The Missing Link

Episode 14: Where Does It Hurt?

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:17:00 GMT

This month, guest Daniel Goldberg gives a provocative look into the world of pain without lesion. How do - and should - doctors handle patients' pain when there's no visible cause?

Episode 13: On Location in Devon

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:39:00 GMT

Today we alight in Devonshire, England. The beaches in this gorgeous, southwestern coastal county have long been a major summer tourist destination. In this episode, we'll learn about how Devon's seaside resorts transformed from health spas into centers of epidemic disease. We'll also discover just what kinds of behaviors could land you in the insane asylums of Victorian Devonshire.

Episode 12: Curiouser and Curiouser

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Warning: This episode contains frank discussions of human anatomy and some violence.

Ever wondered why wonder is so important in science? We're taught from an early edge that science is a world of wonder, and encouraged to indulge our natural curiosity as a first step to achieving scientific rationality. Today, we'll investigate the fascinating history of wonder, including times when wonder was not in fashion and times when it led grown men to kick old women in the stomach. (Yes, you will need to listen to find what that refers to.)

Episode 11: Domestic Science

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:34:00 GMT

Most of us encounter science through the the world of popular science: the books, TV shows, museum exhibits, kits, and toys that are packaged for general consumption. Today, we explore the early days of mass-produced popular science, particularly the books written for women and children.

Episode 10: People of the Book

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Thu, 1 May 2008 03:22:00 GMT

Creationism and intelligent design are widely understood as the province of American Protestants. Today's episode explores how people in some of the world's other religious traditions - particularly Jews, Catholics, and Muslims - have positioned themselves in the evolution-intelligent design debate.

Episode 9: Evolution, Communism and Other "Dirty" Words

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 03:37:00 GMT

How did the Civil War and the Cold War affect the acceptance of evolution in the United States? Tune in to today's program to find out. This is the second episode in a three-part series on the history behind the evolution-intelligent design controversy.

Show notes available here.

Episode 8: The Ghost in the Machine

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:37:00 GMT

This episode inaugurates our series on the history behind the evolution-intelligent design controversy. Today, we examine the deep history of scientific method, and how the rules evolved to the point where intelligent design cannot follow them.

Show notes available here.

Episode 7: Time's Arrow

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 1 Feb 2008 03:30:00 GMT

This month, guest essayist Scott Lough concludes his exploration of time's strange behavior, this time focusing on how early human societies understood and measured it.

Show notes available here.

Episode 6: Uncommon Sense

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 19:40:00 GMT

This episode explores two cases when we have realized that what we thought was common sense - well - wasn't.

Show notes available here.

Episode 5: Strength in Numbers

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:38:00 GMT

This episode transports us to two conferences that can change the way we think about the sciences' past. First, you will tag along with me to the History of Science Society (HSS) annual meeting that took place recently in Washington, DC. I'll share with you some excerpts from Ted Porter's fascinating lecture on "How Science Became Technical."

Then, we'll travel back a half-century to the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, a remarkable event at which 21 eminent scientists - including Leo Szilard, Joseph Rotblat, and Herman Muller - met to discuss the threat posed to world peace by thermonuclear weapons.

Show notes available here.

Episode 4: Constant Companions

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Thu, 1 Nov 2007 03:38:00 GMT

This episode considers some of the animals â big and small, welcome and unwelcome â that have accompanied us humans on our journeys through the history of scientific and medical discovery. Of course animals have been the subject of scientific study for centuries, but what we often forget is that they aren't simply passive subjects. Animals have their own agenda, which sometimes does and sometimes doesn't harmonize with the agendas of the people they live with.

Show notes available here.

Episode 3: On Location in Berlin

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:25:00 GMT

On today's show, we embark on the first of what I hope will be many virtual excursions together. This time we visit Berlin, Germany. This beautiful city is famous for its political and cultural past, but also has a fascinating history in science and medicine.

There is so much to examine, but this episode will focus on CharitÃ -- an institution founded as a plague hospital that ended up treating soldiers, training medical students, hosting some of the founding work in modern pathology, and most recently housing a history of medicine museum -- and the Berlin Phonogram Archive, a founding institution for ethnomusicology and a key voice in early twentieth century evolutionary arguments about race.

Show notes available here. http://missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/episode-3-on-location-in-berlin/

Podcast blog moved

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:44:00 GMT

I have moved the podcast blog a different site. (The blog contains the show notes, links to the episodes, and other information about the podcast). Once WordPress decides to stop messing with my head, the regular podcast address (missinglinkpodcast.com) will direct you to the new blog.

If you have subscribed to the podcast, your subscription will not be affected, as the RSS feed remains the same.

Episode 2: Opposites Attract

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Sat, 1 Sep 2007 00:50:00 GMT

On today's show, we look at the seemingly obvious idea that women and men are opposites. So many cultures historically have assumed this to be so, and so many of these cultures have argued that differences between men and women had a natural basis. We will see how difficult that argument has been to maintain as science has probed deeper into the human body.

Guest essay by Amber Hoerauf on the discovery of hormones.
Host essay on how the sixteenth-century Chinese dealt with cases of ambiguous sex.

Show notes available here. http://missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/episode-2-opposites-attract/

Episode 1: Stranger than Fiction

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 21:26:00 GMT

Today's show considers some of the ways that science fiction has drawn inspiration from planetary science.

Guest essay by Megan Healy on how well the depiction of women scientists in 1950s American sci-fi films matched up against the reality of women scientists' lives at that time.

Host essay on the "discovery" of canals on Mars in the late nineteenth century and its impact on the writing of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

Show notes available here: http://missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/episode-1-stranger-than-fiction/

feed trackers

greenmue@southwestern.edu (Elizabeth Green Musselman) — Fri, 1 Jun 2007 21:02:00 GMT

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