throughout the segment as well because we're joined by a live Zoom audience. but here to kick off this celebration of science books from 2020. One of the few things we feel confident we can celebrate this year are my guest, Brian Muldoon. He's the children's librarian at the Clinton Hill Branch at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Brian, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. And returning to Roundup Books this year with us is Valerie Thompson, senior editor at Science Magazine in Washington, D.C. Hi there, Valerie. Hi, John. Thanks for having me. Well, let's get started here. And Valerie, maybe you can kick things off for us with the first book on your list. It's a book that happens to be on my list this year, too, and it's called The Alchemy of Us.

Tell us about the author and about why you chose this book. Yeah, I'm really not surprised that this is on your list as well. It's an excellent book. So The Alchemy of Us is written by material scientist Anisa Ramirez, and it examines how a number of notable materials were invented, and then how they, in turn, went on to shape human culture. So she writes, for example, about the invention of the phonograph. and how it changed how we enjoy music.

So the first way that it did that was that it changed music from this commino experience to one where we are able to experience it alone. And then another interesting way that it changed things is that because instruments like the cello and the violin and guitars produce these very soft tones that were hard for the phonograph to pick up, louder instruments like the piano or the trumpet or the trombone actually became more popular. in recorded music because they were easier to record. And then I think one of the coolest things about this specific example was that recorded music actually allowed for the cross-fertilization of musical culture.

So between jazz and blues and rock and roll, even as the musicians themselves were separated by race politics. Yeah, this book, Valerie, is on my list in part because Anisa Ramirez is someone I know who I've worked with. She and I worked on a podcast project, and for years, she's been developing this very keen sense, I think, of how to communicate really important, clear scientific ideas to people through things like sports and music. And I think that this is something that we're seeing a lot more of Valerie in some of the books that are being written this year. This book by Anisa Ramirez

gives you a real sense of how to unlock some of that curiosity about just things that you didn't really think about, probably, that are in your everyday life. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a really great point. I mean, like, another example that she talks about in this book is photographic film. And she writes about how early photographs of black people were often under exposed because dark skin absorbs more light than white skin. And how, like, Kodak actually knew that this was a problem, but they didn't reformulate their product until they started getting complaints from furniture manufacturers and confectioners, who started to complain that their customers couldn't see the difference between wood species and chocolate varieties. So it's, it's a really interesting.

the book is packed with these really interesting anecdotes and kind of, like you said, showing the hidden world that maybe we don't think about underneath everyday objects. Brian, let's get to one of the books on your list. It's one that you have a personal connection with. It's called The Apocalypse Factory. Tell us about it. Yeah, so the Apocalypse Factory by Steve Olson, who is a journalist out of Seattle with a background in science. And so what this book does is it pretty much traces the history of plutonium. It's discovered. every at UC Berkeley and then it's mass production and use in the atomic bomb. My personal connection with it is that this book focuses on a site called Hanford, which was located in the desert region in Washington State, just kind of in the southern area right on the Columbia River. And my grandfather actually worked at that site. He was a mechanical engineer from it. So the government comes in, pretty much clears everybody out and then builds these huge reactors. It was actually the first

fully functional nuclear reactors in the world. And then they just just start mass-producing plutonium as part of the Manhattan Projects. Almost all the plutonium that was used in our entire nuclear arsenal was produced there. And it continued on well into the Cold War until it was discontinued in the 70s. And it remains there to this day, just this kind of huge toxic site. It is actually the most toxic site in the Western Hemisphere. And they're still trying to figure out how to clean it up. And what I really enjoyed about this book is that he digs into the site and not just kind of the main physicists and stuff that we're working on these projects and chemists.

But he also kind of, she's what it was like from the machinists who were building the site, the farmers that were having to kind of deal with all the toxic material under the air and things like that and just the long running kind of legacy of this thing. But that's what's so interesting about it too is this is a piece of history that a lot of people who are, say, interested in World War II history. could really sink their teeth into, but this is something that persists to this day. This is a real life story for real life people who are living right now. And so it's in that way it's not just a history book. Yeah, exactly. And it's just got a lot of long-lasting lessons for just kind of like careful with what we do and we innovate so quickly, I mean, that we're able to kind of make these huge strides

in science, but at what costs and just kind of not really thinking about the future. So Valerie, you have another book in here. It's called The Great Indoors. And just the title alone, I think a lot of people are thinking an awful lot about the great indoors, especially as weather gets colder and we're going to be stuck inside for an entire winter. So tell us about this book. Yeah. So obviously, this one feels appropriate. Given how much time a lot of us are spending indoors right now. But the book basically encourages readers to think about whether or not the built environment is really serving your needs. And so it's focused on the behavioral implications of indoor design in a bunch of different contexts. Can we improve surgical outcomes with better designed operating rooms? Can we implement more humane design strategies in our prisons? Can we leverage technology to help elderly people stay independent for longer?

