Science Weekly is taking a summer break, so the next few shows will be leaner and pithier than usual, featuring one item or interviewee apiece. The regular, full-fat podcast will return on 6 July.

This week we showcase the Guardian Science Book Club.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker tries to re-balance the nature-nurture debate, arguing that we are born with certain hardwired personality and intelligence traits that no amount of education and social engineering will ever change.

Pinker claims that modern psychologists are following an agenda of political correctness by asserting that human nature is a "blank slate" that society can write on.

Our Science Book Club guru Tim Radford has been reading the book and will open online discussions on Friday 19 June.

He talks to Ian Sample about the pre-eminence of science over the past 200 years as a means to interpret the world and the way science books can reveal the wonders of that enterprise to a general readership.

But if you're reading a controversial but rareified book like Pinker's Blank Slate, with whom are you going to share your thoughts? As Tim says, the internet could have been made for a specialist book club like ours.

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