American Innovations

Introducing: Reign of Error May 15, 2023

James Dolan was born into immense privilege. He could have done anything with his life. But he chose the family business — a cable television empire that came to include ownership of the New York Knicks, one of the most beloved franchises on earth. What happened from there is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Dolan didn’t just lead the Knicks to disaster (and the worst record in the NBA in the 21st Century); he also built a laboratory of shame, dysfunction, and, well, unintentional hilarity.

Join host David Greene as he unpacks this trainwreck, over 5 riveting episodes, while chasing the answer to one elusive question: Why the hell won’t James Dolan just sell the team? From SmartLess Media, and Campside Media, Reign of Error is the series James Dolan doesn’t want you to hear.

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Wondery Presents - Flipping The Bird: Elon vs Twitter May 01, 2023

When Elon Musk posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter HQ carrying a white sink along with the message “let that sink in!” It marked the end of a dramatic takeover. Musk had gone from Twitter critic to “Chief Twit” in the space of just a few months but his arrival didn’t put an end to questions about his motives. Musk had earned a reputation as a business maverick. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX, his name was synonymous with big, earth-shattering ideas. So, what did he want with a social media platform? And was this all really in the name of free speech...or was this all in the name of Elon Musk?

From Wondery, the makers of WeCrashed and In God We Lust, comes the wild story of how the richest man alive took charge of the world’s “digital public square.”

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Tech’s Next Big Waves | 3 Dec 30, 2021

For our last episode before American Innovations goes on hiatus, we look to the future of new technology from artificial intelligence and virtual reality to carbon capture and the electrification of mobility. Steven talks about these innovations and more with friend of the podcast Clive Thompson, a journalist who writes about science and technology and the author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World.

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The Mystery of Stuxnet | All The President’s Malware | 2 Dec 23, 2021

Experts at Symantec have finally discovered that the virus Stuxnet is designed to target nuclear facilities in Iran. But many questions remain. Who is responsible for the virus? How did it get out? As veteran New York Times reporter David Sanger delves into the origins of Stuxnet, he worries that it represents a new kind of cyber warfare, one without defined rules of engagement, that could have dire consequences for global cybersecurity.

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The Mystery of Stuxnet | Cracking the Code | 1 Dec 16, 2021

In the summer of 2010, a mysterious computer virus called Stuxnet lands on the desk of Symantec cybersecurity analyst Liam O’Murchu. Stuxnet is unlike anything O’Murchu has ever seen: a highly sophisticated piece of malware that serves no obvious purpose. O’Murchu and his colleagues are determined to figure out how it works and who’s behind it -- but soon, it becomes clear that Stuxnet might be more than they bargained for.

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Encore: The Modern Ambulance | 1 Dec 09, 2021

Today when you dial 9-1-1, a squad of trained medical professionals arrives, often within minutes. But just 55 years ago, emergency calls were generally dispatched to funeral homes, simply because their vehicles were suited to transporting bodies. You’d be lucky if the person transporting you had any first aid training at all.

Throughout the 1960s, volunteer rescue squads emerged. But it would take the ambitious vision of a community organizer in Pittsburgh to spin a medical revolution into being.

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Man with No Memory | The Observer | 4 Dec 02, 2021

In losing his ability to form memories, Henry Molaison also lost the ability to learn new skills, retain information and form relationships. He became a kind of time traveler, living forever in the present moment. In this episode, Steven talks with John Gabrieli, a cognitive neuroscientist who worked directly with Molaison aka “Patient H.M.” in the 1980s. Gabrieli shares more about the new discoveries of how memory works that were built on studying this very special patient.

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Man with No Memory | Henry's Final Flight | 3 Nov 25, 2021

Henry Molaison has now lived over half his life unable to form new memories. And with the passing of his parents -- the one constant in his life -- he descends into despair. With no one else to turn to, he forms a close emotional bond with the lead neuroscientist on his case, Suzanne Corkin, who blurs the lines between professional and personal as she tries to help Henry live out his last years with dignity.

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Man with No Memory | The Permanent Now | 2 Nov 18, 2021

Without a functioning memory, Henry Molaison struggles to cope with everyday life. He loses his job, and becomes totally dependent on his overwhelmed parents. Meanwhile, neuroscientist Brenda Milner realizes that Henry’s tragic case can solve some profound mysteries about how memory works in our brains—and might even reveal whole new aspects of memory that previously went undetected.

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Man with No Memory | The Accident | 1 Nov 11, 2021

Even as recently as the early 1950s, we didn’t understand that there were different types of memory, or how the brain processed and stored memories. Then, in 1953, a radical surgery by a reckless doctor gave us tremendous insights into how human memory works. Those scientific gains came at a terrible cost, however. The surgery left the patient, Henry Molaison, a profound amnesiac -- completely incapable of forming new memories. This is his story.

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Predator Drone | In The Pilot’s Seat | 4 Nov 04, 2021

The Predator drone made a dramatic transformation from unarmed reconnaissance vehicle to lethal weapon in 2001, just after 9/11. On this episode, Steven talks to retired Air Force officer and pilot Scott Swanson, who was part of the team tasked with using the Predator to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders in Afghanistan.

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Predator Drone | Lethal Weapon | 3 Oct 28, 2021

In post 9/11 Afghanistan, the Predator drone proves wildly successful for the military, helping kill a key Al Qaeda leader, and aiding in the rescue of Army Rangers trapped on a mountainside. It's the start of a new era in aerial warfare, as the Predator gains widespread acceptance. But in the years to come, mounting civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes provoke an outcry from the world... and the Obama Administration faces a moral reckoning.

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Predator Drone | Hellfire | 2 Oct 21, 2021

The Predator proves its value as a “spy in the sky” for the U.S. military in Bosnia in the mid-90s. But it's not until the Predator is handed over to the Air Force that it reaches its full potential. Aided by a covert Air Force group, and a genius scientist known as “The Man With Two Brains,” the Predator is reborn as a lethal killing machine, with a new enemy to hunt: Osama Bin Laden.

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Predator Drone | From Albatross to Amber | 1 Oct 14, 2021

What if you could design a spy plane that could be flown remotely and hover in the sky for hours, providing reconnaissance for troops on the ground? In the early 1980s, the visionary inventor Abe Karem begins building drones out of his L.A. garage. Soon, the Pentagon and the CIA take notice. Though he faces many challenges, Karem is on the forefront of a revolution that will change the face of modern aerial warfare.

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Encore: Organ Transplant | A Short History of Living Longer | 4 Sep 30, 2021

In the past 100 years, we’ve doubled life expectancy. It might be the single greatest achievement of the modern era. So why haven’t we done more to celebrate it?

On this episode, Rufus Griscom, host of Wondery’s “The Next Big Idea,” turns the tables and puts Steven Johnson in the interviewee’s seat. They’ll discuss Steven’s book and PBS series “Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer,” about the many breakthroughs, large and small, that led to our increased longevity.

To learn more about “Extra Life,” visit https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/.

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Encore: Organ Transplant | The Heart Race | 3 Sep 23, 2021

In 1967, an unlikely surgeon performs the first human heart transplant – and shocks the world. As others race to replicate his achievement, one surgical team makes a mistake that could spell the end of organ transplants in the United States.

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Encore: Organ Transplant | A Matter of Life and Death | 2 Sep 16, 2021

By the early 1960s, surgeons have proven that it's possible to transplant kidneys and lungs. Now, with heart disease still the leading cause of death, they've set their sights on performing the first human heart transplant. But first, they've got to overcome the ethical, legal, and surgical challenges of removing a donor's heart before it stops beating for good.

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Encore: Organ Transplant | The Kidney Twins | 1 Sep 09, 2021

A century ago, organ transplants were the stuff of science fiction. But a handful of experimental surgeons believed that transplants were not just possible – they had the potential to save thousands of lives. Then, in 1954, a man agreed to donate his kidney to his twin brother – and one surgeon finally got his chance to prove the doubters wrong.

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Social Media | Interview: #DearInternet | 4 Sep 02, 2021

Facebook, Friendster and MySpace weren’t the only companies that pioneered social media. In 2006, a new company turned the act of “tweeting” into an opportunity for wide-ranging commentary, and made your number of “followers” a status symbol. On this episode, Steven talks to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who also co-founded Medium.com and wrote the memoir Things a Little Bird Told Me.

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Social Media | Move Fast and Break Things | 3 Aug 26, 2021

By 2007, Facebook finds itself at a crossroads. Its sole focus has been growing its users and traffic. Now, it needs to turn a profit. Luckily for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook possesses an invaluable asset: deep knowledge of the personal data and habits of its users. But when Zuckerberg teams up with Sheryl Sandberg to monetize that data, it will create a host of issues that will mire Facebook in controversy.

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Social Media | It's Complicated | 2 Aug 19, 2021

It’s the mid 2000s, and social media is mainstream. MySpace has eclipsed Friendster and been acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Meanwhile, another company is quietly reinventing social media yet again, founded by a college sophomore with a rare combination of technical skill and strong business instincts. His name is Mark Zuckerberg, and his company, The Facebook, will soon challenge MySpace and its new corporate owner for control of the social media landscape.

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Social Media | Find Your Friends | 1 Aug 12, 2021

Today social media is such a dominant part of our daily lives, it's hard to believe that only 20 years ago, it didn’t exist. Then a newly single tech entrepreneur named Jonathan Abrams wondered: What if you could use the internet to expand your network of real-life friends? His simple idea became Friendster, the first social media site, which would change not only how people interact online, but the very nature of human connection and friendship.

