Time to Eat the Dogs
Episodes
3I/ATLAS, SETI, and the Controversy Over How We Search for Extraterrestrial Life
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Wright talks about 3I/ATLAS, the controversy surrounding it, and the way the search for life in the universe is beginning to change. Wright is a...
Gems, Science, and Empire
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
17th century traders who traveled the sea routes between India and Southeast Asia were interested in spices, but they were also interested in gemstone...
Artificial General Intelligence, Part II
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Part two of my interview with Julian Togelius, who talks about the history of machine learning, the quest for Artificial General Intelligence, and th...
Artificial General Intelligence, Part I
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of two episodes, Julian Togelius talks about the history of machine learning, the quest for Artificial General Intelligence, and the dif...
Replay: Inventing the World
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Meredith Small talks about the city of Venice and its importance to the history of travel and exploration. Small is professor emerita at Cornell Unive...
The Habitable Worlds Observatory
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Giada Arney talks about the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a space telescope that, when it's built and launched into space, will be able to image...
Replay: Icebound
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1500s, Dutch navigator William Barrents sailed north in search of a Northeast Passage to Asia. This expedition and a second one both suffe...
The Europa Clipper and the Search for Extraterrestrial LIfe
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the Europa Clipper mission and NASA's broader agenda to find life on other worlds. Webb is a historian of science and ...
Replay: Enemy of All Mankind
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Johnson talks about the British pirate Henry Every and his improbable capture of the Mughal treasure ship, Gunsway. Johnson is the author of tw...
Mountains, Writers, and Travelers in the 18th Century Alps
26 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Célia Abele talks about Wolfgang von Goethe, the French writer Chateaubriand, and the German physicist Georg Lichtenberg. These writers became fasci...
On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Armston-Sheret returns to Time to Eat the Dogs to talk about British geographical expeditions and the labor that made them possible, specifically t...
Replay: Quantum Legacies
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David Kaiser talks about the history of twentieth-century physics and the forces that have shaped it as a scientific discipline. Kaiser is a Professo...
Mungo Park's Ghost
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dane Kennedy talks about Mungo Park's troubled expeditions in West Africa and the rescue expeditions that set off to find him. Kennedy is an emeritus...
Replay: The Tsarina's Lost Treasure
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees talk about the voyage of the Vrouw Maria and the long quest to find the ship under the waters of the Archipelago Sea of...
The Challenger Disaster
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Higginbotham talks about the history of the Space Shuttle program and the decisions that made the Challenger explosion almost inevitable. Higgen...
Replay: Portuguese Exploration After the Age of Discovery
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Catarina Madruga talks about Portuguese exploration in the nineteenth century as European powers made plans to conquer Africa and colonize its people...
An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Historian of science Jeffery Mathias talks about scientific experiments in isolation during the Cold War. Mathias is the author of the Ph.D dissertati...
The Making of French Polar Exploration
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alexandre Simon-Ekeland talks about explorers, the Polar Regions, and the French imagination. Simon-Ekeland recently completed his doctoral dissertat...
Sovietistan
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Erika Fatland talks about her long journey through the Central Asian republics and the legacy of Soviet influence there. Fatland is the author of many...
Replay: American Arctic Exploration
27 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Al Zambone talks with me about American polar exploration, the origin of Time to Eat the Dogs, and the history of science as an academic discipline. ...
How to be an African Travel Writer in Africa
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Emmanuel Iduma talks about his experiences traveling through Africa and his quest to find a new language of travel. Iduma is a writer and lecturer at ...
Replay: The Mystery of Altitude Sickness
20 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiolog...
Empires of the Sky
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Rose talks about the history of airplanes and airships at the turn of the century, a time when the direction of aviation remained unclear. R...
Replay: Love, Travel, and Separation
13 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht's life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborato...
Why Did Scientists Collect the Blood of Indigenous Peoples?
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Kowal talks about the history of biospecimen collection among the aboriginal peoples of Australia. Kowal is a cultural and medical anthropologist...
Replay: Floating Coast
06 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bathsheba Demuth talks about the history and exploration of the Bering Strait, from the early 1800s to the present day. Demuth is Assistant Professor ...
A History of Modern Tourism
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Zuelow talks about the origins of tourism from the era of the European Grand Tour through the twenty-first century where is has become – until ...
Replay: Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica
30 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Priestley talks about her journeys to Antarctica and the process of bringing them to life in her writing. Priestley is an associate professor ...
A Strange Week at NASA
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Berger talks about the sudden departure of Doug Loverro, the head of human space flight at NASA, only days before the agency sends astronauts int...
Replay: An Update from the Hobbit Cave
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paige Madison talks about recent discoveries at the Liang Bua cave where researchers are trying to understand the complicated story of the hominin Hom...
Sea Wife
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist Amity Gaige talks about her book Sea Wife. Gaige is a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellow. Her novel Schroder was one of the New York Times Best ...
Replay: China is Going to the Moon
16 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Namrata Goswami talks about the Chinese space program and its ambitious plans for lunar exploration. Goswami is a strategic analyst on space and g...
