Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchFrances Perkins: Architect of the Modern American Workplace
Episode 6455
This episode explores the life and legacy of Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member in United States history and the primary architect of t…
1 week, 4 days ago
Katherine Johnson: The Human Computer Who Mapped the Stars
Episode 6456
This episode chronicles the life of Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician whose calculations were essential to the success of the American spa…
1 week, 4 days ago
Émilie du Châtelet: The woman who corrected Isaac Newton
Episode 6457
In the lavish and rigid court of 18th-century France, Émilie du Châtelet defied every limitation imposed on women of her class. Born in 1706 to the p…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Census Taker of the Sky: How Annie Jump Cannon Organized the Cosmos
Episode 6458
Before modern supercomputers organized the night sky, a nearly deaf astronomer manually charted more stars than anyone else in human history. Born in…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Fight
Episode 6459
On December 29, 1890, the systemic starvation and cultural collapse of the Lakota Sioux culminated in the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre. In a desperat…
1 week, 4 days ago
Prisoners of the Sky: The Kessler Syndrome and the Threat of Our Own Space Garbage
Episode 6460
The Fermi Paradox famously asks why we hear only silence from a universe that should be teeming with intelligent civilizations. One sobering theory s…
1 week, 4 days ago
Tu Youyou and the ancient malaria cure
Episode 6461
In 1967, amid the height of the Vietnam War, a silent crisis emerged on the battlefield: a highly mutated, chloroquine-resistant strain of malaria wa…
1 week, 4 days ago
Vannevar Bush weaponized American science
Episode 6462
On June 12, 1940, a man named Vannevar Bush walked into the Oval Office and presented President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a single sheet of paper. W…
1 week, 4 days ago
Vaporized Dirt and Floating Ball Lightning
Episode 6463
In March 1963, Eastern Airlines Flight 539 was cruising through a violently heavy electrical storm when a blinding flash and a deafening crack envelo…
1 week, 4 days ago
Vasco da Gama s Brutal War for Spices
Episode 6464
Imagine achieving the ultimate impossible: linking Europe and Asia directly by sea for the very first time. You cross unmapped oceans, survive deadly…
1 week, 4 days ago