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Fracking | Interview: The Price of Gas | 4 Aug 05, 2021

Families who leased their gas-rich land to fracking companies during the boom are still wrestling with the impact of that decision. On this episode, Steven talks to Eliza Griswold, an award-winning poet, writer and journalist. Her book, “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America,” won a Pulitzer Prize for its immersive, insightful look into the fracking boom and its effect on Appalachian coal country.

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Fracking | Something in the Water | 3 Jul 29, 2021

As stories of water contamination and health issues become public, one of the largest grassroots environmental movements in decades emerges to protest fracking. The fracking industry, led by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, fights back with lobbyists, PR flacks, and an unlikely ally: the Sierra Club. The battle over fracking will pit neighbor against neighbor, as poor rural communities are torn between the promise of easy money and the desire to protect their land and water.

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Fracking | Land Grab | 2 Jul 22, 2021

By the early 2000s, fracking was seen as the most promising new energy industry technology in decades. And when a Penn State geologist discovered that the shale field sitting under Pennsylvania and Upstate New York held over 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the race was on to bring fracking to the Northeast. But in the rush to frack the new field, accidents began to happen, making locals question just how safe this new technique really was.

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Fracking | The Source Rock | 1 Jul 15, 2021

In the late 1970s, oil and natural gas fields across the U.S. were drying up, making the country increasingly dependent on foreign oil. Then, a Texas energy magnate named George Mitchell decided to try extracting natural gas from shale, a layer of rock almost two miles beneath the surface, using a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. His innovation would kick off an energy revolution, and spur a massive environmental backlash.

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Encore: Heimlich Maneuver | Heimlich’s Maneuver | 1 Jul 08, 2021

In the 1960s, choking was a national epidemic. In the United States alone, close to 4,000 people were dying from choking every year. Lobster, ham, and hamburger were common culprits. But steak was by far the greatest offender.

Coroners called for a solution to these “Cafe Coronaries,” and the medical community responded with weird and dangerous gadgets: vacuum tubes and long tweezers. But Dr. Henry Heimlich knew this problem required something else; a simple technique that anyone can use to save the lives of choking victims—the Heimlich Maneuver.

The Heimlich Maneuver would save the lives of thousands of people, including Carrie Fisher, Cher, New York Mayor Ed Koch, and at least one American President. And yet, Dr. Heimlich would spend a decade fighting for the legitimacy of his life-saving maneuver.

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Cryonics | Suspended Animation | 3 Jul 01, 2021

Robert Ettinger was a science teacher and writer who launched the field of cryonics and became its most most fervent ambassador, even choosing to be cryogenically frozen himself. On this episode, Steven talks to filmmakers Josh Koury and Myles Kane. Their documentary short film, We Shall Live Again, is a unique window into the mind of Ettinger and the process of cryopreservation.

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Cryonics | Frozen Heroes | 2 Jun 24, 2021

Bob Nelson is hoping cryonics will become the business boon he's been expecting. Operating on a shoestring budget and employing the most primitive methods of freezing and storing bodies, Nelson struggles to stay in business. He continues to believe he’s one step from the big time. But a series of miscalculations and unforeseen complications leave him on the brink of disaster.

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Cryonics | Immortality On Ice | 1 Jun 17, 2021

Not everyone chooses burial or cremation after death. Some believe in cryonics, freezing their bodies in the hopes of being reanimated sometime in the future. Bob Nelson, a TV repairman with no scientific background, made history when he froze the first human being. But as Nelson would discover, freezing someone is easy; keeping them frozen is a lot harder.

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Storm Chasers | Reaping the Whirlwind | 3 Jun 10, 2021

Storm chasing is part scientific inquiry, part amateur thrill seeking — and sometimes, a bit of both. On this episode, Steven talks to journalist Brantley Hargrove, author of The Man Who Caught the Storm, about legendary storm chaser Tim Samaras, whose breakthrough probe helped measure atmospheric conditions inside a tornado.

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Storm Chasers | Blown Away | 2 Jun 03, 2021

Thanks to the movie “Twister” and the popularity of David Hoadley’s “Storm Track” newsletter, by the late 1990s, storm chasing has gone mainstream. But with more and more chasers on the road, it’s only a matter of time before some get a little too close to the eye of the storm.

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Storm Chasers | Tornado Alley | 1 May 27, 2021

No extreme weather phenomenon fascinates us more than tornadoes. For most of human history, very little was known about how these graceful yet violent columns of swirling air formed or behaved. Then, in the 1950s, a teenager from North Dakota began chasing them, and a scientist from Japan began studying them. Together, they started a movement.

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Hacking | Heroes and Villains of the Digital Age | 4 May 20, 2021

Hackers helped shape the digital world we live in today. But more than ever, that world is under attack by a new generation of cyber-criminals. On this episode, Steven talks to Wired editor-at-large Steven Levy, author of the seminal book “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,” about hacking’s groundbreaking past and weaponized future.

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Hacking | White Hat vs. Black Hat | 3 May 13, 2021

For two years, super-hacker Kevin Mitnick eludes the FBI by living under a series of false identities. But in a fit of hubris, he hacks Tsutomu Shimomura, one of the country’s leading computer security experts. It’s hacker vs. hacker as Shimomura sets out to do what the FBI can’t: stop Kevin Mitnick once and for all.

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Hacking | The John Dillinger of Cyberspace | 2 May 06, 2021

In the 1980s, computers, now more powerful and more affordable, become a bigger part of people’s work and life. And that makes hackers a greater threat. America’s laws are slow to keep up with this new form of break-in. Then, an incorrigible teenager with a talent for computers gets caught in the country’s shifting views of hacking, and becomes the most wanted cyber criminal in the United States.

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Hacking | What’s in the Blue Box? | 1 Apr 29, 2021

Hackers: the criminals who prey on our digital lives. Today they steal credit cards and personal information, or even commit acts of cyber-terrorism. But in the early days, hackers were largely seen as harmless pranksters. And it wasn’t computers they were initially interested in, but phones -- which they hacked with a mysterious device called the Blue Box.

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Breaking The Sound Barrier | Who Got to Mach 1 First? | 3 Apr 22, 2021

In 1947, Chuck Yeager made history when he flew faster than the speed of sound. But was he really the first to do it? On this episode, Steven talks to aviation historian and retired fighter pilot Dan Hampton, whose book “Chasing the Demon” presents an alternate history of the quest to reach Mach 1.

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Breaking The Sound Barrier | Sonic Boom or Bust | 2 Apr 15, 2021

With each test run, pilot Chuck Yeager is getting closer to taking the top secret Bell X-1 plane past the speed of sound. But just before a critical flight, an accident on the ground jeopardizes his chances of success.

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Breaking The Sound Barrier | A Bullet With Wings | 1 Apr 08, 2021

In the 1940s, as planes got faster, it seemed like they were hitting a wall -- literally. Many pilots tried to travel faster than the speed of sound, often with fatal results. Could American test pilot Chuck Yeager succeed where they had failed? Or would his daredevil attitude get him grounded before he gets a chance?

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Encore: Electric Chair | A Matter of Light and Death | 3 Apr 01, 2021

In the summer of 1888, just as the electric chair controversy was unfolding, Nikola Tesla moved to Pittsburgh to work for George Westinghouse, fulfilling a year-long commitment he made when Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s AC motor patents.

The deal would make Tesla a millionaire, but it would ultimately threaten to topple Westinghouse’s business.

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Encore: Electric Chair | The War Becomes Electric | 2 Mar 25, 2021

After his unceremonious departure from Edison Electric, Nikola Tesla found himself broke and dejected, but more determined than ever to share his alternating current system with the world. And thanks to the help of one man who really believed in his work -- a man with vision, money and power -- he’d soon have his chance.

Tesla had Edison in his sites, and the War of the Currents was about to get deadly.

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Encore: Electric Chair | Power to the People | 1 Mar 18, 2021

On August 6, 1890, a prisoner named William Kemmler became the first man executed in the electric chair. It was designed to be a more humane form of execution, but the gruesome scene in the death chamber that day revealed the device to be anything but.

Behind the story of the electric chair lies another story, involving three titans of innovation—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse — locked in a desperate fight for control of the future of electricity. Their conflict would take lives, spark scientific advances and revolutionize human existence.

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Lie Detector | The Future of Lying | 3 Mar 11, 2021

What new technologies might eventually replace the still-popular but widely debunked polygraph? On this episode, Steven talks with Ken Alder, author of the book “The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession,” about the lie detector’s enduring appeal and uncertain future.

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Lie Detector | Larson's Monster | 2 Mar 04, 2021

In 1922, a murder case in Washington, DC presents the first opportunity for lie detector results to be used in a criminal trial. But even as lie detectors become more commonly used, one of the device’s inventors begins to have serious doubts about the accuracy of his creation.

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Sponsored: The Way Things Should Be | Carmax | 6 Feb 26, 2021

The weed whacker. The microwave. Instant noodles. Three simple yet ingenious inventions that challenged the status quo and made our lives easier. On this special episode, we tell the stories of three inventors who, through their visionary products, showed us the way things should be. Presented by Carmax.

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Lie Detector | The Heart of a Liar | 1 Feb 25, 2021

Humans are shockingly bad at telling whether or not someone is lying. That’s why, a century ago, psychologists and criminologists developed machines to detect lies for us, by measuring blood pressure, pulse, and breathing rate. Their lie detectors promised to revolutionize the criminal justice system. But is it really possible for science to separate truth from lies?

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Mission To Mars | How to Land on the Red Planet | 6 Feb 18, 2021

On February 18th, 2021, Perseverance will become the latest NASA rover to land on Mars. To mark the occasion, Steven talks to two of the engineers behind the Mars rover program: Dr. Anita Sengupta, who designed the parachute systems for the Curiosity rover in 2012, and Dr. Matt Smith, one of the flight directors guiding Perseverance towards its landing site.