Did you have a specific smart design idea that came out of this book that really resonated with you? I would say one of the things that resonated with me about a particularly bad design, which you would not necessarily think about, would be open office floor plans. They were like the big loser in the design department. The author shows that people who work in open offices actually end up taking more sick days than employees that have their own private work spaces. So I think from a design perspective, that's something maybe we should be moving away from. Yes, yes, indeed.

But it's also interesting, too, whenever there's a book that's written in a year like this that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the things that we were experiencing, but then it just seems to be so prescient, so exactly on the nose of what we're thinking about. Valerie, you know, open office floor plans weren't people's favorite thing, but now they're going to be outlawed, right? I mean, it's never going to be the same way that it was before. This is a book that actually hit it right on the nose, it seems. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny, because like you said, this book was obviously written in pre-pendemic times,

but there are a lot of relevant applications. So, for example, she spends a whole chapter talking about microbes in our homes. And, you know, this is a time when people are really maybe leaning heavily into the antimicrobial cleaners and things. And that's something, at least from this book, you know, we're learning kind of similar to the human body. Like our homes have kind of a microbiome and it's not necessarily all bad microbes. And so when we're cleaning them, you know, very thoroughly with all these antimicrobial. aerobial agents, we could be disrupting the good part of the microbiome. So that's just something to keep in mind, you know, moving forward. We have a listener suggestion now. Matt Milton has one for us.

Matt? Yeah. So I thought the book Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrick was really great, both about how fungi affect all aspects of biology, but largely their relationship with forests and humans. and yeah, I just thought it was really great. There's not a lot of popular science books about mycology, so it was a great addition. Matt, thanks so much for that. And Brian, this is on your list, right? Yeah, this was actually probably my favorite book on my list. And one of the things that I really think elevates it above other books on fungi.

I'm kind of one of these people who's long been fascinated by it. I just think it's cool that they're kind of like the most alien thing, but also totally the most terrestrial thing on Earth. But the one thing that I think really elevates this one is just the level of the writing. It's just he's got such a problem. poetic turn of phrase, and it really makes it so you can really kind of get deep into the dirt. It's so sensuous and stuff like that when he's describing the way mycelium kind of create these huge networks. You really, really get an idea of like how it works and kind of what the fungi perspective is. And it made you feel what it's like to be a mushroom. Yeah, I think so.

Well, but that's really interesting because this isn't the only book of recent times that has been written on this subject. This is something that more and more people are writing about, thinking about people care more about mushrooms maybe than ever before. Yeah, well, I mean, they're fascinating. I mean, and this book really, really kind of highlights just how we owe absolutely everything to mushrooms. Like, they just kind of connect these huge, huge massive biomes together and just like make it so forest and things like that really function. And the thing I found most fascinating about this book is that it really shows how mushrooms are kind of almost entirely responsible for life on dry land, that they were the ones that kind of melded with algae and formed lichens

and brought, which are kind of regenerators to like all plants on land, which obviously changed your atmosphere and gave rise to all other kinds of life. So I don't know. I guess they're kind of like the Illuminati of the Natural World or kind of like the underlying forests. Oh boy. We're going to get the conspiracy theory books now. You know, so Valerie, I want to get back to your list. And, you know, we're talking about the best science books of the year, but that this doesn't and shouldn't exclude works of fiction. I know that you've got one of these on your list, too, called Real Life. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, like you said, normally when we're talking about science book, we're talking about nonfiction, but there's no reason that that needs to be the case. And this is a particularly good example. So

Real Life by Brandon Taylor, it follows Wallace, who is a queer, black biochem grad student as he navigates academia at a predominantly white institution in the Midwest. So the story kind of unfolds and Wallace is exploring kind of like his ambivalence about completing his degree and this kind of larger struggle about, you know, where he fits in into the broader world. But I think what makes this book especially important for a scientific audience is its incisive indictment of the subtle and sometimes not so subtle hypocrisies that pervade institutions that like to think of themselves is progressive. So, you know, his supervisor is really condescending. He's fetishized by his program for being the only black student and other members of his cohort are questioning the basis for his

admission. In the end, it's a pretty bleak portrait of academia, but I think it's one that unfortunately will probably resonate with people from marginalized groups. And I think it's the way that the story is told is one that's really interesting. and would be difficult to convey in a nonfiction analysis. Yeah, could you talk more about that? Because some books, some stories just lend themselves toward fiction, whereas others, you really want to hear the real story as told, as reported over time. Why do you think this works so well as a piece of fiction?

