Time to Eat the Dogs
A podcast about science, history, and exploration. Michael Robinson interviews scientists, journalists, and adventurers about life at the extreme.
Fri, April 25, 2025
Artificial General Intelligence, Part I
In the first of two episodes, Julian Togelius talks about the history of machine learning, the quest for Artificial General Intelligence, and the difficulties AI researchers have in defining exactly what intelligence is. Togelius is an associate professor of Computer Science at New York University. He is the author of Artificial General Intelligence, published recently by MIT Press.
Sun, April 06, 2025
Replay: Inventing the World
Meredith Small talks about the city of Venice and its importance to the history of travel and exploration. Small is professor emerita at Cornell University. She’s the author of Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization
Fri, March 21, 2025
The Habitable Worlds Observatory
Dr. Giada Arney talks about the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a space telescope that, when it’s built and launched into space, will be able to image planets in other solar systems directly, focusing on planets that may support life. Arney is a Research Space Scientist in the Planetary Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She’s also the interim project scientist for the Habitable Worlds Observatory and the Deputy Principal Investigator of the DAVINCI mission to Venus.
Fri, February 28, 2025
Replay: Icebound
In the late 1500s, Dutch navigator William Barrents sailed north in search of a Northeast Passage to Asia. This expedition and a second one both suffered hardships, but they were mild in comparison with the horrors of the third expedition. Andrea Pitzer talks about the Arctic voyages of William Barents and their impact on Europe for centuries to come. Pitzer is a journalist and author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World .
Sun, February 16, 2025
The Europa Clipper and the Search for Extraterrestrial LIfe
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the Europa Clipper mission and NASA’s broader agenda to find life on other worlds. Webb is a historian of science and directs the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute. Her opinion piece, “Can We Please Just Find the Aliens Already,” was published by the New York Times in October, 2024
Sun, February 02, 2025
Replay: Enemy of All Mankind
Steven Johnson talks about the British pirate Henry Every and his improbable capture of the Mughal treasure ship, Gunsway . Johnson is the author of twelve books, including Enemy of All Mankind , Farsighted , Where Good Ideas Come From , and The Ghost Map . He’s also the host of the PBS series How We Got To Now and the podcast American Innovations .
Sun, January 26, 2025
Mountains, Writers, and Travelers in the 18th Century Alps
Célia Abele talks about Wolfgang von Goethe, the French writer Chateaubriand, and the German physicist Georg Lichtenberg. These writers became fascinated in the Alps and volcanoes such as Vesuvius. Abele is an assistant professor of French at Boston College. She’s the author of “Mountain Time: Tense Futures and Present Pasts in the Alps and Vesuvius around 1800.”
Mon, November 11, 2024
On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration
Ed Armston-Sheret returns to Time to Eat the Dogs to talk about British geographical expeditions and the labor that made them possible, specifically the labor of local peoples that is frequently omitted from explorer accounts. Armston-Sheret is a Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. He’s the author of On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration .
Sat, October 05, 2024
Replay: Quantum Legacies
David Kaiser talks about the history of twentieth-century physics and the forces that have shaped it as a scientific discipline. Kaiser is a Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is also a Professor of Physics. He’s the author of Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World .
Thu, August 29, 2024
Mungo Park's Ghost
Dane Kennedy talks about Mungo Park’s troubled expeditions in West Africa and the rescue expeditions that set off to find him. Kennedy is an emeritus professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He has written eight books including Mungo Park’s Ghost: The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa
Tue, June 25, 2024
Replay: The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure
Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees talk about the voyage of the Vrouw Maria and the long quest to find the ship under the waters of the Archipelago Sea off the coast of Finland. Easter is a professor of history at Boston College. Vorhees is a travel writer for Lonely Planet with an expertise in Russia, New England, and Central America. They are the authors of The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck .
Fri, May 24, 2024
The Challenger Disaster
Adam Higginbotham talks about the history of the Space Shuttle program and the decisions that made the Challenger explosion almost inevitable. Higgenbotham is a journalist and contributing writer for the New Yorker , Wired , and the New York Times . His book Midnight in Chernobyl won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction and was selected as one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times . He discusses his new book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space .
Fri, May 03, 2024
Replay: Portuguese Exploration After the Age of Discovery
Catarina Madruga talks about Portuguese exploration in the nineteenth century as European powers made plans to conquer Africa and colonize its peoples. Madruga is a post-doctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. She’s the author of “Expert at a Distance: Barbosa du Bocage and the Production of Scientific Knowledge on Africa,” Journal for the History of Science and Technology , 11, 57-74 .
Mon, April 01, 2024
An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind
Historian of science Jeffery Mathias talks about scientific experiments in isolation during the Cold War. Mathias is the author of the Ph.D dissertation, "An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind.”
Sun, August 20, 2023
The Making of French Polar Exploration
Alexandre Simon-Ekeland talks about explorers, the Polar Regions, and the French imagination. Simon-Ekeland recently completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Oslo. He is the author of M aking French Polar Exploration, 1860s-1930s.
Tue, June 30, 2020
Sovietistan
Erika Fatland talks about her long journey through the Central Asian republics and the legacy of Soviet influence there. Fatland is the author of many books and essays including Sovietistan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan .
Sat, June 27, 2020
Replay: American Arctic Exploration
Al Zambone talks with me about American polar exploration, the origin of Time to Eat the Dogs , and the history of science as an academic discipline. Zambone is the host of the podcast Historically Thinking . He’s the author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life . You can hear an extended version of this interview on the Historically Thinking podcast, available on most podcast platforms as well as online at historicallythinking.org.
Tue, June 23, 2020
How to be an African Travel Writer in Africa
Emmanuel Iduma talks about his experiences traveling through Africa and his quest to find a new language of travel. Iduma is a writer and lecturer at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His stories and essays have been published in Best American Travel Writing 2020 and the New York Review of Books . He is the author of A Stranger’s Pose , which was a finalist for the Ondaatje Prize in 2019.
Sat, June 20, 2020
Replay: The Mystery of Altitude Sickness
Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiology of Europeans and Himalayans in the 1800s. Fleetwood is the author of “Bodies in High Places: Exploration, Altitude Sickness, and the Problem of Bodily Comparison in the Himalaya, 1800-50,” published in the journal Itinerario 43, no. 3 (2019): 489-515.
Tue, June 16, 2020
Empires of the Sky
Alexander Rose talks about the history of airplanes and airships at the turn of the century, a time when the direction of aviation remained unclear. Rose is the author of Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World.
Sat, June 13, 2020
Replay: Love, Travel, and Separation
Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht’s life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborators. Hollander is a historian of modern Europe. She’s also the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary , which was awarded the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize by USA Poet Laureate Charles Wright.
Tue, June 09, 2020
Why Did Scientists Collect the Blood of Indigenous Peoples?
Emma Kowal talks about the history of biospecimen collection among the aboriginal peoples of Australia. Kowal is a cultural and medical anthropologist at Deakin University. She’s the co-author, along with Joanna Radin, of "Indigenous Biospecimen Collections and the Cryopolitics of Frozen Life," published in the Journal of Sociology.
Sat, June 06, 2020
Replay: Floating Coast
Bathsheba Demuth talks about the history and exploration of the Bering Strait, from the early 1800s to the present day. Demuth is Assistant Professor of History & Environment and Society at Brown University. She’s the author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait .
Tue, June 02, 2020
A History of Modern Tourism
Eric Zuelow talks about the origins of tourism from the era of the European Grand Tour through the twenty-first century where is has become – until the current pandemic at least – the largest service sector industry in the world. Zuelow is a professor of European History at the University of New England. He’s the author of A History of Modern Tourism .
Sat, May 30, 2020
Replay: Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica
Rebecca Priestley talks about her journeys to Antarctica and the process of bringing them to life in her writing. Priestley is an associate professor at the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is the author of Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica which was recently longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Tue, May 26, 2020
A Strange Week at NASA
Eric Berger talks about the sudden departure of Doug Loverro, the head of human space flight at NASA, only days before the agency sends astronauts into space after almost a decade. Berger is the Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica .
Fri, May 22, 2020
Replay: An Update from the Hobbit Cave
Paige Madison talks about recent discoveries at the Liang Bua cave where researchers are trying to understand the complicated story of the hominin Homo Floresiensis. Madison is a PhD candidate in the history of science at Arizona State University where she also works with The Center for Biology and Society and the Institute of Human Origins. She writes about paleoanthropology at the blog Fossil History. She recently wrote about her trip for National Geographic and Scientific American .
Tue, May 19, 2020
Sea Wife
Novelist Amity Gaige talks about her book Sea Wife . Gaige is a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellow. Her novel Schroder was one of the New York Times Best Books for 2013. A review and excerpt of Sea Wife can be read in the New York Times Book Review.
Sat, May 16, 2020
Replay: China is Going to the Moon
Dr. Namrata Goswami talks about the Chinese space program and its ambitious plans for lunar exploration. Goswami is a strategic analyst on space and great power politics. She’s the author of many books and articles including Great Powers and Resource Nationalism in Space soon to be published by Lexington Press.
Tue, May 12, 2020
Women in Antarctica
Hanne Nielsen talks about the challenges facing women who work in Antarctica. Nielsen is a Lecturer in Antarctic Law and Governance at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) in Hobart, Tasmania. She’s the co-author, along with Meredith Nash, of “Gendered Power Relations and Sexual Harassment in Antarctic Science in the Age of #Me Too,” due out this year in Australian Feminist Studies.
Sat, May 09, 2020
Replay: Malaria, Tonic Water, and Empire
Kim Walker talks about the history and science of cinchona bark as a tonic, medicine, and mixer. Walker is a biocultural historian completing her PhD work on the Cinchona Bark Collection at Kew Gardens. She’s the co-author (along with Mark Nesbitt) of Just The Tonic: A Natural History of Tonic Water .
Tue, May 05, 2020
Pacific Exploration, Botany, and Revolution
Edwin Rose talks about Joseph Banks and Georg Forster, naturalists on the Cook expeditions, and how political ideas shaped the way these specimens were understood back in Europe. Rose is completing a PhD. in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and will soon be the Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge University Library and a research fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. He’s the author of “Publishing Nature in the Age of Revolutions: Joseph Banks, Georg Forster, and the Plants of the Pacific,” published in the April 2020 edition of the Historical Journal.
Sat, May 02, 2020
Replay: Hawaiian Exploration of the World
David Chang talks about the history of indigenous Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli) as explorers and geographers of the world. Chang is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota. He’s the author of The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration .
Tue, April 28, 2020
The Lost White Tribe
Babak Ashrafi and Jessica Linker talk to me about my book The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent . Ashrafi and Linker produced this interview for the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. You can find many podcasts, video lectures, and other materials at the Consortium website CHSTM.org . Thanks to Tyler Putman, Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi, and Nicholas Barron for contributing questions to the interview.
Sat, April 25, 2020
Replay: How NASA Plans Big Missions
Glen Asner and Stephen Garber talk about NASA’s efforts to plan ambitious missions in the face of huge political and financial challenges. Asner is the Deputy Chief Historian for the Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Garber works in the NASA History Division at NASA Headquarters. They are the authors of Origins of 21st-Century Space Travel: A History of NASA’s Decadal Planning Team and the Vision for Space Exploration, 1999–2004 .
Tue, April 21, 2020
Neptune's Laboratory
Antony Adler talks about the history of ocean science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Adler is a Research Associate in the History Department at Carleton College. He’s the author of Neptune’s Laboratory: Fantasy, Fear, and Science at Sea .
Sat, April 18, 2020
Replay: How George Putnam's Arctic Expedition Got into Trouble
Tina Adcock talks about the controversy over George Putnam's Baffin Land expedition and why it tells a bigger story about the changing culture of exploration in the 1920s. Adcock is an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She’s the author of the essay “Scientist Tourist Sportsman Spy: Boundary-Work and the Putnam Eastern Arctic Expeditions” which was published in the edited collection Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History , edited by Adcock and Edward Jones-Imhotep.
Tue, April 14, 2020
'Ruling the Savage Periphery'
Benjamin Hopkins talks about the concept of the frontier: how it exists not merely as a place on a map but as a set of practices used by colonial states around the world. Hopkins is an associate professor of history at George Washington University. He’s the author of Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State .
Sat, April 11, 2020
Replay: Searching for Life Beyond Earth
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the search for extraterrestrial life and the different strategies used by astronomers and exobiologists to look for it. Webb is a PhD candidate at MIT's History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society Program. Her dissertation project, “Technologies of Perception: The Search for Life and Intelligence Beyond Earth” won the HSS/NASA Fellowship in Aerospace History.
Tue, April 07, 2020
American Arctic Exploration
Al Zambone talks with me about American polar exploration, the origin of Time to Eat the Dogs , and the history of science as an academic discipline. Zambone is the host of the podcast Historically Thinking . He’s the author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life . You can hear an extended version of this interview on the Historically Thinking podcast, available on most podcast platforms as well as online at historicallythinking.org.
Fri, April 03, 2020
Replay: Assembling the Dinosaur
Lukas Rieppel talks about dinosaur fossils in the Gilded Age – from the discovery and excavation of fossils in the American West to the re-construction of fabulous creatures in museums that were the darlings of wealthy philanthropists. Rieppel is an assistant professor of history at Brown University. He’s the author of Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle .
Tue, March 31, 2020
Replay: Jessica Nabongo is Traveling to Every Country in the World
Annette Joseph-Gabriel speaks to Jessica Nabongo about her quest to be the first black woman to travel to all of the countries of the world. Joseph-Gabriel is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Nabongo is a writer, entrepreneur, and the founder of Jet Black, a boutique luxury travel company that promotes tourism to Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
Sat, March 28, 2020
Replay: Starlink is Blanketing the Earth with Satellites
Lisa Ruth Rand talks about the Starlink satellite program. She also talks about Project West Ford, which attempted to create an artificial ionosphere in 1961 by launching millions of copper needles into orbit. Rand is the Haas Postdoctoral Fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Her op-ed on Starlink and Project West Ford appeared in the July 8th 2019 edition of Scientific American.
Wed, March 25, 2020
The Mystery of Altitude Sickness
Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiology of Europeans and Himalayans in the 1800s. Fleetwood is the author of “Bodies in High Places: Exploration, Altitude Sickness, and the Problem of Bodily Comparison in the Himalaya, 1800-50,” published in the journal Itinerario 43, no. 3 (2019): 489-515.
Sat, March 21, 2020
Replay: The City Built by Travel
Fiona Vernal talks about the migration stories of Hartford Connecticut’s many communities. Vernal is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut and the creator of the exhibition “From Human Rights to Civil Rights: African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian Housing Struggles in Hartford County Connecticut, 1940-2019” now open at the Hartford Public Library.
Tue, March 17, 2020
Love, Travel, and Separation
Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht’s life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborators. Hollander is a historian of modern Europe. She’s also the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary , which was awarded the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize by USA Poet Laureate Charles Wright.
Sat, March 14, 2020
Replay: Inuit Testimony and the Search for Franklin's Ships
David Woodman talks about his quest to find the missing wrecks of the Franklin Expedition, a mission that led him to the journals of the Arctic explorer Charles Hall who lived with the Inuit for four years and recorded their encounters with British explorers. Woodman is the author of Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, a book that correctly predicted the site of HMS Erebus discovered by Parks Canada in 2014.
Wed, March 11, 2020
Reimagining Liberation
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks about black women writers, decolonization, and travel. Joseph-Gabriel is an assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She’s the author of Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire .
Sat, March 07, 2020
Replay: Science, Islam, and Evolution
Sarah Qidwai talks about her research on Sayyid Ahmad Khan as well as her own journey to Mecca and Medina. Qidwai is a Ph.D candidate in the History of Science at the University of Toronto. Her essay “Reexamining Complexity: Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Interpretation of 'Science' in Islam” is in the edited collection Rethinking History, Science and Religion: Exploring Complexity published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Tue, March 03, 2020
Replay: The Polar Star is Falling Apart
Richard Read talks about the troubled life of the Coast Guard's sole heavy icebreaker, Polar Star . Read is the Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times in Seattle. He is the winner of two Pulitzer prizes for his investigations on the Asian Financial Crisis and abuses by U.S. immigration officials. His article on the Polar Star was published in the August 2nd edition of the Los Angeles Times.
Sat, February 29, 2020
Replay: Mental Illness and the Mawson Expedition
Elizabeth Leane talks about Sidney Jeffryes, radio operator for Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1913. Jeffryes’ struggle with mental illness challenged Mawson’s expedition party as well as the way Mawson tried to present his expedition to audiences back home. Leane is a professor of English at the University of Tasmania and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She’s also the co-author (along with Ben Maddison and Kimberley Norris) of “Beyond the Heroic Stereotype: Sidney Jeffryes and the Mythologising of Australian Antarctic History.”
