Steve and Tim talk with Professor Rob Beck at the University of Michigan. Rob and Steve teach a joint course combining MSE with Archaeology & Anthropology to teach materials engineering students about the humanities and to teach humanities students about engineering. The course is called "Making Things: Three Million Years of Materials and Culture". It is based on work that Kevin Jones (see podcast episode S1E8) did in his Impact of Materials on Society project. This version was reworked with Archaeology instead of the Sociology. We discuss all aspects of the course, including many tangents into the wild world of materials history and culture!

You can find our more about Rob here:
https://lsa.umich.edu/anthro/people/faculty/archaeological-faculty/rabeck.html

The article about Rob's work in Cahokia that he talks about at the end of the podcast can be found here (highly recommended reading):
https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/lsa-magazine/lsa-magazine-archive/spring-2025/notes-from-underground.html

Rob is also Curator of the UM Museum of Anthropological Archaeology: https://lsa.umich.edu/ummaa

You can find a video where Rob and Steve talk about the course for a virtual talk they presented on the meaning of social learning here:
https://youtu.be/osBdpU5VA_s

A video introducing the course from a few years ago can be found here:
https://youtu.be/e82iosMorBo

The YouTube video can be found here:
https://youtu.be/nxeVc67cLkk

Our YouTube channel can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/@Undercooled.Materials

This episode is sponsored by the TMS Foundation and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).