Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 2894 Wastewater Treatment.  Today, the unmentionable.

Episode: 2666 Codes, ciphers and Alan Turing.  Today codes, ciphers and Alan Turing.

Episode: 2951 Scurvy, Vitamin C, and the Origins of the Modern Clinical Trial.  Today, we go to sea.

Episode: 2540 Semi-Submersible Ships, or how the USS Cole hitched a ride home.  Today, semi-submersible ships.

Episode: 2537 Vredefort, Chicxulub, Apophis — once and future threats to Earth.  Today, Vredefort and Apophis.

Episode: 2536 The Scapa Flow ship cemetery.  Today, Scapa Flow.

Episode: 2532 Fanny Kemble, technology, and London's circle of radical intellectual women.  Today, another kind of radical.

Episode: 2891 Specifics and Generalities: teaching and the problem of universals.  Today, what exactly is that?

Episode: 2448 Sergei Rachmaninoff visits a hypnotist to remove his writer's block.  Today, a composer unblocked.

Episode: 3288 Yellow-Bellies.  Today we consider "Yellow Bellies".

Episode: 2528 le Systeme international d'units, our real standard of units.  Today, another look at weights and measures.

Episode: 2526 John Montague, Lord Sandwich, and a little-known island chain.  Today, Sandwich's islands.

Episode: 2525 Reflections on protruding land, shipwrecks and lighthouses.  Today, protruding land.

Episode: 2524 Art Arfons' last Hurrah.  Today, a thought about folly and Function.

Episode: 2889 An important step toward solving the twin primes conjecture.  Today, almost twins.

Episode: 2658 Massively Multiplayer Math.  Today, let's talk massively multiplayer mathematics.

Episode: 2724 Let's be pedants — well, insofar as language allows.  Today, let's be pedants.

Episode: 2522 Farnum Thayer Fish, first airplane combat casualty.  Today, first aerial combat casualty.

Episode: 2521 The Stata Center, Caligari's Cabinet, and radical buildings.  Today, radical buildings.

Episode: 2519 James Dewar freezes hydrogen solid and invents the thermos bottle.  Today, the man who froze hydrogen.

Episode #2518:  Annular wings: another idea that seems as though it should work. Will it?  Today, a strange airplane wing.

Episode: 2887 Apple's most famous flop: The Newton.  Today, before there was "i."

Episode: 3216 World War II, the Los Angeles Art Students League, and Japanese American internment.  Today, art and survival.

Episode: 1660 Simplicity, complexity, and Shakespeare (with guest Megan Cole).  Today, a treat.

Episode: 2516 The Atapuerca dig and a missing link: Homo Antecessor.  Today, the Atapuerca dig.

Episode: 2512 Saluda: The worst steamboat explosion, not much worse than all the rest.  the Saluda, the Glenco, Captain Francis Belt, steamboats, riverboats, boiler explosions, safety, accidents, Mormon migration, LDS, …

Episode: 2511 An Early 20th-century crackdown on medical quacks.  Today, quack medicine.

Episode: 2886 Not Just Gadgets: The Science of Engineering Systems.  Today, beyond gadgets.

Episode: 3287 Darwin Goes to Hollywood - Learning Evolution from Movies.  Today, offbeat lessons in evolution.

Episode: 2508 The paradox of asymmetry — in faces, airplanes, and tigers.  Today, dare we look upon asymmetry?

Episode: 2509 Human-Powered Machines — bringing the question of human endurance back to technology.  Today, human and machine endurance.

Episode: 2506 Spanish Moss — not at all the stuff of antebellum decay.  Today, a remarkable stuffing.

Episode: 2504 The most decorated woman in France: Marie Marvingt.  Today, a remarkable woman.

Episode: 2883 A dead salmon points the way to better brain imaging.  Today, outrageous research.

Episode: 2439 Reflections on Hurricane Ike and the effect of satellite technology on the hurricane experience.  Today, picturing monsters.

Episode: 2249 Mrs. Coade's remarkable stones.  Today, architectural historian Margaret Culbertson tells about a woman who made artificial stone.

Episode: 2498 The Ju-87 Stuka, another troubling story of military technology.  Today, a troubled machine.

Episode: 2496 Trilobites: Wondrous window upon the processes of evolution.  Today, the evolution of the trilobite.

Episode: 2494 Inventing the cotton gin: More to it than we thought.  Today, we gin cotton.

Episode: 2492 The Schooner Wyoming, world's largest wooden ship — an example of technology over-reaching.  Today, the largest wooden ship.

Episode: 2879 The Economics of Empty Shipping Containers.  Today, empty boxes.

Episode: 2682 Technical English and the Verbing of Nouns.  Today, we verb a little.

Episode: 2534 History and Epidemic Disease.  Today, medical historian Helen Valier offers us a new look at history and epidemic disease.

Episode: 2489 Before we invent the aeroplane, let's decide how to power it.  Today, we wonder how to power our flying machines.

Episode: 2490 In which footprints, 1.5 and 3.6 million years old, tell their story.  Today, we walk in some very old footsteps.

Episode: 2486 Who remembers the once ubiquitous sectional wooden windmill?  Today, sectional windmills.

Episode: 2484 Ghosts in Omaha: A six-block-long sculpture.  Today, ghosts in Omaha.

Episode: 2878 U-boats in the First World War.  Today, full speed ahead.

Episode: 2531 Reading Vienna - A history through architecture.  Today, we read Vienna.

Episode: 2613 Can we hear shapes?  Today let’s ask: Can we hear shapes?

Episode: 2482 Where does a wise man hide a leaf: Harold Warp's Museum.  Today, where would a wise man hide a leaf?

Episode: 2479 Restigouche River: site of the last naval battle in the French and Indian War.  Today, the last naval battle of The Seven Years War.

Episode: 2477 The Sand Hill Crane, not just another bird.  Today, Sand Hill Cranes.

Episode: 2476 Jesse Ramsden, Instrument maker to King George and to the Enlightenment.  Today, Jesse Ramsden.

Episode: 2875 Today, a profession comes of age.  Pierre Fauchard, Father of Modern Dentistry.

Episode: 2597 Today, let’s see what mathematics tells us about history.  Mathematical models of historical events.

Episode: 2841 Today, we imagine the Big Bangs.  Multiple Big Bangs and Multiple Universes; The Fantastical Multi-Reality of Multiverse

Episode: 2474 Antoine de St. Exupéry, André Gide, and a new vocabulary for a new technology.  Today, Antoine de St. Exupéry.

Episode: 2471 In which Henry Farman and Glenn Curtiss emerge from the pack of pioneer airmen.  Today, aeroplanes in embryo.

Episode: 2470 The design and construction of a spider web.  Today, let's weave a spider web.

Episode: 2468 Fort Independence, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Cask of Amontillado.  Today, a cask of Amontillado in Boston Harbor.

Episode: 2872 The Stimpmeter: Golf's Supremely Simple Maintenance Tool.  Today, low tech in a high-tech game.

Episode: 2579 Music and Mathematics.  Today, UH Math Professor Krešo Josić talks about music and mathematics.

Episode: 2505 Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher's Wild America.  Today, a legendary road trip.

Episode: 3157 Martin Luther King Jr's. remarkable means.  Today, a preacher teaches us about invention.

Episode: 2466 In which renewable energy enters by the back door.  Today, a silent arrival.

Episode: 2465 Victor Lougheed's extraordinary 1909 aeroplane book.  Today, where were the first aeroplanes going?

Episode: 2462 The Mississippi Delta: Rewriting Geography.  Today, geography shifts before our eyes.

Episode: 2870 The Canal du Midi.  Today, coast to coast.

Episode: 3112 Donald Barthelme: Creative Editor.  Today, a sheriff of an editor.

Episode: 2075 Rudolph Ackerman and his amazing chronicles of 19th-century art and technology.  Today, architectural historian Margaret Culbertson …

Episode: 2460 In praise of the City: A fine piece of the natural world.  Today, another look at form and function.

Episode: 2459 St. Anthony Falls, beauty lost, beauty found.  Today, a lost and found story.

Episode: 2457 Isabella Beeton's remarkable book on "household" management.  Today, Beeton's household management.

Episode: 2455 The Fairey Swordfish: An airplane in a timewarp.  Today, the bite of a dinosaur.

Episode: 2628 When traveling into space, how do you know you're there?  Today, astronaut Michael Barratt asks, where exactly is the border of space?

Episode: 3286 The pause, a simple act of kindness.  Today, the pause, a simple act of kindness.

Episode: 2453 Albert Einstein and meandering rivers -- seen from above.  Today, we look down on a river.

Episode: 2451 Guillaume Dufay, still clear as day to us, six centuries later.  Today, Guillaume Dufay.

Episode: 2566 Taking Champagne to the Masses.  Today, we pop the cork.

Episode: 2038 Putting a leap second in an elastic year.  Today, we add a second to our lives.

Episode: 2014 Boiling bubbles and fizzing bubbles: So alike, so different!  Today, bubbles in soda and bubbles in teakettles.

Episode: 2868 Scholasticism: Reason or Revelation?  Today, reason or revelation?

Episode: 2838 The World of Small Dimensions; Nano-Dimensions and Pico-Times.  Today, we explore Small.

Episode: 2499 Frederick Law Olmsted and the Texas Germans.  Today, Texas auf Deutsch.

Episode: 2449 Francis Hopkinson: My Days Have So Wondrous Free and other accomplishments.  Today, America's first song.

Episode: 1563 Looking back at the impact of toys.  Today, we play with toys.

Episode: 2039 In which we experience quiet on the Western Front.  Today, it's quiet on the Western Front.

Episode: 1760 The Christmas Lectures: Michael Faraday's Gift to children.  Today, the Christmas Lectures.

Episode: 1671 Quantum mechanics takes to a place we didn't know was there.  Today, we think about multiple Christmases.

Episode: 2669 Plants and greens associated with the Christmas Season.  Today, Christmas greenery.

Episode: 3285 Literature's Famous Epiphanies: Real and Fictional.  Today, one of literature's famous epiphanies.

Episode: 2446 Gödel, Ginsberg, and the limits of logic.  Today, the limits of logic.

Episode: 2445 In which Renaissance engineer Robert Norton thinks about gunnery.  Today, the inner life of an early engineer.

Episode: 2443 The Dornier X: another of yesterday's extreme airplanes.  Today, Dornier's flying palace.

Episode: 2442 The Mysteries of Nature and Art, John Bate's legacy for Isaac Newton.  Today, John Bate's wonderful book.

Episode: 2865 Computer Divide: The Future of Microprocessors.  Today, two roads.

Episode: 2822 Herodotus describing historical events of 5th century BC, a fantastical and entertaining component of The Histories.  Today, we visit Herodotus.

Episode: 2497 Frederick Law Olmsted on the Texas Frontier.  Today, we go from the Texas frontier to Central Park.

Episode: 3284 A place for scary spiders in STEM education.  Today, Spiders and STEM education.