Science History Podcast

Today's episode is a discussion on the history of PFAS, or forever chemicals, including their accidental development, incorporation into commercial products, concerns about health effects, and environmental contamination and remediation. My guest is Sharon Udasin. Sharon is a Colorado-based environmental journalist and author of Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019-2020 and received a SEAL Environmental Journalism Award in 2023. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, she has reported for numerous publications over the past two decades — most rec...

The weather has always been a critical element of the human experience - deadly during storms and droughts, sustaining when aligned with the harvest schedule, beautiful and frightening, and integrated into the myths and religions of all societies. How did a scientific understanding of the weather come about? Here to guide us on this question is Simon Winchester. Simon's articles and approximately 30 books range in topic from travel writing to politics, geography, biography, and science history. Simon is best known for his books The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, Th...

In Episodes 10 and 11 of the Science History Podcast, I interviewed James Muller on the role that Winston Churchill played in the unparalleled advancement of science and technology during the first half of the 20th Century, particularly as it related to the two world wars. In today's episode, Jim returns to discuss Churchill and an earlier war fought in the Sudan at the end of the 19th Century. Jim is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Anchorage and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Churchill. For more than a quarter century, Jim has chaired the Board of Ac...

Our health, and the health of wildlife, depends on a clean environment. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, our environment has suffered from waves of pollution as different technologies came to the fore, each with its own set of practical benefits and associated chemical waste. Perhaps the most insidious of these environmental pollutants is lead. With us to discuss the history of lead as an environmental contaminant is Bruce Lanphear. For over 30 years, Bruce has investigated how toxic chemicals harm human health, especially the health of children. His research helped shape U.S. federal standards for lead in air...

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 cancelled billions of dollars in research grants that had already been awarded to universities. With me to discuss the Trump Administration attacks on university research is Claudia Polsky. Claudia is a clinical professor of law and the founding director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley.

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 those journalists, Jaimi Dowdell, is back to discuss how a federal agency responsible for community health assessments has a history of failing to protect the communities that seek its aid. Jaimi was part of the Reuters team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. Today we discuss the Reuters special report published in August 2024 and entitled, "How a US health agency became a shield for polluters."

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 American college campuses. Since those episodes, America went back to the future with the election for the second time of Donald Trump, and the Trump Administration has attacked elite American universities such as Columbia and Harvard with historic intensity. These attacks are motivated by the right's revulsion with the dominance...

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 public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

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 of Göttingen, we discuss how Göttingen became a focal point of physics, key moments and people during the decades that Göttingen hosted discovery after discovery, and what happened to the assembly of scholars in Göttingen as Germany descended into the abyss of fasci...

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 criminal justice system, is the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. With us to discuss the history of PCR is one of its innovators, Henry Erlich. As Director of the Human Genetics Department at Cetus Corporation and later as Director of Human Genetics and Vice President of Exploratory Research at Roche Molecular...

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 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this monumental discovery. More generally, Meitner overcame profound obstacles facing women in science to become a central figure in physics during its heyday as she worked with the likes of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein to understand the atom, and hence the universe...

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 scale of atoms, and the road to that theory was littered with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. With us to discuss the development of quantum mechanics, and the major schools of thought represented by Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein, is Jim Baggott. Today we discuss many of the key players in the development of quantum mechanics, including Bohr, Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Planck, and Max Born.

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 created the Stanford Workshops on Social and Political Issues, or SWOPSI. SWOPSI was founded by three students, two of whom are with us today: Joel Primack and Robert Jaffe. The third student was Joyce Kobayashi. Also with us today is my uncle Frank, who worked on some of the early SWOPSI initiatives. In this episode, I ask Joel, Bob and Frank: How did they hack Stanford's rules f...

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, real or imagined, on society at large. Criticism of American universities has sharpened since Oct. 7, 2023, as the Hamas attack on Israel was closely followed by campus protests against Israel. The ensuing turmoil resulted in the temporary closure of campuses, the resignations of college presidents, the cancellations of speakers and commencement ceremonies, and congressional investigations. How did American universities get to this moment? What are the implications for free speech...

