Initial Conditions: A Physics History Podcast
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Bonus: Initial Conditions Off Mic
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Justin, Maura, and Allison reflect on the creation of Initial Conditions and speak to some of the other staff at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives...
Bonus: Live from PhysCon!
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Justin and Maura interview speakers and students who attended the 2022 Society for Physics Students Physics Congress. Dame Jocelyn Be...
Hawai'i and the Thirty Meter Telescope
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Featuring a discussion with experts Samantha Thompson and Kalewa Correa from the Smithsonian Institution, this episode is about the history of Hawai’...
The Legacy of Ptolemy’s Almagest
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode dives into the story of the oldest book in NBLA’s Wenner Collection: a 1528 Latin translation of the Almagest. Claudius Ptolemy wrote t...
The Newton You Didn't Know
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Apart from his publications on gravity and optics, Newton was also a biblical scholar, religious mystic, and alchemist. In fact, a great deal of his w...
The Unexpected Hero of Light
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is the story of how a Pittsburgh steel worker became the lensmaker behind some of the most important experiments of 19th century physics. John Br...
An Interview with Dr. Ronald Mickens
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June, after several technical mishaps, I flew down to Atlanta, Georgia, to meet Dr. Ronald Mickens and talk about his research on the history of Af...
The African American Presence in Physics
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Based on the Ronald E. Mickens collection, this episode describes the history of the community of Black physicists in the United States. In 1999 the A...
Historical Romance and LGBTQ+ Representation
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode will tell the stories of Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. It features an interview with Olivia Waite, who combines the two historic...
Was Einstein Wrong??
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is pseudoscience? The answer to that question is more difficult than you might think. In trying to answer the question, we can learn a lot more a...
Quantum Counterculture
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
 Inspired by David Kaiser's 2011 book, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, this episode will cover ...
Energy Crises and Climate Change in the 1970s
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode describes efforts undertaken by the Department of Energy in the late 1970s to study the environmental, economic, and social consequences ...
Enter the Anthropocene: Climate Science in the Early 20th Century
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
 In this episode we discuss the efforts of three scientists–Svante Arrhenius, Guy Callendar, and Charles David Keeling–to figure out exactly what...
Eunice Foote: A Once Forgotten Climate Science Pioneer
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps because she was a woman, or perhaps because she was American, Eunice Foote did not receive credit for her 1856 discovery of the heat-absorbing...
Trailer
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas