Engines of Our Ingenuity

Episode: 3325 Machines That Forgot How to Fail: An AI Guest's Perspective on Reliability.  Today, our guest, ChatGPT, talks about machines that forgot to fail.

Episode: 2495 Creativity Within Limits: Rules as a Source of Creativity.  Today, bounded creativity.

Episode: 3236 Analysis, Creativity, and the Humble Index Card.  Today, the humble index card.

Episode: 3324 Jimmy Doolittle, Inventor of Instrument Flying.  Today, flying blind.

Episode: 3323 We learn a new way of speaking in the 1930s.  Today, biting words.

Episode: 1421 The Rocket Boys, a moving story of adolescence and engineering.  Today, a book with a surprising subtext.

Episode: 1420 The Erie Canal.  Today, we ride 568 feet uphill in a barge.

Episode: 1419 Another way of looking at the 14th century Plague.  Today, population reduction by disaster.

Episode: 3322 Some Thoughts on the Future of High-Speed Rail.  Today, very fast trains.

Episode: 2824 An 18th-century catalogue of brass objects, an early approach to marketing, and decorative drawer handles.  Today, we look at a mysterious catalogue.

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: 1418 Does war influence technological evolution? Some surprising facts.  Today, we wonder how war influences technology.

Episode: 1417 In which the medieval clock metaphor finally collapses.  Today, a metaphor dies.

Episode: 1416 Technology on Hold: ideas that return after a long time.  Today, technology on hold.

Episode: 1415 Right and left handedness: some new ideas about origins.  Today, why do you write with your right hand?

Episode: 2495 Creativity Within Limits: Rules as a Source of Creativity.  Today, bounded creativity.

Episode: 3243 Hollywood's Heroic Water FX. Today, water effects.

Episode: 2810 The Concrete Revolution in Ancient Rome.  Today, some concrete achievements.

Episode: 1414 Viewing America through advertisements in Appleton's magazine, 1869.  Today, advertisements just after the Civil War.

Episode: 1413 How contemporary Romantic poets saw the Industrial Revolution.  Today, Romantic poets and the Industrial Revolution.

Episode: 1412 NonExercise Activity Thermogenesis (or NEAT) and weight gain.  Today, we lose weight.

Episode: 1411 The role of notation in John Dalton's atomic theory.  Today, we wonder how to draw an atom.

Episode: 2493 Child's Play: the role of play in education.  Today, child's play.

Episode: 2801 The Maria Theresa Thaler.  Today, the almighty Thaler.

Episode: 3321 Scott Joplin persevered in creating Ragtime music as a black musician in post-Civil War America. .  Today, Joplin and Ragtime.

Episode: 1410 Homo Technologicus.  Today, a chicken-and-egg question.

Episode: 1409 The Douglas DC-3: an airplane for all seasons.  Today, we ride the first modern passenger airplane.

Episode: 1408 Fast game, slow game, and Stone Age population dynamics.  Today, a Paleolithic story of the tortoise and the hare.

Episode: 1407 A matter of size: scaling laws among living species.  Today, a matter of size.

Episode: 2491 Mitch Miller and the Gang: A Look at American Pop Culture in the Late 1950s.  Today, we follow the bouncing ball.

Episode: 2809 Laurence Housman designs an edition of Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market.  Today, Goblins, sisterly love, and a masterpiece of book design.

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

Episode: 3320 Brown.  Today, Let's talk about the color brown.

Episode: 1406 The end of the medieval age of reason.  Today, a brief bright era in medieval Europe.

Episode: 1405 Marc Isambard Brunel and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Today, two larger-than-life engineers.

Episode: 1404 Prerequisites seen as a reflection of the structure of science.  Today, let's talk about the prerequisite course.

Episode: 2485 Jean Le Rond d'Alembert: Controversial Mathematician of the Enlightenment.  Today, the controversies of an enlightened mathematician.

Episode: 2725 The Atocha Bombing Memorial: Remembering the dead — creating hope.  Today, mourning and monuments.

Episode: 3319 Perhaps WWII really began when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935.  Today, when did World-War-Two begin?

Episode: 3318 Vera C. Rubin: The astronomer who brought dark matter to light.  Today, meet Vera Rubin.

Episode: 1402 Ben Franklin and Le Ray de Chaumont's house in Paris.  Today, Ben Franklin, revolution, and a house in Paris.

Episode: 1401 Theodore Roosevelt and Frederic Remington defining the West.  Today, Roosevelt and Remington go West.