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Mission To Mars | Encore: The Woman Who Put Man on the Moon | 5 Feb 11, 2021

Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are preparing to land on the Moon. The whole world is watching live on television. But something is very wrong: Their warning alarms are flashing. There’s only one woman who can fix it: MIT software engineer Margaret Hamilton.

This episode originally aired on March 14, 2019.

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Mission To Mars | Becoming Martians | 4 Feb 04, 2021

A Mars colony by 2040? Children born on Mars by 2050? It still sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but more than ever, it’s within reach. On this episode, Steven talks to engineer, author and Mars evangelist Dr. Robert Zubrin about why putting humans on the red planet isn’t just a scientific and technological exercise -- it’s also a way to ensure that human culture keeps moving forward.

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Mission To Mars | Curiosity and Perseverance | 3 Jan 28, 2021

Led by an iconoclastic engineer who barely graduated high school, NASA jumps back into the race to send humans to Mars. But first, they need to figure out how to land larger vehicles on the treacherous Martian surface – and how to make enough oxygen for humans to one day colonize the red planet.

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Mission To Mars | Elon Musk Takes Aim | 2 Jan 21, 2021

After making his fortune in the dot-com boom, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk decides to take on a new challenge: going into space, and eventually colonizing Mars. To him, rockets are outdated technology just waiting to be disrupted. But he soon learns that space is not so easily conquered.

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Mission To Mars | Seeing Red | 1 Jan 14, 2021

Even after the Apollo program put astronauts on the moon, Mars remained out of reach. Then, in 1990, an ambitious engineer hatched an ingenious plan to send the first humans to the red planet. But will anyone at NASA buy into his idea?

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Encore: Conquering Pain | Ether Dreams | 3 Jan 07, 2021

As Horace Wells’ life goes from bad to worse, William Morton becomes an unlikely hero.

This episode originally aired on November 22, 2018.

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Encore: Conquering Pain | The Swindle | 2 Dec 31, 2020

After experimenting on himself, Horace Wells realized that laughing gas might help make surgeries less painful. But his search for a business partner would lead him to a fateful encounter with a petty crook named William Morton.

This episode originally aired on November 15, 2020.

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Encore: Conquering Pain | The Frolic | 1 Dec 24, 2020

For decades, Americans resigned themselves to gritting their teeth through the agony of surgery. But then an eminent surgeon, a charming swindler, and his hapless mark crossed paths and changed everything.

This episode originally aired on November 8, 2018.

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Year In Review | When Will I Get the Vaccine? | 1 Dec 17, 2020

2020 has been a year of struggle, uncertainty and loss. It has also forced us to adapt and innovate in nearly every aspect of our lives. But no innovation this year has been more important and more astounding than the Covid-19 vaccine. On this year-end episode, Steven talks to Bruce Gellin, president of Global Immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington, D.C.. about what to expect from the imminent Covid-19 vaccine.

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Telephone | Our Distracted Minds | 3 Dec 10, 2020

Alexander Graham Bell wouldn’t recognize the telephone today. Our phones allow us to keep the internet in our pockets and offer an endless stream of information and entertainment. But they're also altering our society. On this episode, Steven talks to Dr Larry Rosen, co-author of “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World,” about how smartphones have impacted our lives.

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Telephone | Guided by Voices | 2 Dec 03, 2020

Alexander Graham Bell has created one of the most important inventions in history. Now all he has to do is fight a business partner who doesn't care and a corporate monster that wants to destroy him.

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Telephone | Call Waiting | 1 Nov 26, 2020

In the 19th Century, the telegraph is the cutting edge of communication. No one can imagine anything better—except Alexander Graham Bell.

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Auto-Tune: From Cher to Kanye | 1 Nov 19, 2020

All Andy Hildebrand wanted to do was make a computer program to help singers sound better. He never expected it to kick off a battle for the soul of modern music.

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The Fight Against AIDS | The AIDS-Covid Connection | 4 Nov 12, 2020

With AIDS under control here in the U.S., we find ourselves in the middle of another deadly pandemic. Now the doctors who were on the front lines of the AIDS crisis are using what they've learned over the past 30 years to help fight against Covid-19. On this episode, Steven talks to Dr. Monica Gandhi, director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research, who has recently contributed to research into SARS-CoV-2.

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The Fight Against AIDS | The Lazarus Effect | 3 Nov 05, 2020

As AIDS activists keep up the pressure to find new treatments and lower the price of existing ones, they win unlikely allies at the highest levels of government. Meanwhile, some doctors on the frontlines of the epidemic take drug research into their own hands. And a new class of drugs promises to bring the sickest AIDS patients back from the brink of death.

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The Fight Against AIDS | Placebos and Profits | 2 Oct 29, 2020

Four years into the AIDS epidemic, scientists discover a drug that may treat the disease: AZT. But the new drug quickly becomes mired in controversy -- over how it's tested, its potential side effects, and its astronomical price tag.

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The Fight Against AIDS | The Epidemic Begins | 1 Oct 22, 2020

In the early 1980s, a mysterious new disease spread like wildfire through the gay communities of major U.S. cities. Before it even had a name, AIDS had already killed over half its victims. Public response was hampered by ignorance, fear, and homophobia. This is the story of the doctors, scientists and activists who risked everything to lead the fight against AIDS.

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Encore: Thinking Machines | Passing For Human | 5 Oct 15, 2020

Can a computer pass for human? And more importantly, can a computer beat a human at Jeopardy? It’s all fun and games until we start putting life-changing decisions in the hands of machines.

Note: This episode originally aired in September 2018.

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Encore: Thinking Machines | I Learn, Therefore I Am | 4 Oct 08, 2020

A leap in the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence causes concern about the dangers ahead.

Note: This episode originally aired in September 2018.

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Encore: Thinking Machines | Siri-ous Business | 3 Oct 01, 2020

The development of smartphone Artificial Intelligence from early government research funding and the first experimental robot in Silicon Valley to the rise of the personal assistant known as Siri.

Note: This episode originally aired in September 2018.

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Encore: Thinking Machines | How Do You Make A Computer Blink? | 2 Sep 24, 2020

With six different kinds of pieces, 64 squares to move in, and billions of possible combinations of moves, chess is a good test for a computer. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the visible universe. For all intents and purposes: almost infinite.

Gary Kasparov is the world’s best chess player. Deep Blue is a computer. It’s humanity v machine. There’s a lot at stake and things turn controversial fast with accusations of cheating, a very human meltdown and a computer that hallucinates.

Note: This episode originally aired in September 2018.

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Encore: Thinking Machines | Artificial Intelligence | 1 Sep 17, 2020

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction. And it’s about to get much more powerful: machines that can reason, create, predict the future, even dream. AI is likely to be one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st century.

This is the first in our four-episode series about the rise of artificial intelligence and humanity's quest to breathe intellectual life into computers. In this episode, we're going to meet the mavericks who first dreamed of a world where machines are capable of being smarter than the people who created them.

And what better way for smart machines and their creators to face off in a battle of wits ... than by playing chess?

Note: This episode originally aired in August 2018.

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Keeping Cool | The Air Conditioning Trap | 3 Sep 10, 2020

As the Earth heats up, air conditioning is quickly shifting from a luxury to a necessity. But our reliance on ACs is also speeding up the pace of global warming. It’s the “air conditioning trap.” On this episode, Steven asks Guardian science writer Stephen Buranyi how – and if – we can escape it.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Larry Brilliant on Why We Need a Global Covid Response | 19 Sep 08, 2020

There are few people who have thought more about pandemics than epidemiologist Larry Brilliant. He worked with the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox. He’s fought polio and blindness in India. And, in his 2006 TED Prize talk, he warned the audience that a pandemic was coming “within your children or your grandchildren's lifetime.”

He was right. What he couldn’t predict, though, was how mismanaged our response would be – and how quickly we’d set aside the lessons we learned defeating smallpox. As Larry tells Steven, “We have to work together… and we're not doing it so far.”

Watch Larry’s Ted Prize acceptance speech: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_my_wish_help_me_stop_pandemics?language=en

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Keeping Cool | It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity | 2 Sep 03, 2020

Summer blockbusters. Phoenix, Arizona. President Ronald Reagan. What do all these things have in common? They might never have happened if not for AC.

On this episode, AC finally hits the big time – and changes America forever.

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Keeping Cool | A Chilly Reception | 1 Aug 27, 2020

Muggy. Sticky. Miserable.

For eons, that’s just what summer was. In fact, when air conditioning first became available, few people took advantage of it. Wasn’t summer supposed to be uncomfortable?

This is the story of how people finally warmed up to the idea of keeping cool.

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Video Games | Game Designer Ian Bogost on the Past and Future of Gaming | 4 Aug 20, 2020

The video game industry has certainly matured over the years. But does it still have the sense of open-ended innovation that it did in the early golden era of Spacewar and Pong?

To get a better sense of how today’s game breakthroughs compare to the heyday of Atari, Steven speaks with one of the most thoughtful observers of the video game industry, Ian Bogost. Bogost is a game designer and the author of Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games. More recently, he’s written about Animal Crossing and Untitled Goose Game for The Atlantic.

Read more about Ian and his work here:

http://bogost.com/

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ian-bogost/

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Fighting Coronavirus | Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Vaccines (But Were Afraid to Ask) | 18 Aug 18, 2020

The coronavirus has put our lives on pause, but it’s kicked the science behind vaccines into hyperdrive. Science writer Carl Zimmer walks Steven through some of the radical new approaches to making vaccines – and gives his best-case/worst-case scenarios for when a vaccine will be ready. Also: we get answers, kind of, about what’s up with Russia. And Steven drops a Taylor Swift reference.

