Perspectives on Science

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Emily Merchant, author of Building the Population Bomb. In her book, Dr. Merchant explores the history of population growth modeling and the intellectual and ideological battles over the concept of overpopulation. The author describes the battle between the so-called mercantilist position—held by a number of statisticians, among others—which held that...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Douglas O'Reagan, author of Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War. In his book, Douglas O'Reagan discusses the Allied effort to appropriate German science, technology, and industrial capability during and after World War II. As O'Reagan explains, Germany's longstanding reputation for scientific and te...

With the virtual joint meeting of the History of Science Society and Society for the History of Technology coming up next month, join us as we revisit our September 2020 discussion with Jan Golinski, Tom Misa, and AAHM President Keith Wailoo as they talk about the challenges of the present moment and what the future holds for their organizations. They address the organizations' new initiatives, th...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Eric Hintz, author of American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D. In his book, Eric Hintz describes how American independent inventors continued to innovate after the so-called "Golden Era of Invention" of the mid-to-late 19th century. Hintz argues that, while the first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of corporate R&D that in...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Lucas Richert, author of Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture. In his book, Lucas Richert discusses the impact of the countercultural movement on the theory and practice of psychiatry in the late 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Richert argues that broader societal developments—e.g., the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism,...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Teasel Muir-Harmony, author of Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo. In her book, Teasel Muir-Harmony discusses Project Apollo and the successful mission of landing humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Dr. Muir-Harmony discusses the ways in which fears about Sputnik and the Soviet space program were either downplayed or amp...

Join Dr. Rachel Walker as she recounts how reading a curious passage in the Anglo-African Magazine, which she found in the archives of the Library Company of Philadelphia, led to her research on race and science in early America, and more specifically, the nineteenth-century sciences of phrenology and physiognomy. Professor Walker uses images from the archives of member institutions such as the Li...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Neeraja Sankaran, author of A Tale of Two Viruses: Parallels in the Research Trajectories of Tumor and Bacterial Viruses. In her book, Neeraja Sankaran compares the research trajectories of two groups of viruses: cancer-causing viruses and bacteriophages, which infect and live at the expense of bacteria. She discusses how their respective discoveries—...

What's that smell? Join us as we revisit our interview with Melanie Kiechle on the history of cities, senses and public health. This episode of our podcast series features Melanie Kiechle's book, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America. The book illuminates the lives of 19th-century Americans—including medical experts and ordinary city-dwellers—who used their nos...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Alberto Martínez, author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition. In his book, Alberto Martínez reevaluates the life, career, and death of Giordano Bruno, the philosopher and cosmologist burned alive by the Catholic Inquisition in Rome in 1600. Martínez demonstrates that it was not his heterodox religious beliefs that led to his c...

If you've watch television or listened to the radio lately, you've probably been bombarded with direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Join us as we revisit our forum from October 2018 on the interplay between medicine and advertising, capitalism and consumerism. ------- Why do we refer to patients as "consumers" in the United States? Is today's opioid crisis the result of medical consumer...

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has been in the news this week with the recent IPO of 23andMe. Thus, we are revisiting our forum from September 2017 on biobanking, genetics, and the competing interests of individuals, businesses, and society in the collection and use of genetic samples. ------- Are we now approaching a time when we could all live, at least in freezers, forever? Modern collectio...

Held in partnership with the American Philosophical Society, this discussion brings together historians Courtney Thompson and Alicia Puglionesi to discuss the fascinating world of the mind sciences in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time period, the human mind captured the imagination of the American public. Efforts to reveal the subconscious and to understand m...

In light of the current global vaccination campaign against COVID-19 and the struggles to increase vaccine acceptance and ensure vaccine compliance, we revisit our Trust in Science: Vaccines forum from January 2019. What are the historical roots of resistance to vaccination? What is the data about contemporary attitudes? How do these attitudes relate to changing social, economic and political cont...

Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know is available now on Netflix, or go to https://www.blackholefilm.com and click on the Watch button at the top for more options. What can black holes teach us about the boundaries of knowledge? These holes in spacetime are the darkest objects and the brightest—the simplest and the most complex. With unprecedented access, Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know fol...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Abraham Gibson, author of Feral Animals in the American South: An Evolutionary History. In his book, Abe Gibson tells the broader social and environmental history of the Southern United States by focusing on the domestication and subsequent ferality of dogs, horses, and pigs over the past three hundred years. Gibson discusses the co-evolution of human...

In light of India's ongoing struggle with COVID-19 and its devastating impacts, we revisit our conversation with Kavita Sivaramakrishnan from June 30, 2020. Dr. Sivaramakrishnan discusses public engagement and political history in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in India. Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on COVID-19 at: www.chstm.org/video/74

To view Professor Hansen's images and for more resources on this topic, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/118. Join Professor Bert Hansen as he discusses a number of popular images of American medicine from the late nineteenth century that he has donated to Yale's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. In this presentation, Professor Hansen shows us what medicine looked like and how it was exper...

Stephen Kenny scrutinizes the career of surgeon Rudolph Matas, the so-called "father of vascular surgery." Kenny demonstrates how his life and work must be understood in the context of segregation in the U.S. South and the racialized medicine that was practiced there in the 19th and 20th centuries. He also highlights the ways in which Matas used medical photography to legitimate an ideologically d...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Wendy Gonaver, author of The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880. Wendy Gonaver reveals the history of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Williamsburg, Virginia and its superintendent, John M. Galt. Gonaver explains the Asylum's exceptional status as the only psychiatric facility to accept both slaves and free blacks as pati...

In this recording, historian Warwick Anderson discusses his investigations into the development of racial science in the Global South and the fabrication of whiteness as a "strategy of authority." Warwick Anderson is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, and leader of the Politics, Governance and Ethics Theme with...

In this recording and in her book Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins, Christa Kuljian examines the history of paleoanthropology in South Africa, interrogating the ways in which ideas about racial hierarchies influenced the founding and development of the field. Her research demonstrates how the social and political context in which paleoanthropology has been practiced...

In this episode of Perspectives, we sit down with Audra Wolfe to discuss her book, Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science. In Freedom's Laboratory, Dr. Wolfe examines the relationship between science, politics, and governance in the United States during the Cold War, highlighting the ways in which scientists, policymakers, and administrators defined and thought about c...

In this episode of Perspectives, we talk with M. Susan Lindee, author of Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War. In Rational Fog, Susan Lindee explores the way that science, technology and medicine were transformed by the military establishment and defense funding. She discusses the ways in which thousands of scientists, engineers, and physicians justified or made peace with creating t...

Elise Burton discusses the development of genetics, racial science, and race concepts in the Middle East. Dr. Burton sketches the connections between European, North American, and Middle Eastern scientists, and elaborates upon how contemporary issues (such as COVID-19) are influenced by ideas of genetic nationalism. Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on racial science at: www.ch...