Dec 20, 20251h 28m
A roundup of Dan and Amanda's picks for the top science books of the past year, featuring new books by Sam Kean, Dagomar Degroot, Lynn Gamwell, Pria Anand, David Baron, and many more!
science
BookLab
Hosted by Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter · science · EN
About this Podcast:
From neurons to nanotech and from quarks to the cosmos, BookLab is the podcast that puts science books under the microscope! Join hosts Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter for a look at the latest in popular science writing: what's new, what's hot, and what you ought to be reading right now.
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
22%
Guest openness
Selective
80/100
Required Score
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What is BookLab about?
From neurons to nanotech and from quarks to the cosmos, BookLab is the podcast that puts science books under the microscope! Join hosts Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter for a look at the latest in popular science writing: what's new, what's hot, and what you ought to be reading right now.
Who hosts BookLab?
BookLab is hosted by Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter. The show has published 40 episodes to date.
What has BookLab covered recently?
Recent episodes include "BookLab 040: The best science books of 2025" (20 December 2025, 88 minutes), "BookLab 039: More Everything Forever, by Adam Becker" (5 July 2025, 68 minutes), and "BookLab 038: The Language Puzzle; Ways of Being; Playing Possum" (25 March 2025, 70 minutes).
How often does BookLab publish?
BookLab publishes roughly every few months, with episodes averaging 64 minutes across 40 episodes.
How hard is it to get booked on BookLab?
Booking probability for BookLab is 22%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. BookLab requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. BookLab's contact route on record: verified email.
About the host
Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter hosts BookLab, a science podcast with 40 episodes published.
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Recent episodes
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Jul 5, 20251h 8mTech billionaires talk about colonizing Mars, building grand space stations far from Earth, lengthening life spans, and maybe even eradicating aging and death, or uploading our minds into computers. Well, not so fast...
- Mar 25, 20251h 10m
There's no question that animals communicate -- but only humans have full-blown symbolic language. So, how did we get here? In The Language Puzzle, archeologist Steven Mithen tries to figure out how we became such a...
Episode #37
BookLab 037: Ten Year Anniversary Special
Dec 25, 202453 minHosts Dan Falk and Amanda Gefter reflect on favorite science books, publishing trends, and more as BookLab marks its first ten years.
Dec 13, 20241h 5mYou know about Galileo, Newton, and Einstein -- but what about the many women scientists who helped shape our understanding of the cosmos? In this episode, we look at two books give those overlooked women the...
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Aug 22, 20241h 23mSome researchers believe that the traditional scientific approach, in spite of its impressive 400-year track record, has left something out. Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson lay out the argument in The...
- Dec 21, 20231h 15m
It's one of the oldest and most vexing questions in science and philosophy: Do we have free will? In this episode of BookLab, we take a close look at two books by two scientists who have considered the question at...
Aug 3, 20231h 16mThe human mind is quite something. We can use it to reason; to envision past and future events; to ponder abstractions. But what other minds are out there? In Philip Ball's The Book of Minds, we're invited to explore...
Feb 27, 20231h 16mThe world around us seems incredibly diverse -- but what if beneath that diversity there was a unifying sameness? That's the idea behind "monism" -- an ancient idea that physicist Heinrich Pas believes is due for a...
- Dec 16, 20221h 10m
Virtual reality has taken off in recent years. But what if the virtual worlds of VR are real -- just as real, perhaps, as the physical world we see around us? And... is it possible we're living in a simulation right...
- Sep 15, 202258 min
Featured book: Being You, by Anil Seth. A lot has been written on the subject of consciousness, but few are positioned to tackle the problem better than neuroscientist Anil Seth, whose new book examines how we...
Dec 26, 202157 minFeatured book: Hawking Hawking, by Charles Seife. Charles Seife's new biography of Stephen Hawking takes an unflinching look at the good and bad sides of the famous physicist. And on the nightstand: The Zoologist's...
Oct 16, 202150 minWhat is life? As Carl Zimmer shows in Life's Edge , the more we try to pin it down, the more elusive an answer becomes. And in The Genesis Quest , Michael Marshall examines the age-old puzzle of how life began on our...
BookLab
BookLab 027: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Why Fish Don't Exist, and The Precipice
Mar 30, 20211h 3mFeatured Book: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain , by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett take a deep dive into our most remarkable organ – and explains why the brain is for much more than...
Dec 30, 202052 minWe double up on the physics in this episode: First, Katie Mack looks at the universe's end-game in The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) . Then we explore the universe's most exotic objects in Janna Levin's...
- Oct 27, 202046 min
In this special episode of BookLab, we focus on COVID-19 by journalist Debora MacKenzie. Her book examines how this pandemic happened, how it might have been prevented – or at least mitigated – and what can be done to...
Jun 26, 20201h 6mFeatured book: Until the End of Time , by Brian Greene. Where exactly do human beings fit in, in this vast cosmos? Brian Greene tackles the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything in an ambitious new book. And...
May 17, 202053 minFeatured book: The Feeling of Life Itself , by Christof Koch. A neuroscientist who's spent decades studying the puzzle of consciousness explores the problem of how the brain gives rise to the mind. And on the...
Feb 12, 20201h 3mIt's one of the most provocative ideas in all of science – the notion that our universe might just an infinitesimal part of a much larger reality. In this episode, we look at two new books that take us deep into the...
Nov 5, 201948 minFeatured book: The Goodness Paradox , by Richard Wrangham. Our species, Homo sapiens , is less violent than any of our primate cousins -- but how did we get that way? A Harvard anthropologist suggests an answer. And on...
Recent guests
Recent guests on BookLab. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
J
Johan Eklöf
author, Darkness Manifesto
P
Philip Ball
freelance science writer and author, none
S
Sabine Hossenfelder
research fellow, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
J
Janna Levin
theoretical cosmologist and professor of astronomy and physics at Barnard College, Barnard College of Columbia University
Best industries to pitch BookLab for
Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this podcast is a strong guest fit for executives in:
sciencestrong
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