Read Carl’s latest on the vaccine race in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/by/carl-zimmer

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Video Games | Home Invasion | 3 Aug 13, 2020

It's 1975 and Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell is setting his sights on the next frontier in video games: the home.

But convincing people to bring video games into their homes won't be easy. Bushnell’s going to need a lot of cash, a couple perfectly timed technological breakthroughs, and a killer business plan. Oh, and he’ll also have to teach the world what a “game console” is.

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Video Games | Ping-Pong | 2 Aug 06, 2020

Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space was the world's first commercial video game, but it failed to win over the masses. Now Bushnell’s plotting his comeback … and his comeback has a name: Atari.

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Video Games | Electric Dreams | 1 Jul 30, 2020

Call of Duty, Fortnite, Animal Crossing.... The video game industry generates billions of dollars each year. But not so long ago, video games were mostly played by the programmers who made them. On our new season, we’re telling the story of how video games broke out of university computer labs and found their way straight to the heart of popular culture.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Back to School | 17 Jul 28, 2020

Back-to-school season is here, but students across the country aren’t going anywhere. Anya Kamenetz, NPR’s education correspondent, returns to the show to shed light on the greatest educational crisis of our time. How can we safely reopen schools? And what can we learn from countries that have tried – and failed?

Listen to Anya’s stories for NPR at https://www.npr.org/people/302894536/anya-kamenetz.

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Radar | The Superpowers of Modern Radar | 4 Jul 23, 2020

Since World War II, scientists have continued to use radar to explore what we can’t see or hear ourselves. And their uses have become increasingly creative. On this episode, we’re talking to three people involved in some of the most fascinating applications of radar today.

First up, Steven talks to Sara Kiley Watson about ground-penetrating radar, which provides archaeologists with breathtakingly clear pictures of underground cities. Next, Dr. Jyotika Virmani tells Steven about what oceanographers are learning as radar helps them plumb the mysteries of the ocean floor. And finally, engineering professor Youngwook Kim shares a surprising new way radar can aid in search and rescue missions.

Read Sara Kiley Watson’s article in Popular Science, “Scientists explored a buried Roman city without digging up an ounce of soil”: https://www.popsci.com/story/science/falerii-novi/

View radar images of Falerii Novi, a buried Roman city: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/sacred-topography-0013831

Lean more about the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s efforts to map the ocean floor: https://schmidtocean.org/cruise-log-post/mapping-earths-ocean-seafloor/

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Radar | The Rad Lab | 3 Jul 16, 2020

As German bombers raze England’s cities, American scientists race to build the world’s first air-to-air radar system. But building the system is only half the challenge. If the scientists succeed, they’ll also have to fit the world’s most cutting-edge technology inside the nose of a B-18 – a space that’s smaller than a shoe box.

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Radar | Mr. Bowen Goes to Washington | 2 Jul 09, 2020

As World War II rages on, American and English scientists race to develop a microwave radar system. But both sets of scientists have something the other team needs to cross the finish line.

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Fighting Coronavirus | How We Can Still Win | 16 Jul 07, 2020

When National Geographic science editor Nsikan Akpan began researching his latest article on the coronavirus, he asked every scientist he talked to the same question: Has the U.S. already lost? Every scientist said no – but we need a better game plan.

On this week’s episode, Nsikan tells Steven what we’ve been getting wrong – and what the new game plan should look like.

You can find Nsikan Akpan’s articles, including “Here’s How To Stop The Coronavirus From Winning,” at natgeo.com/coronavirus.

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Radar | Welcome to Tuxedo Park | 1 Jul 02, 2020

What technology won WWII? Most people would say the atomic bomb, but the real answer is radar.

As a small island country, vulnerable to aerial attacks, England took the lead in developing radar in the 1930s. But the early radar systems were too massive to fit into planes, where they would be of most use in the fight against the Germans. At the heart of the problem was a technological catch-22. Smaller radar systems were, by definition, less powerful.

Or so everyone thought, until a mismatched pair of brothers in Northern California decided to take a crack at creating a new kind of radar...

This is episode one of our three-part series on radar, “Welcome to Tuxedo Park.”

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Fighting Coronavirus | Inside the NBA Bubble | 15 Jun 30, 2020

Back in March, the NBA pressed pause on its 2019-20 season. Now, the league wants to pick up where it left off – but with Covid-19 rates on the rise, it’s not going to be easy.

This week, Kavitha Davidson, host of The Lead, walks us through the NBA’s plan to move 16 teams into a “bubble” at the Disney World Resort. What rules will players have to follow? And will the risks to players’ health be worth it?

Check out The Lead, Wondery’s daily sports podcast, at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lead/id1478448344

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Encore: The Polio Vaccine | The Fight Goes On | 3 Jun 25, 2020

In 1955, the world received its first viable polio vaccine, courtesy of Jonas Salk. He was hailed as a hero until kids started to fall sick with polio. A bad batch of vaccines was thought to be the culprit. But it was also an opening for a scientist with a competing vision. Albert Sabin warned of the dangers of Salk’s vaccine from the start. The final clash between the two vaccines, and the two scientists, is the true story of how polio was conquered.

Note: This episode originally ran in October 2018.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Forest Fires, Memes, & Covid-19 | 14 Jun 23, 2020

Forest fires. Ant colonies. Internet memes.

On the surface, they have nothing in common. But, according to network scientist Samuel Scarpino, they’re all complex systems that spread. Sam’s job is to crack the rules underlying their spread, and then apply them to epidemics such as Covid-19.

Read more about Sam’s work in Steven’s New York Times Magazine article, “How Data Became One of the Most Powerful Tools to Fight an Epidemic”: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/magazine/covid-data.html

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Encore: The Polio Vaccine | Can You Patent The Sun? | 2 Jun 18, 2020

Pressure mounts to release a vaccine for polio, but a rushed vaccine could have disastrous results. After all, vaccines contain benign samples of the viruses they’re designed to protect against. If a flawed polio vaccine were to be tested on humans, it wouldn’t cure the disease – it would help spread it.

Note: This episode originally ran in October 2018.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Can We Ditch the Office Forever? | 13 Jun 16, 2020

Most CEOs hated the idea of employees working from home. But when the coronavirus hit, they didn’t have a choice. They sent their white-collar workers home before they’d even learned how to mute themselves on Zoom. What happened next surprised everyone. Productivity shot through the roof. Now, companies don’t know whether they should bring workers back to the office, even if they can do it safely.

We’ve invited Clive Thompson, fresh off his piece for The New York Times Magazine about remote work, to talk us through this rapid culture shift. What, exactly, makes remote work so productive? What do we lose when we work in isolation? What new technology will emerge from this moment? And how many of us will ever voluntarily do the 9-to-5 again?

Links:

Clive Thompson, “What if Working From Home Goes On … Forever?”, New York Times Magazine:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/09/magazine/remote-work-covid.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

And check out Clive's interview on The Next Big Idea about his book "Coders": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coders-the-invisible-architects-that-shape-our-lives/id1482067226?i=1000455369916

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Encore: The Polio Vaccine | Marching Toward A Cure | 1 Jun 11, 2020

The virus spread invisibly and without warning. Person to person. Through contaminated food, shared possessions, and unwashed hands.

Mid-century Americans lived in fear of one disease: polio. But the story of the polio vaccine is not just a scientific story – it’s a political and financial story, too. One that played out across the corner offices of New York City, the sound booths of Hollywood, and the back rooms of Washington D.C..

Note: This episode originally ran in October 2018.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Why Covid-19 Disproportionately Kills Black Americans | 12 Jun 09, 2020

There’s a saying in public health circles: “When white America sneezes, black America gets pneumonia.” When the coronavirus hit, health care experts knew that black Americans would be the hardest hit. But the numbers were still shocking. Black people make up 12.7% of the U.S. population but have so far made up 22% of its Covid-19-related deaths.

On this episode, Steven talks to reporter Linda Villarosa about the reasons behind those numbers, and her quest to give them a human face in her New York Times Magazine article, “A Terrible Price: The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America.” Along the way, she offers hope that we might be able to turn this current crisis into a call for action.

Articles by Linda Villarosa:

“A Terrible Price: The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America,” New York Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/magazine/racial-disparities-covid-19.html

“How False Beliefs in Physical Racial Difference Still Live in Medicine Today,” New York Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-differences-doctors.html

“Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies are in a Life-or-Death Crisis,” New York Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html

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Ferris Wheel | Scott A. Lukas and the History of Theme Parks | 2 Jun 04, 2020

George Ferris aspired to build a structure for the 1893 World's Fair that could rival Paris's Eiffel Tower. And when the Ferris wheel debuted, newspapers hailed it as the eighth wonder of the world.

The grandeur and success of the Ferris wheel paved the way for future theme parks. These fantastical spaces have become symbols of leisure and fun throughout the United States and offered innovators like George Ferris a chance to showcase attractions that pushed the boundaries of what's possible.

On this episode, Steven speaks with Scott A. Lukas, an anthropologist, theme park consultant, and author of the books “Theme Park” and “The Immersive Worlds Handbook: Designing Theme Parks and Consumer Spaces.” Steven and Scott discuss the uniquely American history of theme parks and the ways they’ve influenced all kinds of public spaces.

