Episode 4: Constant Companions

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This episode considers some of the animals – big and small, welcome and unwelcome – 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.

(You also get to hear what the host sounds like when microbes’ agendas get the better of her immune system.)

Host essay: “The Dog Who Would Be Naturalist”

• for further reading:
  • Burchell, William John, Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa (1822-24; reprint, Cape Town: C. Struik, 1967).
  • Gallant, Johan, The Story of the African Dog (University of Natal Press, 2003).
  • Ritvo, Harriet, Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989).
  • Van Sittert, Lance, and Sandra Swart, eds., Canis Africanis: A Dog History of Southern Africa (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).

Host essay: “No Flies on Me”

• for further reading:
  • Cirillo, Vincent J., “‘Winged Sponges’: Houseflies as Carriers of Typhoid Fever in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Military Camps,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 49 (2006): 52-63.
  • Kohler, Robert E., Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
  • Latour, Bruno, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2007).
  • Leavitt, Judith Walzer, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).
    
  • Morgan, Nigel, “Infant Mortality, Flies and Horses in Later Nineteenth-Century Towns: A Case Study of Preston,” Continuity and Change 17 (2002): 97-132.

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network except where noted.

• Sunburn in Cyprus, History (intro & outro)
• Happy Gemini 3, Pondering the 10^th Planet (transitions)
• Dejunair, Walkin the Dogg; Freddie Wong, Dog Day Afternoon; Pops Mohammed, Ambient Africa (during first essay)
• Debbie Cassell, The Boatman’s White Dog (following first essay)
• dt king, Ladybug Labs (during second essay)
• Scarlatti Tilt, The Insects Party (following second essay)
• Sound effects courtesy of the FreeSound Project:
  • scream

Other links:

• Open Culture blog