Time to Eat the Dogs

A podcast about science, history, and exploration. Michael Robinson interviews scientists, journalists, and adventurers about life at the extreme.

Artificial General Intelligence, Part I 04/25/2025

Artificial General Intelligence, Part I In the first of two episodes, Julian Togelius talks about the history of machine learning, the quest for Artificial General Intelligence, and the difficulties AI researchers have in defining exactly what intelligence is. Togelius is an associate professor of Computer Science at New York University. He is the author of Artificial General Intelligence, published recently by MIT Press. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/36312615

Replay: Inventing the World 04/06/2025

Replay: Inventing the World talks about the city of Venice and its importance to the history of travel and exploration. Small is professor emerita at Cornell University. She’s the author of /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/36025150

The Habitable Worlds Observatory 03/21/2025

The Habitable Worlds Observatory 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 planets in other solar systems directly, focusing on planets that may support life. Arney is a Research Space Scientist in the Planetary Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She’s also the interim project scientist for the Habitable Worlds Observatory and the Deputy Principal Investigator of the DAVINCI mission to Venus. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/35809580

Replay: Icebound 02/28/2025

Replay: Icebound 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 suffered hardships, but they were mild in comparison with the horrors of the third expedition. talks about the Arctic voyages of William Barents and their impact on Europe for centuries to come. Pitzer is a journalist and author of . /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/35484405

The Europa Clipper and the Search for Extraterrestrial LIfe 02/16/2025

The Europa Clipper and the Search for Extraterrestrial LIfe 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 directs the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute. Her opinion piece, “Can We Please Just Find the Aliens Already,” was published by the New York Times in October, 2024 /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/35302570

Replay: Enemy of All Mankind 02/02/2025

Replay: Enemy of All Mankind talks about the British pirate Henry Every and his improbable capture of the Mughal treasure ship, Gunsway. Johnson is the author of twelve books, including , Farsighted, Where Good Ideas Come From, and The Ghost Map. He’s also the host of the PBS series How We Got To Now and the podcast American Innovations. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/35116925

Mountains, Writers, and Travelers in the 18th Century Alps 01/26/2025

Mountains, Writers, and Travelers in the 18th Century Alps Célia Abele talks about Wolfgang von Goethe, the French writer Chateaubriand, and the German physicist Georg Lichtenberg. These writers became fascinated in the Alps and volcanoes such as Vesuvius. Abele is an assistant professor of French at Boston College. She’s the author of “Mountain Time: Tense Futures and Present Pasts in the Alps and Vesuvius around 1800.” /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/35011615

On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration 11/11/2024

On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration Ed Armston-Sheret returns to Time to Eat the Dogs to talk about British geographical expeditions and the labor that made them possible, specifically the labor of local peoples that is frequently omitted from explorer accounts. Armston-Sheret is a Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. He’s the author of On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/33889282

Replay: Quantum Legacies 10/05/2024

Replay: Quantum Legacies talks about the history of twentieth-century physics and the forces that have shaped it as a scientific discipline. Kaiser is a Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is also a Professor of Physics. He’s the author of . /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/33341197

Mungo Park's Ghost 08/29/2024

Mungo Park's Ghost 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 professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He has written eight books including Mungo Park’s Ghost: The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/32802512

Replay: The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure 06/25/2024

Replay: The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure 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 off the coast of Finland. Easter is a professor of history at Boston College. Vorhees is a travel writer for Lonely Planet with an expertise in Russia, New England, and Central America. They are the authors of . /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/31881527

The Challenger Disaster 05/24/2024

The Challenger Disaster Adam Higginbotham talks about the history of the Space Shuttle program and the decisions that made the Challenger explosion almost inevitable. Higgenbotham is a journalist and contributing writer for the New Yorker, Wired, and the New York Times. His book Midnight in Chernobyl won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction and was selected as one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the New York Times. He discusses his new book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/31445152

Replay: Portuguese Exploration After the Age of Discovery 05/03/2024

Replay: Portuguese Exploration After the Age of Discovery talks about Portuguese exploration in the nineteenth century as European powers made plans to conquer Africa and colonize its peoples. Madruga is a post-doctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. She’s the author of “Expert at a Distance: Barbosa du Bocage and the Production of Scientific Knowledge on Africa,” Journal for the History of Science and Technology, 11, 57-74. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/31104008

An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind 04/01/2024

An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind Historian of science Jeffery Mathias talks about scientific experiments in isolation during the Cold War. Mathias is the author of the Ph.D dissertation, "An Empire of Solitude: Isolation and the Cold War Sciences of the Mind.” /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/30631888