What was the Western World's understanding of the origins of humanity prior to the Enlightenment? Why did Christopher Columbus have a Hebrew speaker on his voyages of exploration? Why did the American universities founded before the Revolution have Hebrew in their curriculum? What role did linguistics play in the late 19th century modernization of the Hebrew language? What does the literary critic Edmund Wilson have to do with the science of archeology? Finally, and unrelated to science, how did the soft power of the arts - including music, theater, dance, film, literature, and television - help to shape the relationship...

Archeology is the science that most directly connects us with our past, and no city in the world has been subject to more archeological interest than Jerusalem. With us to explore the archeology of Jerusalem is Jodi Magness. Jodi is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2002, she has been the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jodi's research interests focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world...

Today I speak with Steve Fetter about his work on a variety of nuclear disarmament efforts, including the Black Sea Experiment, nuclear archeology, the risks associated with a single person having the ability to start a nuclear war, ballistic missile defense, the weaponization of space, nuclear energy, and climate change. Steve received an SB in physics from MIT in 1981 and a PhD in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Steve has been a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland since 1988. Steve also served in government, including five years in the...

Today we focus on the Soviet nuclear program with Thomas Cochran. Tom directed nuclear disarmament projects at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1973 until his retirement in 2016. He has received numerous awards for his work on nuclear disarmament, including the public service award from the Federation of American Scientists and the Szilard Award from the American Physical Society, both in 1987. Tom was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1989, and, due to his work, the Natural Resources Defense Council received the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award that same year. Today we discuss the Soviet...

Today we explore the history of the field of endocrine disruption with Patricia Hunt. Pat is a Regents Professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University. She is a distinguished researcher and the recipient of many awards; additionally, she works at the forefront of initiatives to communicate complex scientific findings to the public. 

In episode 77, I interviewed William Lanouette about Leo Szilard's work on the atom bomb, with a discussion of the roles that Szilard played until the end of World War II. Today, in part two of my interview with Bill, we focus on Szilard's achievements after the war. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and...

Perhaps the most overlooked scientist who played critical roles in the development of the atomic bomb was Leo Szilard. With us to explore Szilard's numerous contributions to science and society is William Lanouette. Bill is a writer and public policy analyst who has specialized in the history of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He received an A.B. in English with a minor in Philosophy at Fordham College in 1963, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science at the London School of Economics and the University of London in 1966 and 1973, respectively. Bill then worked as a journalist for...

Peter Agre received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of aquaporins. Peter is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and he also directed the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute until 2023. Today we discuss the history of malaria research, and Peter reflects on being a scientist. The interview is followed by Peter's keynote lecture for the University of Arizona One Health symposium, which he gave on February 12, 2024.

In 1994, while attending graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, I had the pleasure of seeing a lecture by Oliver Sacks in which he discussed his work on sleeping sickness and various other neurological disorders. He also discussed his thoughts on the economy of a life. Today's episode is that lecture in full, with all the insights and charm that was Oliver Sacks.

Novichok is the most deadly chemical weapon ever developed. With us to discuss the history of Novichok is Vil Mirzayanov. Vil worked in the secret Soviet chemical weapons laboratory that developed Novichok. He revealed its existence to the world in 1991 and was then arrested by the Russian counterintelligence service and prosecuted in a secret trial. He won his freedom with the help of an international group of scientists, including three who have appeared as guests on this podcast. He then immigrated to the United States and published his story in the book State Secrets. An Insider's Chronicle of the Russian...

How could a brilliant scientist and mathematician, an innovator in quantum theory, who worked closely with Jewish colleagues, become an ardent Nazi? How did this man, who has a field of mathematics named after him, escape the scrutiny of his colleagues? And what happened to him upon the collapse of Nazi Germany? The scientist who straddled this strange world of physics and Nazism was Pascual Jordan. With us to explain the history of Pascual Jordan is Ryan Dahn. Ryan is a writer, editor, science historian, and translator. He is the books editor at Physics Today, the flagship physics magazine of...

Many of the most important secrets held in international contests are technological or scientific in nature, and wars are often settled due to technological superiority of one side over the other. This leads spy agencies to employ all manner of trickery and tools to obtain those secrets. With us to explore the history of scientific espionage is Eli Lake. Eli was a senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek, and a syndicated columnist with Bloomberg. Eli is now a columnist for the Free Press and the host of the Re-Education Podcast on Nebulous media. Eli is also...

A retrospective on the Franck-Hertz experiment, which resulted in James Franck and Gustav Hertz receiving the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics. Image credit: By Infoczo - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35281920

A retrospective on James Franck, recipient of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The ability to extract DNA from ancient fragments of biological material has revolutionized our understanding of recent evolutionary history, including human evolution and phylogeography. Analysis of ancient DNA in tandem with radiocarbon dating, along with traditional archeological techniques, has led to a flurry of discoveries. With us to discuss this research is Maanasa Raghavan. Maanasa is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. 

The world just experienced a devastating pandemic, yet in the context of historical pandemics, COVID-19 was a relatively minor event in the history of disease. What do we know about the history of pandemics, including before written records, and what can we learn from this history? With us to answer these and other questions about the origins of epidemics and pandemics is Leslie Reperant. Leslie graduated with a doctorate of veterinary medicine at the National Veterinary School of Lyon, France in 2004 and obtained a PhD at Princeton University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2010. Leslie's doctoral and...

Before the advent of the germ theory of disease in the 1870s, quarantine provided one of the few effective means to prevent or alleviate epidemics. The Lazaretto quarantine station in Philadelphia illustrates the history of quarantine both before and after the discovery of pathogenic microbes. With us to explore the history of 18th and 19th century quarantine in Philadelphia, and what it meant for public health, is David Barnes. David teaches the history of medicine and public health at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is an Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science. David received a BA in...

What are the commonalities between scaling the world's highest peaks and tackling the most challenging pollution problems? What was it like to enter the worlds of climbing and chemistry as a woman in the 1960s and 70s? With us to answer these questions is Arlene Blum. Arlene completed a bachelor's degree at Reed College in 1966 and a PhD in biophysical chemistry at Berkeley in 1971. She was a pioneering alpinist early in her career and a founder of the Green Science Policy Institute later in her career. She is the author of Annapurna - A Woman's Place, published by Counterpoint in 1980...

Any intellectual endeavor runs the risk of bias. Today we explore ways in which political ideology interferes with scholarship, particularly in the social sciences, with a focus on social psychology. My guest is Lee Jussim, a distinguished professor of social psychology and the leader of the Social Perception Laboratory at Rutgers University. Lee is a prolific author and studies stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination; political radicalization; and other problems that impede science and society. Lee's books include Social Perception and Social Reality, which received the American Association of Publishers award for best book in psychology, as well as the edited volumes...

The world's environmental problems demand solutions for the common good, which in turn necessitate environmental diplomacy. With us to untangle the messy history of environmental diplomacy is Mark Lytle. In addition to his long tenure as a professor at Bard College, Mark has taught at Yale, Vassar, and University College Dublin. Mark's books include The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, and The All-Consuming Nation: Pursuing the American Dream Since World Wa...

Certain fields of science attract broad interest because of what they tell us about humanity, and no field does this more directly than paleoanthropology. Today we explore the history of paleoanthropology with a focus on Louis and Mary Leakey, who made key discoveries at an inflection point of our understanding of human evolution. With us to discuss this history is Evan Hadingham. Evanis the Senior Science Editor of the award-winning PBS series NOVA. Today we discuss his new book, Discovering Us, Fifty Great Discoveries in Human Origins, published in partnership with the Leakey Foundation in 2021.

How could a conservation easement be anything other than a great thing? With us to answer this question are Jaimi Dowdell and Andrea Januta, both of whom are investigative reporters and data journalists with Reuters. Jaimi and Andrea were part of the Reuters team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. Today we discuss their Reuters special report entitled "How Boeing created a nature preserve that may also preserve pollution", published on July 20, 2022.

For thousands of years, scholars have struggled with what it means to be human. One critical dimension of humanity is foresight, and with us to decipher the evolution of foresight is Thomas Suddendorf. Thomas is a professor at the University of Queensland, where he investigates mental capacities in young children and in animals to answer fundamental questions about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Thomas is the author of over 140 research articles and two books: The Gap: The science of what separates us from other animals, published in 2013 by Basic Books, and The invention of tomorrow: a natural...

Johan Rockström and colleagues first proposed the concept in 2009 of planetary boundary threats and a safe operating space for humanity. This conceptual framework clarifies environmental problems that are of planetary significance, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and stratospheric ozone depletion. The most recently articulated planetary boundary threat, or set of threats, relates to chemical pollution of the biosphere. With us to unpack planetary boundary threats as they relate to pollution is Bethanie Carney Almroth. Bethanie is a professor at the University of Gothenburg, where she researches threats posed to our planet due to the immense number and quantities o...

