In the late 1970s, oil and natural gas fields across the U.S. were drying up, making the country increasingly dependent on foreign oil. Then, a Texas energy magnate named George Mitchell decided to try extracting natural gas from shale, a layer of rock almost two miles beneath the surface, using a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. His innov ... Show More
Jun 2021
Cryonics | Immortality On Ice | S48-E1
Not everyone chooses burial or cremation after death. Some believe in cryonics, freezing their bodies in the hopes of being reanimated sometime in the future. Bob Nelson, a TV repairman with no scientific background, made history when he froze the first human being. But as Nelson ... Show More
38m 42s
Oct 2021
Pushing Painkillers | An Untapped Market | S44-E1
Doctors once shied away from using opioids to treat chronic pain, citing the risk of addiction. But in the 1970s, a new generation of doctors started to argue that opioids should be reconsidered, and that allowing terminal patients to suffer in agony is torturous. As the palliati ... Show More
42m 33s
Oct 2021
EP101: Pyromaniac's Paradise and How One Desperate Man Revolutionized American Energy
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joel Wegener and his wife have 10 kids, and because he worked in education, they had to find ways during the summers to make a little extra money; and meet George Mitchell, the unknown hero who lowered our energy costs, carbon emissions, a ... Show More
38m 17s