The HPS Podcast

22/07/2025

You may have noticed that The HPS Podcast Season 5 is back!

Join new lead host, Thomas Spiteri, for a special episode w/ Samara Greenwood, where they reflect on the podcast, iHPS, & consider the roads ahead.

Listen now on all good podcast platforms!

We can't wait to share an amazing line-up of guests with you this season!

Episodes out weekly.

04/12/2024

Final Episode of Season 4 is out now!

Featuring not 1, not 2, but 5(!) fab guests discussing 'Philosophy of Science in Practice: The Conference'

With
Julia Bursten
Aja Watkins
Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam
Caleb Hazelwood
Joseph Rouse

And
Joshua Eisenthal
Samara Greenwood

Today we have not one, not two, but five fabulous guests who all presented at this year’s conference for the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, or SPSP24 for short. Many philosophers of science we have featured on the podcast, inc...

20/11/2024

"These conversations are the focus of fierce debate, not because scientists lack authority, but because these are the intellectual battles worth fighting"

Today's guest on the podcast is one of our favourite historians of science, .milam, talking about the importance of scientific discussions that occur outside the technical literature - a domain she terms Colloquial Science.

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Find it here: https://lnkd.in/emwayeeR

14/11/2024

"We need to get [scientists] to realise that history and philosophy of science has much to contribute to science itself"

"Just because we made these spectacular vaccines, there's history and philosophy of science behind why not everybody got one.. there's also a lot of history and philosophy of science behind how COVID impacted people generally. A lot of those things.. science couldn't solve on its own."

Thanks so much to Editor-in-Chief of Science, Holden Thorp, for such a generous interview in which he calls for increased HPS teaching across high school and tertiary science curricula

Check the ep out on the pod today!

https://thehpspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2180146/episodes/16063938-s4-ep-9-holden-thorp-on-teach-history-and-philosophy-of-science

08/11/2024

“You can have great understandings of how people are supposed to make knowledge that do not work in practice"

S4 Ep8 Nicole C. Nelson talks to to Carmelina Contarino about Ethnographies of Science

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Listen here now and follow The HPS Podcast on your favourite podcast streaming service.

Today, Carmelina is joined by Dr. Nicole C. Nelson, Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nicole is an ethnographer of science and a familiar face to many within both Sc...

30/10/2024

"In response to that article I was getting hate mail, I was getting attacked. I thought, 'these people have a script.'"

This weeks' special guest on the podcast is acclaimed science historian Prof Naomi Oreskes discussing her public facing work on the social construction of ignorance and the role of historians in speaking out on difficult topics.

Naomi was a delight to talk to! An episode not to be missed.

https://thehpspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2180146/episodes/16006705-s4-ep-7-naomi-oreskes-on-writing-on-ignorance

27/10/2024

Guess who our next guest will be...??!!

Recently Samara sat down for a wonderful conversation with the always amazing Naomi Oreskes on her work in public-facing history of science

A very exciting episode dropping this Thursday!

25/10/2024

"Science isn't finished until it's communicated"

This week acclaimed leader Associate Prof Jen Martin shows us that communicating science in inclusive and non-elitist ways is not an ‘optional extra’ but a fundamental part of the research process



https://thehpspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2180146/episodes/15974883-s4-ep-6-jen-martin-on-communicating-science

16/10/2024

"The insight behind experimental philosophy is a need to broaden the tools we use to answer philosophical questions"

Today on The HPS Pod, the fabulous Distinguished Prof Edouard Machery discussing exciting developments in the x-phi movement

https://thehpspodcast.buzzsprout.com/2180146/episodes/15926618-s4-ep-5-edouard-machery-on-experimental-philosophy

09/10/2024

“We often find ourselves judging the merit of rules, or laws, or claims, regardless of whether we’re an expert and regardless of whether we are or are not going to comply with it"

S4 E4 Dr Darrin Durant talks to Carmelina Contarino about Expertise
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Today we are joined by Dr Darrin Durant a Senior Lecturer in HPS at the University of Melbourne specialising in Science and Technology studies. Darrin's research covers two seemingly distinct areas: nuclear energy and expertise. Yet nuclear energy...

02/10/2024

Applications are now open for our visiting fellow and post doctorate positions in AY 2025-26.

Find more information and links to apply below.

Visiting Fellows: https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/programs/visiting-fellows/program-overview/

Postdocs: https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/programs/postdoc-fellowships/program-overview/

25/09/2024

It's here! In this episode we talk with the amazing Simon Schaffer about the classic HPS Book 'Leviathan and the Air-Pump'

The interview was so good, we have had to break it into 2 parts. Part one out today, part two next week. Come listen to a master communicator at work.

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This episode is the first of two in which the celebrated Professor of History of Science, Simon Schaffer, discusses the famous HPS publication, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, which Simon co-wrote with another ...