Hold That Thought

As a follow-up to last week's episode with Luis Salas on the ancient history of medicine and anatomy, we're reaching into the archives to share the story of story of one museum, La Specola, and its infamous 18th century exhibit of gruesome wax anatomical models. Our guide is Rebecca Messbarger, a professor of Italian and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and director of the Medical Humanities minor at Washington University in St. Louis. In this episode from 2014, Messbarger explains how La Specola and its wax inhabitants helped set the course for a new Enlightenment era, and how one figure, the Venus, became central to this new regime of the human body.

What can an ancient debate about an elephant tell us about the history of medicine? To find out, step into the life and times of Galen of Pergamum. Though his name is not commonly recognized today, Galen's writings influenced medical theory and practice for centuries. Luis Salas studies Greek and Roman medicine and philosophy, in particular the works of Galen. Here, Salas shares a fascinating and revealing story about Galen, his rivals, and the heart of an elephant.

For a while now, David Schuman, a fiction writer and the director of the Creative Writing MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis, has been interested in--what he calls--"the Void." The Void can also be thought of as the ineffable quality of art, the thing too great to be expressed in words, or as a musical score, or even with paint or clay, but that is felt nonetheless. Call it what you will, David wrestles with the unnamable and calls upon other writers and artists who have shared his fascination with the Void.

For some artists, shame motivates them write the next page. Others become paralyzed by it. Today, Stefan Merrill Block, the author of The Story of Forgetting, shares his earliest encounter with artistic shame. He also gives his advice on how to overcome and use shame to help the creative process.

Today, we consider the memoir. Kathleen Finneran, a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about her memoir "The Tender Land: A Family Love Story," which focuses on her family and how their lives were altered by the suicide of her younger brother. She considers how writing the book affected her grieving process and chronicles her family's surprising reaction to the book. This interview was first released in the summer of 2014 as "Family Histories."

Writing is hard. Sometimes when writing fiction, the narrative's momentum sputters to a stop. Charles Baxter, a fiction writer and essayist, shares six quick and dirty plot devices to increase the sense of urgency and keep a story moving forward before talking about the narratives he returns to in his own work.

"Essay," as a verb, means to attempt or try, and comes from "assay" which is to examine something in order to determine its nature. And for essayist Dinty Moore, this is what nonfiction is all about. Having written several books on life and writing, he discusses the role of voice and persona in nonfiction, the slipperiness of memory, and the true vocation of the essay-writer.

How do you make a poem? Renown poet Carl Phillips finds inspiration for his work in even the every day moments of his life. In this re-release of a 2013 interview, Phillips shares his writing process, discusses his (then) latest poetry collection "Silverchest," and imparts his personal antidote to poetry.

We've all been there: staring at the ceiling at 2:43 a.m., unable to fall asleep while the world slumbers around us. How do our internal clocks stay synced to our environment? What exactly do circadian rhythms control? Might future research provide relief for late-night workers or the jet-lagged? Erik Herzog, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, explains how the brain's "master clock" works and how genetics can influence our daily biological rhythms. A version of this podcast was first released in 2013. To learn about Erik Herzog's ongoing efforts to support and encourage younger neuroscientists, check out our recent episode How to Create a Neuroscience Pipeline.

Most elementary-school students have never met a scientist. Claire Weichselbaum and Brian Lananna, graduate students in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis, want to change that. Last year, the team cofounded Brain Discovery, an outreach program that brings neuroscience into classrooms. Over the course of the 6-week program, kids get to know a "scientist buddy" and learn about the brain through fun experiments and activities. So far, volunteers with Brain Discovery have already reached some 250 students and spent over 1,500 hours in classrooms around St. Louis.

Twice a year, the St. Louis Science Center hosts a carnival - but you won't find a carousel or a performer doing magic tricks. Instead, at the Amazing Brain Carnival, kids of all ages get to learn about the real-life magic happening inside their own bodies. Graduate students Dov Lerman-Sinkoff and Tyler Schlichenmeyer walk us through the carnival and share why, as neuroscience researchers, they want to reach out and inspire more people to get excited about the brain.

Back when his kids were in elementary school, biology professor Erik Herzog remembers taking a human brain into their classroom and watching the kids' faces light up with curiosity. Yet somewhere along the way, he knew, many kids get discouraged from pursuing careers in science - and this can be especially true for students from underrepresented backgrounds. Herzog, a neuroscientist who studies circadian rhythms, now manages many efforts across Washington University to support and encourage younger neuroscience researchers, from elementary school all the way through doctoral programs. Here he shares some of the outreach efforts across campus and the inspiration behind them, including the recently launched St. Louis Neuroscience Pipeline.

What can a single sheet of paper reveal about the complex life of an artistic genius like Michelangelo Buonarroti? William Wallace, an art historian and author of Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and his Times, reveals how documents - including one extremely rare document in Washington University's own library - provide a window into Michelangelo's life and art.

Four hundred years after the death of William Shakespeare, theater enthusiasts around the world are celebrating the famous playwright's legacy. To learn more about Shakespeare, his works, and the times in which he lived, we invite you to tune in to our 2015 series Summer with the Bard. In the following episode from that series, Robert Wiltenburg takes us through Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and romances to reveal how a quintessential Shakespearean theme - mercy - evolves in each genre, highlighting great triumphs and disasters along the way.

Most people don't normally associate comic books and superheroes with religion. However, Roshan Abraham, a comics studies scholar and assistant professor of religious studies and classics at Washington University in St. Louis, reveals how religion is actually in the DNA of comics. He traces the many ways religion influences, shapes, and appears in comics, and how scholars in both religious and comics studies face very similar problems.