Topic
History of Science
The episodes where the show explains History of Science from the ground up.
- EP 52
The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)
For FFP’s first anniversary, we uncover the densely populated precolonial Amazon, imagine what our civilization will leave behind, and build the first shelves of the From First Principles library.
- EP 47
America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 2
Part two of our America 250 special traces American science from Sputnik to the AI age, covering Apollo, ARPANET, CRISPR, LIGO, mRNA vaccines, JWST, transformers, and the future of science funding.
- EP 46
America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 1
Part one of our America 250 special traces the inventions, institutions, and scientific breakthroughs — from Franklin to Sputnik — that helped build the United States into a global scientific power.
- EP 39
The Prometheus Constellation: Dramaturgical and Scientific Analysis of the Physicists in Oppenheimer
A movie cast list turned into a deep dive on quantum mechanics, black holes, nuclear physics, and the greatest minds of the 20th century.
- EP 47 · 21:35Cosmic microwave background
- EP 47 · 24:14Bell’s theorem
- EP 47 · 1:24:22COBE
- EP 47 · 1:43:05Bose-Einstein condensate
- EP 47 · 2:06:30LIGO
- EP 47 · 2:13:23James Webb Space Telescope
- EP 46 · 9:26Electromagnetic self-induction
- EP 46 · 17:55Gibbs and chemical thermodynamics
- EP 46 · 24:13Michelson-Morley experiment
- EP 46 · 26:20Alternating current and the electrical grid
- EP 46 · 37:47Cepheid variables and cosmic distance
- EP 46 · 1:09:47Lamb shift and quantum field theory