On this week's show Alok Jha meets science writer Bryan Appleyard to discuss his new book The Brain is Wider than the Sky: Why Simple Solutions Don't Work in a Complex World. It's "part memoir and part reportage" on what he sees as our tendency to oversimplify the complexity of the human experience – particularly in the field of neuroscience – and misunderstand the limits of science.
With science writing to the fore, we hear from writer Richard Holmes in his role as chair of the judges for this year's Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, which is due to be announced on Thursday. Richard has a unique perspective on the relative merits of the six shortlisted books, having won the prize in 2009 for The Age of Wonder.
Guardian Science is reviewing all six shortlisted books, and we're offering two complete sets as prizes in our competition. The deadline for entries is 23:59 on Thursday.
Finally we have the concluding instalment of Cosmological Connections, a wickedly insightful lecture given at The School of Life in London by theoretical physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss.
Subscribe for free via iTunes to ensure every episode gets delivered. (Here is the non-iTunes URL feed).
Follow the podcast on our Science Weekly Twitter feed and receive updates on all breaking science news stories from Guardian Science.
Email scienceweeklypodcast@gmail.com.
Guardian Science is now on Facebook. You can also join our Science Weekly Facebook group.
We're always here when you need us. Listen back through our archive.
