Italy | The Episodic Table of Elements

92. Uranium: Two Untold Tales (Live At Harvard)

May 29, 2023

6:00 am

16 Comments on 92. Uranium: Two Untold Tales (Live At Harvard)

Alsos, Belgium, Church Rock, Congo, Edwin Kemble, Espionage, France, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, George Kistiakowsky, Georgius Agricola, Germany, Harvard, Indigenous Americans, Italy, Leslie Groves, Mining, Moe Berg, Navajo Nation, Nazis, Nobel Prizes, Nuclear Accidents, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, Otto Hahn, Paracelsus, Radioactivity, Samuel Goudsmit, Shinkolobwe, The Manhattan Project, Three Mile Island, United States, Werner Heisenberg, World War II

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America’s worst radioactive accident isn’t Three Mile Island, and the Nazi nuclear physicist wasn’t assassinated by the famous baseball player.

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61. Promethium: What A Friend We Have In Prometheus

May 18, 2020

6:00 am

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Art & Science, Henry Moseley, Illumination, Italy, Mythology, Radioactivity

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We’ve met mythological light-bearers before, but this one possesses a decidedly nobler spirit.

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43. Technetium: Naturally Synthetic

August 12, 2019

6:00 am

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Carlo Perrier, Dmitri Mendeleev, Emilio Segre, Ernest Lawrence, Etymology, Fission, Gabon, Germany, Ida Tacke, Italy, Medicine, Nuclear Power, Oklo, Otto Berg, Particle Accelerators, Synthetic Elements, Walter Noddack

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It’s only after we gave up searching for this element that we found it out in the universe.

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33. Arsenic: It’s Not Easy Being Green

March 11, 2019

6:00 am

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Adenosine Triphosphate, Agatha Christie, Aqua Tofana, Botox, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Crime, Giulia Tofana, Italy, Literature, Napoleon, Paracelsus, Pharmaceuticals, Poisons, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Considering how synonymous this episode’s element is with “poison,” it’s astounding how eager people have historically been to ingest the stuff.

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