In this episode of Perspectives, we sit down with Audra Wolfe to discuss her book, Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science. In Freedom's Laboratory, Dr. Wolfe examines the relationship between science, politics, and governance in the United States during the Cold War, highlighting the ways in which scientists, policymakers, and administrators defined and thought about concepts such as "scientific freedom" and "Western science." She examines the role of scientists in American cultural diplomacy after World War II, at a time when United States propaganda promoted a vision of science as empirical, objective, and international. This view of science was often contrasted with a representation of Soviet science as politically motivated and nationalistic. 

Dr. Wolfe adds to our knowledge of how science and propaganda, psychology and diplomacy, interacted with one another and were deployed on both sides during the Cold War. Weaving diplomatic history with the history of science, Wolfe's book demonstrates the powerful and controversial uses and abuses of science during the Cold War.

Audra Wolfe is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian. She is the author of two books on science and the Cold War, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America and Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science, both available from Johns Hopkins University Press. You can follow her on Twitter as @ColdWarScience and subscribe to her newsletter at Never Just Science dot substack dot com. 

For more resources on this topic, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/112

Audra Wolfe — Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science

In this recording and in her book Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins, Christa Kuljian examines the history of paleoanthropology in South Africa, interrogating the ways in which ideas about racial hierarchies influenced the founding and development of the field. Her research demonstrates how the social and political context in which paleoanthropology has been practiced in South Africa and elsewhere influenced the development of the science, and how present-day scientists are pushing back against their field's troubling legacy.

Christa Kuljian is a writer, author, and Research Associate at WiSER, the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on Race Science and Scientific Racism at: www.chstm.org/video/101

Christa Kuljian on Race and Science

In this recording, historian Warwick Anderson discusses his investigations into the development of "race science" in the Global South and the fabrication of whiteness as a "strategy of authority."

Warwick Anderson is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, and leader of the Politics, Governance and Ethics Theme with the Charles Perkins Centre. As an historian of science, medicine and public health, Dr. Anderson's work has focused on ideas about race, human difference, and citizenship in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in Australasia, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and the United States. 

In this episode of our podcast series on race and science, Anderson discusses the differences between how "race science" was practiced in the Global South and how it was practiced in North America and Europe. He notes that theories about race—and thus the practices of "race science"—were often more malleable and flexible in the Southern Hemisphere, as opposed to the more rigid racial typologies and hardline eugenics that characterized the United States and Western Europe. In addition, following the work of James Baldwin and Homi Bhabha, Anderson notes how whiteness has been used as a "strategy of authority" for colonial settlers rather than as a robust identity, a fact he illustrates through his research on race in Australia and the Philippines. 

To listen to other installments in the Consortium's series on Race Science and Scientific Racism, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/101

Warwick Anderson on Race and Science

Stephen Kenny scrutinizes the career of surgeon Rudolph Matas, the so-called "father of vascular surgery." Kenny demonstrates how his life and work must be understood in the context of segregation in the U.S. South and the racialized medicine that was practiced there in the 19th and 20th centuries. He also highlights the ways in which Matas used medical photography to legitimate an ideologically driven racialized research agenda. 

Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on "Race Science" and Scientific Racism at: www.chstm.org/video/101

Stephen Kenny on Race and Science

In light of the current global vaccination campaign against COVID-19 and the struggles to increase vaccine acceptance and ensure vaccine compliance, we revisit our Trust in Science: Vaccines forum from January 2019.

What are the historical roots of resistance to vaccination? What is the data about contemporary attitudes? How do these attitudes relate to changing social, economic and political contexts? How do these issues play out in the relationship between a doctor and a patient? Listen to experts share their research and experience on these questions, and lead our discussion.

"Trust in Science: Vaccines" is the first event in a series inspired by Perceptions of Science in America, a report from the Public Face of Science Initiative at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From the Archives — Trust in Science: Vaccines

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Alberto Martínez, author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition.

