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 .
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 .
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.
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 .
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 .
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 ...
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.
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 .
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.
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."
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 .
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.'
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.
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.
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 .
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 .
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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 .
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 .
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.
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: Bla...
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
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.
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 .
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.
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.