Well, it's interesting because the author himself, before he became a writer, was actually a science grad student. So I think that there's a lot of truth behind the story itself, but it's such a personal story, and it's not something that's filled with facts and figures and look at this graph and look at these, you know, citations. It's a gripping story. And along the way, you kind of get this very good sense of like what it is like to be a person who comes from a non-traditional background, who's trying to make their way in science. And so I think that for that reason, like I said, it's just not something that can be easily conveyed in nonfiction.

I'm John Dankowski, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking about the best science books of 2020 with Brian Muldoon from the Brooklyn Public Library and Valerie Thompson from Science Magazine. I should say, maybe this is the right place that one of the books on my list is a book called Ledger by Jane Hirschfield. She's a poet. And I talked to her earlier in the year on Science Friday. It was just the start of the pandemic. And this book is not a book fully about science poems. But she uses science as her sort of through line and touch point for so much.

She writes about climate change. She writes about some of the looming apocalyps that we have coming. And I think much like what you were saying, sometimes poetry is the only form to get across. some very big ideas that are almost too scary to talk about in real life, right? And I feel like this book, Jane Hirschfeld's ledger is one that gets that across. I don't know, Brian, did you run across any fiction books this year? I know your list is mostly nonfiction, but do you feel the sense that that's sometimes the best way to tell the story of science?

No, I would definitely agree with what both of you guys are saying, that sometimes you really need to kind of like stretch the imagination and kind of create these conditions the best tell the story. I can't think of any books specifically from this year, but there are a couple of science, poetry books that I read last year, one that was kind of playful by Brenda Shawnessy called The Octopus Museum. And it kind of projects a future where climate change is decimated human civilization and Octopi have taken over. Why not? We'll give Octopi just as good a chance as anyone else to take over when we're done.

Brian, the next book is another one we talked about on our show. It actually led to one of my favorite segments of the year that Ira Flato did. And it's called Clean, the New Science of Skin. Yeah, this one is really, really amusing. This is another one that's very, very well written. So James Hamlin, he's a staff writer for the Atlantic. And he also used to be a working physician. So he really digs into kind of the skincare industry and just the way we care for skin.

and he is kind of the ultimate in practicing what he preaches and that he has not showered in five years, meaning that he rinses off and he makes sure to be very clear that he still washes his hands and he understands that that's an extremely important practice, especially in these days. But just kind of the way we're pretty much trained in modern Western society who shower every day, really scrub down with soap

and an endless array of skincare products and stuff like that, is not necessarily the best thing for our skin. He doesn't necessarily say that everybody should just completely give up showering, but maybe reexamine some of your daily hygiene practices. Did you change anything after reading the book? Yeah. I wouldn't say that I'd change it because of the book. They were already kind of sliding because of the pandemic.

But yeah, I definitely felt vindicated by this. And that, like, yeah, I just kind of let my showering laps. And I was starting to notice a difference in just kind of like the health my hair and my skin. And this really kind of illuminated a lot of exactly what was going on. And it's definitely kind of made me not necessarily need to go back, though I did shower before this segment. Well, we're talking here about the best science books of 2020 with Valerie Thompson, senior editor at Science Magazine in Washington, Ryan Muldoon, Children's Library at the Clinton Hill branch at the Brooklyn Public Library. We're going to get to some more ideas on books from some

of our Zoom audience as well. We do have to take a break right now, but we're going to come back right after this. Hey there, folks. It goes without saying this has been a challenging year, no. And if there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the need for fact-based journalism and the need for science are stronger than ever. At a time when science is continually called into question, Science Friday remains committed to filtering out the noise and discussing the evidence, supporting the science that you need to make informed decisions. You know that demand for Science Friday this year was higher than ever, but you may not know that your donations are what's keeping us running.

And right now, Science Friday has a dollar-for-dollar donation match, which means that any donations will be doubled. So, if you have a few dollars to spare and agree that this world could use more science, please support Science Friday with a donation. Any amount makes a difference. Go to ScienceFriday.com slash give. That's science friday.com slash give. Thank you and stay safe. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. We're recapping some of the best science books that came out this year with my guest, Brian Muldoon, Children's Librarian at the Clinton Hill branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and Valerie Thompson, senior editor at Science Magazine in Washington, D.C.

