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History of Science
Literary Studies February 3, 2023

Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature

Curtis Runstedler

Hosted by Nathan Moore
Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and …

History of Science

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Interviews with historians of science about their new books.

Peoples & Things January 30, 2023

The History of Teletherapy

A Conversation with Hannah Zeavin

Hannah Zeavin

Hosted by Lee Vinsel
Hannah Zeavin, lecturer in the department of History and member of the executive committees of both the Center for New Media and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society …
Medicine January 27, 2023

Habit Forming

Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914

Elizabeth Kelly Gray

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 (Oxford UP, 2023) traces the …
Peoples & Things January 22, 2023

Deafness “Cures” in History

A Conversation with Jaipreet Virdi

Jaipreet Virdi

Hosted by Lee Vinsel
Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long history of attempts to “fix” deaf people …
Recall This Book January 19, 2023

Lorraine Daston Books In Dark Times (JP)

Lorraine Daston

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Our Books in Dark Times series offered John this 2021 chance to speak with Lorraine Daston of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her list of publications …
Sociology January 15, 2023

On Émile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (1912)

A Discussion with Steven Lukes

Steven Lukes

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
In 1912, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim published The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Centered around the experience of religion in tribal cultures, this masterpiece explores the nature of religion …
Peoples & Things January 12, 2023

Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America

A Discussion with Andrew Jewett

Andrew Jewett

Hosted by Lee Vinsel
Andrew Jewett is the author of Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (2020) and Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the …
Medicine January 10, 2023

The First Resort

The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States

Matthew Smith

Hosted by Claire Clark
Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its proponents developed environmental explanations of mental health, arguing that …
Irish Studies January 10, 2023

Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class

Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902

Ciara Breathnach

Hosted by Roberto Mazza
Ciara Breathnach's book Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on the evolution of the Dublin City Coroner's Court and on Dr Louis …
Early Modern History January 9, 2023

The Index of Prohibited Books

Four Centuries of Struggle Over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God

Robin Vose

Hosted by Jana Byars
Robin Vose (St. Thomas University) talks about his new monograph, The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God (Reaktion …
Recall This Book January 5, 2023

Lorraine Daston Rules the World (EF, JP)

A Discussion of Rules and Where they Come From

Lorraine Daston

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Historian of science Lorraine Daston's wonderful new book, Rules: A Short History of What We Live by (Princeton UP, 2022). is just out. Daston's earlier pathbreaking works include Against Nature, Classical …
History of Science January 4, 2023

Oceans Under Glass

Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea

Samantha Muka

Hosted by Victor Monnin
In Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Stevens Institute of …
Science, Technology, and Society January 2, 2023

Wild Experiment

Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin

Donovan O. Schaefer

Hosted by Alison Renna
In Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke UP, 2022), Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the conventional wisdom that feeling and thinking are separate. Drawing on science studies, philosophy …
African American Studies January 1, 2023

Proving Pregnancy

Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America

Felicity M. Turner

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America (UNC …
Economic and Business History January 1, 2023

The Greeks and the Rational

The Discovery of Practical Reason

Josiah Ober

Hosted by Javier Mejia
Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs …
The Vault December 30, 2022

Edmund Leach on Roman Jakobson's Contributions to Linguistics

Edmund Leach

Hosted by New York Institute for the Humanities
In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear the1982 Gallatin Lecture, in which Sir Edmund Leach discussed the work of Roman Jakobson, who he met in 1960, at Stanford’s …
Medicine December 28, 2022

On Learning to Heal

or, What Medicine Doesn't Know

Ed Cohen

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best …
High Theory December 23, 2022

Neurasthenia

Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks with Saronik about neurasthenia. A disease that no longer exists, neurasthenia was a nineteenth century American epidemic of energy depletion. Thinking about …
Early Modern History December 19, 2022

From Lived Experience to the Written Word

Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World

Pamela H. Smith

Hosted by Jana Byars
How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (U Chicago …
Critical Theory December 18, 2022

Marx's Wager

Das Kapital and Classical Sociology

Thomas M. Kemple

Hosted by Stephen Dozeman
Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics of a society consumed by …