Jun 11, 2025
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, episode 65 on ideology and science, and episode 84 on the academy's ideological march to the left and antisemitism on...
May 12, 2025
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 biology. Today I explore this transition of physicists working in biology with William Lanouette. Bill is a writer and...
Apr 10, 2025
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 Göttingen are Tim Salditt, Kurt Schönhammer, and Sarah Köster. In this conversation over tea at the University...
Mar 10, 2025
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 discoveries, ranging from a profound shift in our understanding of the origin of humanity to a seismic change in the...
Feb 10, 2025
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 she did as she puzzled over experimental results generated by her colleague Otto Hahn. Hahn, but not Meitner, received...