In his book, Alberto Martínez reevaluates the life, career, and death of Giordano Bruno, the philosopher and cosmologist burned alive by the Catholic Inquisition in Rome in 1600. Martínez demonstrates that it was not his heterodox religious beliefs that led to his condemnation, but instead his visionary scientific beliefs—that the Earth moves, and that there are many worlds other than our own—that led to his demise. Dr. Martínez discusses the contrasting ways in which Bruno and Galileo were dealt with by the Inquisition, and shows how they drew upon the insights of prior thinkers to inform their own views about the heavens and the earth. He ends by discussing the immense power the Catholic Church has had over the construction of knowledge, and how it influences our collective memory of people like Giordano Bruno. 

Alberto Martínez is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

This podcast features a number of questions for Dr. Martínez from Lisa Nocks, a historian at the IEEE History Center, and from Vivion Vinson, a retired nurse. 

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Alberto Martínez, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, July 27, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/123.

Alberto Martínez — Burned Alive: Bruno, Galileo, and the Inquisition

What's that smell? Join us as we revisit our interview with Melanie Kiechle on the history of cities, senses and public health.

This episode of our podcast series features Melanie Kiechle's book, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America. The book illuminates the lives of 19th-century Americans—including medical experts and ordinary city-dwellers—who used their noses to detect and address sanitation challenges associated with foul odors in the midst of rapid urban and industrial growth.

Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at:
www.chstm.org/video/62

Replay—Melanie Kiechle's Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Neeraja Sankaran, author of A Tale of Two Viruses: Parallels in the Research Trajectories of Tumor and Bacterial Viruses. 

In her book, Neeraja Sankaran compares the research trajectories of two groups of viruses: cancer-causing viruses and bacteriophages, which infect and live at the expense of bacteria. She discusses how their respective discoveries—in 1911 by Peyton Rous and 1916 by Felix d'Herelle—changed our understanding of what viruses are, how they operate, and what they are capable of doing in animal and human bodies. Dr. Sankaran discusses the ways in which the phenomenal development of biomedical imaging and identification technologies in the middle decades of the 20th century allowed for our current understanding of what viruses are and how they are able to infect host cells. She ends her discussion with a poignant and timely call to recognize that stigmas of all kinds—whether against certain groups of people, or against viruses themselves as potential agents of disease—have often hindered the development of science and medicine, and that the worst effects of global epidemics (e.g., the AIDS epidemic, as well as COVID-19) may have been mitigated had the stigma surrounding those infected, and the viruses themselves, not existed.

Neeraja Sankaran is Senior Research Scholar at the Descartes Centre of Utrecht University. She is a historian of science and medicine interested in the recent and near-contemporary history of the biomedical sciences, and has worked on the history of virus research, molecular biology, immunology, and origins of life research.

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Neeraja Sankaran, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, August 30, 2021, www.chstm.org/video/122.

Neeraja Sankaran — A Tale of Two Viruses

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Lucas Richert, author of Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture.

In his book, Lucas Richert discusses the impact of the countercultural movement on the theory and practice of psychiatry in the late 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Richert argues that broader societal developments—e.g., the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and the Vietnam War—pushed a large number of psychiatrists and mental health workers to radically reform the discipline. Psychiatrists and psychologists such as R.D. Laing, Claude Steiner, Phyllis Chesler, and Mike Michaelson all labored to improve mental health by identifying and critiquing the power dynamics involved in both the practice of therapy and society at-large. Richert ends with a fascinating and timely discussion on the use of psychedelic drugs in psychiatry in the 1960s and 1970s, and the ways in which mind-altering pharmaceuticals are making their way back into the heart of the field in the 21st century after decades of prohibition. 

Lucas Richert is Associate Professor and George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Lucas Richert, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, September 9, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/127.

Lucas Richert — Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Eric Hintz, author of American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D.

