Science History Podcast
1) Episode 93. Attacks on University Research: Claudia Polsky
The year 2025 has seen the most aggressive moves ever by the US executive branch against scientific research as the Trump Administration has gutted federal science and regulatory agencies and cancelle...Show More
2) Episode 92. ATSDR: Jaimi Dowdell
In Episode 62, I interviewed two Reuters journalists about how industry and government in the United States use conservation easements to avoid rigorous cleanup of contaminated sites. Today, one of th...Show More
3) Episode 91. Political Bias: Bill von Hippel
In prior episodes, we examined political interference and bias in science in a few contexts, including episode 3 on the history of U.S. congressional attacks on science, episode 57 on types of bias, e...Show More
4) Episode 90. Physicists as Biologists: William Lanouette
In prior episodes, I have interviewed many people about the history of physics and physics-adjacent topics such as nuclear disarmament. Many of the physicists we have discussed also made forays into b...Show More
5) Episode 89. Göttingen Physics: Tim Salditt, Kurt Schönhammer, & Sarah Köster
Prior to the rise of Nazism, the University of Göttingen hosted most of the top physicists in the world, either as resident or visiting scientists. With us to discuss the history of physics in Götting...Show More
6) Episode 88. Polymerase Chain Reaction: Henry Erlich
The history of science is punctuated by moments of technological innovation that produce a paradigm shift and a subsequent flurry of discovery. A recent technological innovation that generated diverse...Show More
7) Episode 87. Meitner's Atom: Marissa Moss
Lise Meitner was the most important female physicist of the 20th century. She made fundamental discoveries on the atom, including, most famously, being the first to discover the idea of fission. This ...Show More
8) Episode 86. Quantum Mechanics: Jim Baggott
Humanity's understanding of the universe radically altered with the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. The theory of quantum mechanics describes how nature behaves at or below the ...Show More
9) Episode 85. SWOPSI: Joel Primack & Robert Jaffe
Societal problems big and small typically have a scientific element, often in a central way, yet most scientists are not directly involved in policy. My guests sought to change that in 1969 when they ...Show More
10) Episode 84. The Academy: Bret Stephens
Institutions of higher education, especially in the United States, have received a great deal of attention over the past two generations regarding their ideological march to the left, and the impacts,...Show More