Time to Eat the Dogs
A Podcast About Science, History, and ExplorationChasing the Moon
Director Robert Stone talks about his film Chasing the Moon, a three part documentary which aired on PBS’s American Experience for the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Stone talked to me in front of live audience at Bard College after he showed some clips from the film. Thanks to Paul LaBarbera and Cariahbel Azemar of Bard AV Services who recorded the audio for this episode. And thanks too to Paul Cadden-Zimansky, director of the Physics Program, who organized the event and introduced both of us to the audience.
Robert Stone
Replay: The Navigator in the Early Modern World
Margaret Schotte talks about how sailors were trained to do the difficult and dangerous work of navigation in the early modern world. Schotte is an Assistant Professor of History at York University. She is the author of Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill.
Margaret Schotte
Scurvy!
Nares Expedition (1875)
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.
Ed Armston-Sheret
Replay: Mountaineering and Glaciology after WWII
Devil’s Paw, Juneau Icefield
The Juneau Icefield is 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.
Dani Inkpen talks about the links between mountaineering and glaciology after World War Two. 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” published in September 2018 in the history of science journal Isis.
Dani Inkpen
How We Talk about Apollo
Crowds watching the launch of Apollo 11
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 Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA and Apollo Pilot: The Memory of Astronaut Don Eisele.
Amy Shira Teitel
Replay: Death in the Ice
H.M.S Erebus in the Ice, François Etienne Musin (1846) Credit: National Maritime Museum
In December 2018, Death in the Ice, an exhibition about the Franklin Expedition opened at the Mystic Seaport Museum. It featured artifacts raised from the underwater wreck of HMS Terror. Russell Potter discusses this and new developments in the search for answers about the Franklin Expedition — a British mission to find the Northwest Passage — that disappeared in 1845 without a trace. Potter is professor of English and Media studies at Rhode Island College. He is a lead consultant of “Death in the Ice” and the author of Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search.
Russell Potter
The Human Exploration of Mars
Jake Robins and Michael Robinson talk about the quest to explore mars: how it compares to earlier eras of exploration in the West and in the Arctic as well as its power to capture the imagination of thousands of people. Robins is the host of WeMartians, a podcast that considers the exploration of the Red Planet from a variety of angles, both technical and scientific.
Jake Robins
