Statistical graphing was born in the seventeenth century as a scientific tool, but it quickly escaped all disciplinary bounds. Today graphics are ubiquitous in daily life. In their just-published A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication (Harvard UP, 2021), Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer detail the history of graphs and tables, how they h ... Show More
Nov 23
Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster" (Repeater, 2025)
Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Afr ... Show More
39m 40s
Nov 23
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 22
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowe ... Show More
44m 53s
Oct 2022
Edward Chancellor, "The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022)
Edward Chancellor's just published history of interest rates could not be better timed. As the world adjusts to rising rates after decades of falling ones, Chancellor's historical and sometimes polemical account of rates kept too low for too long seems all too prescient. Chancell ... Show More
45m 57s
Mar 2023
How Data Happened: Professors Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones on the History of Data
<p>Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book <em>How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms</em>, join Patrick to discuss the history of data, why enumerating things isn't a neutral act, and the ethics of building a world on the fo ... Show More
59m 16s
Apr 2020
What If We Lived 50 Years Into the Future? - Guest: Steven Kotler
Mark Twain once said...Well, Mark Twain said a lot of things but in this particular context, his "it's difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" is as apropos as it is yogi Berra-ish. But these days, futurism is not only harder than it's probably ever been, bu ... Show More
54m 54s
Dec 2020
What If You Never Aged? - with Jamie Metzl
What If you could live forever? Since the days of Ponce De Leon and the search for the Fountain of Youth, human beings have pursued longer lives, doing whatever they could to cheat time and extend their lives. Now, with genetic engineering/CRSPR technology etc. this is no longer ... Show More
45m 57s