Episodes

  • Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand

    Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand
    Dec 8 2025
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Thomas Haigh, Professor and Chair of History and affiliate of the Department of Computer Science at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about his forthcoming book on the history of artificial intelligence. The book, which has had the working title _Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand_ with the final title to be determined, examines how and why historical actors have decided to apply the term “artificial intelligence” to a variety of disparate computing technologies that often have very little to do with one another. Vinsel and Haigh also talk about how the book’s lessons apply to our current Generative AI bubble and an assortment of other fun topics along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 42 mins
  • Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

    Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
    Nov 28 2025
    Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated, The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe explores the many ways in which medieval surgeons, doctors, monks, and artists understood and depicted human anatomy. Taylor McCall refutes the common misconception that Renaissance artists and anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius were the fathers of anatomy who performed the first human dissections. On the contrary, she argues that these Renaissance figures drew upon centuries of visual and written tradition in their works. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    37 mins
  • Thomas Morel, "Underground Mathematics: Craft Culture and Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

    Thomas Morel, "Underground Mathematics: Craft Culture and Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
    Nov 21 2025
    Thomas Morel joins Jana Byars to tell the story of subterranean geometry, a forgotten discipline that developed in the silver mines of early modern Europe, talking about his book Underground Mathematics: Craft Culture and Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge UP, 2022). Mining and metallurgy were of great significance to the rulers of early modern Europe, required for the silver bullion that fuelled warfare and numerous other uses. Through seven lively case studies, he illustrates how geometry was used in metallic mines by practitioners using esoteric manuscripts. He describes how an original culture of accuracy and measurement paved the way for technical and scientific innovations, and fruitfully brought together the world of artisans, scholars and courts. Based on a variety of original manuscripts, maps and archive material, Morel recounts how knowledge was crafted and circulated among practitioners in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. Specific chapters deal with the material culture of surveying, map-making, expertise and the political uses of quantification. By carefully reconstructing the religious, economic and cultural context of mining cities, Underground Mathematics contextualizes the rise of numbered information, practical mathematics and quantification in the early modern period. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 mins
  • Judith L. Pearson, "Radical Sisters: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2025)

    Judith L. Pearson, "Radical Sisters: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2025)
    Nov 11 2025
    There was a time when women's health was marginalized. There was a time when breast cancer wasn't discussed. There was a time when October wasn't pink. But three women--Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder--refused to be silenced. Their courage ignited a movement that forever changed the way society addresses breast cancer. When these "radical sisters" were diagnosed, they faced a medical world rife with myths, outdated protocols, and a shocking lack of research. Breast cancer awareness was non-existent, and treatment options were limited. Yet, Shirley, Rose, and Evelyn--empowered by their own diagnoses--became trailblazing advocates for breast cancer research, early detection, and women's health. Their efforts broke open the conversation and set the stage for a new era of breast cancer advocacy. Radical Sisters: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement (Mayo Clinic Press, 2025) meticulously researched by award-winning biographer Judith L. Pearson, chronicles their powerful journeys. Taking cues from the women's health and AIDS movements, these inspirational women demanded a shift in how society viewed breast cancer--not as a taboo, but as a cause worthy of public attention and action. Today, more than 300,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. They stand on the shoulders of these courageous pioneers, whose legacy has empowered generations to advocate for better healthcare, increased research, and greater awareness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)

    Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)
    Nov 10 2025
    How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the mechanisms by which ancient people came to have knowledge—not of the world and its myriad processes but about something more intimate, namely the individuals they encountered in close quarters, those they knew in everyday life. Tracing previously unfathomed structures beneath the surface of late ancient Christianity, Ellen Muehlberger reveals surprising insights about the ancient world and, by extension, the modern. Things Unseen holds treasures for scholars of early Christian studies, for historians in general, and for all those who wonder about how we know what we seem to know. The book is open access. Ellen Muehlberger is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. You can find many of the other essays mentioned in the show here. She is also the editor of The Journal of Early Christian Studies. Michael Motia teaches in the department of Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Al Posamentier, "Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians" (Prometheus, 2020)

    Al Posamentier, "Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians" (Prometheus, 2020)
    Nov 9 2025
    Today I talked to Alfred S. Posamentier, a co-author (with Christian Spreitzer) of Math Makers: The Lives and Works of 50 Famous Mathematicians (Prometheus, 2020). This charming book is more than just mathematics, because mathematicians are not just makers of mathematics. They are human beings whose life stories are often not just entertaining, but are sometimes interwoven with important historical events. Of course you get the math in this book –but I would have read this book just for the fascinating anecdotes. Just for openers, how many other disciplines have people who made remarkable contributions but were arrested for revolutionary activities in their teens, and then killed in a duel at age 21? This is the story of Evariste Galois, just one of the 50 fascinating lives you'll read about in this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 mins
  • Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021)

    Jenny C. Mann, "The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime" (Princeton UP, 2021)
    Nov 8 2025
    Today’s guest is Jenny Mann, who has a new book titled The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime (Princeton University Press, 2021). Jenny is Professor in both New York University’s English Department and the Gallatin School, and her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is the author of the previous monograph, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England (Cornell University Press, 2012) and is the co-editor with Debapriya Sarkar of a special issue of Philological Quarterly on “Imagining Scientific Forms.” Additionally, Jenny works in collaboration with the Public Shakespeare Initiative at the Public Theater in New York. John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. His peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins
  • Eram Alam, "The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare" (JHU Press, 2025)

    Eram Alam, "The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare" (JHU Press, 2025)
    Oct 30 2025
    For more than 60 years, the United States has trained fewer physicians than it needs, relying instead on the economically expedient option of soliciting immigrant physicians trained at the expense of other countries. The passage of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expedited the entry of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) from postcolonial South Asia and sent them to provide care in shortage areas throughout the United States. Although this arrangement was conceived as temporary, over the decades it has become a permanent fixture of the medical system, with FMGs comprising at least a quarter of the physician labor force since the act became law. This cohort of practitioners has not been extensively studied, rendering the impacts of immigration and foreign policy on the everyday mechanics of US health care obscure. In The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, Dr. Alam foregrounds global dynamics embedded in the medical system to ask how and why Asian physicians—and especially practitioners from South Asia—have become integral to US medical practice and ubiquitous in the US public imaginary. Drawing on transcripts of congressional hearings; medical, scientific, and social scientific literature; ethnographies; oral histories; and popular media, Dr. Alam explores the enduring consequences of postcolonial physician migration. Combining theoretical and methodological insights from a range of disciplines, this book analyzes both the care provided by immigrant physicians as well as the care extended to them as foreigners. Our guest is: Dr. Eram Alam, who specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, race, migration, and health during the twentieth century. She is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. She received her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a BA and BS from Northwestern University and a MA from the University of Chicago. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a developmental editor, and the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Where Is Home? Immigration Realities Secret Harvests Who Gets Believed The House on Henry Street Womanist Bioethics Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes, or by donating here. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins