United States | The Episodic Table of Elements

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

May 29, 2023

6:00 am

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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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60. Neodymium: Anarchy And Order

May 4, 2020

6:00 am

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Atomic Structure, Belgium, Congo, Electronics, Imperialism, Magnetism, Mining, United States

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Decades of complex geopolitical chaos ultimately result in one afternoon’s rather embarrassing hospital visit.

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52. Tellurium: To Hell You Ride

December 30, 2019

6:00 am

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Astronomy, Atomic Structure, Australia, Dmitri Mendeleev, Etymology, Linus Pauling, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, Mehmed II, Mineralogy, Mining, Odor, Romania, Science Fiction, United States, Vlad the Impaler

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Collecting elements can be risky business. Tellurium is one of those elements that poses a dire threat — not to one’s health, but to the element collector’s reputation in polite society.

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21. Scandium: Spoiling For A Fight

September 24, 2018

6:00 am

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Agriculture, Alloys, Atomic Bonding, Australia, Cricket, Dmitri Mendeleev, Etymology, Illumination, Nuclear Weapons, Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Russia, Sports, Strategic Defense Initiative, Sweden, The Cold War, Transition Metals, United States

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From jet fighters to sporting events to Low Earth Orbit, scandium seems to find itself at the center of conflict.

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