About Claire Clark

Claire Clark is a medical educator, health historian, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

NBN Episodes hosted by Claire:

Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

September 18, 2024

The Architecture of Good Behavior

Joy Knoblauch
Hosted by Claire Clark

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the fed…

Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

September 2, 2024

Appetite and Its Discontents

Elizabeth A. Williams
Hosted by Claire Clark

Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its D…

Robert Baker, "Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics" (MIT Press, 2024)

August 2, 2024

Making Modern Medical Ethics

Robert Baker
Hosted by Claire Clark

The little-known stories of the people responsible for what we know today as modern medical ethics. In Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Ameri…

Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)

July 15, 2024

Adverse Events

Jill A. Fisher
Hosted by Claire Clark

Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,…

Angela Garcia, "The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos" (FSG, 2024)

July 9, 2024

The Way That Leads Among the Lost

Angela Garcia
Hosted by Claire Clark

Based on over a decade of research, a powerful, moving work of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the little-known world of the anexos of Mexico Ci…

Benjamin Breen, "Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science" (Grand Central, 2024)

June 14, 2024

Tripping on Utopia

Benjamin Breen
Hosted by Claire Clark

Today I talked to Benjamin Breen about his book Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science (Grand …

Carl Elliott, "The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No" (Norton, 2024)

June 12, 2024

The Occasional Human Sacrifice

Carl Elliot
Hosted by Claire Clark

The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No (Norton, 2024) is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle t…

Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)

March 27, 2024

Mothership

Greg Wrenn
Hosted by Claire Clark

A dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after trad…

Travis Rieder, "Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices" (Dutton, 2024)

March 13, 2024

Catastrophe Ethics

Travis Rieder
Hosted by Claire Clark

In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level …

Katherine Rye Jewell, "Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio" (UNC Press, 2023)

January 9, 2024

Live from the Underground

Katherine Rye Jewell
Hosted by Claire Clark

Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and the…

Emma K. Sutton, "William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

December 5, 2023

William James, MD

Emma K. Sutton
Hosted by Claire Clark

Emma K. Sutton's William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician (U Chicago Press, 2023) is the first book to map William James's preoccupatio…

E. Summerson Carr, "Working the Difference: Science, Spirit, and the Spread of Motivational Interviewing" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

October 14, 2023

Working the Difference

E. Summerson Carr
Hosted by Claire Clark

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a professional practice, a behavioral therapy, and a self-professed conversation style that encourages clients to ta…

Alexander Stille, "The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune" (FSG, 2023)

September 4, 2023

The Sullivanians

Alexander Stille
Hosted by Claire Clark

In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute fo…

Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth A. Nelson, "Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920" (New Press, 2023)

August 9, 2023

Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?

Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth A. Nelson
Hosted by Claire Clark
Listen:

What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them--and all of us--about the roots of the system that incarcer…

Keisha Ray, "Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health" (Oxford UP, 2023)

July 8, 2023

Black Health

Keisha Ray
Hosted by Claire Clark
Listen:

Why do American Black people generally have worse health than American White people? To answer this question, Keisha Ray's book Black Health: The Soci…

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

April 2, 2023

Psychonauts

Mike Jay
Hosted by Claire Clark

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, a…

Dominique A. Tobbell, "Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

March 24, 2023

Dr. Nurse

Dominique A. Tobbell
Hosted by Claire Clark

An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after Wor…

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

February 28, 2023

Whiteout

Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg
Hosted by Claire Clark

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some arg…

Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)

January 10, 2023

The First Resort

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 …

Christopher Willoughby "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)

November 24, 2022

Masters of Health

Christopher Willoughby
Hosted by Claire Clark

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be…

Todd Meyers, "All That Was Not Her" (Duke UP, 2022)

November 9, 2022

All That Was Not Her

Todd Meyers
Hosted by Claire Clark

While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Mey…

Sandra Eder, "How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

August 30, 2022

How the Clinic Made Gender

Sandra Eder
Hosted by Claire Clark

An eye-opening exploration of the medical origins of gender in modern US history. Today, a world without "gender" is hard to imagine. Gender is at the…

Merlin Chowkwanyun, "All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health" (UNC Press, 2022)

August 30, 2022

All Health Politics Is Local

Merlin Chowkwanyun
Hosted by Claire Clark

Health care is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation …

Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)

July 13, 2022

How to Sell a Poison

Elena Conis
Hosted by Claire Clark

The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporation…