Preventing Paralysis | Marching Towards a Cur...

For decades, Americans resigned themselves to gritting their teeth through the agony of surgery. And then along came an eminent surgeon, a charming swindler and his hapless mark and changed everything.

You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad ...

You can binge all episodes of American Innovations exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Find Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts

In the 1960s a group of scientists and engineers had a vision: that one day people could put on a pair of goggles and enter a who ...

It’s the end of WWII and the US is on the verge of defeating Germany. That’s when the military launches Operation Paperclip: a plan to bring German scientists to America to turn the country into the ultimate military power. But what these men did during World War II was so horrif ...  Show more

In 1968, the Soviet submarine K-129 sank in the Pacific, carrying nuclear weapons and Cold War secrets. After its location was pinpointed three miles beneath the ocean surface, the CIA tasked a trailblazing engineer named Curtis Crooke with designing the technology to bring it ba ...  Show more

Fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, a group of activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971. Their goal: to expose how the agency was suppressing anti-war protests. Calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, they successfully sto ...  Show more

During the Cold War, the US built a secret underground city 100 feet under Greenland’s ice cap. It was disguised as a research facility but was actually meant as a site to launch missiles at Russia. The project failed and turned into a radioactive wasteland. But in the end, this ...  Show more