Tue, February 25, 2020
Floating Coast
Bathsheba Demuth talks about the history and exploration of the Bering Strait, from the early 1800s to the present day. Demuth is Assistant Professor of History & Environment and Society at Brown University. She’s the author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait .
Sat, February 22, 2020
Replay: Anticipating the Astronaut
Jordan Bimm talks about early experiments in space medicine involving subjects who did not resemble the white male test pilots who would become America's first astronauts. Bimm is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University. He’s the author of Anticipating the Astronaut which is under contract to MIT Press, expected in Spring 2021.
Tue, February 18, 2020
Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica
Rebecca Priestley talks about her journeys to Antarctica and the process of bringing them to life in her writing. Priestley is an associate professor at the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is the author of Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica which was recently longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Sat, February 15, 2020
Replay: Why are Women Beating Men in Ultra-Endurance Events?
Dr. Beth Taylor talks about the physiological differences between men and women athletes and why ultra-endurance events seem to offer certain performance advantages to women. Taylor is an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and the Director of Exercise Physiology Research in Cardiology at Hartford Hospital.
Tue, February 11, 2020
An Update from the Hobbit Cave
Paige Madison talks about recent discoveries at the Liang Bua cave where researchers are trying to understand the complicated story of the hominin Homo Floresiensis. Madison is a PhD candidate in the history of science at Arizona State University where she also works with The Center for Biology and Society and the Institute of Human Origins. She writes about paleoanthropology at the blog Fossil History. She recently wrote about her trip for National Geographic and Scientific American .
Sat, February 08, 2020
Replay: The Expedition that Tested Einstein's Theory
Daniel Kennefick talks about resistance to relativity theory in the early twentieth century and the huge challenges that faced British astronomers who wanted to test the theory during the solar eclipse of 1919. Kennefick is an associate professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He’s the author of No Shadow of Doubt: the 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity .
Tue, February 04, 2020
China is Going to the Moon
Dr. Namrata Goswami talks about the Chinese space program and its ambitious plans for lunar exploration. Goswami is a strategic analyst on space and great power politics. She’s the author of many books and articles including Great Powers and Resource Nationalism in Space soon to be published Lexington Press.
Sat, February 01, 2020
Replay: Chasing the Moon
Director Robert Stone talks about his film Chasing the Moon , a three-part documentary which aired on PBS’s American Experience for the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Tue, January 28, 2020
Malaria, Tonic Water, and Empire
Kim Walker talks about the history and science of cinchona bark as a tonic, medicine, and mixer. Walker is a biocultural historian completing her PhD work on the Cinchona Bark Collection at Kew Gardens. She’s the co-author (along with Mark Nesbitt) of Just The Tonic: A Natural History of Tonic Water .
Sat, January 25, 2020
Replay: How We Talk about Apollo
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the creator of the YouTube Channel, Vintage Space . She is also the author of two books, Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA and Apollo Pilot: The Memory of Astronaut Don Eisele .
Wed, January 22, 2020
Hawaiian Exploration of the World
David Chang talks about the history of indigenous Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli) as explorers and geographers of the world. Chang is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota. He’s the author of The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration .
Sat, January 18, 2020
Replay: Scurvy!
Ed Armston-Sheret talks about the mysterious disease of scurvy: how it affected expeditioners and why it was so difficult to understand. Armston-Sheret is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway University of London. He’s the author of "Tainted bodies : scurvy, bad food and the reputation of the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–1904," published in the Journal of Historical Geography .
Tue, January 14, 2020
How NASA Plans Big Missions
Glen Asner and Stephen Garber talk about NASA’s efforts to plan ambitious missions in the face of huge political and financial challenges. Asner is the Deputy Chief Historian for the Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Garber works in the NASA History Division at NASA Headquarters. They are the authors of Origins of 21st-Century Space Travel: A History of NASA’s Decadal Planning Team and the Vision for Space Exploration, 1999–2004 .
Sat, January 11, 2020
Replay: The Human Exploration of Mars
Jake Robins and Michael Robinson talk about the quest to explore Mars: how it compares to earlier eras of exploration in the West and in the Arctic as well as its power to capture the imagination of thousands of people. Robins is the host of WeMartians, a podcast that considers the exploration of the Red Planet from a variety of angles, both technical and scientific.
Tue, January 07, 2020
How George Putnam's Arctic Expedition Got into Trouble
Tina Adcock talks about the controversy over George Putnam's Baffin Land expedition and why it tells a bigger story about the changing culture of exploration in the 1920s. Adcock is an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She’s the author of the essay “Scientist Tourist Sportsman Spy: Boundary-Work and the Putnam Eastern Arctic Expeditions” which was published in the edited collection Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History , edited by Adcock and Edward Jones-Imhotep.
Sat, January 04, 2020
Replay: Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part II
In Part II, Ruth Gruenthal continues her story of her family's escape from France in 1940. She also discusses the challenges of living in the United States after the war.
Wed, January 01, 2020
Replay: Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part I
Ruth Gruenthal talks about her life in Germany as the Nazi Party came to power in the 1930s. Gruenthal and her family – along with thousands of Jewish refugees -- raced to escape France when the Germans invaded in the summer of 1940. Gruenthal is a practicing psychotherapist in New York City. She’s also the daughter of the publisher Kurt Enoch who co-founded the New American Library in the United States after World War II.
Fri, December 27, 2019
Searching for Life Beyond Earth
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the search for extraterrestrial life and the different strategies used by astronomers and exobiologists to look for it. Webb is a PhD candidate at MIT's History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society Program. Her dissertation project, “Technologies of Perception: The Search for Life and Intelligence Beyond Earth” won this year’s HSS/NASA Fellowship in Aerospace History.
Sat, December 21, 2019
Replay: Human Exploration of the Deep Sea
Bruce Strickrott talks about the value of human exploration of the deep sea. Strickrott is the Program Manager and Senior Pilot of the United States’ deepest diving science submersible, the DSV Alvin which is owned by the US Navy and operated out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He has participated in over 60 science expeditions and piloted over 365 dives in Alvin, spending over 2000 hours underwater.
Wed, December 18, 2019
Replay: Destined for the Stars
Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Willy Ley, and the NASA rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Newell is an assistant professor of religion and science at the University of Miami. She’s the author of Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier .
Sat, December 14, 2019
Replay: Starvation Shore
Laura Waterman talks about her novel, Starvation Shore , which relies upon memoirs, letters, and diaries to reconstruct the life of the Greely Party as it attempted to survive impossible conditions. Waterman is a climber, conservationist, and author who has written many books with her husband Guy Waterman about mountain history, climbing and environmental ethics. Her memoir Losing the Garden tells the story of her marriage to Guy and his decision nineteen years ago to end his life on the summit of Mt Lafayette.
Mon, December 09, 2019
Assembling the Dinosaur
Lukas Rieppel talks about dinosaur fossils in the Gilded Age – from the discovery and excavation of fossils in the American West to the re-construction of fabulous creatures in museums that were the darlings of wealthy philanthropists. Rieppel is an assistant professor of history at Brown University. He’s the author of Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle .
Sat, December 07, 2019
Replay: Space Science and the Arab World
Matthias Determann talks about the importance of the space sciences in the Arab World. Determann is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. He is the author of Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East .
Mon, December 02, 2019
Starlink is Blanketing the Earth with Satellites
Lisa Ruth Rand talks about the Starlink satellite program. She also talks about Project West Ford, which attempted to create an artificial ionosphere in 1961 by launching millions of copper needles into orbit. Rand is the Haas Postdoctoral Fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Her op-ed on Starlink and Project West Ford appeared in the July 8th 2019 edition of Scientific American.
Sat, November 30, 2019
Replay: Travel, Race, and Freedom
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks with Tiffany Gill about the history of African American travel in the late twentieth century and its importance to black communities across the lines of class and gender. Joseph-Gabriel is an assistant professor of French at the University of Michigan, College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Gill is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies & History and Cochran Scholar at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism .
Wed, November 27, 2019
Replay: The History of Arctic Fever
Radio host Kevin Fox interviews me about the history of American Arctic exploration. The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 turned the Arctic into an object of fascination. By the end of the century, it had become an 'Arctic Fever.'
Fri, November 22, 2019
Replay: The British Expeditionary Literature of Africa
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Wisnicki is the author of Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature .
Tue, November 19, 2019
Replay: Faces, Beauty, and the Brain
Rachel Walker talks about physiognomy -- the study of the human face -- and why it was so popular among scientists and the general public. Walker is an assistant professor of history at the University of Hartford. She is completing a book based on her dissertation, "A Beautiful Mind: Faces, Beauty, and the Brain in the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1780-1860."
Sat, November 16, 2019
Replay: New Insights about Darwin's Voyage
Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. Sponsel’s close reading of Darwin’s journals and letters reveals insights about the man that would become known as the father of evolution. Sponsel is the author of Darwin's Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation.
Wed, November 13, 2019
Inuit Testimony and the Search for Franklin's Ships
David Woodman talks about his quest to find the missing wrecks of the Franklin Expedition, a mission that led him to the journals of the Arctic explorer Charles Hall who lived with the Inuit for four years and recorded their encounters with British explorers. Woodman is the author of Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, a book that correctly predicted the site of HMS Erebus discovered by Parks Canada in 2014.
Sat, November 09, 2019
Replay: Women Wanderers of the Romantic Era
Ingrid Horrocks talks about the way women travelers, specifically women wanderers, are represented in late-eighteenth century literature. Horrocks in an associate professor in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. She is the author of Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility, 1784–1814 .
Thu, November 07, 2019
Science, Islam, and Evolution
Sarah Qidwai talks about her research on Sayyid Ahmad Khan as well as her own journey to Mecca and Medina. Qidwai is a Ph.D candidate in the History of Science at the University of Toronto. Her essay “Reexamining Complexity: Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Interpretation of 'Science' in Islam” is in the edited collection Rethinking History, Science and Religion: Exploring Complexity published this year by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Sat, November 02, 2019
Replay: Creatures of Cain
Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primatologists in the years after World War II. Milam is a professor of history at Princeton University. She is the author of Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America .
Thu, October 31, 2019
The City Built by Travel
Fiona Vernal talks about the migration stories of Hartford Connecticut’s many communities. Vernal is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut and the creator of the exhibition “From Human Rights to Civil Rights: African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian Housing Struggles in Hartford County Connecticut, 1940-2019” now open at the Hartford Public Library.
Sat, October 26, 2019
Replay: Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration
Dr. Vanessa Heggie talks about the history of biomedical research in extreme environments. Heggie is a Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration.
Tue, October 22, 2019
Replay: The Medieval Invention of Travel
Shayne Legassie talks about Medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion. He also talks about the role the Middle Ages played in creating modern conceptions of travel and travel writing. Legassie is an associate professor of English and Comparative literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Medieval Invention of Travel.
Fri, October 18, 2019
Replay: Apollo in the Age of Aquarius
Neil Maher talks about the social forces that shaped NASA in the 1960s and 1970s, connecting the space race with the radical upheavals of the counterculture. Maher is a professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius .
Tue, October 15, 2019
Replay: After Leichhardt Went Missing
Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose posthumous reputation has changed many times since his disappearance 170 years ago. Hurley is an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. He’s the author of Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth .
Sat, October 12, 2019
Replay: African American Women and Jamaican Travel
Annette Joseph Gabrielle talks with Bianca Williams about African American women who travel to Jamaica as tourists looking for happiness, intimacy, and new identities free from the limits of American racism. Joseph-Gabrielle is an assistant professor of French at the University of Minnesota. Williams is an associate professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Transnationalism .
Wed, October 09, 2019
The Polar Star is Falling Apart
Richard Read talks about the troubled life of the Coast Guard's sole heavy icebreaker, Polar Star . Read is the Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times in Seattle. He is the winner of two Pulitzer prizes for his investigations on the Asian Financial Crisis and abuses by U.S. immigration officials. His article on the Polar Star was published in the August 2nd edition of the Los Angeles Times.
Sat, October 05, 2019
Replay: Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans
Helen Rozwadowski talks about the history of the oceans and how these oceans have shaped human history in profound ways. Rozwadowski is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut Avery Point. She is the author of Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans (Reaktion, 2018).
Mon, September 30, 2019
Mental Illness and the Mawson Expedition
Elizabeth Leane talks about Sidney Jeffryes, radio operator for Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1913. Jeffryes’ struggle with mental illness challenged Mawson’s expedition party as well as the way Mawson tried to present his expedition to audiences back home. Leane is a professor of English at the University of Tasmania and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She’s also the co-author (along with Ben Maddison and Kimberley Norris) of “Beyond the Heroic Stereotype: Sidney Jeffryes and the Mythologising of Australian Antarctic History.”
Sat, September 28, 2019
Replay: Re-imagining People in Anthropological Photographs
Artist Chiadikobi Nwaubani talks about his efforts to find, restore, and publish photographs from the colonial archives of West Africa. He also talks about his work re-interpreting these photographs using art and photo-manipulation.
Tue, September 24, 2019
Replay: The Problem with Andrea Wulf's Biography of Humboldt
Andrea Wulf’s book the The Invention of Nature tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the world’s most important nineteenth-century explorers. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra talks about some of the problems of the book, specifically how Wulf’s view of Humboldt divorces him from the intellectual traditions of Central and South American scholars who helped Humboldt imagine the Americas for European and North American readers. Cañizares-Esguerra is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many books including How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World .
Sat, September 21, 2019
Replay: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin
Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma State University. He is the author of Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin .
Wed, September 18, 2019
Anticipating the Astronaut
Jordan Bimm talks about early experiments in space medicine involving subjects who did not resemble the white male test pilots who would become America's first astronauts. Bimm is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University. He’s the author of Anticipating the Astronaut which is under contract to MIT Press, expected in Spring 2021.
Sat, September 14, 2019
Replay: The Nazi Cult of Mobility
Andrew Denning talks about the Nazi cult of mobility, a set of ideas and practices that were crucial to its racist ideology. Denning is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is the author the essay “'Life is Movement, Movement is life!' Mobility Politics and the Circulatory State in Nazi Germany,” published in the American Historical Review .
Tue, September 10, 2019
Jessica Nabongo is Traveling to Every Country in the World
Annette Joseph-Gabriel speaks to Jessica Nabongo about her quest to be the first black woman to travel to all of the countries of the world. Joseph-Gabriel is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Nabongo is a writer, entrepreneur, and the founder of Jet Black, a boutique luxury travel company that promotes tourism to Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
Sat, September 07, 2019
Replay: The Last Wild Men of Borneo
Journalist Carl Hoffman talks about Bruno Manser and Michael Palmieri, two men who arrived in Borneo with very different dreams and aspirations. Hoffman served as a contributing editor to National Geographic Traveler and Wired Magazine. He is the author of The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure .
Wed, September 04, 2019
Why are Women Beating Men in Ultra-Endurance Events?
Dr. Beth Taylor talks about the physiological differences between men and women athletes and why ultra-endurance events seem to offer certain performance advantages to women. Taylor is an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and the Director of Exercise Physiology Research in Cardiology at Hartford Hospital.
Sat, August 31, 2019
Replay: Should We Colonize Mars?
Lucianne Walkowicz talks about the ethics of colonizing Mars and new developments in the search for extraterrestrial life. Walkowicz held the 2017 NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. She is currently an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium.
Tue, August 27, 2019
The Expedition that Tested Einstein's Theory
Daniel Kennefick talks about resistance to relativity theory in the early twentieth century and the huge challenges that faced British astronomers who wanted to test the theory during the solar eclipse of 1919. Kennefick is an associate professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He’s the author of No Shadow of Doubt: the 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity .
Sat, August 24, 2019
Replay: Searching for the Origins of Humankind
Emily Kern talks about the search for human origins in the 19th and 20th centuries, specifically why anthropologists came to see Africa – rather than Asia – as the cradle of the human species. Kern is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in New Earth Histories at the University of New South Wales.
Tue, August 20, 2019
Chasing the Moon
Director Robert Stone talks about his film Chasing the Moon , a three-part documentary which aired on PBS’s American Experience for the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Sat, August 17, 2019
Replay: The Navigator in the Early Modern World
Margaret Schotte talks about how sailors were trained to do the difficult and dangerous work of navigation in the early modern world. Schotte is an Assistant Professor of History at York University. She is the author of Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill.
Tue, August 13, 2019
Scurvy!
Ed Armston-Sheret talks about the mysterious disease of scurvy: how it affected expeditioners and why it was so difficult to understand. Armston-Sheret is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway University of London. He’s the author of "Tainted bodies : scurvy, bad food and the reputation of the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–1904," published this year in the Journal of Historical Geography .
Sat, August 10, 2019
Replay: Mountaineering and Glaciology after WWII
Dani Inkpen talks about expedition life in the Juneau Icefield, home to some of the most spectacular glaciers in North America. In the 1940s, it was the place where science and mountaineering joined hands and, occasionally, came into conflict. Inkpen is a Faculty Fellow at NYU Gallatin. She is the author of "The Scientific Life in the Alpine: Recreation and Moral Life in the Field," (Isis, Sept 2018).
Tue, August 06, 2019
How We Talk about Apollo
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the creator of the YouTube Channel, Vintage Space . She is also the author of two books, Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA and Apollo Pilot: The Memory of Astronaut Don Eisele .
Sat, August 03, 2019
Replay: Death in the Ice
Russell Potter discusses new developments in the search for answers about the tragic Franklin Expedition that disappeared in the Arctic in 1845. Potter is a professor of English and Media Studies at Rhode Island College. He's the author of Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-year Search.
Tue, July 30, 2019
The Human Exploration of Mars
Jake Robins and Michael Robinson talk about the quest to explore Mars: how it compares to earlier eras of exploration in the West and in the Arctic as well as its power to capture the imagination of thousands of people. Robins is the host of WeMartians, a podcast that considers the exploration of the Red Planet from a variety of angles, both technical and scientific.
Sat, July 27, 2019
Replay: How Isolated Tribes Fight Back
Scott Wallace talks about his trip to Brazil reporting on the efforts of the Guajajara people to protect uncontacted tribes from loggers, miners, and poachers. Wallace is a professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, a contributor to National Geographic, and a former reporter for CBS and CNN. He's the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes .
Mon, July 22, 2019
Replay: Into the Extreme
Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a "frontier" is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an associate professor of anthropology at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth .
Sat, July 20, 2019
Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part II
In Part II, Ruth Gruenthal continues her story of her family's escape from France in 1940. She also discusses the challenges of living in the United States after the war.
Sat, July 13, 2019
Replay: The Identity of the Traveler
Joyce Ashuntantang talks about her experiences as a traveler and a poet, from her childhood Cameroon to her years studying in Great Britain and the United States. Ashuntantang is a professor of English at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. She is the author of many works of poetry, including Beautiful Fire , published this year with Spears Media Press.
Tue, July 09, 2019
Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part I
Ruth Gruenthal talks about her life in Germany as the Nazi Party came to power in the 1930s. Gruenthal and her family – along with thousands of Jewish refugees -- raced to escape France when the Germans invaded in the summer of 1940. Gruenthal is a practicing psychotherapist in New York City. She’s also the daughter of the publisher Kurt Enoch who co-founded the New American Library in the United States after World War II.
Sat, July 06, 2019
Replay: The Archaeology of Exploration
Anthropologist P.J. Capelotti discusses the role of exploration archaeology in understanding the Pacific voyage of Kon-Tiki, the Arctic airship expeditions of Walter Wellman, and the fate of Orca II, a fishing boat used in the film Jaws.
Tue, July 02, 2019
Human Exploration of the Deep Sea
Bruce Strickrott talks about the value of human exploration of the deep sea. Strickrott is the Program Manager and Senior Pilot of the United States’ deepest diving science submersible, the DSV Alvin which is owned by the US Navy and operated out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He has participated in over 60 science expeditions and piloted over 365 dives in Alvin, spending over 2000 hours underwater.
Sat, June 29, 2019
Replay: Women, Aviation, and Global Air Travel
Emily Gibson talks about women, aviation, and global air travel. Gibson is an associate historian at the National Science Foundation.
Tue, June 25, 2019
Replay: The New Map of Empire
Max Edelson talk about the British Board of Trade’s ambitious project to explore and survey British America from the St Lawrence River to the islands of the Caribbean. Edelson is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. He's the author of The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence .
Sat, June 22, 2019
Replay: Making Planets into Places
Anthropologist Lisa Messeri talks about planetary scientists and the way they use data to bring these places to life. Messeri is the author of Placing Out Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds .
Tue, June 18, 2019
Replay: The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Michael Benson talks about the making of 2001, a movie inspired by the collaboration of American director Stanley Kubrick and the British futurist Arthur C. Clark. Benson is the author of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece .
Sat, June 15, 2019
Replay: Science and Exploration in the U.S. Navy
Jason Smith discusses the U.S. Navy’s role in exploring and charting the ocean world. Smith is an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University. He’s the author of To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire.
Tue, June 11, 2019
Destined for the Stars
Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Willy Ley, and the NASA rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Newell is an assistant professor of religion and science at the University of Miami. She’s the author of Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier .
Sat, June 08, 2019
Replay: After the Map
Bill Rankin talks about the changes brought about by GPS and other mapping technologies in the twentieth century. Rankin is the author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century .
Tue, June 04, 2019
Starvation Shore
Laura Waterman talks about her novel, Starvation Shore , which relies upon memoirs, letters, and diaries to reconstruct the life of the Greely Party as it attempted to survive impossible conditions. Waterman is a climber, conservationist, and author who has written many books with her husband Guy Waterman about mountain history, climbing and environmental ethics. Her memoir Losing the Garden tells the story of her marriage to Guy and his decision nineteen years ago to end his life on the summit of Mt Lafayette.
Sat, June 01, 2019
Replay: One Long Night
Andrea Pitzer talks about her book One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps , one of the Smithsonian’s Ten Best History Books for 2017.
Tue, May 28, 2019
Space Science and the Arab World
Matthias Determann talks about the importance of the space sciences in the Arab World. Determann is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. He is the author of Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East .
Sat, May 25, 2019
Replay: Living on the International Space Station
Astronaut Garrett Reisman talks about life aboard the International Space Station. Reisman flew on two shuttle missions to the station and conducted three seven-hour spacewalks during his 107 days in space.
Wed, May 22, 2019
Faces, Beauty, and the Brain
Rachel Walker talks about physiognomy -- the study of the human face -- and why it was so popular among scientists and the general public. Walker is an assistant professor of history at the University of Hartford. She is completing a book based on her dissertation, "A Beautiful Mind: Faces, Beauty, and the Brain in the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1780-1860."
Sat, May 18, 2019
Replay: Aboriginal Australians' First Encounter with Captain Cook
Maria Nugent talks about Aboriginal Australians' first encounter with Captain Cook at Botany Bay, a violent meeting has come to represent the origin story of Australia’s colonial settlement. Nugent is a Fellow in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History in the School of History at the Australian National University. She is the author of Captain Cook Was Here .
Wed, May 15, 2019
The History of Arctic Fever
Radio host Kevin Fox interviews me about the history of American Arctic exploration. The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 turned the Arctic into an object of fascination. By the end of the century, it had become an 'Arctic Fever.'
Sat, May 11, 2019
Replay: An American in Soviet Antarctica, Part I
Stewart Gillmor talks about his fourteen-month stay at Mirny Station, the Soviet Union's Antarctica base. Gillmor was the sole American at Mirny in 1960-1962 during the height of the Cold War.
Sat, May 11, 2019
An American in Soviet Antarctica, Part II
Stewart Gillmor -- the sole American at Mirny Station in 1961 and 1962-- continues his discussion of life at the Soviet base: how communism plays out 10,000 miles from Moscow, the problems with planes in Antarctica, and what to do when the diesel generator dies at the coldest place in the world.
Tue, May 07, 2019
The British Expeditionary Literature of Africa
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Wisnicki is the author of Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature .
Sat, May 04, 2019
Replay: The Mars Rover Curiosity
Emily Lakdawalla discusses the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated machines ever built. Lakdawalla is a senior editor at the Planetary Society. She is the author of The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job .
Tue, April 30, 2019
Replay: What the Dead Can Teach Us
Too often, Dr. Pauline Chen argues, the focus on keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping those who are approaching death. Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon -- the subject of her book Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality -- and how they've shaped the way she practices medicine.
Sat, April 27, 2019
Replay: Rethinking Humboldt
Patrick Anthony discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, the world's most famous explorer in the early 1800s. Famed and admired for his 1799 expedition to South and Central America, Humboldt has been rediscovered by a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Anthony is the author of “Mining as the Working World of Alexander von Humboldt’s Plant Geography and Vertical Cartography.” Isis 109, no. 1 (2018): 28-55.
Tue, April 23, 2019
Women Wanderers of the Romantic Era
Ingrid Horrocks talks about the way women travelers, specifically women wanderers, are represented in late-eighteenth century literature. Horrocks in an associate professor in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand. She is the author of Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility, 1784–1814 .