A reminder that the segment was recorded in front of a live Zoom audience, and if you want to join future Science Friday tapings, you can check out the list at our website, sciencefriiday.com slash events. All right, let's see. Coming back from the break, Jan Siebert has a question about that ever-looming to read pile. Yon, go ahead. Thanks for taking my question. Well, my question is more not as a book, but the problem of too many books. I noted down two more books, which I've got into order, and I can see the piles growing. So how to be more realistic when buying books

or how to find more time for reading all these great books? What a great question. I don't know, Valerie, you want to tackle that first? And I want to hear from Brian too on this, because this is a big problem for a lot of people who love books, maybe love science books. What do you do? Yeah. So for me, this is something I deal with all the time. So I run the book review section of Science Magazine, which means all of the science books that are public, you know, that are going to be published in a year. I'm going to see them all and decide which one to review. And so I think my advice to you would be, be ruthless. You kind of have to, you know, give a book a try. and if it's not doing it for you,

don't feel like you have to complete it. Brian, how about you? Sure. Well, I mean, I've got a pretty easy solution for the doing away with too much buying of books, and that's the library. You can always just check it out and not necessarily read it.

But I would try reading more than one book at a time. I usually have two or three going, and usually if one of them doesn't really do it for me, I just kind of cast it aside. Also, like, it's fine to have a huge stack of books and not get to half of them. Like, you can just not feel guilty about it. But it sounds like neither one of you are completionists.

Like you've got to finish a book if you start it. No way. No, you just don't have enough time for all that, right? Yeah, I don't, yeah. There's, I mean, there's just not enough time. No one has enough time for that, you know? Same thing, Brian? I usually read most books or most books all the way through.

But, you know, I'm not afraid to just kind of cast one aside if I'm really not into it or if it's not the right time to read it. So, Brian, let's go to your next book. It technically came out in 2019, but the themes that it discusses were pretty important this year in 2020. Tell us about race after technology, abolitionist tools for the new Jim Code.

Yeah, so this is by Roja Benjamin, who's actually a sociologist at Princeton. And what this book looks at is just kind of the way technology is encoded with a lot of our cultural biases and stuff like that, in its development. So especially things like digital technology, which the tech industry likes to kind of tatterby thing is being neutral or even benevolent.

But she really kind of says when you scratch below the surface, you can see that that's not quite true. That just because there's so much bias inherent in our culture, it's going to seep in whether people are trying to imbue the technology with it or not. She looks at everything from automatic hand soap dispensers, which are calibrated to lighter skin. So people with darker shades of skin, it's just not going to react to them. And then kind of goes up into how algorithms are used to weed out applicants for jobs.

And a lot of times it'll use things like name or address to kind of suss out their ethnicity. And the same thing is often used for algorithms that are used in determining whether somebody's going to be eligible for parole or where police should patrol and things like that. So this book really, really digs into a lot of that kind of stuff. And one of the things that I found most interesting is that she even posits that race itself as a technology, that it's a tool that we use as society to stratify and kind of codify some of these social inequalities. And just it's something we don't necessarily need to use in such a malevolent way. That tech, like race, like algorithms and things like that are really only as good as what we imbue in them. And that she offers a lot of solutions to these problems saying that we can take these.

things because technology is just a tool and we can kind of flip a script on it and we can use things like social media to help organize anti-racist protests and things like that like something you're seeing with the black lives matter movement a lot that you can develop apps that help you immediately contribute to like a bail fund or something like that that will immediately kind of help people in need directly in combat a lot of the just kind of born in racism. One thing I should plug is that this book was actually given the Brooklyn Public Library's Literary Prize for Nonfiction this year. Valerie, you have a book that's in a similar theme, Predict and Surveil?

Yeah, it's definitely, definitely adjacent to this topic. So predict and surveil is by sociologist Sarah Brain, and it comes at a time when we're talking a lot about the role of policing and what we want it to look like in the future. And so this book is focused on a factor that's set to play a larger and larger role moving forward, which is big data. So Sarah Brain, what she does is she went to spend five years interviewing folks at the LAPD, which is one of the most tech savvy departments in America. And she talks to everyone. She talks to beat cops.

