You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Welcome back to Inquiring Minds.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

Hey, I'm Adam Isaac, the producer of this show. Indre is off this week, so we have someone filling in. Adam Bristol is an

amazing science communicator. He has a PhD in neuroscience. He also happens to be Indre's husband,

so we were able to force him to host this week's show for us. So anyway, without further ado,

here is Adam Bristol. This week, I spoke with University of Cambridge historian, Seb Falk, about his new book,

The Light Ages, the surprising story of medieval science.

Now, Seb's book caught my attention initially because I've been reading about medieval

accounts of the bubonic plague.

You remember that prior pandemic, a rather timely topic, but this book was not about that.

And it was not at all what I expected, yet I was completely hooked.

As Seb explains in our interview, his approach to the study of medieval science is not the standard look for artifacts

of medieval life in modern times. Rather, his exploration of the intellectual pursuits were

within their own time period. That is, why medieval scholars studied what they did, how they were

educated, and what advances they made.

So it's medieval science with a specific focus on astronomy, but on its own terms.

And the book's title, The Light Ages, you can already tell as a stark rebuttal to the colloquial

usage of the term the Dark Ages. And I came to appreciate

through this really wonderfully written and thoroughly researched book that, while medieval

...