Franke Program in Science & the Humanities

Combined advances in archaeological science and the field of history allows a retelling of the cross-continental exchange system that connected Mongolia to the Mediterranean four thousand years ago. The talk integrates isotopic analysis, archaeozoology, prosopographical studies, historical geography, material culture, and human pathology to paint a picture of the system seen from the viewpoint of a single individual—a trader named Zizizi (born c. 1895 BCE) who had her life turned upside down by the very connectedness upon which her society was predicated.

Gojko Barjamovic is a senior lecturer and research scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations. He specializes in the economic and social history of Assyria in the second millennium BCE and also works on ancient foodways (including the Yale Babylonian Recipes), human aDNA, absolute chronology, and ancient metal. He works with colleagues in the field of economics on early markets and the trans-regional convergence of prices.

This panel discussion brings together a distinguished biomedical researcher, a leading climate-communication expert, and one of today’s foremost science storytellers for a conversation on how to rebuild public trust in science.

PANELISTS:
Anton Bennett is the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Pharmacology and Professor of Comparative Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

Anthony Leiserowitz is the JoshAni-TomKat Professor of Climate Communication and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. 

Carl Zimmer is the science columnist for the New York Times and the author of 15 books, most recently Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe.

MODERATOR:
Priya Natarajan, Director of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, is a theoretical astrophysicist interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing, and black hole physics.

This event has been postponed until spring 2026

Sunil Amrith’s book The Burning Earth is an environmental history of the modern world that foregrounds the experiences of the Global South. It was named a 2024 “essential read” by The New Yorker, a 2024 “book we love” by NPR, and was a finalist for the 2025 PEN/E. O. Wilson prize.

Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University with a secondary appointment at the Yale School of the Environment. He is the Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and also serves as Yale’s Vice Provost for International Affairs. 

Amrith’s research focuses on the movements of people and the ecological processes that have connected South and Southeast Asia and has expanded to encompass global environmental history. He is the recipient of the 2025 Toynbee Prize in Global History, the 2024 Fukuoka Academic Prize, the 2022 Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History, a “scientific breakthrough of the year” award from the Falling Walls Foundation in 2022, a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, and the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities. In 2024, Amrith was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy. 

“Are we alone in the universe?” is one of those since the dawn of time questions. It has always been fundamental to our understanding of our place in the universe, though in recent decades it has become more the province of science than of the human search for meaning. Yet the search for alien life, scientifically driven as it is, is still a quest to answer some very human questions. In this talk, author Jaime Green will delve into the history and cutting edge of the field of astrobiology, showing how scientific discoveries drive and are driven by science-fictional imaginings, which together offer new possibilities for understanding ourselves, our world, and our place in the cosmos.

Jaime Green’s book The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was named a best book of the year by Esquire and The Washington Post. Green is also series editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing and a lecturer at Smith College and the Johns Hopkins University Master of Arts Program in Science and Medical Writing. She has her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Aeon, Vulture, Slate, Popular Science, Astrobites, and elsewhere.

Poster

In Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence, Paco Calvo, a leading figure in the philosophy of plant signaling and behavior, offers an entirely new perspective on plants’ worlds, showing for the first time how we can use tools developed to study animal cognition in a quest to understand plant intelligence. Plants learn from experience: wild strawberries can be taught to link light intensity with nutrient levels in the soil, and flowers can time pollen production to pollinator visits. Plants have social intelligence, releasing chemicals from their roots and leaves to speak to and identify one another. They make decisions about where to invest their growth, judging risk based on the resources available. Their individual preferences vary, too—plants have personalities.

Paco Calvo is a renowned cognitive scientist and philosopher of biology, known for his groundbreaking research in the field of plant cognition and intelligence. He is a professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab).

Poster