Have you ever looked at a simple rock or a tiny mushroom and wondered about the massive secrets they are hiding from us? Science is not just a pile of dusty facts found in a school textbook; it is the ...

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Little, Brown, Hardie Grant Books and W.W. Norton & Co) Thankfully, we can still turn to our bookshelves — and podcasts — ...