HPSUniMelb.org
75 episodes listed below
PRESS PLAY
Leading scholars in History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (HPS) introduce contemporary topics for a general audience. Developed by graduate students from the HPS program at the University of Melbourne. Lead Host: Thomas Spiteri (2025-2026).Season 6 is coming soon! More information on the podcast can be found at hpsunimelb.org
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It makes the institutions behind scientific knowledge visible, connecting disciplinary history with questions of trust, work, gender, and public policy.
The HPS Podcast follows scholars into the machinery of science: how disciplines form, how institutions direct attention, and how social values shape what becomes accepted knowledge.
The childcare subsidy has a philosophy problem; so does your office's diversity pitch.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Ethnography follows science into the places where it is made and negotiated.
Nicole C. Nelson makes a clear case for ethnography as a way to understand science from the inside, and the discussion keeps returning to where scientific life actually happens.
A careful look at what it means to turn human qualities into numbers, and what that does to policy.
It takes on a familiar question with unusual care: what it means to measure in the social and human sciences, and why that job is harder than it first appears.
A measured case for fresh dialogue between scientists and historians.
A conversation about the relationship between practicing scientists and the history of science opens into a wider question: how disciplines defend their methods and decide what counts as evidence.
A measured handover that treats the transition as part of the show's intellectual life.
The episode treats a handover as part of the show's work, not just a formal goodbye. Thomas Pateri, the new host, talks with Samara Greenwood about the HBS podcast's place in bringing history and philosophy of science into wider public conversation, then reflects on what the…
A careful case for teaching science with its history, philosophy, and wider context intact.
Holden Thorpe argues that science grows weaker when it is treated only as technique and not also as history and philosophy. The point lands most clearly where the discussion links that broader teaching to public trust, the steady revision of scientific knowledge, and the way…
Science communication is treated as essential work, adapted for different audiences and tied to real public impact.
Jen Martin's conversation treats science communication as part of the work, not a bonus afterward. It moves from the basic case for making research legible to the more practical question of how the message shifts for different audiences, with Martin keeping the emphasis on…
A clear, measured look at how science earns trust, and why face-to-face contact still matters.
Stephen Shapin returns to the questions that have long shaped his work: how facts get made, and how credibility gets earned. The episode stays with his path into the history and sociology of science, but it does not leave the larger issue behind.
A policy focused conversation about whether fathers have real choices in how care and paid work are divided.
Working Fathers treats fathers' freedom as a policy question, asking how care and paid work are split and what government and organisational policy can do about it.
Health, work, and agency under pressure.
Science fiction thinking for a platform-shaped world
The HPS Podcast’s S4 Ep 12 is a conference roundup on “philosophy of science in practice,” built around five SPSP24 guests and host Samara Greenwood’s final episode as coordinator.
Rachel Brown, a philosopher of biology at the Australian National University and director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences, talks with Samara Greenwood at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Melbourne.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy discusses Father Time, A Natural History of Men and Babies, with Samara Greenwood on The HPS Podcast.
Edouard Machery traces his route from a Sorbonne PhD in France to the University of Pittsburgh’s History and Philosophy of Science Department, where he now directs the Center for Philosophy of Science.
Philip Kitcher looks back on a career that spans philosophy of mathematics, biology, and scientific explanation, as well as democracy, ethics, and the pragmatist tradition.
Simon Schaffer traces his path from Cambridge natural sciences in the early 1970s to a PhD on Isaac Newton, then to Imperial College, where he taught history of science to science and engineering students.
Hans-Jörg Reinberger, Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, explains how his path from philosophy to 15 years in molecular biology shaped his ideas about experimental systems.
Samara Greenwood opens with a brief note about the podcast's Blue Sky starter pack.
The HBS Podcast season four opener, “Sam and Carmelina on ‘Studying Humanities and Science,’” frames the series around history, philosophy, and sociology of science while introducing Samara Greenwood and Carmelina's roles in the show.
This episode features Miriam Solomon discussing how stigma has fundamentally shaped the development of psychiatry, influencing diagnostic categories and the definition of psychiatric disorders.
Historian Surekha Davies discusses her new book 'Humans: A Monstrous History,' exploring how ideas about monsters from antiquity to the present have defined what it means to be human.
Holden Thorpe joins Sam and Carmelina after publishing a Science editorial on teaching philosophy of science.
Working Fathers closes the series by looking ahead.
This episode explores the pressures on fathers to conform to traditional masculine roles, featuring insights from researchers and personal stories.
The podcast welcomes back Cordelia Fine to talk about her book *Patriarchy Inc.* and the arguments behind it.
The conversation looks at measurement in the human sciences, especially intelligence, depression, and wellbeing.
Samara Greenwood talks with Naomi Oreskes about ignorance as something worth studying on its own terms.
Lydia Padden joins the HPS podcast to discuss HOPOS.
Stephen Shapin joins the HBS Podcast for a wide ranging conversation about science, history, and social studies.
Thomas Pateri opens the new season by introducing himself as the HBS Podcast's new host and setting up the episode as a handover.
Nicole C.
Heather Douglas joins the HBS podcast to look at the older social contract for science.
Fiona Fidler traces her move from psychology into history and philosophy of science after seeing cherry-picking, p-hacking, and weak statistical power in her own 1994 research.
Darrin Durant uses Brian Wynne’s Cumbria sheep farmers study, Stephen Epstein’s AIDS activists, and Arneman and Kleinman’s bees case to show how expertise works in policy conflict.
Samara Greenwood speaks with Hasok Chang, Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, about epistemic iteration and the argument in Inventing Temperature.
Kristian Camilleri, a Senior Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science program at the University of Melbourne, discusses why science may be better understood as diverse practices rather than one unified method.
Erica Malung, Professor of History at Princeton University, explains why she coined “colloquial science” in relation to her 2019 book Creatures of Cain and the Cold War debates over human nature in the United States.
This episode examines how tax policies, family payments, parental leave, and flexible work arrangements constrain fathers' choices and reinforce traditional gender roles.
Simon Schaefer discusses how Leviathan and the Air-Pump emerged from a 1980 Bath conference where historians of science met sociologists, and how his collaboration with Stephen Chapin grew through letters, typed pages, and visits between London and Edinburgh.
Samara Greenwood opens by setting up a long-running tension between practicing scientists and historians of science.