Making a buzz in science, on the page

'Ologies' podcaster Alie Ward picks five books that show why knowledge is power.

- BY EVA RECINOS

(Photo illustration by JOSEP PRAT SOROLLA For The Times; book jackets from Little, Brown & Co., Hardie Grant Books and W.W. Norton & Co.)

It’s been an uneasy year for science.

While there were significant milestones, like breakthroughs in gene editing for rare diseases and novel insights into early human evolution (including fire-making), the U.S. science community at large was rocked by institutional challenges.

Drastic federal cuts froze thousands of research grants, and the Trump administration began actively working to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Meanwhile, fraudulent scientific research papers are on the rise — casting a shadow over academic integrity.

Thankfully, we can still turn to our bookshelves — and podcasts — to ground us. We tapped science doyenne Alie Ward, the host of the funny cult favorite “Ologies” podcast, to share her picks for the best science books of 2025.

Spanning fascinating subjects from bees to human anatomy, Ward’s insightful list reminds us that books remain a timeless vessel for truth and knowledge.

Ferns

Lessons in Survival From Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants

By Fay-Wei Li and Jacob S. Suissa

Hardie Grant Books: 192 pages, $45

“Dr. Li is the botanist of our dreams ... the way he talks about ferns and why he loves them, and about growing up in Taiwan (in essentially a fern forest), and how the sexual reproduction of ferns has been a great way to draw attention to the LGBTQ and nonbinary community is so charming and funny.

“They even named a whole genus after Lady Gaga because they were listening to ‘Born This Way’ a lot in the lab and also because there are sequences in their DNA that are ‘GAGA.’

“Laura Silburn’s illustrations are gorgeous — they really put a lot of texture into some of these plants that are really tiny. Every page is like looking at a botany poster.