Time to Eat the Dogs
A Podcast About Science, History, and ExplorationReplay: An American in Soviet Antarctica, Part I
Stewart Gillmore in Mirny Station, 1961.
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.
Gillmor holding the Russian coat he used at Mirny Station.
The British Expeditionary Literature of Africa
Adrian Wisnicki
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Reading between the lines of Victorian travel accounts, Wisnicki sees outlines of a bigger story — local peoples, landscapes, and ways of life. Wisnicki is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. For the past ten years he has served as the director (along with co-director Megan Ward) of Livingstone Online a digital museum and library devoted to the written, visual, and material legacies of British explorer David Livingstone. Wisnicki is the author of Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature.
Replay: The Mars Rover Curiosity
Emily Lakdawalla talks about the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated machines ever built. Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 where it has been conducting research within the ancient Gale Crater.
Lakdawalla is a senior editor at the Planetary Society where she writes and blogs about planetary exploration. She is a frequent guest on Planetary Radio. She is also the author of The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job.
Emily Lakdawalla
Links:
Lakdawalla’s Curiosity Goodreads Page
Lakdawalla’s Planetary Society Blog
NASA’s Mars Scientific Laboratory Website
Replay: What the Dead Can Teach Us
Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon and how they’ve shaped the way she practices medicine.
Chen is the author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality and the New York Times column “Doctor and Patient.” Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review. Her work has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.
Pauline Chen
Replay: Rethinking Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt by Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1806)
It’s hard for 21st century audiences to understand the fame and admiration that followed Humboldt after his 1799 expedition to South and Central America. In the early 1800s, he was the most famous explorer in the world. While his fame would be eclipsed by other explorers, especially in the Anglo-American world, Humboldt is working his way back into the conversation. Patrick Anthony discusses Humboldt and his complicated legacy.
“Geographie des Plantes Equinoxiales.” Tableau Physique des Andes et Pays Voisins (1805)
Anthony is a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University. His essay “Mining as the Working World of Alexander von Humbolt’s Plant Geography and Vertical Cartography” recently won the Nathan Reingold Prize from the History of Science Society. It is published in the spring issue of the society’s journal, Isis.
Patrick Anthony
Links:
Susan Faye Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
Michael Robinson, “Why We Need a New History of Exploration”
Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: A European Explorer and His American Disciples
Laura Dassow Walls, Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America
Time to Eat the Dogs 