Max Edelson talk about the British Board of Trade’s ambitious project to explore and survey British America from the St Lawrence River to the islands of the Caribbean. Edelson is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. He's the author of The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence.

Anthropologist Lisa Messeri talks about planetary scientists and the way they use data to bring these places to life. Messeri is the author of Placing Out Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds.

Michael Benson talks about the making of 2001, a movie inspired by the collaboration of American director Stanley Kubrick and the British futurist Arthur C. Clark. Benson is the author of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece.

Jason Smith discusses the U.S. Navy’s role in exploring and charting the ocean world. Smith is an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University. He’s the author of To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire.  

Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Willy Ley, and the NASA rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Newell is an assistant professor of religion and science at the University of Miami. She’s the author of Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier.

Bill Rankin talks about the changes brought about by GPS and other mapping technologies in the twentieth century. Rankin is the author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century.

Laura Waterman talks about her novel, Starvation Shore, which relies upon memoirs, letters, and diaries to reconstruct the life of the Greely Party as it attempted to survive impossible conditions. Waterman is a climber, conservationist, and author who has written many books with her husband Guy Waterman about mountain history, climbing and environmental ethics. Her memoir Losing the Garden tells the story of her marriage to Guy and his decision nineteen years ago to end his life on the summit of Mt Lafayette.

Andrea Pitzer talks about her book One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, one of the Smithsonian’s Ten Best History Books for 2017.