This book group explores various corners of science and technology usually outside of our normal day-to-day concerns and activities. For the Spring of 2025 meetings we continue with five additional books broadly encompassing evolution, including neuroscience, the rules governing living systems, the ocean, technology companies and beauty. The first book by Kevin J Mitchell explores evolution and its relation to free will from a neuroscience perspective. (A counterpoint to Robert Sapolski’s Determined that we read last Spring.) We then consider the regulation in life across vastly different time scales and how it might be used to solve large problems faced by humanity in the Serengetic Rules by Sean B. Carroll. Moving to understanding the natural world, we investigate the mechanisms of the ocean in Helen Czerski’s captivating read, The Blue Machine. Taking a pause from scientific explorations, The Venture Alchemists by Rob Lalka describes the evolution from good intentions to moral compromises in technology companies. Finally we end by scrutinizing the role of beauty in evolution in Richard Prum’s fascinating Evolution of Beauty.

Led by Maurice Lanman and Laurie Calvet.

• Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell
• The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters by Sean B. Carroll
• The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski
• The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power by Rob Lalka
• The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us by Richard O. Prum

• 3 December
• 14 January 2025
• 18 February
• 18 March
• 22 April
• 27 May
• 24 June