Here are some of the parks and rides – old and new – mentioned in this conversation:

Coney Island, NY: https://theweek.com/captured/624918/vintage-photos-from-coney-island-yesteryear
Kennywood Park, West Mifflin, PA: https://www.wtae.com/article/in-photos-kennywood-park-then-and-now/7403416#
The Void, Las Vegas, NV: https://www.thevoid.com/

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Fighting Coronavirus | Can Your Smartwatch Detect Covid-19? | 11 Jun 03, 2020

These days, watches don’t just tell time. Smartwatches like Apple Watch and Fitbit measure your heart rate, count your steps, and track your sleep schedule. According to Dr. Michael Snyder, they can also tell you when you’re getting sick – and potentially spot Covid-19 before you’re even symptomatic.

On this episode, Steven talks to Dr. Snyder, who runs the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford, about his new study on whether wearables can predict the onset of Covid-19. What has the study learned so far, and what else can your wearables be trained to detect?

To participate in Dr. Snyder’s study, visit https://innovations.stanford.edu/wearables.

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Ferris Wheel | Wheel in the Sky | 1 May 28, 2020

The 1889 World’s Fair in Paris dazzles attendees with the Eiffel Tower. So, when plans begin for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the mandate is clear: beat the Tower.

America’s architects and engineers compete to win the job – but every proposal they submit is more outlandish and dangerous than the last. And the most dangerous of all? Well, that might be a ride that resembles a twenty-story bicycle wheel, submitted by a young man named George Ferris….

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Fighting Coronavirus | Stopping the Spread of Bad Information | 10 May 26, 2020

According to the World Health Organization, we’re not just in the midst of a pandemic. We’re living through an “infodemic,” where misinformation is more readily available than facts.

On this episode, Steven talks to Joan Donovan, who studies misinformation in her role as the Director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center. Joan shares how conspiracy theories spread and how each of us can practice good information hygiene. It’s not as easy as wearing a mask … but it’s close.

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Enemy of All Mankind | A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt | 1 May 21, 2020

On September 11th, 1695, two ships confronted each other in the middle of the Indian Ocean: one an enormous treasure ship owned by the Grand Mughal of India, and the other a much smaller British pirate ship led by Henry Every.

What happened next changed the world. Every and his crew took off with $100 million in loot and sparked the world’s first global manhunt. They also inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to the rise of globalization, the tabloid press, and even democracy itself.

All of that, and more, is the subject of Steven Johnson’s latest book, Enemy of All Mankind. We borrow Rufus Griscom from Wondery’s The Next Big Idea podcast to talk with Steven about Every and the surprising ways a single confrontation on the high seas shaped life as we know it.

You can read more about Steven’s book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545158/enemy-of-all-mankind-by-steven-johnson/

And check out The Next Big Idea, currently launching season two.

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Fighting Coronavirus | Will We Remember 2020 A Century From Now? | 9 May 19, 2020

While the U.S. has countless WWI memorials, it has almost none dedicated to the 1918 flu pandemic – even though the pandemic claimed six times as many American lives.

On this episode, Steven talks to historian Nancy Bristow, author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, about the blind spot in America’s collective memory. Why did we forget the 1918 pandemic? And how well will future generations remember this one?

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/.

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Chewing Gum | The Champion of Chewers | 2 May 14, 2020

It’s the early 1890s and thanks to the adoption of chicle, chewing gum is bigger than ever. But it’s still a niche American habit. Men still shun it in favor of tobacco, and women who chew it in public are frowned upon.

But that’s all about to change thanks to the newest face on the gum scene. He’s name is William Wrigley Junior and he’s going to teach the world to chew.

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Fighting Coronavirus | We’re More United Than You Think | 8 May 12, 2020

Communication and cooperation across our society are as important as they’ve ever been. This week, Steven talks with Andy Slavitt, the former Medicare and Medicaid chief, who has emerged as one of the most effective communicators during this crisis. Andy and Steven discuss the future of healthcare, how to find trustworthy news sources, and how to make the most of your child’s senior year in isolation. (Hint: Start a podcast together!)

Check out Andy Slavitt’s podcast In the Bubble.

You can learn more about his new healthcare nonprofit, the United States of Care, here.

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Chewing Gum: Snapping and Stretching | 1 May 07, 2020

It’s the mid-1800s and in Maine, John Bacon Curtis is back from clearing the spruce forests with a crazy idea. He’s going to sell ready-to-chew gum.

But his bold plan is only the start of what will become a decades-long search for the ideal chew. It’s a search that will see the nascent gum business butt heads with newspaper tycoons, strike an alliance with oil refineries, and get a helping hand from the self-styled Napoleon of the West.

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Fighting Coronavirus: Is Social Distancing Enough? | 7 May 05, 2020

If we really want to reopen our economy, we need to do more than just flatten the curve. In the words of Dr. Jim Kim, the former president of the World Bank, we need to “start coming down the mountain.” And to do that, Dr. Kim says there is only one valid solution: “contact tracing,” one of the most low-tech and labor-intensive weapons in our public health arsenal.

On this week’s episode, Steven talks to Dr. Kim about how he convinced Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker to invest in contact tracing when other governors wouldn’t even return his calls, and why contact tracing is the best way to contain the spread of Covid-19.

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/.

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Fighting Coronavirus: Pandemic DIY | 6 Apr 28, 2020

When health care workers began running out of protective equipment, makers around the world powered up their 3D printers and got to work. This week, Steven talks to journalist Clive Thompson about the maker movement, an informal network of sewers, tinkerers, and engineers whose ingenuity is bridging supply gaps and increasing the pace of technological innovation, sometimes in a very retro way.

Read Clive Thompson’s article, “When Government Fails, Makers Come to the Rescue,” on Wired.com.

Download Budmen Industry’s templates for 3D face shields.

Enter the CoVent-19 Challenge.

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Dynamite: Audrey Kurth Cronin on New Technology and Terrorism | 4 Apr 23, 2020

Alfred Nobel worked on dynamite in distinctly unglamorous labs, but his ambitions were as grand as his labs were small. He envisioned dynamite transforming cityscapes and connecting rail lines across Europe. When Alfred finally got dynamite right, it did exactly that – but it also led to new and terrifying forms of political violence.

On the last episode of our dynamite series, Steven Johnson talks to security expert Audrey Kurth Cronin, author of “Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow's Terrorists.” Cronin argues that Nobel’s story is also the story of our times: once again, backyard inventors are spearheading new technology but not always thinking through the technology’s consequences.

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Fighting Coronavirus: Are Our Kids Alright? | 5 Apr 21, 2020

Let’s face it: we’re worried about our kids. How can we protect their mental health? Should the normal rules around screen time still apply? What will school look like come September? This week, Steven talks with Anya Kamenetz, an education correspondent for NPR and author of the book The Art of Screen Time, to get some answers.

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/.

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Dynamite: The Merchant of Death is Dead | 3 Apr 16, 2020

How did Alfred Nobel, the “Merchant of Death,” go from inventing dynamite to establishing the Nobel Peace Prize? The answer lies in a personal ad, a poorly vetted obituary, and a surprising new use for nitroglycerine.

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Fighting Coronavirus: How Can Data Save Lives? | 4 Apr 14, 2020

Where are new cases being detected? How many beds are available in local hospitals? What’s the growth rate of ICU admissions? These are some of the most urgent questions in the world right now, and they’re being answered by data pioneers like Dr. John Brownstein, the Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Brownstein talks to host Steven Johnson about his new crowdsourced website, CovidNearYou.org, and how public health data doesn’t just track deaths, but helps prevent them.

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/

Contribute to Dr. John Brownstein’s live map of Covid-19 symptoms at https://covidnearyou.org/.

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Dynamite: The Loneliest Millionaire | 2 Apr 09, 2020

Alfred Nobel had solved the critical problem of detonating nitroglycerine reliably, but his efforts to turn his new "blasting oil" into a successful commercial product create new challenges. An explosion in his Stockholm lab leads to personal tragedy, and draws the ire of local authorities. And a wave of industrial accidents involving nitroglycerine around the globe has critics accusing Alfred of murder.

Alfred knows that if his "blasting oil" is ever going to realize its potential, he's going to have to figure out a way to keep it from accidentally exploding during storage and transport. Nitroglycerine is clearly the most powerful explosive known to man. The question is: can Alfred's customers actually use the stuff without blowing themselves up in the process?

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Fighting Coronavirus: When Will the Lockdown End? | 3 Apr 07, 2020

Reading the forecast models that track and predict the spread of the coronavirus can feel like a glimpse into the future. And epidemiologists – the scientists behind these models – have suddenly become the most important figures in this fight. Dr. Tara Smith, an epidemiologist and professor at the Kent State University College of Public Health, talks with Steven about what most people misunderstand about these models, whether there’s an end in sight for social distancing, and why the public health sector is our “invisible shield.”

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/

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Dynamite: The Controlled Explosion | 1 Apr 02, 2020

In 1846, an Italian chemist discovered the volatile compound nitroglycerine, the first major breakthrough in creating man-made explosions since the invention of gunpowder a thousand years earlier. But almost everyone who experiments with the compound thinks it’s too dangerous for any commercial application–everyone except for one brooding, obsessed young Swedish inventor named Alfred Nobel.

Nobel dreams of harnessing the chemical’s power to ignite an engineering revolution: blasting railway tunnels, digging out mines and canals…. But as Nobel’s quest to tame nitroglycerine becomes increasingly central to his family’s livelihood, it also repeatedly puts his own life in danger.

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Fighting Coronavirus: How Can We Protect City Life? | 2 Mar 31, 2020

When public health is threatened on a mass scale, we have a long history of working together to take on the challenge. On this new weekly series, Steven will speak with experts from the worlds of health and technology about how the current moment compares with past pandemics, and what the coming months might look like.

