Modern Notion

On today’s show Dr. Philip Zimbardo joins us to talk about his famous Stanford Prison Experiment from 1971. Zimbardo, a psychologist, designed an experiment in which 24 college-aged men lived in a prison simulation for two weeks. Twelve played the role of guard, while the other 12 were the prisoners. Zimbardo planned to observe how…

Retired Lt. Col. Dan Hampton joins us on today’s podcast to talk about his new book, The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions of the Vietnam War (William Morrow, June 2015). Wild Weasels are known for their deadly air missions, and…

On today’s Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Helen Scales, author of Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells (Bloomsbury, July 2015). A marine biologist, Scales decided to explore the science of shells (they’re made from calcium carbonate) and their symbolism throughout human history. Music this hour: “Soldiertype (militarised)” by Ketsa,…

On today’s show, we’re talking with Blake J. Harris, author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation (Dey Street Books, June 2015). Harris explores the tense competition between Sega and Nintendo, two Japanese video game companies, in the early 1990s. Nintendo dominated the market so thoroughly in 1990 that no…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Brian Murphy, author of 81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska’s Frozen Wilderness (Da Capo Press, June 2015). Leon Crane was a test pilot in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, stationed at Ladd…

Author Janice Nimura joins us on today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily to talk about her latest book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back (W. W. Norton & Co., May 2015). In the 1870s, Japan was in the midst of the Meiji Era—a time of great change, when the…

When it comes to octopus adventures, Sy Montgomery has seen it all! She joins us today on Modern Notion Daily to talk about her new book, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Explanation into the Wonder of Consciousness (Atria Books, May 2015). Montgomery talks about the proper plural of “octopus” (hint: it’s not “octopi”)…

Author and palliative care physician David Casarett joins us on today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily to discuss his new book, Stoned: A Doctor’s Case for Medical Marijuana (Current, July 2015). When a patient with advanced cancer asked Casarett about the effects of medical marijuana (positive or negative), he realized that he actually didn’t know…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Mark Haskell Smith, author of Naked at Lunch: A Reluctant Nudist’s Adventures in the Clothing-Optional World (Grove Press, June 2015). Haskell Smith decided to take on the role of gonzo journalist and find what nudism was all about, from the inside. His research took him…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Kristen Green, author of Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle (Harper, June 2015). Green grew up in Farmville, Virginia, where the school district refused to desegregate for five years after they were ordered to…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, historian Emily Bingham joins us to talk about her new book chronicling the life of her great-aunt, Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2015). Henrietta Bingham was a formidable woman who came of age during the 1920s. Born in Louisville, Kentucky,…

On today’s show, our guest is Alexandra Witze, co-author of Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Covered a Continent in Darkness (Pegasus, January 2015), with her husband Jeff Kanipe. The book traces the history of the 1783 eruption of the Laki volcano on Iceland. Beyond its immediate effects on Iceland…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, we’re talking with Dan Eatherley, author of Bushmaster: Raymond Ditmars and the Hunt for the World’s Largest Viper (Arcade Publishing, June 2015). When he was working on various nature films and TV shows, Eatherley discovered Raymond Ditmars, an amateur herpetologist who went on to work for the Bronx…

On this hour of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Wendell Wallach, an ethicist, consultant, and scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and the author of A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control (Basic Books, June 2015). Wallach thinks that technology, if it goes unchecked, could pose serious…

This hour we’re talking with Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, author of the biography Jonas Salk: A Life (Oxford University Press, May 2015). Salk is best known for creating the polio vaccine that paved the way to eradicating the disease in the United States. Jacobs explores the extraordinary story of how Salk ran trials for the vaccine,…

On today’s show our guest is Steve Jones, a renowned British geneticist and author of The Serpent’s Promise: The Bible Interpreted Through Modern Science (Pegasus, paperback June 2015). Jones is an atheist—he even won “Secularist of the Year”—but he thinks the Bible has some historical information to offer us. He doesn’t buy that the Bible…

Today we have a bicycle theme on Modern Notion Daily. Our guest is Tim Moore, who recreated one of the worst bicycle races in history and wrote about it in his new book, Gironimo! The Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy (Pegasus, May 2015). Moore fashioned a bicycle that would resemble the wooden-wheeled vehicles of…

On today’s episode of Modern Notion Daily, our guest is Henry Hemming, author of The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy (Public Affairs, May 2015). Hemming discovered Pyke when he was reading a volume about English eccentrics—and Pyke certainly falls into that category. His crowning achievements include sneaking into and out of Germany during World…

This hour, we examine the experience of having bed bugs with Brooke Borel, author of Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World (University of Chicago Press, April 2015). Borel wanted to know why bed bugs became so prevalent in the last decade, and she found plenty of people to…

On today’s show, Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion: Crimes Committed in the Name of Love and Madness (Pegasus, July 2015), talks about the intersection of law and psychiatry. She studied several trials, between the years 1870 and 1914, to find out how “mind doctors” came to play a significant role in how justice…