Time to Eat the Dogs

Jane Hooper talks about Madagascar and its importance to the history of Indian Ocean trade and exploration. Hooper is the author of  Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600-1800 , published by Ohio University Press.

Art historian Fran Altvater talks about the Medieval Pilgrimage, a practice that became central to Christian Europe in the early Middle Ages. 

Matthew Hersch,  author of  Inventing the American Astronaut , talks about the origins and evolution of the U.S. astronaut program. 

Margaret Schotte talks about how sailors were trained to do the difficult and dangerous work of navigation in the early modern world. Schotte is an Assistant Professor of History at York University. She is the author of  Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill.

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra discusses the 16th century mining center of Potosí and how its peoples and technologies shaped 16th century science.

Dani Inkpen talks about expedition life in the Juneau Icefield, home to some of the most spectacular glaciers in North America. In the 1940s, it was the place where science and mountaineering joined hands and, occasionally, came into conflict. 

Cannibals, headless men, and giants were common figures of Medieval and Renaissance maps. Historian Surekha Davies tells us why we need to take these figures seriously. Davies is the author of  Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters.

Russell Potter discusses new developments in the search for answers about the tragic Franklin Expedition that disappeared in the Arctic in 1845.

In 1946, Swedish and Finnish observers reported "ghost rockets" flying over Scandinavia. In the United States, they became known as "flying saucers." Historian Greg Eghigian discusses the science and culture of UFOs in the twentieth century (rebroadcast).

Scott Wallace talks about his recent trip to Brazil reporting on the efforts of the Guajajara people to protect uncontacted tribes from loggers, miners, and poachers.

Richard Ivan Jobs talks about the rise of backpacking in Europe after the Second World War, a phenomenon that contributed to the political integration of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s (rebroadcast). 

Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a "frontier" is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an associate professor of anthropology at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth .

Paige Madison talks about her work at the Liang Bua cave in Indonesia where she studies Homo Floresiensis as well as the team of researchers who have worked at the cave for years, sometimes for generations.

Nathan Smith discusses the psychology of exploration, specifically the psychology of performance in extreme environments. Smith worked closely with polar explorer Ben Saunders in 2013 as Saunders attempted to complete Robert Falcon Scott's trek to the South Pole and back.

Kate Harris -- writer, scientist, and extreme cyclist – talks about the trip she made with her friend Mel, tracing Marco Polo's route across Central Asia and Tibet. The journey is the subject of Harris's book,  Lands of Lost Borders: a Journey on the Silk Road  (rebroadcast).

Joyce Ashuntantang talks about her experiences as a traveler and a poet, from her childhood Cameroon to her years studying in Great Britain and the United States. Ashuntantang is a professor of English at Hillyer College, University of Hartford. She is the author of many works of poetry, including Beautiful Fire , published this year with Spears Media Press.

Anthropologist P.J. Capelotti discusses the role of exploration archaeology in understanding the Pacific voyage of Kon-Tiki, the Arctic airship expeditions of Walter Wellman, and the fate of Orca II, a fishing boat used in the film Jaws.

Emily Gibson talks about women, aviation, and global air travel. Gibson is an associate historian at the National Science Foundation.

Historian Max Edelson talk about the British Board of Trade's ambitious project to explore and survey British America from the St Lawrence River to the islands of the Caribbean.

Anthropologist Lisa Messeri talks about planetary scientists and the way they use data to bring these places to life. Messeri is the author of Placing Out Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds .

Michael Benson talks about the making of 2001, a movie inspired by the collaboration of American director Stanley Kubrick and the British futurist Arthur C. Clark.

Jason Smith discusses the U.S. Navy's role in exploring and charting the ocean world. Smith is an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University. He's the author of To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire.  

Bill Rankin talks about the changes brought about by GPS and other mapping technologies in the twentieth century. Rankin is the author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century .

Astronaut Garrett Reisman talks about life aboard the International Space Station. Reisman flew on two shuttle missions to the station and conducted three seven-hour spacewalks during his 107 days in space.

Andrea Pitzer talks about her book One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps , one of the Smithsonian's Ten Best History Books for 2017