On this episode, Steven talks with Richard Florida, a bestselling author on cities and urban rebirth. The population density of cities has always been key to driving new ideas, new collaborations, and new social movements. But today, as the coronavirus spreads, that density is creating danger. How can cities protect their way of life, and how they can come out of this crisis even stronger than before?

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/

Read Richard Florida and Steven Pedigo’s 10-Point Preparedness Plan for Cities.

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Fighting Coronavirus: Bruce Gellin On How COVID-19 Could Change Vaccine Development | 1 Mar 26, 2020

As the first in a series on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Steven Johnson speaks with Dr. Bruce Gellin, president of Global Immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington D.C.. Dr. Gellin is also a former director of the National Vaccine Program at the Department of Health and Human Services, and led the creation of HHS’s first pandemic influenza preparedness and response plan. They talk about a very new and pressing challenge: how to speed up vaccine development for COVID-19.

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Organ Transplant: The Heart Race | 3 Mar 19, 2020

In 1967, an unlikely surgeon performs the first human heart transplant – and shocks the world. As others race to replicate his achievement, one surgical team makes a mistake that could spell the end of organ transplants in the United States.

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Organ Transplant: A Matter of Life and Death | 2 Mar 12, 2020

By the early 1960s, surgeons have proven that it's possible to transplant kidneys and lungs. Now, with heart disease still the leading cause of death, they've set their sights on performing the first human heart transplant. But first, they've got to overcome the ethical, legal, and surgical challenges of removing a donor's heart before it stops beating for good.

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Organ Transplant: The Kidney Twins | 1 Mar 05, 2020

A century ago, organ transplants were the stuff of science fiction. But a handful of experimental surgeons believed that transplants were not just possible – they had the potential to save thousands of lives. Then, in 1954, a man agreed to donate his kidney to his twin brother – and one surgeon finally got his chance to prove the doubters wrong.

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Valium: Mother’s Little Helper | 3 Feb 20, 2020

Within 10 years of Valium’s introduction, people are starting to realize it’s not quite as harmless as they had been led to believe. Patients are building up a tolerance to it, taking stronger and stronger dosages, and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when they quit. Women, who have been prescribed Valium at twice the rates men have, spearhead the fight to increase regulation.

When former First Lady Betty Ford announces her own addiction to Valium, the public outcry against the drug finally causes the government to act. They hold days of hearings and tighten up the rules around prescribing the medication, but more importantly, Valium’s reputation is severely damaged.

But decades later, doctors start to wonder if the backlash went too far….

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Valium: The House That Leo Built | 2 Feb 13, 2020

With Miltown sweeping the nation, pharmaceutical companies around the country want in on the action and vie to create their own versions. At Hoffman La Roche, a brilliant scientist by the name of Leo Sternbach leads the charge.

While Roche executives want him to create a copycat drug, Sternbach has bigger ambitions: he wants to invent an entirely new class of tranquilizer. After Roche loses faith in his vision, Sternbach continues his work in secret – and lays the foundation for Valium, soon to become the most commonly prescribed drug in the United States.

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Valium: Miltown Magic | 1 Feb 06, 2020

Anxiety. It’s something everyone experiences at some point in their lives, but for centuries doctors had no effective way to treat it. They could send patients on rest cures, order them to do nothing at all, or prescribe barbiturates that depressed the central nervous system, easily leading to overdose and death.

Finally, in the mid-1950s, chemists discovered a new class of drugs: the minor tranquilizers. The most famous of these was Valium, which would go on to become the most prescribed drug in the United States.

But Valium owes its success to its lesser known predecessor Miltown, which changed the way Americans thought about anxiety.

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Electronic Television: The TVs of The Future | 3 Jan 30, 2020

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, television manufacturer LG debuted a TV set that rolls up like a poster. It's a far cry from our grandparents wooden boxes with black and white screens and bunny ear antennas. And despite impressive new television tech, many people these days are turning to phones and tablets to consume their favorite shows and moves. Today we conclude our series on the television with Susan Murray, Professor or Media, Culture and Communication at NYU. She joins us talk about the history and evolution of the television in our everyday life.

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Electronic Television: A Great Depression And The World's Fair | 2 Jan 23, 2020

While Philo Farnsworth was building gizmos out of a loft in San Francisco, the Radio Corporation of America was already plotting domination of the yet-to-be television industry under the leadership of a man named David Sarnoff. Sarnoff recognized television’s virtually limitless potential, and he was determined to bring it to the masses — with or without the help of Philo Farnsworth.

Sarnoff would rely on inventors like Vladimir Zworykin, who had also figured out how to transmit pictures electronically through his patented Iconoscope. At least, in theory. The missing piece wouldn’t fall into place until Zworykin visited Farnsworth’s lab — setting off a court battle to claim ownership of one of the most iconic inventions of the 20th century.

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Electronic Television: The Picture Radio | 1 Jan 16, 2020

The invention of the electronic television was uniquely complicated for its time. So complicated, in fact, that the prevailing narrative is that it couldn’t have been invented by a single person -- let alone Philo Farnsworth.

After all, some of the most brilliant minds in the world spent the first quarter of the 20th century working on television systems -- and some even managed to transmit images. But none of those systems were ever able to deliver the quality of images they’d need to be commercially viable. None except Philo Farnsworth, a farm boy from Utah, who got the idea for television when he was fourteen years old.

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The Year in Innovation | 6 Jan 09, 2020

It's a new year and a new decade, and that means a lot of new innovation and tech to look forward to. But, as we wonder what the future has in store, it's important to look back at the past year and what it has taught us. Author Clive Thompson joins us to talk about the innovations that caught his attention in 2019 and what he's looking forward to in 2020 and beyond.

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Kodak Roll Film: Brownie Boom | 3 Dec 12, 2019

After George Eastman cut ties with his chief emulsion-maker-turned-saboteur, Henry Reichenbach, the Kodak company started to falter. Some batches of film literally fell apart on the shelves. Others seemed fine, but yielded blurry, unprintable photos.

Eastman had tried to find a suitable replacement for Reichbach, but no one was able to make a stable emulsion at the volume he needed. Eastman was starting to get desperate.

He knew that if he didn’t fix his film fast, his Kodak cameras would never amount to more than a passing fad. Eastman wasn’t just looking to get rich and get out. He was after a legacy that would stand the test of time. In order to do that, Eastman would not only have to make his product reliable, he’d have to continually innovate — constantly turning out one new demographically-targeted product after another. In the end, this strategy would make Kodak a household name, and then doom it to obsolescence.

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Kodak Roll Film: Kodak Fiends | 2 Dec 05, 2019

George Eastman had made technological breakthroughs and forays into the photography market, but his images still weren’t good enough for professional photographers and the photographic process was still too complicated for recreational photographers.

Eastman needed to improve his product and simplify his process, but he couldn’t do it alone. His novice chemistry skills had already carried the company as far as they could go. So Eastman reached out to a gifted chemist for help, and made his company vulnerable in ways greater than he had feared.

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Kodak Roll Film: As Convenient as a Pencil | 1 Nov 28, 2019

Today, if we want to take a photo, we unlock our phone, aim, and click. It can be done on a whim, without a second thought. We document everything from new haircuts to latte art, cute cats to baby’s first smile. But prior to the 1900s, photography was the exclusive domain of professionals and dedicated hobbyists -- people willing to learn complex skills and spend hours on the craft.

Responsible for that shift was a man named George Eastman. Armed with a radical vision for what photography could be, and a cold-blooded business sense, Eastman delivered photography to the masses and altered the way most of us experience our lives over time.

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The Modern Ambulance | 1 Nov 21, 2019

Today, if you or someone you know experiences a medical emergency, you dial 9-1-1 and a squad of trained medical professionals arrives at your door. But just 55 years ago, that was not the case.

Emergency calls were generally dispatched to funeral homes simply because their vehicles were suited to transporting bodies. You’d be lucky if the person transporting you had any first aid training at all. A soldier shot in Vietnam had a better chance of surviving than a housewife in a car accident because the soldier in Vietnam got immediate trained medical care.

Throughout the 1960s, volunteer rescue squads began experimenting with different kinds of pre-hospital care. But in Pittsburgh, 20th century topography converged with the fates of a few individuals, and one ambitious vision, to spin a medical revolution into being.

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Google's Quantum Breakthrough Nov 14, 2019

In October, Google announced in a paper in the journal Nature that it built a chip called "Sycamore" that achieved what is known as "quantum supremacy." It's being hailed as a massive step forward in the world of quantum computing. Quantum computing's principles lie in the fascinating world of quantum mechanics, and while it is extremely complicated to understand, the theoretical applications of a quantum computer could have a massive real-world impact. We'll talk with Scott Aaronson, the David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center, about Google's discovery. Aaronson reviewed Google's paper before it was published and has worked for years on these complex problems.

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Electric Chair | A Matter of Light and Death | 3 Oct 31, 2019

In the summer of 1888, just as the electric chair controversy was unfolding, Nikola Tesla moved to Pittsburgh to work for George Westinghouse, fulfilling a year-long commitment he made when Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s AC motor patents.

The deal would make Tesla a millionaire, but it would ultimately threaten to topple Westinghouse’s business.

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Electric Chair | The War Becomes Electric | 2 Oct 24, 2019

After his unceremonious departure from Edison Electric, Nikola Tesla found himself broke and dejected, but more determined than ever to share his alternating current system with the world. And thanks to the help of one man who really believes in his work -- a man with vision, money and power -- he’ll soon have his chance.

Tesla has Edison in his sites, and the Current War is about to get deadly.

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Electric Chair | War of the Currents | 1 Oct 17, 2019

On August 6, 1890, a prisoner named William Kemmler became the first man executed in the electric chair. It was designed to be a more humane form of execution, but the gruesome scene in the death chamber that day revealed the device to be anything but.

Still, the chair stuck around. And Kemmler’s execution proved to be a pivotal moment in the history of capital punishment. But if you pull back just slightly, you’ll see that the story of the electric chair was just one small chapter in another story — a much larger story — that would come to define the world we live in.

This other story involved three titans of innovation—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse — locked in a desperate fight for control of the future of electricity. Their conflict would take lives, spark scientific advances and revolutionize human existence. And it would come to be called the War of the Currents.

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Skylab: NASA’s Best-Kept Secret | Falling Back to Earth | 3 Oct 10, 2019

The resourcefulness of NASA’s engineers and Skylab’s first crew helped save the space station from near disaster. Now, as the station’s second crew settles into their fifty-nine day mission, another kind of crisis is about to threaten Skylab—one that has nothing to do with the hazards of space travel.

In the fall of 1973, the United States is struggling. Gas prices are skyrocketing thanks to an oil embargo. The Vietnam War is dragging on, costing thousands of American lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. In the White House, Richard Nixon’s presidency is hanging by a thread, as details of the Watergate scandal leak out.

Against this backdrop, public interest in the U.S. space program is waning — and with it, Congress’s will to continue funding it. Now, faced with deep budget cuts, NASA may have no choice but to bring its space station program to a premature end.

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Skylab: NASA’s Best-Kept Secret| We Fix Anything | 2 Oct 03, 2019

Skylab was NASA’s underdog — a cobbled-together program that lived in the shadow of the Apollo moon landings. But with the last of those moon landings completed in December of 1972, it was finally Skylab’s time to shine.

That is, until launch. Now the eighty-ton space station is in orbit, but it’s badly damaged — possibly uninhabitable. And the timing couldn’t be worse. With America in the midst of a recession, politicians’ patience for NASA’s huge budgets is wearing thin. If Skylab turns out to be a two billion dollar boondoggle, it could set the entire American space program back decades.

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Skylab: NASA’s Best-Kept Secret| Apollo’s Leftovers | 1 Sep 26, 2019

Fifty years ago, America’s space program achieved its greatest triumph, when Apollo Eleven put the first men on the moon.

The Apollo program was a remarkable success story. But as NASA was sending men to the moon, they were engaged in another, less celebrated project — one even more important than the moon landings to humanity’s potential future in space. That project was called Skylab — America’s first space station.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Skylab. If you know anything about it at all, you know that after it was launched into orbit, it came crashing back down to Earth. But before that crash, Skylab taught NASA more things about living and working in space than any program before it.

So why did one of the engineers who worked on Skylab once call it “the little redheaded bastard out behind the barn”? Why do so many accounts of NASA’s achievements barely mention it? Why have most Americans never heard of America’s first space station?

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Sex, Cereal, and Nut Milks - The Complicated Legacy of the Kelloggs | 4 Sep 12, 2019

We conclude our series on Corn Flakes with Howard Markel author of "The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek." Markel joins us to talk about how he discovered the Kellogg's story and how their innovations changed the world of medicine, business, and of course, what we eat for breakfast today.

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Corn Flakes | Kellogg vs Kellogg | 3 Sep 05, 2019

Now that Will has officially left the San, it would seem his days of servitude and humiliation are finally over. But John has no intention of leaving him in peace.

As Will forges ahead with his groundbreaking cereal business, John resorts to desperate measures to make sure he’ll never have to share the spotlight with his brother. Even if it ends up costing him everything.

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Corn Flakes | Crunch Time | 2 Aug 29, 2019

After missing the chance to buy the rights to Shredded Wheat, the Kellogg brothers are on a quest to make toasted wheat flakes the leader of the breakfast revolution.

The cereal they make would change the culinary landscape of the country—and push their relationship to the breaking point.

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Corn Flakes | The Brothers of Battle Creek | 1 Aug 22, 2019

For the first 150 years of American history, American citizens were plagued by gastrointestinal issues. Diarrhea, gastritis and dysentery were pretty much a way of life. Indigestion was such an immense problem, the poet Walt Whitman called it “the Great American Evil.”

All these stomach issues were thanks, in part, to breakfast—which looked very different than it does today. Roast pork, pickled vegetables and thick gruel were common staples on the American breakfast table. That is, until two brothers — John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg — invented a ready-to-eat dry cereal that changed American commerce, medicine, and the way we eat even as it locked the brothers in a vitriolic battle that would last their entire lives.

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The Heimlich Maneuver | 1 Aug 15, 2019

In the 1960s, choking was a national epidemic. In the United States alone, close to 4,000 people were dying from choking every year. Lobster, ham, and hamburger were common culprits. But steak was by far the greatest offender.

Coroners called for a solution to these “Cafe Coronaries,” and the medical community responded with weird and dangerous gadgets: vacuum tubes and long tweezers. But Dr. Henry Heimlich knew this problem required something else; a simple technique that anyone can use to save the lives of choking victims—the Heimlich Maneuver.

The Heimlich Maneuver would save the lives of thousands of people, including Carrie Fisher, Cher, New York Mayor Ed Koch, and at least one American President. And yet, Dr. Heimlich would spend a decade fighting for the legitimacy of his life-saving maneuver.

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Author Jason Torchinsky Talks Our Autonomous Future | 3 Aug 08, 2019

The first mass rollout of robots into mainstream life won’t be humanoid machines designed to clean our homes or mow our lawns. It will be our cars. That’s what author Jason Torchinsky argues in his book “Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving.” Torchinsky, senior editor at Jalopnik.com joins us to talk about why building truly autonomous vehicles is a lot more complicated than we think.

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Innovation Fails: DeLorean | Shifting Gears | 2 Aug 01, 2019

The DeLorean was going to change the automotive industry. Designed to be fast, fuel-efficient, durable and affordable, it was going to be the first ethical sports car. It was going to break Detroit’s monopoly on car manufacturing and bring stability to Ireland’s fragile economy.

So what went wrong? And what can we learn from it?

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Innovation Fails: DeLorean | Driven to Succeed | 1 Jul 25, 2019

Normally on American Innovations, we look at the history of the science and technology that transformed the world we live in. These stories teach us about the vision, grit, competition, and teamwork required to conquer new frontiers and forge new pathways to the future. But equally valuable, perhaps, are the stories of those visionary innovators who seemed poised for greatness, who aimed for the stars, and then fell, crashing spectacularly back to earth.

In this series, we’ll examine one of the greatest failures in automotive history: the life and work of John DeLorean, the maverick engineer whose technical achievements seemed destined for the history books, among the likes of Henry Ford and Elon Musk. But instead, he became known for his dramatic demise.

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The Birth Control Pill | Biologist Timothy Mousseau Can't Stop Going Back To Chernobyl | 4 Jul 04, 2019

Radioactive bugs, birds, and dogs: these are a few of biologist Timothy Mousseau’s favorite things. Though the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and neighboring Pripyat have sat largely abandoned for over 30 years, Mousseau has been back more than 50 times. Radiation levels vary inside the evacuation zone — perfect conditions he says to observe its effects on the creatures that call the area home.

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The Birth Control Pill | Paradise and the Pill | 3 Jun 27, 2019

Since its launch, the birth control project had faced one obstacle after another. And over the year and a half that they’d been working, they had managed to solve all of their problems, except one: recruiting test subject for human trials.

Birth control was still illegal in the US, so they couldn’t advertise the study, and if they couldn’t advertise, they couldn’t recruit subjects. At the time, the problem seemed insurmountable. But then, while on vacation, Dr. Gregory Pincus found the solution to his recruitment problem: Puerto Rico.

Birth control was legal on the island, and more importantly, the women were desperate for an answer to their population problem. There was no doubt in Pincus’s mind: these clinical trials would cement the project’s place in history. And he was right. The trials for the birth control pill would come to be known as one of the most controversial studies in the history of American medicine.

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The Birth Control Pill | A Matter of Money | 2 Jun 20, 2019

In 1951, Dr. Gregory Pincus was on the verge of a breakthrough. He had successfully halted ovulation in rabbits and mice; now the project was finally ready for human trials. Only problem was, they had run out of money. Both Pincus and Margaret Sanger had tapped all of their respective resources. If there was any hope for the birth control pill, they'd need a big influx of cash—fast.

That’s when Katharine McCormick entered the picture.

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The Birth Control Pill | But Can It Be Done? | 1 Jun 13, 2019

When Margaret Sanger opened her birth control clinic in 1916, she knew she was breaking the law. Distributing contraceptives, or even literature about birth control, was a jailable offense. But she didn’t care. As a nurse, Sanger had sworn to devote herself to the welfare of those in her community. And in the early 1900s, that meant doing something about the public health crisis caused by unplanned pregnancies.

At the turn of the century, many women were having babies with no break in between pregnancies. It put them at risk for anemia, and uterine ruptures. Miscarriages were common. Of the children that were born, one in five died during the first five years of life.

To Sanger, the solution was clear: a safe, effective, discrete contraceptive for women—a pill, no bigger than an aspirin. At the time, the idea seemed more radical than putting a man on the moon. And in some ways, developing it would be even more difficult.

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Molly Wood: In A Changing Climate, How Can Tech Help Us Survive? | 4 Jun 06, 2019

Molly Wood has spent two decades covering the tech industry. As the host of “Marketplace Tech,” she demystifies the digital economy and how the world of business and tech influences us in unexpected ways. She came on the show to talk about why she’s drawn to tech world, and the role of tech in one of the biggest issues we face today: climate change.

