Science History Podcast

Attacks on science and scientists have been a hallmark of the Trump administration, but such attacks emanating from the U.S. federal government are not new, nor are they restricted to one political party or one branch of government.  The best known of such attacks came from Bill Proxmire, who served in the Senate as a Democrat representing the state of Wisconsin from 1957-1989.  Proxmire achieved national recognition with his monthly Golden Fleece Awards, in which he mocked what he considered to be

The possibility that world annihilation rests with the twitching fingertips of a dictator in North Korea and a narcissist in Washington motivated me to focus the second science history podcast on nuclear disarmament.  As a bonus, we also discuss renewable energy, another fitting topic at a time when the United States stands alone as the only country in the world that is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.  My first guest is Jose Goldemberg, a physicist who has played a central

My guest Pete Myers has spent the past 30 years calling media attention to findings about toxic chemicals, while the industry producing those chemicals has worked to discredit the science and scientists involved.  In the 1990s, Pete helped to establish the field within toxicology known as endocrine disruption. Since then, he has relentlessly brought the findings of this field into public view.  It turns out that many chemicals are toxic because they disrupt the body’s normal hormonal processes,