In his book, Eric Hintz describes how American independent inventors continued to innovate after the so-called "Golden Era of Invention" of the mid-to-late 19th century. Hintz argues that, while the first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of corporate R&D that internalized invention within large firms, independent inventors such as Chester Carlson, Samuel Ruben, and others continued to develop important technologies outside of the corporate structure. However, large firms did not always compete or try to do away with independent inventors; indeed, they often collaborated with independent inventors when they could not produce useful or profitable technologies in-house. Hintz discusses the importance of the American patent system for the viability of invention, and notes the ways in which women and African-American inventors were able to use the patent system to not only profit from their creations, but also bolster their arguments for equal rights. Dr. Hintz ends by noting that the independent inventor is still alive and well in American society in the 21st century, especially in the areas of computing and biotechnology. 

Eric Hintz is a historian with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

For more information on our ever-growing library of podcasts, videos, and essays on the history of science, technology and medicine, please visit:
www.chstm.org/perspectives

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Eric Hintz, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, September 9, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/128.

Eric Hintz — American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

With the virtual joint meeting of the History of Science Society and Society for the History of Technology coming up next month, join us as we revisit our September 2020 discussion with Jan Golinski, Tom Misa, and AAHM President Keith Wailoo as they talk about the challenges of the present moment and what the future holds for their organizations. 

They address the organizations' new initiatives, the roles of young scholars in the Societies, the limits and opportunities of virtual meetings, inclusion and diversity in the profession, and the current jobs crisis.

To find helpful resources related to this presentation, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/104

Replay—Presidents of HSS, SHOT, and AAHM (September 2020)

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Douglas O'Reagan, author of Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War.

In his book, Douglas O'Reagan discusses the Allied effort to appropriate German science, technology, and industrial capability during and after World War II. As O'Reagan explains, Germany's longstanding reputation for scientific and technological excellence, beginning in the nineteenth century, was bolstered by the waves of German-Jewish émigré scientists fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 1940s. As a result, the Allies were fearful of the potential technological capabilities of the Nazis and were determined to learn from and exploit that knowledge as much as possible during and after the war.

However, the United States and the United Kingdom came to realize that, despite collecting copious and detailed notes on German science, technology, and industry and writing highly detailed reports on their findings, they were often missing the "know-how" that came with actual on-the-job or in-the-lab training. The French, seemingly more aware of the importance of tacit knowledge and the context in which work gets done (and also interested in surveilling the Germans lest they try to rebuild their military apparatus after the war) embedded students in laboratories and factories in order to learn from German experts in real world conditions. The French efforts to learn from German science and technology proved fruitful, whereas the Americans and British found their own reports relatively ineffective. 

O'Reagan's book, detailing the largest-scale effort at technology transfer in world history, is a subtle and elegant story about the importance of tacit knowledge and situational context for knowledge creation, told from the perspectives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union in their attempts to take Nazi technology and science.

Douglas O'Reagan is a historian of technology, industry, and national security, and received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a 2012 to 2013 Dissertation Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Douglas O'Reagan, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, November 8, 2021, www.chstm.org/video/129.

Douglas O'Reagan — Taking Nazi Technology

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Emily Merchant, author of Building the Population Bomb. 

In her book, Dr. Merchant explores the history of population growth modeling and the intellectual and ideological battles over the concept of overpopulation. The author describes the battle between the so-called mercantilist position—held by a number of statisticians, among others—which held that population growth was the driver of national economic development and geopolitical strength, and the Malthusian position (named after noted economist Thomas Robert Malthus)—held by quite a few biologists and natural scientists—that saw rapid population growth as a harbinger of poverty, famine, and ecological collapse. The publication of the 1968 book The Population Bomb by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich made overpopulation a cause célèbre in the late 1960s and 1970s. However, as Dr. Merchant makes clear, those fears did not come to fruition, and many of the problems that were blamed on overpopulation would more accurately have been ascribed to colonial and postcolonial economic relationships, and the maldistribution of global resources.

Emily Merchant is a historian of science and technology at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Merchant was a 2012-2013 Dissertation Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology & Medicine. 

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Emily Merchant, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, November 9, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/130.

Emily Merchant — Building the Population Bomb

Andy Evans discusses the history of "race science" in Germany before the Nazi takeover in 1933. Evans describes how Germany's nineteenth-century liberal anthropological tradition transmogrified into a hierarchical and racist "science" in the early part of the twentieth century. 

