Episodes

  • Life’s Building Blocks| Civil War | S1-E2

    Life’s Building Blocks| Civil War | S1-E2
    May 10 2018
    When Gregor Mendel discovered genes, he had no idea that his discoveries with pea plants would outlive him. He was just an isolated monk playing in his garden. And his ideas collected dust in university libraries for 40 years until a biologist named William Bateson discovered his work. And by the end of the first page, Bateson knew Mendel’s ideas would change the world. He said, “An exact determination of the laws of heredity will probably work more change in man’s outlook of the world, and in his power over nature, than in any other advance in natural knowledge that can be foreseen.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    38 mins
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  • Life’s Building Blocks | Double Helix | S1-E3

    Life’s Building Blocks | Double Helix | S1-E3
    May 10 2018
    From your high school science classes you may know the names Watson and Crick. If you took any more biology classes you may have heard of Wilkins, but a third name is often overlooked: Rosalind Franklin. Together, they took blurry photographs of DNA goo and discovered “the secret to life.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    38 mins
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  • Life’s Building Blocks | Testing Times | S1-E5

    Life’s Building Blocks | Testing Times | S1-E5
    May 24 2018
    Over the past 50 years, our understanding of DNA has grown exponentially. It took supercomputers working overtime to produce a single genomic map… and now all it takes is a spit sample that you drop in the mail. For about a hundred bucks, you can have your own personal genome mapped. One thing we still haven’t figured out is what to DO with all of that information. It’s been used to map family trees, trace diseases, exonerate innocents and catch serial killers - and that’s only the beginning. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    32 mins
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  • Nuclear Energy | Atoms For Peace | S2-E3

    Nuclear Energy | Atoms For Peace | S2-E3
    Jun 28 2018
    After the war, scientists who’d come to work at Los Alamos went their separate ways. They’d figured out how to destroy cities, but now they wanted to control atoms. The Atomic Energy Commission was created to support nuclear energy experiments, and Eisenhower himself created a catchy slogan to go with the new direction: Atoms for Peace. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    34 mins
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  • Nuclear Energy | Meltdown | S2-E4

    Nuclear Energy | Meltdown | S2-E4
    Jul 5 2018
    The first serious accident from a nuclear reactor happened in the United States in 1960. It wouldn't be the last. And in the coming decades, a new word will be used to talk about accidents of these kind, a word that will strike fear into the hearts of people living near nuclear power plants from Russia to Japan to the United States: meltdown. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    35 mins
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  • Thinking Machines | Siri-ous Business | S3-E3

    Thinking Machines | Siri-ous Business | S3-E3
    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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    34 mins
  • Thinking Machines | Garry Kasparov | S3-E6

    Thinking Machines | Garry Kasparov | S3-E6
    Oct 4 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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    42 mins
  • Preventing Paralysis | Marching Towards a Cure | S4-E1

    Preventing Paralysis | Marching Towards a Cure | S4-E1
    Oct 11 2018
    By the middle of the last century Americans lived in fear of one disease: polio. The story of the polio vaccine is not just a scientific story- it’s a political and financial one, too. One that would pave the way for medical research fundraising campaigns that followed. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    30 mins
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