Time to Eat the Dogs
A Podcast About Science, History, and ExplorationReplay: Assembling the Dinosaur
University of Wyoming Bone Room (1890s) Credit: Lukas Rieppel
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.
Lukas Rieppel
Replay: Jessica Nabongo is Traveling to Every Country in the World
Jessica Nabongo
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.
Professor Annette Joseph-Gabriel
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.
For the record, another black woman traveler, Woni Spotts, has already claimed to have traveled to all the countries of the world. You can read about the competing claims here.
Jessica Nabongo
Replay: Starlink is Blanketing the Earth with Satellites
Lisa Ruth Rand talks about the Starlink satellite program. She also talks about Project West Ford, which attempted to create an artificial ionosphere in 1961 by launching millions of copper needles into orbit. Rand is the Haas Postdoctoral Fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Her op-ed on Starlink and Project West Ford appeared in the July 8th edition of Scientific American.
Stuff in Space offers an interactive 3D map of objects currently in Earth orbit.
Lisa Ruth Rand
The Mystery of Altitude Sickness
Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiology of Europeans and Himalayans. 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.
Lachlan Fleetwood
Replay: The City Built by Travel
The West Indian Social Club of Hartford
Fiona Vernal talks about the travel experiences of Hartford’s many communities. Vernal is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. She’s 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” which opened at the Hartford Public Library.
Fiona Vernal
Love, Travel, and Separation
Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht’s life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborators. Hollander is a historian of modern Europe. She’s also the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary, which was awarded the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize by USA Poet Laureate Charles Wright.
Kate Hollander
Replay: Inuit Testimony and the Search for Franklin’s Ships
HMS Erebus in the Ice, François Etienne Musin, 1846
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.
David Woodman Credit: John Murray
