Time to Eat the Dogs: Recent Episodes
Michael Robinson: historian of science and exploration
A podcast about science, history, and exploration. Michael Robinson interviews scientists, journalists, and adventurers about life at the extreme.
Jason Wright talks about 3I/ATLAS, the controversy surrounding it, and the way the search for life in the universe is beginning to change. Wright is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University. He's the director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. He is also the author of The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and Practice.
17th century traders who traveled the sea routes between India and Southeast Asia were interested in spices, but they were also interested in gemstones, objects of desire, commercial value, and increasingly, scientific fascination. Claire Conklin Sabel talks about the gem trade in South and Southeast Asia, and the way this trade was impacted by European traders in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sabel is a historian of early modern earth science and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vienna. She is working on her a book project, Rare Earth: Gemstones, Geohistory, and Commercial Geography c. 1600-1750.
Part two of my interview with Julian Togelius, who 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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 Making French Polar Exploration, 1860s-1930s.
Dr. Hannah Wakeford talks about the Webb Telescope and its significance for the study of exoplanets: planets orbiting suns in other solar systems. Wakeford is a lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Bristol. She is also one of the hosts of Exocast: a podcast about exoplanet research and discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dr. Carolin Roeder talks about the Soviet search for the abominable snowman and its parallels to other "wildman" legends in the United States and elsewhere. Roeder facilitates research collaboration between the Freie Universität in Berlin and other European universities as part of the Una Europa project. She is the author of “Cold War Creatures: Soviet Science and the Problem of the Abominable Snowman” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Markus Hällgren talks about the 1996 Everest disaster from the perspective of business and management. Hällgren is a professor of management and organization at Umeå School of Business and Economics, Umeå University. He is the founder and leader of the interdisciplinary research profile "Extreme Environments - Everyday Decisions" (www.tripleED.com) as well as co-founder and organizer of the International network "Organising Extreme Contexts." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Patrick Dean talks about the first successful ascent of Denali in 1913. Dean is a writer and executive director of the Mountain Goat Trail Alliance. He’s the author of A Window to Heaven: The Daring First Ascent of Denali: America’s Wildest Peak Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eric Berger talks about the rise of SpaceX and its eccentric, mercurial founder Elon Musk. Berger is the Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica. He’s the author of Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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,” published in the Journal for the History of Science and Technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dr. Karen Routledge talks about Baffin Island’s Inuit community as it came 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 book, Do You See Ice?: Inuit and Americans at Home and Away is published by University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Matteo Salvadore talks about the strange journey of Ṣägga Krǝstos and his impact on the Renaissance world. Salvadore is an Associate Professor of History at the American University of Sharjah. He’s the author of The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402–1555. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Meredith Small talks about the city of Venice and its importance to the history of travel and exploration. Small is professor emerita of at Cornell University and visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ralph Bauer talks about early modern exploration in the Americas and its connection to ideas about discovery, science, and religion in Europe. Bauer is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland. He’s the author of The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Andrea Pitzer talks about the Arctic voyages of William Barents and their impact on Europe in the centuries that followed. Pitzer is a journalist and author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Daniel Deudney makes the argument against the human colonization of space. He suggests that Space Expansionism is a dangerous project, a utopian ideal that masks important risks to human civilization. Deudney is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He’s the author of Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 also serves as a Professor of Physics. He’s the author of Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Benjamin Hopkins talks about the concept of the frontier: how it exists on the map but also 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees talk about the voyage of the Vrouw Maria and the long quest to find the wreck in 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. He’s the author of “Publishing Nature in the Age of Revolutions: Joseph Banks, Georg Forster, and the Plants of the Pacific.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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-Imhot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Annette Joseph-Gabriel returns to Time to Eat the Dogs. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 and its reception back home. Leane is a professor of English at the University of Tasmania. 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.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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-Imhot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Laura Waterman talks about her novel, Starvation Shore which reconstructs 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 in the field and at home. Leane is a professor of English at the University of Tasmania. 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.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra talks about Andrea Wulf’s book the 'The Invention of Nature' and how it divorces the explorer Alexander von Humboldt from the intellectual traditions of Central and South America. Cañizares-Esguerra is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emily Gibson talks about women, aviation, and global air travel. Gibson is an associate historian at the National Science Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 and conservationist 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 to end his life on the summit of Mt Lafayette. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks with Tiffany Gill about African American travel in the late twentieth century and its importance 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Annette Joseph Gabrielle talks with Bianca Williams about African American women who travel to Jamaica as tourists looking for happiness and intimacy, 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah Pickman talks about the literature of exploration. She offers some picks for categories of exploration books not commonly seen in indexes and bibliographies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Professor Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra talks about some of the problems of the book, specifically how Wulf’s view of Humboldt divorces him from the Central and South American scholars who helped him re-imagine the Americas for European and North American readers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dr. Karen Routledge talks about Baffin Island’s Inuit community as it came 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 just been published by University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz talks about the ethics of colonizing Mars and new developments in the search for extraterrestrial life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historian Emily Kern talks about the search for human origins in the 19th and the 20th centuries, specifically why anthropologists came to see Africa – rather than Asia – as the cradle of the human species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Art historian Fran Altvater talks about the Medieval Pilgrimage, a practice that became central to Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Matthew Hersch, author of Inventing the American Astronaut, talks about the origins and evolution of the U.S. astronaut program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra discusses the 16th century mining center of Potosí and how its peoples and technologies shaped 16th century science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Russell Potter discusses new developments in the search for answers about the tragic Franklin Expedition that disappeared in the Arctic in 1845. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 (rebroadcast). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Emily Gibson talks about women, aviation, and global air travel. Gibson is an associate historian at the National Science Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Anthropologist Lisa Messeri talks about planetary scientists and the way they use data to bring far away places to life. Messeri is the author of Placing Out Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stewart Gillmor talks about his fourteen-month stay at Mirny Station, the Soviet Union's Antarctic base. Gillmor was the sole American at Mirny in 1960-1962 during the height of the Cold War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices