NEW EPISODE! It's never too late to do what you love! Ynes Mexia, started her scientific career at the age of 51. We chat about her life in Mexico before becoming a botanical collector, traveling to jungles, mountain peaks, and rivers to find unique plants. www.smartteapodcast.com/ynes-mexia

Smart Tea Podcast | Ynes Mexia

It's never too late to become a scientist! Aarati tells the story of Ynes Mexia, the shy yet adventurous woman who became a botanical collector at the age of 51 and  discovered over 500 new plant spec...

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#onthisday we celebrate the birthday of Alice Ball, the young black scientist who had her work in finding a treatment for leprosy stolen and her story forgotten for decades. Listen to episode 5 of the Smart Tea podcast to hear her full story, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/alice-ball

NEW EPISODE! Lynn Conway lost her career at IBM, her wife, children and friends when she came out as trans. Despite this, she restarted her life in California, contributing to the Silicon Valley boom and changing computers forever. Episode 63, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/lynn-conway

NEW EPISODE! Today's podcast explores the story of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of ....you guessed it! This "Crazy" Count's thirst for adventure revolutionized air travel. Listen to episode 62 of the Smart Tea podcast, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/ferdinand-vo...

NEW EPISODE! This week on the Smart Tea podcast, we cover the life of Dr. Roger Tsien, a scientist who shared the Nobel prize for fluorescent proteins. Take a shot every time we mention the Nobel Prize (or maybe just a sip of water. Please drink responsibly 😅) www.smartteapodcast.com/roger-tsien

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Roger Tsien

A bioluminescent jellyfish brought a rainbow of possibilities to biology. Aarati tells the story of a brilliant chemist who won the Nobel Prize for transforming nature's fluorescent proteins into powe...

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Dr. Virginia Apgar was born #OTD 125 years. Inventor of the "Apgar score," she joined @marchofdimes.org and contributed to research on prematurity and birth defects. "There's plenty of room in science and medicine for women" - #MedSky + #HistorySky. www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJc...

From the Archives: "Dr. Virginia Apgar"

YouTube video by March of Dimes

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1/ Charles R Drew was born 3 June 1904 in Washington DC, USA. An African-American physician and surgeon, Drew specialised in blood transfusion. He helped improve techniques for blood storage and the development of large-scale blood banks in the early part of the Second World War.

NEW EPISODE! NEW EPISODE! 🌈 Happy #PrideMonth !🌈 For this episode of the Smart Tea podcast, we cover the story of Dr. Alan Hart, a transgender doctor who made breakthroughs in detecting early-stage tuberculosis using x-rays. www.smartteapodcast.com/alan-hart

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Alan Hart

Happy Pride Month! This episode, we are covering the story of a trailblazing doctor who was the first trans man in America to have a gender affirming surgery. His contributions to the early detection ...

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! We talk about the life of Dr. Henry Beecher, who made key observations about the placebo effects and changed the way we think about bioethics and set up clinical trials. Listen to episode 59, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/henry-beecher

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Henry K. Beecher

Your mind can be a powerful drug, but when (if ever) is it ethical to choose mind over matter? Aarati tells the story of an army doctor who observed the placebo effect in soldiers and then went on to ...

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! Dr. Carlos Finlay was the first to propose that a mosquito could be a vector for tropical diseases like yellow fever. We talk about his life story, from growing up as a child in Cuba to becoming an "international" doctor. Ep. 58 is now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/carlos-finlay

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Carlos Finlay

Yellow fever killed thousands of people in the 1800s but no one understood how it spread. Aarati tells the story of the Cuban doctor who discovered that mosquitos can act as a vector for disease.

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Happy birthday to Eugenie Clark, The Shark Lady! She was a marine biologist who swam with sharks and showed people how smart they were. Listen tobher life story on episode 41 of the podcast! www.smartteapodcast.com/eugenie-clark

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Eugenie Clark

Dive into the extraordinary life of the marine biologist who transformed our understanding of the ocean and the animals that live in it. Aarati tells the story of Dr. Eugenia Clark's lifelong obsessio...

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! In honor of #EarthDay, we are coving the story of Dr. John Goodenough, a Nobel Prize laureate who helped develop lithium ion batteries. From laptops, to cell phones, to electric cars, lithium-ion batteries are everywhere! Listen now! www.smartteapodcast.com/john-goodeno...

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. John B. Goodenough

From laptops to cell phones to electric cars, our modern world runs on lithium-ion batteries. Aarati tells the story of one of the scientists who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating lightwei...

smartteapodcast.com

Happy #WorldQuantumDay! Check out this episode on the story of Dr. Elmer Imes, the physicist who proved that the rotational and vibrational energy states of molecules can be quantized. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Dr. Elmer S. Imes: The Quantum Spectroscopist

Podcast Episode · Smart Tea · February 26, 2025 · 53m

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Dr. Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, (a.k.a. Mr. Tornado) was able to solve the case of a mysterious plane crash in 1975, just by studying the wreckage and recreating the thunderstorm that caused it. Listen to Dr. Fujita's life story on ep 56 of the podcast, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/ted-fujita

NEW EPISODE! Aarati tells the story of Dr. Ted Fujita, who escaped two atomic bombs, moved to the US to study severe storms, made air travel safer for millions, and gave us a scale to quantify tornados. What a life! www.smartteapodcast.com/ted-fujita

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita

On June 24, 1975, Eastern Airlines 66 mysteriously crashed when attempting to land at JFK airport. Authorities called in Mr. Tornado to investigate. Aarati tells the story of Dr. Ted Fujita, who analy...

smartteapodcast.com

The highly anticipated PART 2 of Dr. Alice Stewart's story is now streaming! We cover her life after retirement and her fight for nuclear facility workers against the DOE for a safe work environment and fair compensation for workers families. #womenshistorymonth podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

5,000+ downloads on podcast streaming platforms and 3,100+ views on Youtube! We are well on our way to 10,000 listens. Thank you to all our listeners for tuning in to hear the funny, depressing, wacky and inspiring life stories of scientists who have changed our world! www.smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! Dr. Alice Stewart discovered the link between prenatal X-rays and childhood leukemia. This episode, we dive into her life and career up until her retirement from Oxford... and then she did so much afterwards, we had to make a part 2 (coming soon!). www.smartteapodcast.com/alice-stewart

NEW EPISODE! Stress affects men and women differently (no surprise there!). Kiara Rodríguez-Acevedo, a Ph.D. candidate at the UPenn explains to us how she is working to link estrogen levels in the brain to stress vulnerability and resilience. #womeninstem www.smartteapodcast.com/kiara-rodrig...

Check out episode 49 of the Smart Tea Podcast for Ludwig Boltzmann’s life story podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Dr. Ludwig Boltzmann: The Disordered Physicist

Podcast Episode · Smart Tea · December 31, 2025 · 1h 6m

podcasts.apple.com

Mario Livio@mariolivio.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Today is Feb 20. On this date in 1844 physicist Ludwig Boltzmann was born. He developed statistical mechanics, which explains & predicts how properties of atoms (e.g. mass, charge, structure) determine the visible properties of matter (such as viscosity, thermal conductivity, diffusion).

NEW EPISODE! In honor of Black History Month and with Valentine's day near, Vivien Thomas's story is the perfect intersection. He was a Black carpenter who became indispensable to one of the top surgeons in the nation in the 1930s-50s. Listen to the story here: www.smartteapodcast.com/vivien-thomas

Smart Tea Podcast | Vivien Thomas

Happy Black History month! In this episode, Aarati tells the unlikely story of a carpenter turned lab technician. Vivien Thomas created a blood shunt for the hearts of blue babies without ever having ...

smartteapodcast.com

Happy birthday to Guy Callendar, who figured out human activity was causing Earth’s climate to change by gathering and analyzing data at home(Episode 9), and Wilson Bentley, the snowflake man, whose beautiful photographs showed us a world of ice crystals (episode 24)!

The first scientific paper highlighting the observed rise in global temperatures was in 1938. By me! And I also linked the observed warming to the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, building on the earlier theoretical work. We have known all this for soooo long.

Happy birthday to Russian #chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907) who published the periodic table. 🧪🐡 #histsci Born in Siberia, the youngest child of a large family, his father was a school principal until he lost his sight & job. His mother then restarted her family’s abandoned glass factory 🧵

In this week’s episode, it’s 1918 and a young Katharine Burr Blodgett joins future Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir at The General Electric Company’s industrial research laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y. It’s the start of her brilliant career.

Layers of Brilliance - Episode Two: The 'House of Magic'

In 1918 a young Katharine Burr Blodgett joins future Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir at The General Electric Company’s industrial research laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y. It’s the start of her bril...

lostwomenofscience.org

NEW EPISODE! We sit down with Andrew Robertson (@andrew-antdude.bsky.social) winner of the #myscijourney competition hosted by @galacticpolymath.com. Dive into the remarkable world of ants and learn how complicated these tiny creatures are! Listen now www.smartteapodcast.com/andrew-rober...

Smart Tea Podcast | Andrew Robertson

Ants may not be very big, but we have a lot to learn from these tiny creatures! Andrew Robertson, a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech and winner of Galactic Polymath Education Studio's 2025 #MySciJourney ...

smartteapodcast.com

It's episode 50! Aarati tells the story of the temperamental Russian chemist who figured out a way to organize all the known (and unknown) elements into a table that ordered them by increasing atomic weight and grouped them into categories. www.smartteapodcast.com/dmitri-mende...

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Dmitri Mendeleev

It's episode 50! Aarati tells the story of the temperamental Russian chemist who figured out a way to organize all the known (and unknown) elements into a table that ordered them by increasing atomic ...

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! Sneaking in one more before the end of the year and wrapping up our series on #thermodynamics physicists. Dive into the fascinating and tragic life of Ludwig Boltzmann, the man who redefined entropy! #sciencepodcast #phsyics www.smartteapodcast.com/ludwig-boltz...

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Ludwig Boltzmann

Why do certain things never happen in reverse? A shattered glass does not spontaneously reform, a spray of perfume doesn't concentrate back into it's bottle... but why not? In the Part III of our Dece...

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! Our December Thermodynamics Extravaganza continues with the story of Dr. Rudolf Clausius, the physicist who defined the first 2 laws of thermodynamics: 1) energy is conserved and 2) entropy is always increasing. Listen to his story, now streaming! www.smartteapodcast.com/rudolf-claus...

Smart Tea Podcast | Dr. Rudolf Clausius

Part II of our December Thermodynamics Extravaganza! Aarati tells the story of the German scientist who formally stated that 1) energy is conserved and 2) entropy is always increasing.

smartteapodcast.com

NEW EPISODE! Sadi Carnot was a young French scientist who designed the most perfect )albeit theoretical) stem engine. He is known as the Father of Thermodynamics! Check out his full life story here www.smartteapodcast.com/sadi-carnot

Smart Tea Podcast | Sadi Carnot

Born to one of the most influential families during the French Revolution, Sadi Carnot kickstarted another revolution in physics. His perfect (although theoretical) steam engine transformed the way we...

smartteapodcast.com