Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 3373 Today we meet Thomas Campion: medical doctor, and a great poet and composer.  Today, let's meet Thomas Campion.

Episode: 1570 GE, light bulbs, and the product-driven innovation cycle.  Today, we talk about light bulbs and product innovation.

Episode: 1569 Alkahest, the universal solvent.  Today, we look for the universal solvent.

Episode: 1568 Lord Kelvin's miscalculation of the age of the earth.  Today, a Victorian scientist miscalculates the age of the earth.

Episode: 2591 Instant runoff voting and the Academy Awards.  Today, what's best?

Episode: 2885 Very Large Numbers.  Today, let's talk about very large numbers.

Episode: 3372 Rhetoric, Objectivity, and Gaslighting.  Today, we flip the switch on “gaslight.”

Episode: 3371 The creative work and relative anonymity of Mary Coulter, and her Native American architecturally themed designs.  Today, meet Mary Colter.

Episode: 1567 Christopher Wren: a great architect first learns medicine.  Today, an unexpected student of medicine.

Episode: 1566 Glottochronology: In which language decays like carbon-14.  Today, a new word for you: glottochronology.

Episode: 1565 Using the hysplex to start an ancient Greek foot race.  Today, we learn how to start a foot race.

Episode: 2588 Synthetic Sound Waves.  Today, the sound of music.

Episode: 3370 A Look at Poetry and the Importance of Rhythmic Metre.  Today, the rhythm of poetry.

Episode: 3369 Small cells and microorganism that behave like living factories.  Today, tiny living factories.

Episode: 3368 The possibility that there exists a reality out of reach of any human science.  Today, we wonder what's real.

Episode: 1564 The Second Law of Thermodynamics and time's arrow.  Today, we see why time goes only from then to now.

Episode: 1562 Guido da Vigevano uses war as an excuse to invent.  Today, a medieval inventor goes to war -- almost.

Episode: 1561 'Hustling Hinkler, Up in the Sky' - an early Australian flier leaves his mark.  Today, an odd hero of early aviation.

Episode: 2585 The technology of timing races.  Today, who won that race?

Episode: 2942 Hilton Hotels in Space.  Today, we reach for the stars.

Episode: 2638 Artificial Gravity for Human Spaceflight; What is Gained, What is Lost.  Today, astronaut Michael Barratt discusses the pros and cons of artificial gravity.

Episode: 1560 In which we 'look' at the world through a narrow slit.  Today, we look at the world through a narrow slit.

Episode: 1559 Music-making: the first technology.  Today, we look for the oldest technology.

Episode: 1558 Mastered by nature, we o'ercome by art - then as now.  Today, an old debate in a new arena.

Episode: 1556 In which we run out of manual arts teachers for our schools.  Today, let's work with our hands.

Episode: 2583 Children and their Goals.  Today, president, pope, astronaut.

Episode: 3253 Teaching Computers to Think.  Today, Teaching a Computer.

Episode: 3166 Spoonerisms and Their Unwilling Namesake.  Today, spooning in speakerisms.

Episode: 1554 In which new science yields new instruments: 1500 to 1950.  Today, a new class of machines and new viewpoint.

Episode: 1553 Galileo, Torricelli, von Guericke, and the idea of a vacuum.  Today, we invent vacuum.

Episode: 1552 The ocean - the wild card in global warming.  Today, we wonder how things are really heating up.

Episode: 1551 In which Gary Larson tells us the piano was invented earlier than we thought.  oday, a lesson in invention from the Far Side.

Episode: 2578 The Wonders of Water Towers.  Today, water flows downhill.

Episode: 2864 The theorem of Reverend Bayes.  Today, let's talk about uncertainty and an 18th century Presbyterian minister.

Episode: 3247 Proust, Turing, and the Measure of Humanity.  Today, we go from Turing to Proust.

Episode: 1550 Making a book of The Engines of Our Ingenuity.  Today, we wonder how to make a book.

Episode: 1549 Compte Rendus, 1836: a snapshot of science at high tide.  Today, we read modern science when it was first being made.

Episode: 1547 Mystery at the threshhold of the Twentieth Century.  Today, let's reclaim mystery.

Episode: 1546 Max Jakob: a breath of fresh air in a new land.  Today, a great engineer escapes the Holocaust.

Episode: 2576 Are screw caps good for wine?  Today, a turn of the screw.

Episode: 2687 Getting to know the organisms that live on and in the human body.  Today, what lives within us.

Episode: 3367 In which Scientific American Magazine gets wrong, the airflow during singing.  Today, Scientific American gets it wrong.