Time to Eat the Dogs

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tina Adcock talks about the controversy over George Putnam's Baffin Land expedition and why it tells a bigger story about the changing culture of exploration in the 1920s. Adcock is an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She’s the author of the essay “Scientist Tourist Sportsman Spy: Boundary-Work and the Putnam Eastern Arctic Expeditions” which was published in the edited collection Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History, edited by Adcock and Edward Jones-Imhotep.

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.

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.