Andy Evans is Associate Professor of History at SUNY New Paltz, and is the author of, among other works, Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany.

Find this podcast and others in the Consortium's series on race science and scientific racism at:
www.chstm.org/video/101

Andy Evans on Race and Science in Germany

How do we reconcile the positives and negatives of scientific and technological development? Join us in revisiting our interview with Susan Lindee, author of Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War.

In Rational Fog, Susan Lindee explores the way that science, technology and medicine were transformed by the military establishment and defense funding. She discusses how thousands of scientists, engineers, and physicians justified creating technologies of war, or instead rebelled against the use of science for such pursuits. As Dr. Lindee reminds us, scores of scientific societies have defended science as a uniquely positive endeavor dedicated to the "welfare of mankind," all while their members have pursuit chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons research for the purposes of human injury and death.

M. Susan Lindee is Janice and Julian Bers Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Replay—Susan Lindee's Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War

How did scientists, policymakers, and government officials think about concepts such as "scientific freedom" and "Western science" during the Cold War? Join us in revisiting our interview with Audra Wolfe, author of Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science.

In Freedom's Laboratory, Dr. Wolfe examines the relationship between science, politics, and governance in the United States during the Cold War. Wolfe examines the role of scientists in American cultural diplomacy after World War II, at a time when United States propaganda promoted a vision of science as empirical, objective, and international. This view of science was often contrasted with a representation of Soviet science as politically motivated and nationalistic.

Audra Wolfe is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian. She is the author of two books on science and the Cold War, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America and Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science, both available from Johns Hopkins University Press. You can follow her on Twitter as @ColdWarScience and subscribe to her newsletter at Never Just Science dot substack dot com.

For more resources on this topic, please visit: www.chstm.org/video/112

Replay—Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science by Audra Wolfe

Richard Wetzell analyzes the history of "racial science" in Germany during the early years of the Nazi regime, demonstrating how medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and human geneticists wielded competing theories of race in order to influence public policy and maintain their professional status.

Richard Wetzell is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D.C. and editor of the GHI's Bulletin. Dr. Wetzell is a historian of modern Germany, with particular interests in the history of criminology and penal reform, and the history of the human and biological sciences.

To listen to other installments in the Consortium's series on "Race Science" and Scientific Racism, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/101

Richard Wetzell on "Racial Science" in Nazi Germany

What would it take to "render justice" in science? In this roundtable discussion, our panelists discuss two episodes that demonstrate how scientific credit and recognition reflect the social and political order of the times. Ruth Lewin Sime and Robert Marc Friedman discuss the "Meitner Scandal," in which the world-renowned physicist Lise Meitner was denied a Nobel Prize for her work, despite being nominated over 50 times and having been considered by many—both in her time and now—as an exemplary candidate. Michael Chwe and Peter Sachs Collopy discuss the recent reckoning with the racist and pro-eugenic beliefs of Robert A. Millikan, the former faculty member at Caltech and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics. They discuss activism in having Millikan's name taken off of buildings at Caltech, as well as current attempts to make Caltech more inclusive and diverse.

Our moderator for this panel is Susan Lindee, Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and our commentator is Sue V. Rosser, Provost Emerita and Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University.

Please watch a number of our panelists live on Sunday, February 20, 2022 at 12:00pm and on-demand as they discuss these issues at the 2022 AAAS Annual Meeting. The link to the AAAS Program can be found at: https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/28502

For more information on this forum and related resources, please visit: 
https://www.chstm.org/video/134

Injustice in Science: The Meitner Scandal and Robert Millikan's Troubling Legacy

In light of the COVID-19 epidemic and the sometimes fierce opposition to vaccination, join us as we re-examine our presentation from January 2019 on contemporary vaccine skepticism in America and its historical roots.

What does the data show about present-day attitudes towards vaccination? How do these attitudes relate to changing social, political, and economic conditions? How are these issues mediated by the relationship between doctor and patient? Three experts—Jeffrey Baker, Elena Conis, and Erica Kimmerling—lead our discussion and share how their research tries to answer these complex questions.