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing worldwide Great Depression left families in economic shock and despair. International trade collapsed to less than half of its previous levels and unemployment skyrocketed. Into this devastating mess stepped Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began his long presidency in 1933. FDR spearheaded a series of programs known as the New Deal to revive the United States. The most popular of these was the government work relief program called the Civilian Conservation Corps, which ran from 1933 to 1942. Three million American men joined the Corps, gaining skills and employment while also attending to widespread conservation problems...

The ways people think about matters both big and small, from climate change to daily tasks, impact the outcomes. Throughout the history of science and society, key insights arose through a thought process of simplification and subtraction, though the human tendency leans towards complication and addition. Today I discuss the power of subtraction with Leidy Klotz. Leidy is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he studies the science of design. He is the author of Subtract, published in 2021 by Flatiron Books.

No matter our claims to the contrary, we are all biased in our perceptions and beliefs. But bias is not random and its directions relate to our evolutionary history and culture, especially to how these interface with human sociality. With us to decipher bias is Jim Zimring. Jim is the author of What Science is and How it Really Works, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking, published by Columbia University Press in 2022. Today we discuss flawed thinking about fractions, the No True Scotsman Fallacy, what we see when we read, heuristics, stories...

The oceans have been used as the dumping grounds for all manner of toxic waste. Outrage over such dumping led to the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 in the United States and the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter in 1975. Today I discuss the dumping of DDT and other wastes off the coast of Southern California with Dave Valentine. Dave completed a BS in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California San Diego in 1995, followed by an MS in chemistry also at UCSD the following year. He then...

Many landmarks of environmental history share a connection with a single molecule: DDT. During and after the Second World War, it was broadcast into the environment at a scale that far surpassed the applications of any prior chemical. The public met this mass spraying of DDT with enthusiasm, as the war proved it to be highly effective against the vectors of malaria, yellow fever, typhus, and other insect-borne diseases. But these public health successes were short-lived as insects quickly evolved resistance. Nevertheless, DDT use skyrocketed around the world, especially in agriculture. It was also used on a massive scale in...

At the start of the 20th century, physicists probed the structure of nature. Their discoveries changed our fundamental understanding of matter, of life, and of war. At the center of these discoveries stood the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Bohr approached problems of atomic structure and quantum theory with a philosophical perspective and an ability to skirt paradoxes with his principle of complementarity. Perhaps as important as Bohr’s discoveries on the atom was his hosting of international collaborations at his institute in Copenhagen, which in turn led to fundamental insights in physics and chemistry. Bohr also played significant humanitarian and di...

The advent of agriculture over 10,000 years ago forever altered the trajectory of humanity. Communities grew larger until cities and nations dotted the landscape, labor became specialized, new diseases emerged, civilizations flourished and vanished, warfare increased in scale and lethality, and people colonized every corner of the globe. Agriculture facilitated the exponential growth of the human population, which necessitated ever greater efficiency and productivity and eventually led to the industrialization of farming. But this efficiency has come at a cost – the loss of crop varieties and the local knowledge and cultural practices associated with those crops. With us to understand these ra...

The brain is the most mysterious and complex organ of the body, and when things go awry, we may be confronted with personal tragedy and we may gain insights on what it means to be human. With us to discuss neurological disorders and the history of their discovery is Sara Manning Peskin. Sara completed an AB in biochemistry at Harvard University in 2009, an MS in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and an MD also at U Penn in 2015. She completed postgraduate training and a fellowship in various aspects of neurology also at U Penn, where...

Today’s episode marks the four-year anniversary of the Science History Podcast, where we have explored all manner of science and relevant policy spanning from gravitational waves to bioterrorism. So it is fitting that today’s guest, Dick Garwin, has worked on just about every major scientific and technology problem with a defense application since just after the Second World War, ranging from the first thermonuclear weapon in 1951 all the way to the U.S. response to pandemics. Today we discuss it all, including space nuclear detonations and electromagnetic pulses, spy satellites, anti-submarine warfare, sequential memory for computers, magnetic resonance imag...