Science History Podcast

The advent of agriculture over 10,000 years ago forever altered the trajectory of humanity. Communities grew larger until cities and nations dotted the landscape, labor became specialized, new diseases emerged, civilizations flourished and vanished, warfare increased in scale and lethality, and people colonized every corner of the globe. Agriculture facilitated the exponential growth of the human population, which necessitated ever greater efficiency and productivity and eventually led to the industrialization of farming. But this efficiency has come at a cost – the loss of crop varieties and the local knowledge and cultural practices associated with those crops. With us to understand these radical changes in agricultural practices, and their implications for society, is Helen Anne Curry. Helen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Churchill College. Her research focuses on the histories of seeds, crop science, and industrial agriculture. She is author of Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth Century America and Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction.

The brain is the most mysterious and complex organ of the body, and when things go awry, we may be confronted with personal tragedy and we may gain insights on what it means to be human. With us to discuss neurological disorders and the history of their discovery is Sara Manning Peskin. Sara completed an AB in biochemistry at Harvard University in 2009, an MS in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and an MD also at U Penn in 2015. She completed postgraduate training and a fellowship in various aspects of neurology also at U Penn, where she is now an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology. Today we discuss a cornucopia of neurological disorders, including Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, Pick’s disease, pellagra, and kuru disease (and its association with cannibalism) – all drawn from the pages of her new book, A Molecule Away from Madness, published in 2022 by W.W. Norton & Company.

Nothing is so intertwined with human success and folly as economics. The economy, for better or for worse, drives much of our fate from our household budget to our national policies to the outbreak of war. But economic activity also has profound effects on the environment and a close inspection of economics opens the question of whether humans can live sustainably on the only planet we have. The field of economics that focuses on sustainability and the environmental costs of economic activity is ecological economics. With us to discuss this field is one of its founders, Herman Daly. Herman received a B.A. in economics from Rice University in 1960 and a PhD in from Vanderbilt University in 1967. He was a professor of economics at Louisiana State University until 1988, and then served as senior economist in the environment department of the World Bank until 1994. He then joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in the School of Public Affairs. Herman is the author of over 100 articles in professional journals, as well as many books, including: Toward a Steady-State Economy (1973), Steady-State Economics (1977), Valuing the Earth (1993), Beyond Growth (1996), Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics (1999), Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (2004), and Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development (2007). He is co-author with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. of the award-winning book, For the Common Good (1989). He also co-founded the journal Ecological Economics and the International Society of Ecological Economics. Herman has received too many awards to list here, but they include Sweden’s Honorary Right Livelihood Award, the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science from the Netherlands, the Sophie Prize for Environment and Development from Norway, the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment, and the Blue Planet Prize.

The 60s hosted the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which occurred in the midst of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and civil unrest. How did the culture wars of the 1960s relate to the space race, especially in the United States? How did the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left, environmentalism, the women’s movement, and the Hippie counterculture influence NASA, and vice versa? With us to answer these questions is Neil Maher. Neil received a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College in 1986, an MA in U.S. history from New York University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in history, also from New York University, in 2001. He is a professor of history in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark, where he teaches environmental history, political history, and the history of environmental justice. Neil has received numerous fellowships, awards, and grants from the Smithsonian Institution, NASA, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, and Ludwig Maximilian University’s Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. His books include Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Apollo in the Age of Aquarius (Harvard University Press, 2017).

Today’s episode marks the four-year anniversary of the Science History Podcast, where we have explored all manner of science and relevant policy spanning from gravitational waves to bioterrorism. So it is fitting that today’s guest, Dick Garwin, has worked on just about every major scientific and technology problem with a defense application since just after the Second World War, ranging from the first thermonuclear weapon in 1951 all the way to the U.S. response to pandemics. Today we discuss it all, including space nuclear detonations and electromagnetic pulses, spy satellites, anti-submarine warfare, sequential memory for computers, magnetic resonance imaging, laser printers, touch-screen monitors, nuclear weapons testing, nuclear reactor accidents, Ebola, the Iraq War, the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill, and even gravitational waves. Dick was born in Ohio in 1928. He received a BS in physics from Case Institute of Technology in 1947 at the age of 19, and then a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1949, at the age of 21. Two years later, in 1951, for a summer project at Los Alamos, he designed the first hydrogen bomb. Dick joined the IBM Corporation in 1952, where for over 40 years he helped to design diverse technology with military applications. He also held numerous posts in universities and at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, in addition to advising presidents on science and technology, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon. He also served on various technical committees for subsequent American administrations, all the way through to the Obama presidency. Dick has published over 500 papers and been granted 47 U.S. patents. He also coauthored many books, including Nuclear Weapons and World Politics (1977), Nuclear Power Issues and Choices (1977), Energy: the Next Twenty Years (1979), Science Advice to the President (1980), Managing the Plutonium Surplus: Applications and Technical Options (1994), and Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? (2001). Dick is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. Dick received too many awards to list them all here, but they include the 2003 National Medal of Science, awarded by President George W. Bush, and the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Barack Obama. In sum, he is a treasure of 20th Century American science, and I hope you enjoy this opportunity to hear his thoughts as we tour the last 70 years of science, technology and policy.

Today we explore the history of nuclear disarmament with Zia Mian. Zia is a physicist and co-director of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, part of the School of Public and International Affairs, where he has worked since 1997. His research interests include issues of nuclear arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament, and international peace and security. Zia is co-editor of the journal Science & Global Security, and he is the co-author of Unmaking the Bomb, published by MIT Press in 2014. He is also co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. Zia received the 2014 Linus Pauling Legacy Award for “his accomplishments as a scientist and as a peace activist in contributing to the global effort for nuclear disarmament and for a more peaceful world.” He also received the American Physical Society’s 2019 Leo Szilard Award “for promoting global peace and nuclear disarmament”. In 2021, Zia was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “promoting global nuclear risk reduction and disarmament.”

How do we distinguish real science from hogwash? How does real science evolve over time into pseudoscience? Why will science always be plagued with sister movements on the fringe that make us cringe? With us to explore these topics and their relationship to the demarcation problem is Michael Gordin. Michael is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and the director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of modern science in Russia, Europe, and North America, especially issues related to the history of fringe science, the early years of the nuclear arms race, Russian and Soviet science, language and science, and Albert Einstein. He is the author of On the Fringe, which we discuss today, as well as The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English, and Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly. Today we discuss diverse topics in fringe science, including Bigfoot, extra sensory perception, UFOs, astrology, alchemy, the ether, Aryan physics, Lysenkoism, phrenology, cryptozoology, Velikovsky, Mesmerism, Uri Geller, cold fusion, and where all of this leaves us as we navigate the waters between science and pseudoscience.

Uncertainty is inherent to science and exploited by those who wish to stymie regulations that would promote environmental quality and public health. Chemical companies, oil companies, tobacco companies, and many others, kept their products on the marketplace and promoted consumerism by stressing the unsettled nature of research. With us to explore this history, and how it relates to the environment and public health, is Mark Lytle. Mark is among those historians seeking to develop the field of “Environmental Diplomacy.” The author of The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941-1953, he began his career as a student of American relations with Iran and the role of oil in postwar foreign policy. Since then, in his books America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon and The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, he has focused on the history of the 1960s and environmentalism. His interest in history education inspired the writing with James West Davidson of After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. His latest book is The All-Consuming Nation: Pursuing the American Dream Since World War II. In addition to his long tenure as a professor at Bard, he has taught at Yale, Vassar, and as the Mary Ball Washington Professor at University College Dublin.

The study of wildlife has a history full of adventures in remote corners of the Earth, discoveries of remarkable behaviors, and achievements in conservation. George Schaller is a pioneer of the field, with seven decades of work spanning from the Arctic to the Tropics. George was born in Germany in 1933 and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He received a BS degree from the University of Alaska in 1955 and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1962. He then held positions at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University before working as a research associate for the Rockefeller University and New York Zoological Society’s Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, beginning in 1966. This program evolved into the Center for Field Biology and Conservation, where George worked as the Coordinator. Beginning in 1979, George directed the New York Zoological Society’s International Conservation Program. George’s many awards reflect his impacts on the conservation of wildlife and ecosystems around the world. These awards include the National Geographic Society Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and many others. He is also known for his many books on wildlife, including The Mountain Gorilla – Ecology and Behavior, published in 1963, The Year of the Gorilla published in 1964, The Tiger: Its Life in the Wild published in 1969, and The Serengeti Lion: A study of Predator-Prey Relations, published in 1972, for which he received the U.S. National Book Award in Science.

The history of science is punctuated by both the greatest achievements and the greatest tragedies of human endeavors. The development of organic chemistry illustrates this dichotomy, as some scientists improved the human condition while others facilitated the horrors of genocide. The guise of chemistry also has served as a useful front for fraudsters. With us to illuminate chemical accidents, brilliant discoveries, searing evils, and the use and misuse of organic chemistry is Joe Schwarcz. Joe was born in Hungary in 1947. His family escaped to Austria during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and from there immigrated to Quebec. Joe received BS and PhD degrees in chemistry from McGill University in 1969 and 1973. He held various faculty positions before joining the faculty at McGill in 1980. Joe is the Director of McGill’s Office for Science and Society, which has the mission of separating sense from nonsense. He is well known for his informative and entertaining public lectures on topics ranging from the chemistry of food to the mind-body connection. Joe has received numerous awards for teaching chemistry and for interpreting science for the public. For example, he was the first non-American to win the American Chemical Society’s Grady-Stack Award for demystifying chemistry, and he was awarded the “Montreal Medal”, which is the Canadian Chemical Institute’s premier recognition of lifetime contributions to chemistry in Canada. Joe has hosted a radio show on science for forty years, has appeared hundreds of times on television, writes a regular newspaper column, and is the author of eighteen best-selling books.