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Star Wars' Cinema Technology | The Audience is Listening | 3 May 30, 2019

By 1975, George Lucas knew exactly what he wanted Star Wars to look like, but what it would sound like was another story altogether. Lucas was tired of Sci-Fi’s typical synthetic and electronic cliches; he wanted a sonic world that felt organic and personal. So he hired a young sound designer named Ben Burtt, and sent him out into the world with a recorder and microphone.

Burtt would need to blend and manipulate his recordings in order to achieve original sound designs, customized in every way to help bring the Skywalker saga to life. Like a detective, Burtt would have to hunt for the perfect buzz, bark, or hum to make Star Wars come alive. And in the process, he and Lucas would help to change the way audiences experience sound in films.

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Star Wars' Cinema Technology | The Saga Continues | 2 May 23, 2019

With the success of STAR WARS, George Lucas finally had the independence and power to make movies exactly the way he wanted to make them—which was critical, because the sequels he planned were going to be even bigger and more challenging than the original. The artists of Industrial Light and Magic had barely finished the first film, but now they’d have to top themselves--designing a snow planet, imperial walkers, tauntauns, asteroid fields, a Cloud City, and a 12-mile long Star Destroyer.

From 1978 to 1983, ILM surged forward with the mandate to not only complete the original STAR WARS trilogy, but also expand the company itself. The ultimate mission: to push the edge of what visual effects could be, and ultimately lead cinema from its analogue origins, to its digital present.

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Star Wars' Cinema Technology | 6842 Valjean Ave | 1 May 16, 2019

When STAR WARS debuted in May 1977, it gave rise to a pop-cultural phenomenon unlike any the world had ever seen. The movie was so singular and iconic, and so technically ambitious -- that it almost never came to be.

To bring Star Wars to the screen, new technology had to be invented and existing technology had to be utilized in ways never before imagined. None of the special effects companies in Hollywood could handle the blend of creativity and innovation necessary to bring director George Lucas’s vision to life. So Lucas built his own studio, and forever changed the way movies are made.

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Airplane | Rewriting Aviation History | 3 May 02, 2019

In 1913, the young aviation industry was in trouble. The Wright brothers’ broad proprietary claim on airplane technology—and their willingness to sue competitors—created a legal bottleneck that was stifling the airplane’s development.

Their legal power over aviation stemmed from the idea that they were the first to build a plane capable of flying. But what if they weren’t the first? In early 1914, Glenn Curtiss was presented with the opportunity to test that idea. Ironically, the experiment would end up costing him his place in history.

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Airplane | Wrights and Wrongs | 2 Apr 25, 2019

Glenn Curtiss may have mastered the technical aspects of the airplane, but in September of 1909, Curtiss found himself painfully ill-equipped to handle the latest challenge before him: the Wright brothers were suing him for patent infringement., demanding he stop building, selling, and even flying his planes.

While Curtiss was the main target of the lawsuit, the outcome of the case would affect the industry as a whole. That’s because the question at hand focused on the interpretation and application of patent law. Specifically, could any one man--or in this case, two brothers--legally own the air.

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Airplane | The Flight of the June Bug | 1 Apr 18, 2019

Think for a moment about some of the pioneering developments from the earliest days of American aviation: The first pilot’s licence; the first flight from one city to another; the first airplane sold commercially. More than a century later, most people attribute these milestones to the Wright brothers. But the Wright brothers were responsible for none of these firsts. In fact, all of these achievements belong to just one man: Glenn Hammond Curtiss, the father of modern aviation. So why is it that most Americans have never heard his name?

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Jaron Lanier Wants You to Delete Social Media | 5 Apr 11, 2019

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube. The past year has brought a backlash against these companies and others over data privacy and their treatment of speech. Tech visionary and critic Jaron Lanier discusses his take on social media and why he thinks you should delete yours.

Read Jaron’s latest book: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now.

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XX Factor | Hedy Lamarr | 4 Apr 04, 2019

Glamour. Hollywood. Drama. Although she was known as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” Actress Hedy Lamarr’s greatest life work was far from the silver screen. At the height of her film career, and in the midst of a world war, Hedy invented the basis for all modern wireless communications: signal hopping.

Part of a special series with Smithsonian Magazine highlighting the lives of women inventors to celebrate Women’s History Month. Head over to Smithsonian.com/Wondery to go deeper, or find us on Twitter @InnovationsPod.

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XX Factor | Margaret Knight | 3 Mar 28, 2019

A machine to mass produce paper bags. Seems unremarkable today, but in the 1800s, it was cutting edge. The technology would change everyday life, and maybe, the life of one inventor: Margaret Knight. That is if she could get people to believe she invented it.

Part of a special series with Smithsonian Magazine highlighting the lives of women inventors to celebrate Women’s History Month. Head over to Smithsonian.com/Wondery to go deeper, or find us on Twitter @InnovationsPod.

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XX Factor | Madam C.J. Walker | 2 Mar 21, 2019

The first self-made female African American millionaire is how she’s known. But Madam C.J. Walker’s story is much more than a rags to riches tale of a cosmetics industry mogul. She was an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist. Along the way, she faced challenges from inside her own community and found a way to transform them into successes.

Part of a special series with Smithsonian Magazine highlighting the lives of women inventors to celebrate Women’s History Month. Head over to Smithsonian.com/Wondery to go deeper, or find us on Twitter @InnovationsPod.

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XX Factor | The Woman Who Put Man on the Moon | 1 Mar 14, 2019

Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are preparing to land on the Moon. The whole world is watching live on television. But something is very wrong, their warning alarms are flashing and they don't know what it is. There’s only one woman who can fix it: MIT software engineer Margaret Hamilton.

This is the first episode of a special series with Smithsonian Magazine highlighting the lives of women inventors to celebrate Women’s History Month. Head over to Smithsonian.com/Wondery to go deeper, or find us on Twitter @InnovationsPod.

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Coca-Cola: The Perfect Package | 2 Feb 28, 2019

Things are really picking up for Coca-Cola, thanks to its industrious new—and most importantly, sober—owner, Asa Candler. Over the past year, Candler’s sold enough syrup to make half a million glasses of soda. The drink is loved by everyone who tries it, but on the business side, Candler is still just scraping by. To turn Coca-Cola into the sensation he knows it can be, he will have to battle a slew of imposters, take a massive marketing risk, and deal with one very problematic ingredient: cocaine.

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Coca-Cola: The Cocaine Clinician | 1 Feb 21, 2019

In the wake of the Civil War, Atlanta emerged as both the cultural capital of the New South, and the epicenter of its snake oil trade. A shell-shocked populace, haunted by poverty, hunger and disease sought salvation in the dubious cure-all tonics of the pharmacy trade. What they got instead would go on to become the most famous beverage in the world: Coca-Cola.

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Thinking Machines | Garry Kasparov | 6 Oct 04, 2018

An interview with the Grandmaster himself: Garry Kasparov. In 1985, he earned international fame when he became the youngest world chess champion at just 22-years-old. He went on to defend his title for more than a decade. But it’s his 6-game match against IBM’s supercomputer “Deep Blue” in 1997 that will be remembered as a defining moment in the history of chess -- and artificial intelligence.

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Thinking Machines | Passing For Human | 5 Sep 27, 2018

Can a computer pass for human? And more importantly, can a computer beat a human at Jeopardy? It’s all fun and games until we start putting life-changing decisions in the hands of machines.

Written by Steven Johnson

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Thinking Machines | I Learn Therefore I Am | 4 Sep 20, 2018

A leap in the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence causes concern about the dangers ahead.

Written by Tom Simonite

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Thinking Machines | Siri-ous Business | 3 Sep 13, 2018

The development of smartphone Artificial Intelligence from early government research funding and the first experimental robot in Silicon Valley to the rise of the personal assistant known as Siri.

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Thinking Machines| How Do You Make a Computer Blink | 2 Sep 06, 2018

With six different kinds of pieces, 64 squares to move in, and billions of possible combinations of moves, chess is a good test for a computer. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the visible universe. For all intents and purposes: almost infinite.

Gary Kasparov is the world’s best chess player. Deep Blue is a computer. It’s humanity v machine. There’s a lot at stake and things turn controversial fast with accusations of cheating, a very human meltdown and a computer that hallucinates.

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Thinking Machines| Artificial Intelligence | 1 Aug 30, 2018

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction. And it’s about to get much more powerful: machines that can reason, create, predict the future, even dream. AI is likely to be one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st-century.

This is the first in our four-episode series about the rise of artificial intelligence and humanity's quest to breathe intellectual life into computers. In this episode, we're going to meet the mavericks who first dreamed of a world where machines capable of being smarter than the people who created them.

And what better way for smart machines and their creators to face off in a battle of wits -- than by playing chess?

Pre-order Steven Johnson’s new book Farsighted now before it is released on September 4th.

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Where Are Past Seasons? May 10, 2018

Hey American Innovations listeners! You might be wondering what happened to some of our older seasons. We’ve moved them to our new premium service, Wondery+, where you can listen ad-free and get access to more Wondery shows. For a limited time, we’re offering listeners of American Innovations a free week of Wondery+. Just go to wonderyplus.com/AI.

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Introducing American Innovations Apr 26, 2018

DNA science. Artificial intelligence. Smartphones and 3D printers. Science and technology have transformed the world we live in. But how did we get here? It wasn’t by accident. Well, sometimes it was. It was also the result of hard work, teamwork, and competition. And incredibly surprising moments.

Hosted by bestselling author Steven Johnson (“How We Got To Now”), American Innovations uses immersive scenes to tell the stories of the scientists, engineers, and ordinary people behind the greatest discoveries of the past century.

All episodes are available now. You can binge the series - including exclusive seasons - ad-free on Wondery+ or on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription. Join Wondery+ here: https://wondery.app.link/innovations

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