Women in Antarctica
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hanne Nielsen talks about the challenges facing women who work in Antarctica. Nielsen is a Lecturer in Antarctic Law and Governance at the Institute f...
Replay: Malaria, Tonic Water, and Empire
09 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Walker talks about the history and science of cinchona bark as a tonic, medicine, and mixer. Walker is a biocultural historian completing her PhD ...
Pacific Exploration, Botany, and Revolution
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Edwin Rose talks about Joseph Banks and Georg Forster, naturalists on the Cook expeditions, and how political ideas shaped the way these specimens wer...
Replay: Hawaiian Exploration of the World
02 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Chang talks about the history of indigenous Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli) as explorers and geographers of the world. Chang is a professor of history...
The Lost White Tribe
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Babak Ashrafi and Jessica Linker talk to me about my book The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent. Ashraf...
Replay: How NASA Plans Big Missions
25 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Glen Asner and Stephen Garber talk about NASA's efforts to plan ambitious missions in the face of huge political and financial challenges. Asner is th...
Neptune's Laboratory
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Antony Adler talks about the history of ocean science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Adler is a Research Associate in the History Departme...
Replay: How George Putnam's Arctic Expedition Got into Trouble
18 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tina Adcock talks about the controversy over George Putnam's Baffin Land expedition and why it tells a bigger story about the changing culture of expl...
'Ruling the Savage Periphery'
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Hopkins talks about the concept of the frontier: how it exists not merely as a place on a map but as a set of practices used by colonial stat...
Replay: Searching for Life Beyond Earth
11 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the search for extraterrestrial life and the different strategies used by astronomers and exobiologists to look for it....
American Arctic Exploration
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Al Zambone talks with me about American polar exploration, the origin of Time to Eat the Dogs, and the history of science as an academic discipline. Z...
Replay: Assembling the Dinosaur
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lukas Rieppel talks about dinosaur fossils in the Gilded Age – from the discovery and excavation of fossils in the American West to the re-constru...
Replay: Jessica Nabongo is Traveling to Every Country in the World
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Joseph-Gabriel speaks to Jessica Nabongo about her quest to be the first black woman to travel to all of the countries of the world. Joseph-Ga...
Replay: Starlink is Blanketing the Earth with Satellites
28 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lisa Ruth Rand talks about the Starlink satellite program. She also talks about Project West Ford, which attempted to create an artificial ionosphere ...
The Mystery of Altitude Sickness
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiolog...
Replay: The City Built by Travel
21 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fiona Vernal talks about the migration stories of Hartford Connecticut's many communities. Vernal is an associate professor of history at the Universi...
Love, Travel, and Separation
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht's life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborato...
Replay: Inuit Testimony and the Search for Franklin's Ships
14 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Woodman talks about his quest to find the missing wrecks of the Franklin Expedition, a mission that led him to the journals of the Arctic explor...
Reimagining Liberation
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks about black women writers, decolonization, and travel. Joseph-Gabriel is an assistant professor of French and Francophone...
Replay: Science, Islam, and Evolution
07 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Qidwai talks about her research on Sayyid Ahmad Khan as well as her own journey to Mecca and Medina. Qidwai is a Ph.D candidate in the History o...
Replay: The Polar Star is Falling Apart
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Read talks about the troubled life of the Coast Guard's sole heavy icebreaker, Polar Star. Read is the Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times...
Replay: Mental Illness and the Mawson Expedition
29 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Leane talks about Sidney Jeffryes, radio operator for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1913. Jeffryes' struggle with me...
Floating Coast
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bathsheba Demuth talks about the history and exploration of the Bering Strait, from the early 1800s to the present day. Demuth is Assistant Professor ...
Replay: Anticipating the Astronaut
22 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jordan Bimm talks about early experiments in space medicine involving subjects who did not resemble the white male test pilots who would become Americ...
Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Priestley talks about her journeys to Antarctica and the process of bringing them to life in her writing. Priestley is an associate professor ...
Replay: Why are Women Beating Men in Ultra-Endurance Events?
15 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Beth Taylor talks about the physiological differences between men and women athletes and why ultra-endurance events seem to offer certain performa...
An Update from the Hobbit Cave
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paige Madison talks about recent discoveries at the Liang Bua cave where researchers are trying to understand the complicated story of the hominin Hom...
Replay: The Expedition that Tested Einstein's Theory
08 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kennefick talks about resistance to relativity theory in the early twentieth century and the huge challenges that faced British astronomers who...
China is Going to the Moon
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Namrata Goswami talks about the Chinese space program and its ambitious plans for lunar exploration. Goswami is a strategic analyst on space and g...
Replay: Chasing the Moon
01 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Director Robert Stone talks about his film Chasing the Moon, a three-part documentary which aired on PBS's American Experience for the fiftieth anniv...
Malaria, Tonic Water, and Empire
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Walker talks about the history and science of cinchona bark as a tonic, medicine, and mixer. Walker is a biocultural historian completing her PhD ...
Replay: How We Talk about Apollo
25 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the cr...
Hawaiian Exploration of the World
22 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Chang talks about the history of indigenous Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli) as explorers and geographers of the world. Chang is a professor of history ...
Replay: Scurvy!