"Trust in Science: Vaccines" is the first event in a series inspired by Perceptions of Science in America, a report from the Public Face of Science Initiative at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This series is presented by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

To view more resources and participate in the discussion, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/vaccines

Replay — Trust in Science: Vaccines

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Stephen Weldon, author of The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism.

In his book, Stephen Weldon uncovers how, at the beginning of the twentieth century, liberal ministers and rabbis created the humanist movement to accommodate religion to an increasingly scientific world and worldview. Joined by academic philosophers and prominent scientists in the years that followed, the movement engaged in battles not only with religious fundamentalists, but also with itself, as democratic humanists influenced by pragmatism fought with those influenced by the arch-rationalist philosophy of logical positivism. Professor Weldon places humanists and their "scientific spirit" at the vanguard of an increasingly secular and non-theistic America in the twentieth century. However, he also shows how humanism evolved over time, becoming more defensive in its response to the upswell of born-again Christian religiosity of the 1970s and 1980s.

Stephen Weldon is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Oklahoma and is the editor of the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science. Dr. Weldon received his Ph.D. in History and History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For more resources on this topic, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/135

Stephen Weldon — The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Adam R. Shapiro, author of Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools.

In his book, Adam R. Shapiro details the ways that the business practices of the science textbook industry of the early twentieth century, combined with a new push toward teaching a unified subject called "biology" in American high schools, led to the showdown known as the Scopes Trial. However, as Shapiro notes, this seemingly paradigmatic clash of supposed opposites—science and religion—was really anything but: evolution and evolutionary thinking had been in the cultural zeitgeist for a half-century before the Scopes Trial, and antievolution religious sentiment had existed all throughout that time as well. Instead, he argues that we need to look at the shifting social, political, and economic situation in America, at a time when secondary education was becoming compulsory nationwide, and a small cadre of powerful textbook manufacturers were competing with each other for market share in proliferating science classrooms. Alongside an increasingly contentious battle between rural and urban visions of America, these developments—and not any insurmountable chasm between science and religion—set the stage for the Scopes Trial as well as for more recent conflicts about what should be taught in the nation's schools.

Adam R. Shapiro received his Ph.D. in Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science from the University of Chicago. He was NSF Fellow-in-Residence at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology & Medicine in 2016-2017. His most recent book (with Thomas Dixon) is Science and Religion, A Very Short Introduction from Oxford University Press.

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Adam R. Shapiro, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, March 3, 2022, https://www.chstm.org/video/136.

Adam R. Shapiro — Trying Biology

Join us as we revisit our spotlight on Aristotle's Masterpiece with Professor Mary Fissell, from October 2020. To see the visuals that Dr. Fissell references in the podcast, go to: www.chstm.org/video/83

Follow along with Professor Fissell as she discusses her research on this late 17th century sex, midwifery, and childbirth manual popular in England and America from its publication until well into the 20th century. Dr. Fissell explores the ways in which readers used their copies of the book to record births and vows of love and companionship, performing a similar function to the Bible. Dig into the similarities and differences between copies of the Masterpiece held at Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

To explore more resources related to this presentation, please visit:
www.chstm.org/video/83

Replay — Aristotle's Masterpiece: Early Modern Sex Ed with Mary Fissell

Join us as we revisit our interview from April 2021 with Abraham Gibson, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of Feral Animals in the American South: An Evolutionary History.

In his book, Abe Gibson tells the broader social and environmental history of the Southern United States by focusing on the domestication and subsequent ferality of dogs, horses, and pigs over the past three hundred years. Gibson discusses the co-evolution of humans and domesticated animals both in ancient history and the more recent history of the United States, and highlights how and why the open range in the U.S. South lasted longer than in other parts of the United States. Dr. Gibson uses the differential experiences of feral horses, dogs, and pigs to explore broader themes of commerce, sport, environment, and politics in Southern history from the colonial to the modern era.

