In this episode, Esmé and Kim discuss Mary Shelley’s 1817 novel Frankenstein, the uncanny valley, irresponsible scientists, and artificial intelligence.

Show Notes

More information, references and transcript at: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/sparkingconnections/episode

Immortality is in the realm of supernatural but this week we determine how much of it is potential science. This week we discuss how ageing can be reversed and what our body does to help keep us from ageing for as long as possible. We also discuss a disease that gives your cells immortality but it isn't necessarily a good thing... It's a pretty common disease too.

Transcript and full show notes on the website: pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com

Show Notes

Chang, H. M., Shirron, P. and Baudouy, B. (2020) Cryogenics. Available at: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/cryogenics(Accessed: 24 July 2020).

Crew, B. (2018) World’s First Head Transplant Volunteer Could Experience Something ‘Worse Than Death’, ScienceAlert. Available at: https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-head-transplant-volunteer-could-experience-something-worse-than-death(Accessed: 24 July 2020).

Heinrich (no date) Tracking cancer’s immortality factor, EurekAlert! Available at: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/uom-tci060220.php(Accessed: 24 July 2020).

Hewings-Martin, Y. (2017) How many cells are in the human body? Available at: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318342(Accessed: 24 July 2020).

Kamal, S. et al. (2020) ‘The secrets of telomerase: Retrospective analysis and future prospects’, Life Sciences, 257, p. 118115. doi: 10.1016/j.lfs.2020.118115.

Lytal, C. (2015) USC scientist ponders the possibility of immortality, USC News. Available at: https://news.usc.eduhttps://news.usc.edu/83760/usc-scientist-ponders-the-possibility-of-immortality/(Accessed: 24 July 2020).

Parry, B. (2004) ‘Technologies of immortality: the brain on ice’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. (The Brain in a Vat), 35(2), pp. 391–413. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2004.03.012.

Petralia, R. S., Mattson, M. P. and Yao, P. J. (2014) ‘Aging and longevity in the simplest animals and the quest for immortality’, Ageing Research Reviews, 16, pp. 66–82. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2014.05.003.

Ridout, K. K. et al. (2017) ‘Chapter 18 - Telomeres and Early Life Stress’, in Fink, G. (ed.) Stress: Neuroendocrinology and Neurobiology. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 185–193. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-802175-0.00018-8.

Rubin, L. G. (1997) ‘Cryogenic thermometry: a review of progress since 1982’, Cryogenics, 37(7), pp. 341–356. doi: 10.1016/S0011-2275(97)00009-X.

Vollset, S. E. et al. (2020) ‘Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study’, The Lancet, p. S0140673620306772. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2.

Join Esmé and Kim in a discussion of WF Harvey's short story 'The Lake,' the cultural role of detective fiction, and the subversion of literary tropes, as well as an introduction to structuralist theory.

Show Notes

Here are the words and names Esmé failed to pronounce! Fabula and sjužet, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Elyan Segal. The Sherlock Holmes story referenced was called 'The Creeping Man.'

Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory: Workbook and Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)

Evans, Christine Ann, ‘On the Valuation of Detective Fiction: A Study in the Ethics of Consolation’, Journal of Popular Culture, 28.2 (1994), 159

Haard, Eric de, Narrative and Anti-Narrative Structures in Lev Tolstoj’s Early Works (Rodopi, 1989)

Harvey, W. F., ‘The Lake’, in The Beast With Five Fingers, ed. by David Stuart Davies (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2009)

Knox, Ronald, ‘Introduction’, in The Best Detective Stories of the Year, 1928, ed. by Ronald Knox and H. Harrington (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1929)

Miller, Tyrus, Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between the World Wars (University of California Press, 1999)

Segal, Eyal, ‘Closure in Detective Fiction’, Poetics Today, 31.2 (2010), 153–215 <https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2009-018>

Todorov, Tsvetan, ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction’, in The Poetics of Prose, trans. by R. Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966)

This episode Kim and Esmé talk about the conspiracies surrounding privacy and the internet and about the government having all your personal and GPS information. Just Kidding! This week we discuss how technology is being used to track and understand how some diseases move throughout a population and the benefits of these kinds of technological advances.

Transcript at: pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com

Show Notes

Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). ‘Home’. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/[Accessed: 24/6/2020]

Encyclopedia.com. (2020) ‘Epidemiology, Tracking Diseases with Technology’. World of Microbiology and Immunology. Available at: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/epidemiology-tracking-diseases-technology[Accessed: 24/6/2020]

Hofman A. (2010). ‘New studies, technology, and the progress of epidemiology’. European journal of epidemiology. 25(12). pp 851–854. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-010-9531-8

Mahadeva S. (2020). ‘The Rise of the Robots – Technology in epidemiology and pharmaceutical research’. The Oxford Scientist. Available at: https://oxsci.org/the-rise-of-the-robots-technology-in-epidemiology-and-pharmaceutical-research/[Accessed: 24/6/2020]

National Health Service. (2020). ‘NHS test and trace: how it works’ Coronavirus Guidance, NHS. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-test-and-trace-how-it-works[Accessed: 24/6/2020]

Sherr Ian, Nieva Richard. (2020). "Apple and Google are building coronavirus tracking tech into iOS and Android – The two companies are working together, representing most of the phones used around the world". CNET.

Walko J. (2020) ‘Mobile Phones to Track and Trace Coronavirus’. EE Times. Available at: https://www.eetimes.com/mobile-phones-to-track-and-trace-coronavirus/#[Accessed: 24/6/2020]

World Health Organisation. (2020). ‘Home’. Available at: https://www.who.int/ [Accessed: 24/6/2020]

In this episode, in their discussion of Sonnet 1: The Partial Muse by the Romantic poet Charlotte Smith, Kim and Esmé talk about the relationship between poets and their readers, paratexts, and writing about being really sad.

Show Notes:

Transcript at: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/transcript-episode-9-the-partial-muse

Poem Source: http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/charlotte_smith/poems/4245

Bibliography

Brooks, Stella, ‘The Sonnets of Charlotte Smith’, Critical Survey, 4.1 (1992), 9–21

Dolan, Elizabeth A., ‘British Romantic Melancholia: Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets, medical

discourse and the problem of sensibility’, Journal of European Studies, 33.3-4 (2003) 237-253

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0047244103040416 [accessed 20 March 2018]

Fletcher, Loraine, Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography (Springer, 1998)

Labbe, Jacqueline M., ‘Selling One’s Sorrows: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and the Marketing of Poetry,’ The Wordsworth Circle, 25 (1994), 68-71

Morton, Timothy, ‘John Keats: Romantic Consumerism 3’, Romanticism Spring 2009 UC Davis <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/john-keats-romantic-consumerism-3/id399641699?i=1000411511650> [accessed 30 September 2018]

Roberts, Bethan, ‘Literary Past and Present in Charlotte Smith’s “Elegiac Sonnets”’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 54.3 (2014), 649–74

Smith, Charlotte, ‘Sonnet 1’, in Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. by Duncan Wu, 4th edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 88

Smith, Charlotte, The Poems of Charlotte Smith, ed. By Stuart Curran, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Wu, Duncan, ed., ‘Charlotte Smith (Née Turner) (1749-1806)’, in Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)

Show Notes:

*Note* I couldn’t find the specific book we were talking about but there are many books and articles talking about the gender gap in clinical trials and medicine

Unethical Trials: https://www.history.com/news/the-infamous-40-year-tuskegee-study, https://www.history.com/news/birth-control-pill-history-puerto-rico-enovid

References:

"6 Stages of Vaccine Development." Institute of Medicine. 1993. The Children's Vaccine Initiative: Achieving the Vision. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Doi: 10.17226/2224

CDC (2018). ‘Understanding How Vaccines Work’. CDC – Vaccines – Conversations. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-understand-color-office.pdf. [Accessed: 23/5/20]

European Vaccine Initiative. (2020). ‘Stages of Vaccine Development’. UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg. Available at: http://www.euvaccine.eu/vaccines-diseases/vaccines/stages-development[Accessed: 23/5/20]

Science Direct Database Entry: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/vaccine-development

Le TT, Andreadakis z, Kumar A, Roman RG, Tollefsen S, Saville M, Mayhew S. (2020). ‘The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape’. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 19. pp 305-306. Doi: 10.1038/d41573-020-00073-5

World Health Organisation. (2020). ‘Rabies’. International Travel and Health. Available at: https://www.who.int/ith/vaccines/rabies/en/[Accessed: 23/5/20]

Revenge! Murder! Incest! In episode 7 of Sparking Connections, Esmé and Kim discuss the Caroline revenge tragedy 'Tis Pity She's A Whore,' by John Ford.

Show Notes:

For more information and Transcripts please visit: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com

Boehrer, Bruce, ‘“Nice Philosophy”: ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and the Two Books of God’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 24.2 (1984), 355–71 <https://doi.org/10.2307/450533>

Bowers, Rick, ‘John Ford and the Sleep of Death’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 28.4 (1986), 353–87

Champion, Larry S., ‘Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and the Jacobean Tragic Perspective’, PMLA, 90.1 (1975), 78–87 <https://doi.org/10.2307/461350>

Clerico, Terri, ‘The Politics of Blood: John Ford’s “ 'Tis Pity She’s a Whore”’, English Literary Renaissance, 22.3 (1992), 405–34

Cooper, Farah Karim, and Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015)

Diehl, Huston, ‘Inversion, Parody, and Irony: The Visual Rhetoric of Renaissance English Tragedy’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 22.2 (1982), 197–209 <https://doi.org/10.2307/450335>

Forker, Charles R., ‘“A Little More Than Kin, and Less Than Kind”: Incest, Intimacy, Narcissism, and Identity in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama’, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 4 (1989), 13–51

Gleason, John B., ‘The Dutch Humanist Origins of The De Witt Drawing of the Swan Theatre’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 32.3 (1981), 324–38 <https://doi.org/10.2307/2870249>

Hopkins, Lisa, ‘Speaking Sweat: Emblems in the Plays of John Ford’, Comparative Drama, 29.1 (1995), 133–46

Hoy, Cyrus, ‘“Ignorance in Knowledge”: Marlowe’s Faustus and Ford’s Giovanni’, Modern Philology, 57.3 (1960), 145–54

Jephson, Valerie L., and Bruce Boehrer, ‘Mythologizing the Middle Class: “'Tis Pity She’s a Whore” and the Urban Bourgeoisie’, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 18.3 (1994), 5–28

Kaufmann, R. J., ‘FORD’S TRAGIC PERSPECTIVE’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 1.4 (1960), 522–37

Kistner, Arthur L., and M. K. Kistner, ‘The Dramatic Functions of Love in the Tragedies of John Ford’, Studies in Philology, 70.1 (1973), 62–76

Martin, Matthew R., ‘The Raw and the Cooked in Ford’s “ 'Tis Pity She’s a Whore”’, Early Theatre, 15.2 (2012), 131–46

Maus, Katharine Eisaman, ‘Horns of Dilemma: Jealousy, Gender, and Spectatorship in English Renaissance Drama’, ELH, 54.3 (1987), 561–83 <https://doi.org/10.2307/2873221>

Mikesell, Margaret, ‘The Formative Power of Marriage in Stuart Tragedy’, Modern Language Studies, 12.1 (1982), 36–44 <https://doi.org/10.2307/3194599>

Sasayama, Takashi, ‘The Decadence of John Fordʹs Tragedies’, in English Criticism in Japan: Essays by Younger Japanese Scholars on English and American Literature, ed. by EARL ROY MINER (Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 101–14 <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt130hkf2.12>

Sensabaugh, G. F., ‘John Ford and Platonic Love in the Court’, Studies in Philology, 36.2 (1939), 206–26

Silverstone, Catherine, ‘Sexing Death: Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s “ 'Tis Pity She’s a Whore”’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 29.4 (2011), 559–72

Smith, Emma, and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr, The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Kim talks to Esmé about eradication of diseases and how it’s not as easy as you think to carry out. We also talk about vaccination and the lack of other possible ways to eradicate a disease. Finally, listen out for mentions of Smallpox, Rinderpest, Polio and Measles and how they have been eradicated or why they haven’t been removed yet.

Show Notes:

3 Blue 1 Brown. (2020). ‘Simulating an Epidemic’. Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs&feature=youtu.be. [Accessed: 25/4/2020]

CDC. (2020). ‘History of Smallpox’, Smallpox. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html.[Accessed: 25/4/2020]

Roser M, Ochmann S, Behrens H, Ritchie H, Dadonaite B. (2020). "Eradication of Diseases". Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/eradication-of-diseases.[Accessed: 25/4/2020]

U.S Department of Health and Human Services. (2020). ‘Vaccine Types’. Vaccines.gov. Available at: https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/types. [Accessed: 25/4/2020]

Esmé and Kim discuss the legends of Merlin and Arthur in the context of Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. They talk about teenage Merlin, the context of the name Ambrosius and how these legends are rooted in the same fictional text.

View the Transcript: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/crystal-cave

Show Notes:

*Correction* Esmé repeatedly says "Aurelius Ambrosius" for the historial general when they actually mean "Ambrosius Aurelianus."

Full Show Notes on pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/sparkingconnections/episode-5-the-crystal-cave

This week to take our minds off of the Covid-19 Lock down in the UK, Kim talks to Esmé about some odd science stories that she found. Join them in discussing the  common ancestor of all animals, laughing at Narwhal tusks and having an existential crisis when realising how large the universe is.

*Correction* When Kim talks about the immediate planets to our sun she means Solar System not Galaxy

Show Notes:

Find the transcript at: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/episode-4-4-science-stories

Story 1 – Worms: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200323152108.htm

Story 2 - Narwhals: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317215624.htm

Story 3 – Bone Circles: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200316204633.htm

Story 4 – ‘Hubble Bubble’: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200320192753.htm

For more information visit: https://pleaseholdfor.squarespace.com/