Rubber: The Miracle Material | Bouncing Ideas...

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 shell-shocked populace, haunted by poverty, hunger and disease sought salvation in the dubious cure-all tonics of the pharmacy trade. What t ...

Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are preparing to land on the Moon. The whole world is watching live on television. But something is very wrong, their warning alarms are flashing and they don't know what it is. There’s only one woman who can fix it: MIT software engin ...

Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms, join Patrick to discuss the history of data, why enumerating things isn't a neutral act, and the ethics of building a world on the fo ...

A small Danish toy company survives World War Two thanks to its quality craftsmanship, but behind the scenes all is not well. Despite its good reputation, Lego teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, and a choice to change production methods threatens to tear the family-owned compa ...

It's often said that the past is a foreign country, where our basic assumptions about how the world is supposed to work don't apply. But what does that mean for the practice of history? Professor Greg Anderson has fascinating ideas about how to actually understand the people o ...

Industrialist Henry Ford looks for a new way to supply his factories with rubber without having to pay the prices dictated by the global market. But his decision to build a rubber plantation deep in the Amazon Rainforest comes with a great many complications.

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