History of Science/Technology/Medicine Podcasts

Aside from being a good way to distract myself while running or driving, I find podcasts useful for teaching. In-class presentation tend to create a room full of students either mentally preparing to talk, decompressing after having spoken, or in the middle of an over-long, Powerpoint-fueled paper read. Assigning students to create a podcast episode circumvents most of those problems. Students also tend to understand that a podcast is less formal and more about the "so what," which is useful to emphasize.

Finding podcasts about the history of science/technology/medicine isn't always the easiest, so I thought I would compile the ones I'm aware of. Suggestions of others you've found interesting or useful would be very welcome.

• BBC's In Our Time (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl)
• Though not exclusively about the history of science, relevant topics come up frequently. The format is an interviewer (Melvyn Bragg) and expert guests covering a particular topic.
• Sample episode: "The Curies"

• Distillations (http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/media/distillations/)
• The Chemical Heritage Foundation's series combines one off-site report paired with an interview with a historian expert. 
• Sample episode (featuring me!): "Stealing Industrial Secrets: Not as Easy as it Looks" 

• New Books in Science, Technology, and Society (http://newbooksnetwork.com/category/science-technology/scitechsoc/)
• A great series that fits its name. The interviewer - most often historian Carla Nappi, but others sometimes filling in - speaks with the authors of new books in STS. Already 203 episodes to date, so plenty of back catalog to cover, and a great way to keep up with the field.
• Sample episode: "Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century - Interview with Stephen Macekura"

• Museum for the History of Science's podcast (http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/events/podcasts/)
• The museum records its lecture series and makes them available via podcast. Covers a wide range of topics.
• Sample episode: "Oxford and the Royal Society in the Seventeenth Century"

• The Missing Link (https://missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com/)
• "A Podcast on the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology." This podcast is no longer running, but archives can still be found in a few places across the internet. It's worth seeking out. Creator Elizabeth Green Musselman, a history professor at Southwestern University, often discusses topics herself, but sometimes brings in guests speakers (and sometimes visits conferences like History of Science Society). 
• Sample episode: "Strength in Numbers"
  
• BackStory Radio (http://backstoryradio.org/)
• Another podcast that ranges in its topics, but some hit on the history of science/technology/medicine. This is a product of the University of Virginia, where three professors - one covering the 20th century, one the 19th, and on the 18th - cover the history of weekly topics. 
• Sample episode: "A History of Health Care"
  
• Stuff You Missed in History Class (http://www.missedinhistory.com/)
• This general history podcast doesn't often hit on science topics, but when it does, it's a great model for students considering their own podcast episodes. The hosts have a great, lively back-and-forth, and break the topics down to a very approachable level.
• Sample episode: "Secret Science: Alchemy!"
  
• MedicalHistory (http://medicalhistory.podbean.com/)
• An older, seemingly-defunct podcast, this covers more than just the medical history you might guess from the name. 28 episodes in total. Interview-based.
• Sample episode: "Science Wars: Harry Collins"
  
• Exploring Environmental History (https://www.eh-resources.org/podcast/)
• "Exploring Environmental History is the podcast about human societies and the environment in the past. The periodic programmes feature interviews with people working in the field, reports on conferences and discussions about the use and methods of environmental history." 70 episodes to date.
• Sample episode: "The Oldest Geordie: Environmental History of the River Tyne"
  
• Gastropod (http://gastropod.com/)
• "Gastropod looks at food through the lens of science and history." A bi-weekly podcast co-hosted by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley. 
• Sample episode: "Caffeine: The World’s Most Popular Drug"
  
• Curious Minds podcast (http://www.cmpod.net/episodes/)
• "CMPod (for Curious Minds Podcast) is a podcast (Radio-On-Demand) about Science, Technology and History. Each episode brings interesting stories from a wide range of subjects: from Physics and Astronomy to Medicine, Art and Science Fiction." Only a handful of episodes so far, but the most recent came out not long ago, so worth watching.
• Sample episode: "The War of Currents"

Digital History Idea: Choose Your Own History

I've been re-reading some old articles about digital humanities and digital history from the 1990s and early 2000s, and they're a fun mix of excited, near-utopic predications and sometimes quaint worries - for example, from a talk by Ed Ayers on "The Futures of Digital History" in 2000:

When I talk to audiences of people who are not as taken with the new technologies as we are, I am invariably asked these questions: aren't you worried about putting all this information out there for just anyone to see? Aren't you worried that you will never be able to write a book out of so much material? Aren't you worried that these computers will merely contribute to the fragmentation of knowledge and the shortening of attention spans? Aren't you worried that traditional narratives and sequential arguments will be displaced by isolated pieces of evidence and scattered hyperlinks? Aren't you worried that you are complicit in the erosion of the academy's autonomy and its absorption by corporate culture and demands?

Some of those have proven unfounded; others (eg the corporatization of universities) so commonplace as to be irresistible, and any scholar's efforts minimally important.

In any event, the various articles I've been reading talk continually about all the different ways that historians could use the unfixed medium of the (then-emerging and -even-more-quickly evolving) web to emphasize the complexity of the past.

That gave me an idea: Choose-Your-Own-History. Or more accurately, if less catchy: a Make-Your-Own-Scholarly-Judgements Article.

Users would select a handful of weighted judgments - either as a bunch at the start, or at key moments in the paper - to simulate a scholar's own predilections. For example, a user might answer:

1) You are trying to interpret the actions of a deputy at the State Department, but don't know much about his past or his personality. Which do you assume :
    a) He is probably acting in his own rational self-interest (for example, career promotion). Most people look out for themselves first.
    b) He is probably acting in what he understands to be the State Department's interests. People often get absorbed in serving institutions' needs and established rules, even when flexibility might make more sense.
    c) We fundamentally cannot make such a judgment. Toss out this line of argument.

This would then re-render the article, emphasizing different evidence (or in the case of option c, possibly deleting a paragraph and softening the overall conclusions), highlighting changes in a different text color.

You would have to choose your topics carefully, but there are plenty of under-determined, important historical subjects out there. Why did the US drop atomic bombs on Japan? Was Martin Guerre's wife extremely clever and in on an almost unbelievably complex ruse, or dull and her memory so poor that she could make the almost unbelievable mistake of not recognizing the man who claimed to be her husband? How do we sort out the different sources (each writing some decades or centuries after the fact) for the history of the Roman Republic?

The primary audience, I think, would be undergraduates, as a pedagogical tool. It would underline the subtle decisions that go into research and writing, the construction of history that does not exist without an interpretation.

A further iteration might even gamify the concept: History Professor Simulator. Take a model something like Game Dev Story (or its flashier, in some ways inferior homage/knock-off Game Dev Tycoon) and demonstrate the difficulty of getting research done at all with the various demands on your time; the time spent on the bizarre demands of Reviewer 2; the real trade-off you make if you spend the extra 6 hours really reading this new book closely vs. skimming it and moving on. You can start as a grad student, and the impossible job market is a boss stage.

In any event, the non-game part of this could be done relatively easily and quickly. I think it would make a few neat points about history, and might be well-received in the history community. If I ever have a some time I want to productively procrastinate, I might throw it together myself - hence making this post as a dual self-reminder / suggestion for someone else. Whether it's me or someone else, the idea is out there: feel free to copy it.