Andrea Wulf’s book the The Invention of Nature tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the world’s most important nineteenth-century explorers. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra talks about some of the problems of the book, specifically how...

Dr. Karen Routledge talks about Baffin Island’s Inuit community as it comes into contact with western whalers and explorers in the nineteenth century. Even though the Inuit worked closely with outsiders, their views of the Arctic world, their ideas...

Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma State University. He is the author of Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that...

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

Andrew Denning talks about the Nazi cult of mobility, a set of ideas and practices that were crucial to its racist ideology. Denning is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is the author the...

Noel Phillips discusses the growing popularity of climbing among women. Her article, “No Man’s Land: The Rise of Women in Climbing” was recently published in Climbing Magazine.

Journalist Carl Hoffman talks about Bruno Manser and Michael Palmieri, two men who arrived in Borneo with very different dreams and aspirations. Hoffman served as a contributing editor to National Geographic Traveler and Wired Magazine. He is the...

David Munns, professor of history at John Jay College, talks about his new book, Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War.

Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz talks about the ethics of colonizing Mars and new developments in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Scientists have now identified almost 4000 exoplanets --planets that orbit stars outside our own solar system-- and with powerful new telescopes about to come on line, that number is about to skyrocket. Exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford, Giaconni...

Historian Emily Kern talks about the search for human origins in the 19th and 20th centuries, specifically why anthropologists came to see Africa – rather than Asia – as the cradle of the human species.

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:...

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...

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...

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...