Episode: 2808 Plastic encapsulation of microchips, protection from environment and loads. Today, the encapsulation story.Oleh Haleh Ardebili

Episode: 2231 Of cuckoos, cuckoldry and brood parasitic cupidity. Today, our guest, classicist Richard Armstrong goes cuckoo over brood parasites.Oleh Richard H. Armstrong

Episode: 1268 Finding your limelight. Today, let us find our light.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1267 The secret American Navy of the War of 1812. Today, a secret American navy for the War of 1812.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1266 In which Mrs. O'Leary is absolved of the Great Chicago Fire. Today, a new look at an old fire.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1265 Science and the myth of the self-evident truth. Today, a closer look at scientific knowledge.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 2350 Dystopia: Getting to know utopias evil twin. Today, the evils of technology.Oleh Dr. Andy Boyd

Episode: 2341 Richard Wagner conceives a sound, then invents an instrument to create it. Today, horn player Roger Kaza tells us about the tuba Wagner built.Oleh Roger Kaza

Episode: 1940 In which Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister build a model house to pay for a mansion. Today, architectural historian Margaret Culbertson tells us about a cabin, a mansion, and a model home.Oleh Margaret Culbertson

Episode: 1262 An 18-century environmental disaster in Brittany, France. Today, an 18th-century environmental disaster.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1261 Healthy equilibrium: only a platform for instability. Today, we try to keep our equilibrium.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Alarid examines New Mexico's transition from Spanish to Mexican to US control during the nineteenth century and illuminates how emerging class differences played a crucial role in the regime change. After …

Episode: 1260 Darwin boards the Beagle and sails into history. Today, a young man boards a ship and redirects history.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1258 Inventing the steamboat, inventing the riverboat. Today, the present helps us to understand the past.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Today’s book is: Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (Russell Sage Foundation, 2024), by Dr. Ernesto Castañeda and Daniel Jenks, which explains the reasons for Central American youth migration, describes the journey, and documents how minors experienced separation from their families and their subsequent reunification. …

Episode: 2345 Making Music With a Computer. Today, when is a musician a musician?Oleh Dr. Andy Boyd

Episode: 2530 The observation is evolution & the theory is natural selection. Today, what did Darwin really do?Oleh Peter Copeland

Episode: 2776 Isaac Asimov's fantastic worlds, robots that roam among us, and energy storage methods. Today, our guest Haleh Ardebili talks about Isaac Asimov and Energy Storage.Oleh Haleh Ardebili

Neighborhoods have the power to form significant parts of our worlds and identities. A neighborhood's reputation, however, doesn't always match up to how residents see themselves or wish to be seen. The distance between residents' desires and their environment can profoundly shape neighborhood life. In A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an …

Episode: 1257 Digging the first Suez Canal, 4000 years ago. Today, we ask, when was the Suez Canal built?Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1255 On being healthy, wealthy, and (maybe) wise as well. Today, we seem to find that it's healthy to be wealthy.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1254 A new look at the wheel: the problem of rotation. Today, another look at the invention of the wheel.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1253 Hanna Reitsch: a true believer in a cursed cause. Today, a brave woman and a terrible cause.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 2338 How Skill and Chance Influence the Outcome of Games. Today, skill and chance.Oleh Dr. Andy Boyd

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immens…

Perhaps no American landscape is as iconic as the rainbow rocks of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Yet, as the geographer Yolonda Youngs argues, the Grand Canyon many people think they know is but one sliver of the story of the wider Grand Canyon as a historical and physical place. In Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (U …

Episode: 2228 Ancient Explanations of Bird Migrations. Today, our guest, classicist Richard Armstrong, watches the ancients studying bird migrations.Oleh Richard H. Armstrong

Episode: 3230 How close-ups offer social and psychological benefits that selfies do not. Today, psychology of the close-up.Oleh Karen Fang

Episode: 1252 Forgotten invention of manufacturing with interchangeable parts. Today, a brilliant invention is forgotten.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In …

Episode: 1055 Reflections on roller skates, roller blades, and stability. Today, a strange parable of appearance and reality.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

In 1857, the Meskwaki Nation began the long process of piecing their homelands back together. After decades of war, dispossession, and removal at the hands of the American government and American settlers, the Meskwaki, bit by bit, purchase by purchase, started to reestablish a land base along the banks of the Iowa River, more than a century and a …

Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts of a mining firm, the United States Company. Through its exercise of sovereign power across the borders of North America in the early twentieth century, the transnational US Company shaped the business…

Episode: 1054 In Praise of Bats. Today, we meet some beleaguered animals that should be our friends.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1052 In which wasps teach us to make paper from wood. Today, wasps try to teach us to make paper.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 2334 Edward Bellamy: The year 2000 as envisioned in 1888. Today, Looking Backward.Oleh Dr. Andy Boyd

Episode: 3203 The Shape of Proteins. Today, let's talk about the shape of proteins.Oleh Dr. Krešimir Josić

Episode: 3133 Juan Pujol García: the Liar Who Helped Win D-Day. Today, a great big liar saves the day.Oleh Richard H. Armstrong

Episode: 1051 A Conservation Laboratory keeps vanishing arts alive. Today, we ask: Just what is a conservator conserving?Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1049 Hugh Miller: a fundamentalist radicalizes 19th century geology. Today, a 19th-century geologist struggles with the creation of the earth.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1048 Medieval machines in a 20th century hydraulics text. Today, two 20th-century thinkers look at the end of an era.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1047 In which I question the dubious practice of ghost-writing. Today, we ask, "Who writes our story?"Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 2331 A cow's eye view: Temple Grandin and mercy for the the condemned. Today, the unspeakable.Oleh Dr. Andy Boyd

Episode: 3130 A War of Concrete: The Mulberry Harbors and the Invasion of Normandy. Today, a portable port saves the day.Oleh Richard H. Armstrong

Episode: 1046 The mind of Faraday and the merging of science and religion. Today, a look inside the mind of a surprising scientist.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses…

Episode: 1045 A lesson in engineering design on the sports pages. Today, lessons in modern design from the sports pages.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, all precisely measured and perfectly aligned, turn both urban and rural America into a checkerboard landscape that stretches from horizon to horizon. In evidence throughout the country, but especially …

Episode: 1044 Finding the largest Japanese submarine after 51 years -- 4,400 lb. of gold, 17,000 feet down. Today, we look for gold, and we find history.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard

Episode: 1042 Tiny type: shrinking writing down to atomic dimensions. Today, let's write on the head of a pin.Oleh Dr. John Lienhard