LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This sixth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Dr Heather Love, Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Heather discusses her work on cybernetics in the works of Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, and Virginia Woolf, as well as modernism and diagnosis. She introduces us to her new...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This fifth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Dr John Holmes, Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham. John discusses how poetry helps us to negotiate the legacies of Darwin’s discoveries and the Pre-Raphaelites’ shaping of the culture of Victorian science (and vice versa). He...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This fourth episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with Professor Simon John James (@ProfSJJames) of Durham University. A well-established literary critic of the nineteenth-century novel, Simon discusses his long-standing interests in the relationship between literature and science: its historical origins and H. G. Wells’s...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This third episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with education researcher and recent DPhil graduate Dr Ashmita Randhawa (@Rand_Ash). Through a discussion of Ashmita’s thesis on studio schools, we consider educational policy, STEM and the language of aspiration, and the long history of STEM shortages. At the end of the...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This second episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with modern linguist, early modernist and Francophile Dr Jennifer Oliver (@jenhelenoliver) discussing shipwrecks and technological developments. Materials discussed: Gordon Lightfoot, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI) Gerard...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: This first episode of the new, third series of LitSciPod sees the co-hosts reflecting on what the pandemic has taught us about the indivisible connection between the humanities and the sciences. We cover vaccine communications and vaccine hesitancy, Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s reflections on scientific truth, and books which have got us...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. About the episode: The sixth episode of the second series of LitSciPod is all about analogy and language shared between literature (especially poetry), science, and science writing. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Greg Tate (@drgregorytate), Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of St Andrews. Greg shares his research on matter,...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Robert C. Engen (@RobertEngen), Assistant Professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College. Robert discusses his interdisciplinary research on parallels between the military responses to the 1918 pandemic and the current COVID-19 pandemic, public health and global conflict, a project...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Kari Nixon (@HalfSickShadows). At the end of the episode, you can hear Kari read the poem ‘Inskripsjoner/Inscriptions’ bilingually in Norweigian and English by Tarjei Vesaas, trans. by Kenneth G. Chapman. Episode resources: Introduction: Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World...

Teaser for Episode 4.

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Emilie Taylor-Pirie (@DrETaylorPirie, née Taylor-Brown), an Early Career Academic specialising in the intersections between literature, science and culture. Millie discusses nineteenth-century responses to malaria and how scientists couched their work in imaginative language; how studying a joint honours in...

Coming soon... Outbreak: A Two Cultures Pinch-Point, feat. Dr Emilie Taylor-Brown

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric). Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Olivia Smith (@OliveFSmith), a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Olivia discusses her work on early modern life writing and biology, exploring the importance of cognition and recognition to the pre-history of scientific research. In a wide-ranging discussion, she...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones. Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Professor Sharon Ruston (@SharonRuston), Chair in Romanticism at Lancaster University’s Department of English and Creative Writing. Sharon is the author of ​Creating Romanticism ​(2013) and​ Shelley and Vitality ​(2005) and co-editor of the forthcoming ​Collected Letters of Sir Humphrey Davy​. Sharon talks about her...

LitSciPod is coming back for Series 2.

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones Laura and Catherine discuss the recent BSLS Winter Symposium on the theme of Extinctions and Rebellions, held at the University of Liverpool. If you weren’t able to make the event, we talk through the panels we attended (and between us we went to all of them!), the impact roundtable and our key takeaways from the day. Episode resources (in order of...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones Laura and Catherine are (re)joined by a special guest: Dr Rachel Crossland, Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Chichester. Rachel takes the B/III/iii challenge while discussing how to talk about discoveries in physics past and present; the difficulties of being asked to know what you don’t yet know; and the relationship betwen the popular press...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Peter Fifield, Lecturer in Modern Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Peter relates how his interest in bodies and their ailments grew out of his work on Samuel Beckett, discussing where his research and teaching intersects with #litsci and the medical humanities. Peter also debates whether Dorothy...

Episode 5: Epigenetics, Race, Activism Or, Who are we and what do we think we’re doing? Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Lara Choksey (@larachoksey), postdoctoral research associate at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter. In addition to discussing #litsci aspects of her research and...

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric) Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Will Abberley (@WillAbberley), Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Sussex. In addition to discussing #litsci aspects of his research and teaching, Will also explores language in scientific writings, biology and the imagination, human effects on the environment, and the importance of...