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British physicist Dr. Helen Czerski believes that simple, even mundane, observations can help us understand the properties that govern our universe. By linking ordinary objects and occurrences—like popcorn popping, coffee stains, or refrigerator magnets—to big ideas like climate change, the energy crisis, or innovative new medical testing, she gives us the tools to alter the way we see the world. In an age of string theory, fluid dynamics and biophysics, it can seem as if the science of our world is only for specialists and academics. Czerski disagrees, asserting that science exploration is a constant and commonplace opportunity for anyone who’s paying attention. She explores the patterns and connections that illustrate the grandest theories in the smallest everyday objects and experiences. 
Joshua Cohen and Tablet Magazine’s Alana Newhouse discuss Cohen’s new novel “Moving Kings.”
“Moving Kings” is a powerful and timely novel that blends the American housing crisis with the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Twenty-one-year-olds Yoav and Uri have just completed their required military service in the Israel Defense Forces, having become veterans of the last Gaza War. Taking a year off for rest they journey to New York City, acquiring work with Yoav’s distant cousin—a proud American patriot, Republican, and Jew, and a heavyweight in the tri-state area’s moving and storage industries.
Yoav and Uri struggle to return to civilian life, but are faced with difficulties due to their traumatic pasts and having to spend their days kicking down doors as eviction-movers, throwing out delinquent tenants and seizing their possessions. What starts as an uncomfortably familiar job turns violent when the boys come face-to-face with one homeowner seeking revenge.
Joshua Cohen’s critically acclaimed debut novel, “Book of Numbers,” was published in 2015. He has written short fiction and nonfiction for The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, London Review of Books, The Forward, n+1, and others. In 2017 he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.
Alana Newhouse is a writer, editor and the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine. 
Dava Sobel is a former New York Times science reporter and a repeated New York Times bestselling author. Her past books include "Longitude", "Galileo's Daughter", and "The Planets". A recipient of multiple awards, including the prestigious Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science for her “outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vital roles it plays in all our lives”, Dava even has an asteroid named after her. Dava visited Google Seattle office to discuss her latest book, "The Glass Universe", named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. 
The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas
The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied history. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Commentary, such intellectuals were always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals.
How did this shift happen? In "The Ideas Industry," Daniel W. Drezner points to the roles of political polarization, heightened inequality, and eroding trust in authority as ushering in the change. In contrast to public intellectuals, thought leaders gain fame as single-idea merchants. Their ideas are often laudable and highly ambitious: ending global poverty by 2025, for example. But instead of a class composed of university professors and freelance intellectuals debating in highbrow magazines, thought leaders often work through institutions that are closed to the public. They are more immune to criticism—and in this century, the criticism of public intellectuals also counts for less.
Three equally important factors that have reshaped the world of ideas have been waning trust in expertise, increasing political polarization and plutocracy. The erosion of trust has lowered the barriers to entry in the marketplace of ideas. Thought leaders don't need doctorates or fellowships to advance their arguments. Polarization is hardly a new phenomenon in the world of ideas, but in contrast to their predecessors, today's intellectuals are more likely to enjoy the support of ideologically friendly private funders and be housed in ideologically-driven think tanks. Increasing inequality as a key driver of this shift: more than ever before, contemporary plutocrats fund intellectuals and idea factories that generate arguments that align with their own. But, while there are certainly some downsides to the contemporary ideas industry, Drezner argues that it is very good at broadcasting ideas widely and reaching large audiences of people hungry for new thinking. Both fair-minded and trenchant, The Ideas Industry will reshape our understanding of contemporary public intellectual life in America and the West.