Sat, April 20, 2019
Replay: The 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition
Martin Thomas discusses the 1948 Arnhem Land expedition and the controversy that surrounds it. His new documentary, Etched in Bone, which he co-directed with Beatrice Bijon, traces the events of the expedition and its effects upon the aboriginal communities of Northern Australia. Thomas is a professor of history at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.
Tue, April 16, 2019
New Insights about Darwin
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. Sponsel’s close reading of Darwin’s journals and letters reveals insights about the man that would become known as the father of evolution. Sponsel is the author of Darwin's Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation.
Sat, April 13, 2019
Replay: Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean
Dr. Joy McCann discusses the great circumpolar ocean that surrounds Antarctica. She is a historian at the Centre for Environmental History at Australian National University and the author of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean .
Tue, April 09, 2019
Creatures of Cain
Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primatologists in the years after World War II. Milam is a professor of history at Princeton University. She is the author of Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America .
Sat, April 06, 2019
Replay: Running and the Science of the Extreme
Dr. Beth Taylor discusses the science and psychology of running. Taylor is an Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Connecticut. She also serves as the Director of Exercise Physiology Research at Hartford Hospital.
Tue, April 02, 2019
Travel, Race, and Freedom
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks with Tiffany Gill about the history of African American travel in the late twentieth century and its importance to black communities across the lines of class and gender. Joseph-Gabriel is an assistant professor of French at the University of Michigan, College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Gill is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies & History and Cochran Scholar at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism .
Sat, March 30, 2019
Replay: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition
In 1845, the two British naval ships left England with 129 men in search of the Northwest Passage. They were never heard from again. Professor Russell Potter talks about the expedition and the reasons why it continues to fascinate people around the world. Potter is the author of Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-year Search
Mon, March 25, 2019
Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration
Dr. Vanessa Heggie talks about the history of biomedical research in extreme environments. Heggie is a Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration.
Sat, March 23, 2019
Replay: Watching Vesuvius
Sean Cocco talks about the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius and its impact on Renaissance science and culture. Cocco is an associate professor of history at Trinity College. He is the author of Watching Vesuvius: A History of Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy .
Tue, March 19, 2019
The Medieval Invention of Travel
Shayne Legassie talks about Medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion. He also talks about the role the Middle Ages played in creating modern conceptions of travel and travel writing. Legassie is an associate professor of English and Comparative literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Medieval Invention of Travel.
Sat, March 16, 2019
Replay: Mapping the Polar Regions
Cole Kelleher talks about his work for the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, an agency that uses satellite data to make cutting-edge maps for the support of polar scientists in the field.
Tue, March 12, 2019
Apollo in the Age of Aquarius
Neil Maher talks about the social forces that shaped NASA in the 1960s and 1970s, connecting the space race with the radical upheavals of the counterculture. Maher is a professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius .
Sat, March 09, 2019
Replay: The Last Uncontacted Tribes
Scott Wallace talks about his 2002 expedition into Amazon to find the Arrow People, one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Wallace is a professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, a contributor to National Geographic, and a former reporter for CBS and CNN. He's the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes .
Tue, March 05, 2019
After Leichhardt Went Missing
Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose posthumous reputation has changed many times since his disappearance 170 years ago. Hurley is an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. He’s the author of Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth .
Sat, March 02, 2019
Replay: Descartes, Traveler
Hal Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young René Descartes, a man who spent as much time traveling and fighting as studying philosophy. Cook is the John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University. He is the author of The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
Tue, February 26, 2019
African American Women and Jamaican Travel
Annette Joseph Gabrielle talks with Bianca Williams about African American women who travel to Jamaica as tourists looking for happiness, intimacy, and new identities free from the limits of American racism. Joseph-Gabrielle is an assistant professor of French at the University of Minnesota. Williams is an associate professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Transnationalism.
Sat, February 23, 2019
The Revolution in Paleoanthropology
Anthropologist John Hawks talks about new developments in paleoanthropology: the discovery of a new hominid species Homo Naledi in South Africa, the Neanderthal ancestry of many human populations, and the challenge of rethinking anthropological science’s relationship with indigenous peoples. Hawks is the co-author of Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story.
Wed, February 20, 2019
Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans
Helen Rozwadowski talks about the history of the oceans and how these oceans have shaped human history in profound ways. Rozwadowski is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut Avery Point. She is the author of Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans (Reaktion, 2018).
Sat, February 16, 2019
Replay: Talking Exploration Books with Sarah Pickman
Sarah Pickman talks about the literature of exploration. She offers some picks for categories of exploration books not commonly seen in indexes and bibliographies.
Sat, February 16, 2019
Replay: The Biggest Exploration Exam Ever
Doctoral candidate Sarah Pickman talks about studying exploration for her Ph.D exams: specifically what it's like to read three hundred books and articles and then discuss them in front of a committee of professors.
Tue, February 12, 2019
Re-imagining People in Anthropological Photographs
Artist Chiadikobi Nwaubani talks about his efforts to find, restore, and publish photographs from the colonial archives of West Africa. He also talks about his work re-interpreting these photographs using art and photo-manipulation.
Sat, February 09, 2019
Replay: Project Vanguard
Dr. Angelina Callahan talks about the Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard. While this satellite mission was part of the Cold War "Space Race," it also represented something more: a scientific platform for understanding the space environment as well as a test vehicle that would provide data for satellites of the future.
Wed, February 06, 2019
The Problem with Andrea Wulf's Biography of Humboldt
Andrea Wulf’s book the The Invention of Nature tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the world’s most important nineteenth-century explorers. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra talks about some of the problems of the book, specifically how Wulf’s view of Humboldt divorces him from the intellectual traditions of Central and South American scholars who helped Humboldt imagine the Americas for European and North American readers. Cañizares-Esguerra is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many books including How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World .
Sat, February 02, 2019
Replay: Do You See Ice?
Dr. Karen Routledge talks about Baffin Island’s Inuit community as it comes into contact with western whalers and explorers in the nineteenth century. Even though the Inuit worked closely with outsiders, their views of the Arctic world, their ideas about the meaning of home, even their views of time itself remained different. Routledge is a historian with Parks Canada. Her new book, Do You See Ice?: Inuit and Americans at Home and Away has recently been published by University of Chicago Press.
Tue, January 29, 2019
The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin
Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma State University. He is the author of Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin .
Sat, January 26, 2019
Replay: The Journeys of Eslanda Robeson
Professor Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks about Eslanda Robeson who, in addition to being a political activist with her husband Paul Robeson, was a chemist, anthropologist, and epic traveler.
Tue, January 22, 2019
The Nazi Cult of Mobility
Andrew Denning talks about the Nazi cult of mobility, a set of ideas and practices that were crucial to its racist ideology. Denning is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is the author the essay “'Life is Movement, Movement is life!' Mobility Politics and the Circulatory State in Nazi Germany,” published in the American Historical Review .
Sat, January 19, 2019
Replay: The Rise of Women in Climbing
Noel Phillips discusses the growing popularity of climbing among women. Her article, “No Man’s Land: The Rise of Women in Climbing” was recently published in Climbing Magazine.
Tue, January 15, 2019
The Last Wild Men of Borneo
Journalist Carl Hoffman talks about Bruno Manser and Michael Palmieri, two men who arrived in Borneo with very different dreams and aspirations. Hoffman served as a contributing editor to National Geographic Traveler and Wired Magazine. He is the author of The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure .
Sat, January 12, 2019
Replay: The Amazing Phytotron
David Munns, professor of history at John Jay College, talks about his new book, Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War .
Tue, January 08, 2019
Should We Colonize Mars?
Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz talks about the ethics of colonizing Mars and new developments in the search for extraterrestrial life.
Sat, January 05, 2019
Replay: Chasing Exoplanets
Scientists have now identified almost 4000 exoplanets --planets that orbit stars outside our own solar system-- and with powerful new telescopes about to come on line, that number is about to skyrocket. Exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford, Giaconni Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute, discusses this revolutionary new field and its impact on Earth and planetary sciences.
Tue, January 01, 2019
Searching for the Origins of Humankind
Historian Emily Kern talks about the search for human origins in the 19th and 20th centuries, specifically why anthropologists came to see Africa – rather than Asia – as the cradle of the human species.
Sat, December 29, 2018
The History of Madagascar in Trade and Exploration
Jane Hooper talks about Madagascar and its importance to the history of Indian Ocean trade and exploration. Hooper is the author of Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600-1800 , published by Ohio University Press.