18 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Armston-Sheret talks about the mysterious disease of scurvy: how it affected expeditioners and why it was so difficult to understand. Armston-Shere...
How NASA Plans Big Missions
14 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Glen Asner and Stephen Garber talk about NASA's efforts to plan ambitious missions in the face of huge political and financial challenges. Asner is th...
Replay: The Human Exploration of Mars
11 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jake Robins and Michael Robinson talk about the quest to explore Mars: how it compares to earlier eras of exploration in the West and in the Arctic as...
How George Putnam's Arctic Expedition Got into Trouble
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tina Adcock talks about the controversy over George Putnam's Baffin Land expedition and why it tells a bigger story about the changing culture of expl...
Replay: Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part II
04 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Part II, Ruth Gruenthal continues her story of her family's escape from France in 1940. She also discusses the challenges of living in the United S...
Replay: Escape from Nazi-Occupied Europe, Part I
01 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ruth Gruenthal talks about her life in Germany as the Nazi Party came to power in the 1930s. Gruenthal and her family – along with thousands of Jewi...
Searching for Life Beyond Earth
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Claire Isabel Webb talks about the search for extraterrestrial life and the different strategies used by astronomers and exobiologists to look for it....
Replay: Human Exploration of the Deep Sea
21 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Strickrott talks about the value of human exploration of the deep sea. Strickrott is the Program Manager and Senior Pilot of the United States' ...
Replay: Destined for the Stars
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Will...
Replay: Starvation Shore
14 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Waterman talks about her novel, Starvation Shore, which relies upon memoirs, letters, and diaries to reconstruct the life of the Greely Party a...
Assembling the Dinosaur
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lukas Rieppel talks about dinosaur fossils in the Gilded Age – from the discovery and excavation of fossils in the American West to the re-constru...
Replay: Space Science and the Arab World
07 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthias Determann talks about the importance of the space sciences in the Arab World. Determann is an associate professor of history at Virginia Comm...
Starlink is Blanketing the Earth with Satellites
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lisa Ruth Rand talks about the Starlink satellite program. She also talks about Project West Ford, which attempted to create an artificial ionosphere ...
Replay: Travel, Race, and Freedom
30 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Joseph-Gabriel talks with Tiffany Gill about the history of African American travel in the late twentieth century and its importance to black ...
Replay: The History of Arctic Fever
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Radio host Kevin Fox interviews me about the history of American Arctic exploration. The disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 turned the A...
Replay: The British Expeditionary Literature of Africa
22 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Wisnicki is the author of Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercu...
Replay: Faces, Beauty, and the Brain
19 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Walker talks about physiognomy -- the study of the human face -- and why it was so popular among scientists and the general public. Walker is a...
Replay: New Insights about Darwin's Voyage
16 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin's experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. Sponsel's close reading of Darwin's journals and...
Inuit Testimony and the Search for Franklin's Ships
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Woodman talks about his quest to find the missing wrecks of the Franklin Expedition, a mission that led him to the journals of the Arctic explor...
Replay: Women Wanderers of the Romantic Era
09 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ingrid Horrocks talks about the way women travelers, specifically women wanderers, are represented in late-eighteenth century literature. Horrocks in ...
Science, Islam, and Evolution
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Qidwai talks about her research on Sayyid Ahmad Khan as well as her own journey to Mecca and Medina. Qidwai is a Ph.D candidate in the History o...
Replay: Creatures of Cain
02 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primato...
The City Built by Travel
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fiona Vernal talks about the migration stories of Hartford Connecticut's many communities. Vernal is an associate professor of history at the Universi...
Replay: Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration
26 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Vanessa Heggie talks about the history of biomedical research in extreme environments. Heggie is a Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation a...
Replay: The Medieval Invention of Travel
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Shayne Legassie talks about Medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion...
Replay: Apollo in the Age of Aquarius
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Maher talks about the social forces that shaped NASA in the 1960s and 1970s, connecting the space race with the radical upheavals of the counterc...
Replay: After Leichhardt Went Missing
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose posthumous reputation has changed many tim...
Replay: African American Women and Jamaican Travel
12 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Joseph Gabrielle talks with Bianca Williams about African American women who travel to Jamaica as tourists looking for happiness, intimacy, an...
The Polar Star is Falling Apart
09 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Read talks about the troubled life of the Coast Guard's sole heavy icebreaker, Polar Star. Read is the Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times...
Replay: Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans
05 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Helen Rozwadowski talks about the history of the oceans and how these oceans have shaped human history in profound ways. Rozwadowski is a professor o...
Mental Illness and the Mawson Expedition
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Leane talks about Sidney Jeffryes, radio operator for Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1913. Jeffryes' struggle with me...
Replay: Re-imagining People in Anthropological Photographs
28 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Artist Chiadikobi Nwaubani talks about his efforts to find, restore, and publish photographs from the colonial archives of West Africa. He also talks ...
Replay: The Problem with Andrea Wulf's Biography of Humboldt
24 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 explo...
Replay: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin
21 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma St...
Anticipating the Astronaut
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jordan Bimm talks about early experiments in space medicine involving subjects who did not resemble the white male test pilots who would become Americ...