Milk Sickness and the Mystery of Dr. Ann...

Tracy shares her intentions to cover Peter Kropotkin years ago, and also unpacks some of the positive and negative aspects of his life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

After returning to Russia, Kropotkin was captured and imprisoned. But his life took many turns from there, and in 1902 he published his book book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.” Research: "Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, Gale, 1998. Gale ... Show More

Peter Kropotkin was incredibly influential in the development of anarchism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Part one of this subject focuses on the formative moments in his early life that contributed to his becoming an anarchist communist. Research: "Peter Alekseevich Kropo ... Show More

In the early 19th century, a strange new illness, seemingly unknown to medicine, ravaged settler communities in the American Middle West. As fierce debates about this new disease, now called milk sickness, raged – was it from toxic swamp gasses? arsenic in the soil? infectious mi ... Show More

<p>This Valentine's Day we could have just brought you some sappy love stories from science's past. But instead we offer you three tales of lust, loneliness, betrayal, pettiness, and not one, but two beheadings.</p> <h2>Credits</h2> <p>Hosts: <a href="file:///profile/alexis-j-ped ... Show More

2023 was a year of big decisions for the Supreme Court, including recent news that they’ll be reviewing the constitutionality of mifepristone in the coming year. So we’re heading into the archives with this episode recorded right after the Dobbs decision was leaked. Professor Jac ... Show More

Forty years before the infamous witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, Hugh Parsons stepped out of his dirty, disease ridden prison cell in Boston and was carted off towards the courthouse in order to stand trial as a witch. He’d come from a small settlement named Springfield over ... Show More

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The southern United States was hit by a dramatic epidemic of a mysterious disease called pellagra in the early twentieth century. This episode discusses the cultural and scientific sources of the outbreak -- from the cotton fields of the south, ... Show More

<p>Josie Bassett Morris' life epitomised the Wild West. She grew up on a homestead in the late 18th century, in Northern Utah, USA. Their home was situated on the Outlaw Trail and gun-slingers like Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid would stay as they passed through. Her mother ... Show More

The birth of psychiatry in the early-19th century changed the way that 'madness' was understood, with beliefs in the supernatural becoming evidence of insanity. Charlotte Hodgman spoke to Professor Owen Davies about the men and women who found themselves placed in asylums as a re ... Show More

<p>The discovery of 21,000-23,000-year-old human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico is one of the most exciting developments in the study of the deep past in recent years. But do these footprints hold up to real scrutiny? And if they’re real, how do they change ... Show More

<p>The word "Tuskegee" has come to symbolize the Black community's mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don't know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. P ... Show More