She talks to supervisors. She talks to civilian employees. And she uses these interviews to kind of create a portrait of how people in the LAPD are using and thinking about data. It's interesting because, you know, police have always used data to predict crime. So just think of like the old pin maps where officers would kind of plot out every. weeks crimes onto like a map with pins. But the difference today is that the data that they employ and the platforms they use to mine it often come from private firms. So this kind of raises a lot of questions about possible privacy infringement and about what sort of biases might be baked into

the proprietary algorithms that are used to mine the data. So again, very, very relevant to the last book as well. Brian, you have the Black Hole Survival Guide on your list. Janelle Levin's coming up on our show next week. And she's been on our program a number of times, but why'd you pick this book? Oh, yeah. Jenna Levin's fantastic. I mean, partially I picked it because I think she's just a fantastic writer and just so much fun to read. I also think this is like, if you're looking for Christmas gifts, this is a really great one because in addition to it being like really interesting, it's also a very handsome volume. It's a small format. And instead of using kind of the standard charts and graphs and things like that. She has it fully illustrated by a painter friend of hers. So she's just got these

fun paintings and stuff like that that really illustrate quite literally these very kind of hard-to-grap mind-bending concepts. So this is pretty much just a real short primer on what's a very weird topic, black holes. And she kind of walks through everything, starting with gravity and theories of relativity and brings you right up to kind of these hot controversies surrounding like how black holes disappear and things like that. She uses just like a series of really fun analogies the whole time. The writing is very visual. So like the whole step of the way she's really making so you can kind of see in front of you. And I, as somebody who is a neophyte to astrophysics and stuff like that and does very little about it, I've found it deeply

informative and really, really entertaining. Now, Valerie, you said you'd like to, do more escapism, but you do have a coronavirus book on your list here called Apollo's Arrow? Yes. So as crazy as it sounds, there's actually already a number of books come out on the COVID-19 crisis. It doesn't surprise me at all, actually. Yeah, and I'm honestly, like, I'm afraid to guess how many more are in the works. But I did want to mention this one. This is Nicholas Christakis' is Apollo's Arrow. It's a really nice real-time synthesis of the pandemic. So Christakis is a physician and the director of Yale's Human Nature Lab. And what he does in this book is to look at the complex interactions that are at play in this crisis. So from the epidemiology to the immunology,

to human behavior, social networks, I think if you're someone who's been kind of like drinking from the fire hose since March, you know, like I'm sure we all have, I don't know that you'll necessarily learn something new, but I think what was nice about it for me is that, you know, like I said, every day there's just just an insane amount of new information to kind of digest. And this book kind of takes, you know, what we know to be true at this moment and kind of dissect it and puts it in a historical context and things like that. So it's kind of a nice, you know, if you're not sick of reading about the coronavirus already, it's a good one.

Yeah, and again, we might be sick of reading about the coronavirus, but these are books that are probably going to be good to have on our shelves in a couple of years when we forget exactly what it's like and we want to go back and read. Before we go, we got a couple good suggestions here from listener Audrey Moroski, who says, here are two science books from 2020 that are on my list, but I haven't read them yet. Camilla Pang's Explaining Humans, which won the 2020 Royal Society Book Prize and Bill Bryson's The Body. You can keep the suggestions coming in, of course, and you can get them to us on Twitter and so many other ways. I want to thank our guests, Brian Maldoon, the Children's Librarian at the Clinton Hill Branch at the Brooklyn Public Library, and Valerie Thompson, senior editor at Science Magazine in Washington, D.C. Thank you both so much for sharing some of your best books of 2020 with us. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was a pleasure.

Thanks so much for having me. It's been an unusual year, to say the least, and hurricane season is no exception. This has been the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. Yeah, 30 named storms. So many storms, in fact, that we used up the entire list of names that the World Meteorological Organization put out for the year. So we had to start using the Greek alphabet. The last name storm, at least for now, was Hurricane Iota. But why do we name hurricanes in the first place? Here to tell us is Johanna Mayer, host of Science Diction, a podcast about words and science history. Hi there, Johanna. Hey, John. So, okay, let's start here. Why do we name hurricanes, but not things like tornadoes or earthquakes say? I mean, honestly, it's just mainly for ease of talking about them and being able to keep track if there are multiple storms happening in the same region. But we had also been thinking a lot about how hurricanes get named. And we also got this box pop from a listener. No, there's never been one with my name and it pains me deeply. Why can't we have an

Arnold hurricane. Why? So I totally empathize with Arnold. There's never been a hurricane Johanna either. The World Meteorological Organization has final say over this, and there are actually kind of a lot of rules about what you can and can't name a hurricane. So a name cannot have any sort of larger political significance. The names have to be culturally sensitive to the languages spoken in the region. And they also claim that they're not named after specific people. So I'm very sorry to break it to you, Arnold. We can't pull those strings. I feel so bad for Arnold. You know, of course, I think that there have been a couple Hurricane Johns and a Hurricane Johnny. So I guess I've been pretty lucky. So you're in luck, yeah. I suppose. So did we always do this? Did we always name

hurricanes? No, no. So for a brief, unfortunate period of time, we called hurricanes after the longitude and latitude where they began. So that was a mouthful. That did not work. The first guy that really starts naming storms was a guy named Clement Rag. And he was a meteorologist in Australia back in the 1800s. And he's really the first guy who starts doing this, honestly, probably kind of for his own fun and amusement. He named storms after all sorts of things. He would give them names of local Tahitian women. He called them after Roman gods for a period of time. and eventually he started naming them after politicians. And the politicians did not care for that.

So Clement eventually got kicked out of meteorology because he got on their bad side. Oh, wow. That's always a bad idea to get politicians on your bad side. Yeah, not a good order of events. So then what happened to his naming system when he got fired? Well, it went away for a little bit, but then it came back. And this was the most surprising thing about this whole story to me is that the thing that brought it back was actually a book. And it was a novel called Storm. Maybe you've heard of it. It was really popular for a period of time. But it was about a giant storm and a meteorologist who

was tracking it. And the author of this book had done a ton of research leading up to it. And he had come across Clement Rag and his naming system from back in the day. So in the book, a meteorologist decides to do what Clement did. And he names the storm. And the thing is, it just so happened that this book came out, like, in the thick of World War II. And it made it into these little, like, entertainment kits that they sent out to soldiers who were stationed in the Pacific. And the military informally started naming storms after their wives and their girlfriends with female names. And that just eventually became the official naming system was to name storms after females. It just happened because of that.

It's amazing that that's actually how we arrived at this. I just want to stop and say, this is science. Friday. I'm John Dinkowski, and I'm talking with Johanna Mayer, the host of Science Diction, about the word hurricanes. So, okay, hurricanes had female names at first, this kind of dubious history here. Now they rotate between traditionally male and female names, right? Yes, but it was a long road getting there, John. So United States, 1970s, we were in the thick of second wave feminism, there was kind of a larger national focus on language at that point. Like the word Ms. was, had just been coined. So one woman decided to really take up this hurricane sexism cause.

And her name was Roxy Bolton. And she did not care for the way that the media would talk about these storms. Carol destroyed Louisiana or whatever. You know, it was always a hard driving headline with a woman's name. And I didn't like that one darn bit. That is Roxy. She died in 2017, and this is tape from an oral history from the Florida State Library and Archives. And Roxy fought and she fought and she fought to get this all-female naming system changed. I mean, she went to conferences on hurricanes to argue. She sent cease and desist letters. And eventually, the World Meteorological Organization incorporated traditionally male names into the roster as well. And we've had rotating male and female names ever since,

equally disparaging names to both genders. And what's so interesting about that is she had to fight for such a long time and it just seemed like such an obvious solution, right? Just name them after men and women. But no, this actually took a very long time. She had suggested naming them after birds at one point. She also suggested naming them after senators, which if you remember the Clement Rag story, is probably good that that didn't actually come to fruition. Well, let's get to the word hurricane itself. Where did that come from? So hurricane comes from the Spanish word, Huracan, which likely comes in turn from a really similar word from the Taino people who are indigenous to the Caribbean. So I talked to someone

named Christina Gonzalez about this. She's getting her doctorate in anthropology. She's Taino herself. and she said that when Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors arrived, they had just never seen a hurricane before. So they had no term for it. So naturally they adopted the term that was used by the local people on the islands, which is, you know, a hurricane. So you can hear that word, that taina word is almost perfectly preserved today. That's wonderful. So when we say the word hurricane, we're speaking a little bit of

Taino. I love it. Johanna, the science diction team made a full episode about this. Where can people hear it? You can subscribe to science diction wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast, of course, is called Science Diction. Thanks so much, Johanna, Mayor, for sharing the story with us. Thanks, John. If you missed any part of this program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And on the Science Friday Voxpop app, Astrophysicist and black hole expert Jan 11 will be back on the show next week. We want to hear from you. What questions do you have about black holes?

That's on the Science Friday Voxpop app, wherever you get your apps. Ira's back next week. I'm John Dankoski.