This podcast features a number of questions for Prof. Gibson from Simon Joseph, a former staff member of the Consortium who currently works in the offices of the American Philosophical Society.

Abraham Gibson was a 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Abraham Gibson is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He teaches courses on the history of science, technology, engineering, medicine, and the environment, and his research examines topics such as the domestication of animals, the evolution of cooperation, and the relationship between technology and society.

To cite this podcast, please use footnote:

Abraham Gibson, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, April 30, 2021, www.chstm.org/video/119.

Replay — Abe Gibson's Feral Animals in the American South

What's that smell? Join us as we discuss the history of cities, senses and public health.

The first episode of our new podcast series features Melanie Kiechle's book, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America. This book illuminates the lives of 19th-century Americans—including medical experts and ordinary city-dwellers—who used their noses to detect and address sanitation challenges associated with foul odors in the midst of rapid urban and industrial growth.

Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at:
https://www.chstm.org/video/62

Melanie Kiechle — Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

Are we now approaching a time when we could all live, at least in freezers, forever? Modern collection and storage of biological samples make possible a kind of "immortality" for anyone who has ever had a saliva sample frozen for genealogical testing or a blood sample stored in medical collections. New technologies, like CRISPR for gene editing, expand possible future uses of biological materials stored around the world. The story of Henrietta Lacks, popularized in a book by Rebecca Skloot and an HBO special starring Oprah Winfrey, illustrates the ways that a single person's cells and tissues can take on lives of their own as research material. In 1953, just before her death, Lacks's cancer cells yielded the oldest and most common human cell line still used in research.

There has been significant public interest in her remarkable story, but the "immortality" of people like Henrietta Lacks raises pressing questions for all of us. Who owns and controls bodily materials extracted from research subjects and patients? Who can profit from the cells and genes that make us who we are? How do we weigh the value of personal privacy and an individual’s sense of self against the potential for medical progress? How do imbalances of wealth and power influence questions of consent, exploitation, and identity for people who provide biological materials? These questions framed a public forum organized by the Consortium and hosted by the American Philosophical Society on September 28, 2017.

Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at:
https://www.chstm.org/video/51

Immortal Life: The Promises and Perils of Biobanking and the Genetic Archive

In this podcast episode, we talk with James Poskett, author of Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920. 

Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology.

Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at:
https://www.chstm.org/video/71

James Poskett — Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science

Rana Hogarth talks about how white physicians "medicalized" blackness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how African-Americans pushed back against this endeavor.

Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on Race Science and Scientific Racism at: www.chstm.org/video/101

Rana Hogarth on Race and Science

Elise Burton discusses the development of genetics, "race science," and race concepts in the Middle East. Dr. Burton sketches the connections between European, North American, and Middle Eastern scientists, and elaborates upon how contemporary issues (such as COVID-19) are influenced by ideas of genetic nationalism.

Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on Race Science and Scientific Racism at:
www.chstm.org/video/101

Elise Burton on Race and Science

In this episode of Perspectives, we talk with M. Susan Lindee, author of Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War.

In Rational Fog, Susan Lindee explores the way that science, technology and medicine were transformed by the military establishment and defense funding. She discusses the ways in which thousands of scientists, engineers, and physicians justified or made peace with creating technologies of war, or instead rebelled against the use of science for such pursuits. Indeed, as Lindee reminds us, scores of scientific societies have defended science as a uniquely positive endeavor dedicated to the "welfare of mankind," all while many of their members have pursuit chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons research for the purpose of human injury and death.

M. Susan Lindee is Janice and Julian Bers Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Susan Lindee — Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War

A new public events series from the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine brings historical perspective to contemporary issues and concerns.

In the public forums, historians and other specialists speak about culturally relevant topics in front of a live audience at Consortium member institutions. Forum subjects range from medical consumerism to public trust in science and technology. Videos of these events are also available at chstm.org.

In podcast episodes, authors of new books in the history of science, technology, and medicine respond to questions from readers with a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise. These conversations illuminate the utility and relevance of the past in light of current events.

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