Tue, December 25, 2018
Replay: The Medieval Pilgrimage
Art historian Fran Altvater talks about the Medieval Pilgrimage, a practice that became central to Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages.
Fri, December 21, 2018
Replay: Inventing the American Astronaut
Matthew Hersch, author of Inventing the American Astronaut , talks about the origins and evolution of the U.S. astronaut program.
Tue, December 18, 2018
The Navigator in the Early Modern World
Margaret Schotte talks about how sailors were trained to do the difficult and dangerous work of navigation in the early modern world. Schotte is an Assistant Professor of History at York University. She is the author of Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill.
Sat, December 15, 2018
Replay: How We Got the Scientific Revolution Wrong
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra discusses the 16th century mining center of Potosí and how its peoples and technologies shaped 16th century science.
Tue, December 11, 2018
Mountaineering and Glaciology after WWII
Dani Inkpen talks about expedition life in the Juneau Icefield, home to some of the most spectacular glaciers in North America. In the 1940s, it was the place where science and mountaineering joined hands and, occasionally, came into conflict.
Sat, December 08, 2018
Replay: Monsters on the Map
Cannibals, headless men, and giants were common figures of Medieval and Renaissance maps. Historian Surekha Davies tells us why we need to take these figures seriously. Davies is the author of Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters.
Wed, December 05, 2018
Death in the Ice
Russell Potter discusses new developments in the search for answers about the tragic Franklin Expedition that disappeared in the Arctic in 1845.
Sat, December 01, 2018
Replay: The History of UFOs
In 1946, Swedish and Finnish observers reported "ghost rockets" flying over Scandinavia. In the United States, they became known as "flying saucers." Historian Greg Eghigian discusses the science and culture of UFOs in the twentieth century (rebroadcast).
Tue, November 27, 2018
How Isolated Tribes Fight Back
Scott Wallace talks about his recent trip to Brazil reporting on the efforts of the Guajajara people to protect uncontacted tribes from loggers, miners, and poachers.
Fri, November 23, 2018
Backpack Ambassadors
Richard Ivan Jobs talks about the rise of backpacking in Europe after the Second World War, a phenomenon that contributed to the political integration of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s (rebroadcast).
Tue, November 20, 2018
Into the Extreme
Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a "frontier" is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an associate professor of anthropology at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth .
Sat, November 17, 2018
Searching for Hobbits
Paige Madison talks about her work at the Liang Bua cave in Indonesia where she studies Homo Floresiensis as well as the team of researchers who have worked at the cave for years, sometimes for generations.
Thu, November 15, 2018
The Psychology of Extreme Environments
Nathan Smith discusses the psychology of exploration, specifically the psychology of performance in extreme environments. Smith worked closely with polar explorer Ben Saunders in 2013 as Saunders attempted to complete Robert Falcon Scott's trek to the South Pole and back.
Mon, November 12, 2018
Lands of Lost Borders
Kate Harris -- writer, scientist, and extreme cyclist – talks about the trip she made with her friend Mel, tracing Marco Polo’s route across Central Asia and Tibet. The journey is the subject of Harris’s book, Lands of Lost Borders: a Journey on the Silk Road (rebroadcast).
Tue, November 06, 2018
The Identity of the Traveler
Joyce Ashuntantang talks about her experiences as a traveler and a poet, from her childhood Cameroon to her years studying in Great Britain and the United States. Ashuntantang is a professor of English at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. She is the author of many works of poetry, including Beautiful Fire , published this year with Spears Media Press.
Tue, October 30, 2018
The Archaeology of Exploration
Anthropologist P.J. Capelotti discusses the role of exploration archaeology in understanding the Pacific voyage of Kon-Tiki, the Arctic airship expeditions of Walter Wellman, and the fate of Orca II, a fishing boat used in the film Jaws.
Wed, October 24, 2018
Women, Aviation, and Global Air Travel
Emily Gibson talks about women, aviation, and global air travel. Gibson is an associate historian at the National Science Foundation.
Tue, October 16, 2018
The New Map of Empire
Historian Max Edelson talk about the British Board of Trade’s ambitious project to explore and survey British America from the St Lawrence River to the islands of the Caribbean.
Tue, October 09, 2018
Making Planets into Places
Anthropologist Lisa Messeri talks about planetary scientists and the way they use data to bring these places to life. Messeri is the author of Placing Out Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds .
Tue, October 02, 2018
The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Michael Benson talks about the making of 2001, a movie inspired by the collaboration of American director Stanley Kubrick and the British futurist Arthur C. Clark.
Thu, September 27, 2018
Science and Exploration in the U.S. Navy
Jason Smith discusses the U.S. Navy’s role in exploring and charting the ocean world. Smith is an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University. He’s the author of To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire.
Tue, September 18, 2018
After the Map
Bill Rankin talks about the changes brought about by GPS and other mapping technologies in the twentieth century. Rankin is the author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century .
Tue, September 11, 2018
Living on the International Space Station
Astronaut Garrett Reisman talks about life aboard the International Space Station. Reisman flew on two shuttle missions to the station and conducted three seven-hour spacewalks during his 107 days in space.
Tue, September 04, 2018
One Long Night
Andrea Pitzer talks about her book One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps , one of the Smithsonian’s Ten Best History Books for 2017
Tue, August 28, 2018
Searching for Hobbits
Paige Madison talks about her work at the Liang Bua cave in Indonesia where she studies Homo Floresiensis as well as the team of researchers who have worked at the cave for years, sometimes for generations.
Tue, August 21, 2018
Australians' First Encounter with Captain Cook
Maria Nugent talks about Aboriginal Australians' first encounter with Captain Cook at Botany Bay, a violent meeting has come to represent the origin story of Australia’s colonial settlement.
Wed, August 15, 2018
An American in Soviet Antarctica, Part II
Stewart Gillmor -- the sole American at Mirny Station in 1961 and 1962-- continues his discussion of life at the Soviet base: how communism plays out 10,000 miles from Moscow, the problems with planes in Antarctica, and what to do when the diesel generator dies at the coldest place in the world.
Tue, August 07, 2018
An American in Soviet Antarctica, Part I
Stewart Gillmor talks about his fourteen-month stay at Mirny Station, the Soviet Union's Antarctica base. Gillmor was the sole American at Mirny in 1960-1962 during the height of the Cold War.
Tue, July 31, 2018
The 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition
Historian Martin Thomas discusses the 1948 Arnhem Land expedition and the controversy that surrounds it. His new documentary, Etched in Bone, which he co-directed with Beatrice Bijon, traces the events of the expedition and its effects upon the aboriginal communities of Northern Australia.
Tue, July 24, 2018
Mapping the Polar Regions
Cole Kelleher talks about his work for the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, an agency that uses satellite data to make cutting-edge maps for the support of polar scientists in the field.
Tue, July 17, 2018
My Interview with Radio Canberra
Broadcast journalist Jolene Laverty interviews me for ABC Radio Canberra. We talk about my exploration research, podcast, and recent work at Australian National University. Special thanks to ABC Radio Canberra for permission to post this interview.
Mon, July 09, 2018
Watching Vesuvius
Sean Cocco talks about the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius and its impact on Renaissance science and culture. Cocco is an associate professor of history at Trinity College. He is the author of Watching Vesuvius: A History of Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy .
Tue, July 03, 2018
Wild Sea
Dr Joy McCann discusses the great circumpolar ocean that surrounds Antarctica. McCann is the author of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean. She is a historian at the Centre for Environmental History at Australian National University.
Wed, June 27, 2018
The Egyptologist
Historian Kate Sheppard discusses Egyptologist Margaret Alice Murray who was central to the field of British Egyptology at the turn of the twentieth century. Sheppard is the author of The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman’s Work in Archaeology (Rebroadcast).
Tue, June 19, 2018
The Rise of the Megafire
Journalist Michael Kodas talks about the phenomenon of megafires, forest fires that burn over 100,000 acres, and why the number of these fires is increasing every year. (Rebroadcast)
Tue, June 12, 2018
The Ebola Outbreak of 2013
Professor Stephan Bullard discusses the 2013 Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed 11,000 people. It is the subject of his new book, A Day to Day Chronicle of the 2013-16 Ebola Outbreak (rebroadcast).
Tue, June 05, 2018
The Mars Rover Curiosity
Emily Lakdawalla discusses the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated machines ever built.
