American Innovations
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Dr. John Schneider rode into town like a character out of a Western: an outsider on a Harley-Davidson, in trademark cowboy boots. He promised relief to patients suffering in Wyoming and Monta...
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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 highl...
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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 reck...
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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...
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Doctors once shied away from using opioids to treat chronic pain, citing the risk of addiction. But in the 1970s, a new generation of doctors started to argue that opioids should be reconside...
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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 wonder...
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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 deci...
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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 repai...
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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 behave...
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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 large...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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 an...
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In the 19th Century, the telegraph is the cutting edge of communication. No one can imagine anything better—except Alexander Graham Bell.You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exc...
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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.You can binge all episodes of...
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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. P...
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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 unco...
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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 th...
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38:56
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 rada...
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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 archite...
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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 Brit...
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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...
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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 ear...
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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...
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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 th...
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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...
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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 per...
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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 ca...
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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 t...
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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 d...
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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 sen...
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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 ...
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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...
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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 t...
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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. B...
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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...
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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 airpl...
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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...
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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...
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You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple PodcastsIn a world where materials were limited to wood, l...
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You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple PodcastsIn the 1960s a group of scientists and engineers h...
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For decades, Americans resigned themselves to gritting their teeth through the agony of surgery. And then along came an eminent surgeon, a charming swindler and his hapless mark and changed e...
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You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple PodcastsBy the middle of the last century Americans lived ...
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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 likel...
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You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple PodcastsIn 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower went on natio...
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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...
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In 2000, President Bill Clinton held a press conference to share a milestone for humanity. He said, “we will all see the unbelievable capacity to be noble.” Science and technology embrac...
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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, sometime...
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Description
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.Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of American Innovations ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
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