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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, sometim...
In the summer of 2010, a mysterious computer virus called Stuxnet lands on the desk of Symantec cybersecurity analyst Liam O’Murchu. Stuxnet...
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 m...
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...
Doctors once shied away from using opioids to treat chronic pain, citing the risk of addiction. But in the 1970s, a new generation of doctor...
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 si...
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...
Not everyone chooses burial or cremation after death. Some believe in cryonics, freezing their bodies in the hopes of being reanimated somet...
No extreme weather phenomenon fascinates us more than tornadoes. For most of human history, very little was known about how these graceful y...
Hackers: the criminals who prey on our digital lives. Today they steal credit cards and personal information, or even commit acts of cyber-t...
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...
Humans are shockingly bad at telling whether or not someone is lying. That’s why, a century ago, psychologists and criminologists developed...
Even after the Apollo program put astronauts on the moon, Mars remained out of reach. Then, in 1990, an ambitious engineer hatched an ingeni...
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...
In the 19th Century, the telegraph is the cutting edge of communication. No one can imagine anything better—except Alexander Graham Bell. Yo...
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...
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 nam...
Muggy. Sticky. Miserable. For eons, that’s just what summer was. In fact, when air conditioning first became available, few people took adva...
Call of Duty, Fortnite, Animal Crossing.... The video game industry generates billions of dollars each year. But not so long ago, video game...
What technology won WWII? Most people would say the atomic bomb, but the real answer is radar. As a small island country, vulnerable to aeri...
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 manda...
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...
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-c...
In 1846, an Italian chemist discovered the volatile compound nitroglycerine, the first major breakthrough in creating man-made explosions si...
As the first in a series on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Steven Johnson speaks with Dr. Bruce Gellin , president of Global Immunization a...
A century ago, organ transplants were the stuff of science fiction. But a handful of experimental surgeons believed that transplants were no...
Anxiety. It’s something everyone experiences at some point in their lives, but for centuries doctors had no effective way to treat it. They...
The invention of the electronic television was uniquely complicated for its time. So complicated, in fact, that the prevailing narrative is...
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 ever...
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 yo...
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...
Fifty years ago, America’s space program achieved its greatest triumph, when Apollo Eleven put the first men on the moon. The Apollo program...
For the first 150 years of American history, American citizens were plagued by gastrointestinal issues. Diarrhea, gastritis and dysentery we...
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...
Normally on American Innovations, we look at the history of the science and technology that transformed the world we live in. These stories...
When Margaret Sanger opened her birth control clinic in 1916, she knew she was breaking the law. Distributing contraceptives, or even litera...
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...
Think for a moment about some of the pioneering developments from the earliest days of American aviation: The first pilot’s licence; the fir...
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are preparing to land on the Moon. The whole world is watching live on television. But something i...
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 she...
You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcast...
You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcast...
For decades, Americans resigned themselves to gritting their teeth through the agony of surgery. And then along came an eminent surgeon, a c...
You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcast...
Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction. And it’s about to get much more powerful: machines that can reason, creat...
You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcast...
Hey American Innovations listeners! You might be wondering what happened to some of our older seasons. We’ve moved them to our new premium s...
In 2000, President Bill Clinton held a press conference to share a milestone for humanity. He said, “we will all see the unbelievable capaci...
DNA science. Artificial intelligence. Smartphones and 3D printers. Science and technology have transformed the world we live in. But how did...