Time to Eat the Dogs

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.

Maria Nugent talks about Aboriginal Australians' first encounter with Captain Cook at Botany Bay, a violent meeting has come to represent the origin story of Australia's colonial settlement.

Stewart Gillmor -- the sole American at Mirny Station in 1961 and 1962-- continues his discussion of life at the Soviet base: how communism plays out 10,000 miles from Moscow, the problems with planes in Antarctica, and what to do when the diesel generator dies at the coldest place in the world.

Stewart Gillmor talks about his fourteen-month stay at Mirny Station, the Soviet Union's Antarctica base. Gillmor was the sole American at Mirny in 1960-1962 during the height of the Cold War. 

Historian Martin Thomas discusses the 1948 Arnhem Land expedition and the controversy that surrounds it. His new documentary, Etched in Bone, which he co-directed with Beatrice Bijon, traces the events of the expedition and its effects upon the aboriginal communities of Northern Australia.

Cole Kelleher talks about his work for the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, an agency that uses satellite data to make cutting-edge maps for the support of polar scientists in the field. 

Broadcast journalist Jolene Laverty interviews me for ABC Radio Canberra. We talk about my exploration research, podcast, and recent work at Australian National University. Special thanks to ABC Radio Canberra for permission to post this interview. 

Sean Cocco talks about the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius and its impact on Renaissance science and culture. Cocco is an associate professor of history at Trinity College. He is the author of Watching Vesuvius: A History of Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy .

Dr Joy McCann discusses the great circumpolar ocean that surrounds Antarctica. McCann is the author of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean. She is a historian at the Centre for Environmental History at Australian National University.

Historian Kate Sheppard discusses Egyptologist Margaret Alice Murray who was central to the field of British Egyptology at the turn of the twentieth century. Sheppard is the author of  The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology  (Rebroadcast).

Journalist Michael Kodas talks about the phenomenon of megafires, forest fires that burn over 100,000 acres, and why the number of these fires is increasing every year. (Rebroadcast)

Professor Stephan Bullard discusses the 2013 Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed 11,000 people. It is the subject of his new book, A Day to Day Chronicle of the 2013-16 Ebola Outbreak  (rebroadcast).

Emily Lakdawalla discusses the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated machines ever built. 

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.

Too often, Dr. Pauline Chen argues, the focus on keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping those who are approaching death. Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon -- the subject of her book Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality -- and how they've shaped the way she practices medicine. 

Patrick Anthony discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, the world's most famous explorer in the early 1800s. Famed and admired for his 1799 expedition to South and Central America, Humboldt has been rediscovered by a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

John Hawks talks about new developments in paleoanthropology – the discovery of a new hominid species Homo Naledi in South Africa, the Neanderthal ancestry of many human populations, and the challenge of rethinking anthropological science's relationship with indigenous peoples and the general public. Hawks is the Vilas-Borghesi Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-M...

Angelina Callahan talks about the Naval Research Laboratory's Vanguard Project. While this satellite mission was part of the Cold War "Space Race," it also represented something more: a scientific platform for understanding the space environment as well as a test vehicle that would provide data for satellites of the future.

Hal Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young René Descartes, a man who spent more time traveling and fighting than studying philosophy. 

Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks about Eslanda Robeson who, in addition to being a political activist with her husband Paul Robeson, was also a chemist, anthropologist, and epic traveler.

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

Journalist Scott Wallace talks about a 2002 expedition into Amazon to find the Arrow People, one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Wallace is the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes .

Our conversation with Sarah Pickman continues about the literature of exploration. It focuses on some new categories of exploration books not commonly seen in indexes and bibliographies.

Doctoral candidate Sarah Pickman talks about studying exploration for her qualifying exam: specifically what it's like to read three hundred books and articles and then discuss them in front of a committee of professors.

Historian Richard Ivan Jobs talks about the rise of backpacking in Europe after the Second World War. Jobs argues that youth travel helped create a new European culture during the Cold War, contributing to the integration of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s.