Tue, May 29, 2018
Psychology in Extreme Environments
Nathan Smith discusses the psychology of exploration, specifically the psychology of performance in extreme environments. Smith worked closely with polar explorer Ben Saunders in 2013 as Saunders attempted to complete Robert Falcon Scott's trek to the South Pole and back.
Mon, May 21, 2018
What the Dead Can Teach Us
Too often, Dr. Pauline Chen argues, the focus on keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping those who are approaching death. Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon -- the subject of her book Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality -- and how they've shaped the way she practices medicine.
Tue, May 15, 2018
Rethinking Humboldt
Patrick Anthony discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, the world's most famous explorer in the early 1800s. Famed and admired for his 1799 expedition to South and Central America, Humboldt has been rediscovered by a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thu, May 10, 2018
The Revolution in Paleoanthropology
John Hawks talks about new developments in paleoanthropology – the discovery of a new hominid species Homo Naledi in South Africa, the Neanderthal ancestry of many human populations, and the challenge of rethinking anthropological science’s relationship with indigenous peoples and the general public. Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story
Tue, May 01, 2018
The Vanguard Project
Angelina Callahan talks about the Naval Research Laboratory's Vanguard Project. While this satellite mission was part of the Cold War "Space Race," it also represented something more: a scientific platform for understanding the space environment as well as a test vehicle that would provide data for satellites of the future.
Tue, April 24, 2018
Descartes, Traveler.
Hal Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young René Descartes, a man who spent more time traveling and fighting than studying philosophy.
Tue, April 17, 2018
The Journeys of Eslanda Robeson
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks about Eslanda Robeson who, in addition to being a political activist with her husband Paul Robeson, was also a chemist, anthropologist, and epic traveler.
Tue, April 10, 2018
The Medieval Pilgrimage
Art historian Fran Altvater talks about the Medieval Pilgrimage, a practice that became central to Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages.
Tue, April 03, 2018
The Last Uncontacted Tribes
Journalist Scott Wallace talks about a 2002 expedition into Amazon to find the Arrow People, one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Wallace is the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes .
Bonus · Tue, March 27, 2018
Bonus Episode: Exploration Books
Our conversation with Sarah Pickman continues about the literature of exploration. It focuses on some new categories of exploration books not commonly seen in indexes and bibliographies.
Tue, March 27, 2018
The Biggest Exploration Exam Ever
Doctoral candidate Sarah Pickman talks about studying exploration for her qualifying exam: specifically what it's like to read three hundred books and articles and then discuss them in front of a committee of professors.
Tue, March 20, 2018
Backpack Ambassadors
Historian Richard Ivan Jobs talks about the rise of backpacking in Europe after the Second World War. Jobs argues that youth travel helped create a new European culture during the Cold War, contributing to the integration of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s.
Tue, March 13, 2018
The History of Madagascar in Trade and Exploration
Jane Hooper talks about Madagascar and its importance to the history of Indian Ocean trade and exploration. Hooper is the author of Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600-1800 , recently published by Ohio University Press.
Tue, March 06, 2018
Lands of Lost Borders
Kate Harris -- writer, scientist, and extreme cyclist – talks about the trip she made with her friend Mel, tracing Marco Polo’s route across Central Asia and Tibet. The journey is the subject of Harris’s new book, Lands of Lost Borders: a Journey on the Silk Road.
Tue, February 27, 2018
The Ebola Outbreak of 2013
Stephan Bullard, associate professor of biology at the University of Hartford, discusses the 2013 Ebola outbreak which is the subject of his new book, A Day to Day Chronicle of the 2013-16 Ebola Outbreak , soon to be released by Springer Press.
Tue, February 20, 2018
Inventing the American Astronaut
Matthew Hersch, author of Inventing the American Astronaut , talks about the origins and evolution of the U.S. astronaut program.
Tue, February 13, 2018
The First Americans on Everest, Part II
Phil Clements continues his discussion of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition, the subject of his new book: Science in an Extreme Environment: The American Mount Everest Expedition. He discusses the expedition party's scientific findings and treatment of local Sherpas. He also talks about the expedition's broader relevance to the study of environmental history and climate change.
Tue, February 13, 2018
The First Americans on Everest, Part I
Phil Clements discusses the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition, the subject of his new book: Science in an Extreme Environment: The American Mount Everest Expedition. Originally broadcast in November 2017.
Tue, February 06, 2018
The Falcon Heavy
Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, talks about this week's launch of the Falcon Heavy -- the world's most powerful rocket -- and how it may change the future of spaceflight.
Tue, January 30, 2018
How We Got the Scientific Revolution Wrong
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra discusses the 16th century mining center of Potosí and how its peoples and technologies shaped 16th century science.
Tue, January 23, 2018
The Egyptologist
Historian Kate Sheppard discusses Egyptologist Margaret Alice Murray who was central to the field of British Egyptology at the turn of the twentieth century. Sheppard is the author of The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman’s Work in Archaeology .
Tue, January 16, 2018
In Search of Brightest Africa
Jeannette Eileen Jones discusses the idea of Africa in the American imagination from the "Darkest Africa" of Henry Morton Stanley to the "Bright Africa" of naturalists, artists, and intellectuals. She is the author of In Search of Brightest Africa, Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936 .
Tue, January 09, 2018
Chasing Exoplanets
Scientists have now identified almost 4000 exoplanets --planets that orbit stars outside our own solar system-- and with powerful new telescopes about to come on line, that number is about to skyrocket. Exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford, Giaconni Fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute, discusses this revolutionary new field and its impact on Earth and planetary sciences.
Tue, January 02, 2018
Monsters on the Map
Cannibals, headless men, and giants were common figures of Medieval and Renaissance maps. Historian Surekha Davies tells us why we need to take these figures seriously. Davies is the author of Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Tue, December 26, 2017
The Amazing Phytotron
David Munns, professor of history at John Jay College, talks about his new book, Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War, but we also talk about Matt Damon, shitting in space, and growing pot in your dorm room.
Tue, December 19, 2017
The History of UFOs
In 1946, Swedish and Finnish observers reported "ghost rockets" flying over Scandinavia. In the United States, they became known as "flying saucers." Historian Greg Eghigian discusses the science and culture of UFOs in the twentieth century.
Tue, December 12, 2017
Can You See the Ice?
Karen Routledge tells the story of Baffin Island’s Inuit community as they came into contact with western whalers and explorers in the nineteenth century. Her new book, Can You See the Ice ?, tells the story of the Inuit of Cumberland Sound. Even though the Inuit worked closely with outsiders, their views of the Arctic world, of the meaning of home, even time itself, remained very different.
Fri, December 08, 2017
California is Burning
California is in the middle of its worst fire season ever. 1.2 million acres have burned so far with no end in sight. Now, with flames threatening Los Angeles, 200,000 people have been told to evacuate. Michael Kodas returns to Time to Eat the Dogs to give an update on the fires raging across Southern California. When we spoke two weeks ago, Kodas described the Napa Valley fires as wildfires that were transitioning into urban firestorms. Now this dangerous type of fire approaches Los Angeles, the second largest city in America.
Tue, December 05, 2017
NASA in the Age of Trump
In September President Trump nominated Jim Bridenstine – a three term Congressman from Oklahoma-- to lead NASA. Discussing Bridenstine’s nomination and other issues confronting NASA is Dan Vergano, science reporter for BuzzFeed.
Tue, November 28, 2017
The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition
In 1845, the two British naval ships left England with 129 men in search of the Northwest Passage. They were never heard from again.The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition shocked the world. Dozens of expeditions set sail into the Arctic looking for the missing explorers. Professor Russell Potter talks about the Expedition and the reasons why it continues to fascinate people around the world.
Tue, November 21, 2017
The Ascent of Women Climbers
Noel Phillips discusses the growing popularity of climbing among women. Her article, “No Man’s Land: The Rise of Women in Climbing” was recently published in Climbing Magazine.
Sat, November 18, 2017
The First Americans on Everest
Ten years after the 1953 summit of Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, a team of 19 Americans and hundreds of Sherpas, attempted to do it again. Historian Phil Clements discusses the American expedition and its focus on Cold War scientific research.
Sat, November 18, 2017
The Science of Running
The sport of running has exploded in the last three decades with some runners pushing the envelope of the extreme. Dr. Beth Taylor discusses the science and psychology of this rapidly growing sport.
Sat, November 18, 2017
Rise of the Megafire
Journalist Michael Kodas talks about the phenomenon of megafires, forest fires that burn over 100,000 acres, and why the number of these fires is increasing every year.
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