The Making of French Polar Exploration 08/20/2023

The Making of French Polar Exploration Alexandre Simon-Ekeland talks about explorers, the Polar Regions, and the French imagination. Simon-Ekeland recently completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Making French Polar Exploration, 1860s-1930s. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/27801468

Sovietistan 06/30/2020

Sovietistan 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 books and essays including Sovietistan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/15016937

Replay: American Arctic Exploration 06/27/2020

Replay: American Arctic Exploration 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. Zambone is the host of the podcast Historically Thinking. He’s the author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life. You can hear an extended version of this interview on the Historically Thinking podcast, available on most podcast platforms as well as online at historicallythinking.org. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14984924

How to be an African Travel Writer in Africa 06/23/2020

How to be an African Travel Writer in Africa 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 the School of Visual Arts in New York. His stories and essays have been published in Best American Travel Writing 2020 and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, which was a finalist for the Ondaatje Prize in 2019. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14926646

Replay: The Mystery of Altitude Sickness 06/20/2020

Replay: The Mystery of Altitude Sickness Lachlan Fleetwood talks about debates about altitude sickness in the Himalaya and the ways these debates became tied up with ideas about the physiology of Europeans and Himalayans in the 1800s. Fleetwood is the author of “Bodies in High Places: Exploration, Altitude Sickness, and the Problem of Bodily Comparison in the Himalaya, 1800-50,” published in the journal Itinerario 43, no. 3 (2019): 489-515. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14894579

Empires of the Sky 06/16/2020

Empires of the Sky 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. Rose is the author of 'Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World.' /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14837867

Replay: Love, Travel, and Separation 06/13/2020

Replay: Love, Travel, and Separation Kate Hollander talks about Bertolt Brecht’s life and work. She also talks about the community of artists who were his friends, lovers, and collaborators. Hollander is a historian of modern Europe. She’s also the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary, which was awarded the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize by USA Poet Laureate Charles Wright. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14803592

Why Did Scientists Collect the Blood of Indigenous Peoples? 06/09/2020

Why Did Scientists Collect the Blood of Indigenous Peoples? Emma Kowal talks about the history of biospecimen collection among the aboriginal peoples of Australia. Kowal is a cultural and medical anthropologist at Deakin University. She’s the co-author, along with Joanna Radin, of "Indigenous Biospecimen Collections and the Cryopolitics of Frozen Life," published in the Journal of Sociology. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14749676

Replay: Floating Coast 06/06/2020

Replay: Floating Coast Bathsheba Demuth talks about the history and exploration of the Bering Strait, from the early 1800s to the present day. Demuth is Assistant Professor of History & Environment and Society at Brown University. She’s the author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14716499

A History of Modern Tourism 06/02/2020

A History of Modern Tourism 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 the current pandemic at least – the largest service sector industry in the world. Zuelow is a professor of European History at the University of New England. He’s the author of A History of Modern Tourism. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14656481

Replay: Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica 05/30/2020

Replay: Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica Rebecca Priestley talks about her journeys to Antarctica and the process of bringing them to life in her writing. Priestley is an associate professor at the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is the author of Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica which was recently longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14620610

A Strange Week at NASA 05/26/2020

A Strange Week at NASA 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 into space after almost a decade. Berger is the Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14562443

Replay: An Update from the Hobbit Cave 05/22/2020

Replay: An Update from the Hobbit Cave Paige Madison talks about recent discoveries at the Liang Bua cave where researchers are trying to understand the complicated story of the hominin Homo Floresiensis. Madison is a PhD candidate in the history of science at Arizona State University where she also works with The Center for Biology and Society and the Institute of Human Origins. She writes about paleoanthropology at the blog Fossil History. She recently wrote about her trip for National Geographic and Scientific American. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14534954

Sea Wife 05/19/2020

Sea Wife 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 Books for 2013. A review and excerpt of Sea Wife can be read in the New York Times Book Review. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14466134

Replay: China is Going to the Moon 05/16/2020

Replay: China is Going to the Moon Dr. Namrata Goswami talks about the Chinese space program and its ambitious plans for lunar exploration. Goswami is a strategic analyst on space and great power politics. She’s the author of many books and articles including Great Powers and Resource Nationalism in Space soon to be published by Lexington Press. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14439575

Women in Antarctica 05/12/2020

Women in Antarctica Hanne Nielsen talks about the challenges facing women who work in Antarctica. Nielsen is a Lecturer in Antarctic Law and Governance at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) in Hobart, Tasmania. She’s the co-author, along with Meredith Nash, of “Gendered Power Relations and Sexual Harassment in Antarctic Science in the Age of #Me Too,” due out this year in Australian Feminist Studies. /episode/index/show/timetoeatthedogs/id/14379458

Time to Eat the Dogs

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