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History of Science
British Studies September 16, 2023

The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge

Joshua Ehrlich

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The East India Company is remembered as the world's most powerful, not to say notorious, corporation. But for many of its advocates from the 1770s to the 1850s it was …

History of Science

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Interviews with historians of science about their new books.

Indian Religions September 14, 2023

Science and Society in the Sanskrit World

Vishal Sharma, Christopher T. Fleming, Toke Lindegaard Knudsen and Anuj Misra

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Science and Society in the Sanskrit World (Brill, 2023) lauds the remarkable career of Christopher Z. Minkowski, the erstwhile Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Balliol College, University of Oxford. The …
Early Modern History September 13, 2023

Defining Nature's Limits

The Roman Inquisition and the Boundaries of Science

Neil Tarrant

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into …
Science September 8, 2023

Fascination of Science

60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time

Herlinde Koelbl

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
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An intimate collection of portraits of internationally renowned scientists and Nobel Prize winners, paired with interviews and personal stories. What makes a brilliant scientist? Who are the people behind the …
Buddhist Studies September 8, 2023

Situating Religion and Medicine

A Discussion with Michael Stanley-Baker

Michael Stanley-Baker

Hosted by Pierce Salguero
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Today I sit down for an in-depth conversation with my good friend, Michael Stanley-Baker, a scholar of Chinese religion and medicine. We talk about Mike’s international childhood and how his …
Jewish Studies September 5, 2023

The Twin Children of the Holocaust

Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive. Photographs from the Twins’ 40th Anniversary Reunion at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Nancy L. Segal

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
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The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is an annotated collection of original, informative, and moving photographs of the twins …
Disability Studies September 5, 2023

Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

Implications for the Social Work Profession

Gerald O'Brien

Hosted by Shu Wan
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Gerald O'Brien's book Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective: Implications for the Social Work Profession (Oxford UP, 2023) focuses on the conceptual relationship between the American eugenic movement …
Australian and New Zealand Studies September 4, 2023

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

Alexandra Roginski

Hosted by Piers Kelly
The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external ‘reading’ of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand …
Disability Studies September 2, 2023

Madness in Buenos Aires

Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983

Jonathan Ablard

Hosted by Shu Wan
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Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983 (Ohio UP, 2008) examines the interactions between psychiatrists, patients and their families, and the national state in modern Argentina …
Science, Technology, and Society August 29, 2023

Fertility Technology

Donna J. Drucker

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
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A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe …
Ancient History August 28, 2023

The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought

Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics

Barbara Sattler

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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Barbara M. Sattler's book The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: Foundations in Logic, Method, and Mathematics (Cambridge UP, 2020) examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motion. It investigates …
British Studies August 25, 2023

Victorians and Numbers

Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain

Lawrence Goldman

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with statistics. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population, the development of industry and commerce, and the …
Critical Theory August 23, 2023

How to Live at the End of the World

Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene

Travis Holloway

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The end of the Holocene era is marked not just by melting glaciers or epic droughts, but by the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds …
South Asian Studies August 22, 2023

The Frontier in British India

Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century

Thomas Simpson

Hosted by Tiatemsu Longkumer
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In The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2021), Thomas Simpson provides an innovative account of how distinctive forms of colonial power and knowledge developed …
Literary Studies August 20, 2023

Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination

Morbid Anatomies

Laura R. Kremmel

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies (U Wales Press, 2022) demonstrates a little-studied crossover between the Gothic imagination and the medical imagination in the Romantic period. Unafraid to …
Performing Arts August 15, 2023

The Theater of Experiment

Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-century Britain

Al Coppola

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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The first book-length study of the relationship between science and theater during the long eighteenth century in Britain, The Theater of Experiment: Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP …
Science, Technology, and Society August 11, 2023

Darwinism as Religion

What Literature Tells Us about Evolution

Michael Ruse

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow …
Science, Technology, and Society August 10, 2023

How Data Happened

A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms

Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones

Hosted by Jake Chanenson
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From facial recognition―capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents―to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a …
Science, Technology, and Society August 6, 2023

Nervous Systems

Brain Science in the Early Cold War

Andreas Killen

Hosted by Paul Lerner
In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our …
East Asian Studies August 2, 2023

Good Formulas

Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts

Ruth Yun-Ju Chen

Hosted by Victoria Lupascu
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Ruth Yun-Ju Chen is a historian of mid-imperial China (600–1400). Her research interests lie in the histories of medicine, publishing, and material cultures during this period. Her first book, Good …