Tracing the history of refrigeration

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

A World War I discovery about blocking ethylene, a plant hormone, now helps preserve our fruits

Listen to this in-depth podcast episode about discoveries that enabled fruits and vegetables to be preserved and appear fresh for months or longer and other scientific insights, including why iceberg lettuce was the salad staple people ate for most of the 20th century.

Learn the history of food science breakthroughs from the 20th century

Long after humans developed the means to produce sufficient food to feed civilizations, scientific research focused on a wide variety of objectives, such as developing methods to preserve food quality (accomplished via frozen food), speeding up cooking (leading to the microwave), and lowering the cost of sweetening food, which high fructose corn syrup provides.

Learn the history and science of influenza in 'This Podcast Will Kill You'

In their flu episode, cohosts Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke unpack influenza’s biology, history, and impact—explaining everything from past pandemics to modern vaccines, all with their trademark mix of science and storytelling.

Oil’s legacy: fueling industrial growth and shaping imperial strategies

This episode of The Rest Is History podcast traces oil’s pivotal role—from fueling industrial growth to steering imperial power. It also examines how access to oil shaped US politics, World War II, and sparked the creation of OPEC following the Suez Crisis.

Budweiser pioneered refrigerated rail transport for its beer in the 1870s

This enabled Budweiser to achieve national distribution long before competitors, fundamentally transforming the US beer industry. It was also among the earliest large-scale adopters to use pasteurization, allowing it to be shipped long distances without going bad.

Explore the technical side of the Erie Canal

Listen to this podcast from Northwestern University exploring the canal’s groundbreaking infrastructure—from locks and aqueducts to its role as America’s first large-scale engineered waterway.

Ice cream can be traced back to the 7th century

Documents from ancient China refer to a frozen milk dish, a predecessor of the treat we now know. That evolved into a blend of buffalo milk, flour, and fragrant camphor oil that more closely resembled our ice cream.

See a timeline of commercial radio history

Radio, as we know it, began in the 1910s. This FCC timeline traces the evolution of the medium over the century that followed, highlighting groundbreaking broadcasts, speeches, and technological breakthroughs.

Atlantis and the apocalypse: the world of fringe archaeology

A Netflix series called "Ancient Apocalypse" claims that a thriving civilization was wiped out during the ice age by comets and floods, but left humanity with science and technology. Experts call this “pseudo-archaeology.” This hour-long podcast...

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

How a black market for banned refrigerants still threatens ozone recovery and climate progress

Despite the Montreal Protocol's success, illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, and hydrofluorocarbons persists. Driven by high profits and weak enforcement, smugglers supply banned refrigerants, causing significant ozone depletion and greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to billions of tons of carbon dioxide.

Search for psychrotolerant and psychrophilic microorganisms found in Antarctica

Developed following a five-week expedition to the southern continent, "Life Under the Ice" allows users to examine a petri-dish-like microscopic world and uncover recordings of organisms that can withstand, or even thrive, in the harsh environment.

Validation of the greenhouse effect may have been misattributed

Although Irish physicist John Tyndall showed in 1859 that water vapor and carbon dioxide could absorb and radiate infrared radiation, experiments by American scientist Eunice Foote three years earlier identified the same phenomenon for light in general. Historically overshadowed, her work was rediscovered by female historians over a century later.

A history of treating frostbite

Amid Napoleon's invasion of bitterly cold Russia, soldiers succumbed to frostbite by the thousands. Nineteenth century doctors recommended walking and rubbing snow around the affected area. Fast forward to recent years, and the FDA has approved its first ever drug to treat frostbite. Listen to this podcast to learn the history of this wintry affliction.

Hear the untold colonial backstories of the British Museum’s most famous artifacts

This podcast from VICE’s Unfiltered History Tour visits the British Museum’s prized objects through accounts from experts and communities from which they were taken.

Dive into the history of beer via comic book

Why was the covered beer stein invented, and what led to the creation of the Vienna Lager beer style? Find out in this article about a 173-page comic book outlining the history of beer. According to creator Mike Smith, the history of beer is a...

Read a history of how oral rehydration solution was created

Experiments dating back to the 1940s eventually led to the creation and standardization of a mixture of sugar, salt, and clean water that is now widely used globally.

A dive into some of the country's stranger Thanksgivings

How did a raccoon intended for the Thanksgiving dinner table end up a beloved presidential pet? History teacher Sharon McMahon’s podcast "Here’s Where It Gets Interesting" takes an episode to delve into some of the more unusual Thanksgivings at the White House, including the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 and the story of Calvin Coolidge and his "first raccoon," Rebecca.

IBM Quantum’s dilution refrigerators keep quantum processors colder than space

In IBM’s quantum lab, quantum processors are kept at a temperature of 15 millikelvin using dilution refrigerators. These refrigerators use nested thermal layers, cryogens like liquid nitrogen and helium, and powerful compressors to maintain the ultra-cold temperatures required for qubit stability and performance.

Discover trends in Earth's climate system: What are indicators of climate change?

A comprehensive deep dive tracking components of the climate system over time, such as temperature, sea level, sea ice amounts, ocean heat, greenhouse gases, and more (w/charts and graphs).

The surprising economics of sushi

How exactly does a patron of a sushi restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, get to eat fresh fish caught off the coast of Japan? This episode of the Freakonomics podcast answers this question and explains the impressive feat. Listen to learn about the tricky economics and time-sensitive process behind importing fresh catches to sushi-lovers across America.

The basics of private credit—plus why it matters in 2026

This podcast episode—one of the best we found for explaining the ins and outs of private credit—details how private credit became a significant lender for the tech industry, and how AI could disrupt private credit investments.

The global plastic crisis in images

For decades we have relied on plastics to keep us safe, insulate our homes, and make sure our food stays fresh. But when does plastic’s life come to an end?

The history of the gene: an interactive timeline

Humans didn’t need modern technology to figure out that kids tend to look like their parents. But what did humans believe about genetics before we knew about DNA or cells in general? Explore this interactive timeline to see how philosophers and scientists throughout the ages tried to explain how traits are passed from generation to generation.

There’s a group of people hunting down remaining Sears and Roebuck homes

This podcast episode dives into the history of Sears and Roebuck houses, including the people searching for these real estate relics today. Many of them were destroyed or renovated beyond recognition, so they’re not easy to find or identify.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'