AMSEcast American Museum of Science and Energy

Thanks to a grant from Humanities Tennessee and the National Endowment for the Humanities, we created a series of interviews at the AMSE Foundation about the connections of science, engineering, and history, suitably called The STEM of History. One guest I interviewed was Steve Olson, the author of many terrific books including Mapping Human History: Genes, Race and our Common Origins.

Kate Winkler Dawson's years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials shapes, American Sherlock to capture the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon–as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.
Host of @buriedbonespod, @tenfoldmorewicked, Wicked Words on @exactlyright. Author of All That Is Wicked and American Sherlock.

This episode of AMSEcast features Dr. Aarathi Prasad talking about silk, a very special and beautiful material. Dr. Prasad explains why people have loved silk for so long and how it's made, mainly by silkworms. She also talks about different kinds of silk from around the world and how silk was used in the past for things like making clothes and even in wars as armor. She also discusses how silk can be used for new, remarkable technologies in the future. The episode helps us learn much about silk's history and what makes it so important and exciting.
Dr. Aarathi Prasad is a researcher, broadcaster, and writer who specializes in the intersection of science, history, and culture. She has contributed to major publications and has been involved in groundbreaking research on ancient DNA. Her latest work, "Silk: A World History," examines the impact of silk on human civilization and its potential future applications.

Welcome to the AMSE Science Report.  It seems that we are bombarded every day with a lot of statistics, but for many of us, the meaning of all those numbers, and how they were compiled, can be a bit mysterious.  That’s why I was glad to speak on our podcast, AMSEcast, with Charles Wheelan about his book Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data.  Charles makes the complicated world of statistics quite understandable and relatable. For example, we often hear the terms median and mean, or average.  But what is the difference between those terms?

Welcome to The AMSE Science Report. What is nothingness?  Why is there something rather than nothing?  I spoke on our podcast, AMSEcast, with Jim Holt, the author of Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, about those mind-bending questions. They have been responded to many ways over the years – answers were found in God, in philosophy, in mathematics.
Some say that the universe came into existence due to the laws of quantum physics, but then the whole idea of the nature of laws comes into question.

Dr. Eric Jay Dolin wanted to be Jacques Cousteau as a child, but he changed his plans in college when he realized he wasn’t very good at science. Fortunately, he was able to pivot into environmental management, policy, and planning. Eric has written numerous books including A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes. In this episode, Alan talks with Dr. Dolin about the history of studying hurricanes in the United States, the advances that have been made in predicting and tracking them, as well as what we can expect from them in future due to our changing climate.
Dr. Eric Jay Dolan attended Brown University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Environmental Studies. He then completed a master’s in environmental management at Yale and a PhD in environmental policy and planning at MIT. Dr. Dolan has worked with institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service. However, his true passion is storytelling. Eric has been widely published and is an award-winning author of books such as Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, and today's featured book, A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes.