Added 7.26.18. To preserve big game animals being hunted to extinction, legendary explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley embarked time and again on perilous expeditions in the wilds of Africa. This champion of conservation created the African Hall at the New York Museum of Natural History and cavorted with outsize personalities of the times, such as Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum. His story is told by biographer Jay Kirk in “Kingdom Under Glass.” Milt in 2010 interviews Kirk about the life and times of Akeley. Publisher’s Weekly called Greene’s book, “a rollicking biography” and “epic adventure…a beguiling novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the call of the wild.”

Added 6.5.18. The practice of psychiatry in recent decades has grown in sophistication and diagnostic capabilities. Milt in this 2010 probe discusses the state of modern psychiatry with three prominent researcher-practitioners. They are: Mani Pavuluri, Founding Director of the Pediatric Mood Disorders Program, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine; Will Cronenwett, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavorial Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University; and Murali Rao, Department Chair, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Loyola University Medicial Center. They delve into a range of topics, including: the hard-wiring of the human brain; how advances in biomedical technology and analysis have fostered earlier detection and treatment of psychiatric pathologies; and the ongoing tension between  the need for involuntary treatment and the individual’s right to autonomy. Discussants also briefly wrestle with whether, in fact, the world’s vast proportion of psychiatrists are based in the United States, and what that might mean.

Added 5.29.18. Milt talks in 2010 with noted scholar Richard Rhodes, who had just authored his fourth major book on nuclear weapons. It was titled, “The Twilight Of The Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, And The Prospects For A World Without Nuclear Weapons.” Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for his 1986 book, “The Making of the Bomb.” It covered the discovery of nuclear fission in the 1930s, the Manhattan Project, and the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

Added 5.22.18. In this 2012 episode, Milt talks with two experts about man’s similarities and differences with primates. Is our own free will to some extent an illusion, because we’re hard wired to act in certain ways in certain situations? Discussants probe the tension between our biological programming and our higher nature, which stems from a more acute consciousness, ethics and the physical ability to produce nuanced linguistic expression. Guests are Paul Reber, Northwestern University psychologist and head there of the Brain, Behavior and Cognition program; and Dario Maestripieri, author of “Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation Of The Evolution And Economics Of Human Relationships.”

Added 5.8.18. Milt in 2010 talked with author Bart Madden about what Madden calls the “invisible graveyard” of patients who “are dying needlessly because they are denied timely access to the most innovative new drugs.” Drawing from his book, “Free To Choose Medicine” Madden argues that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bears considerable responsibility for the problem. Offering additional perspectives are two other guests. They are Jeffrey M. Senger, a former Acting Chief Counsel at the FDA and partner at the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley and Austin; and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Sam Peltzman.