Nikola Tesla: A Man of Science

Title: Nicola Tesla: A Man of Science

Description: Today, Steve is joined by podcaster, professor and scientist Chad Davies to discuss the life and times of one of the most important scientists and inventors of the modern era, Nicola Tesla. Was Tesla a mad scientist, the most forward looking scientist of all times or all of the above?

Learn More About our Guest:
Chad Davies of the Scientific Odyssey Podcast
https://thescientificodyssey.typepad.com/

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“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Chad Davies of the Scientific Odyssey Podcast. Links to learn more about Chad and the Scientific Odyssey can be found at thescientificodysee.typepad.com or in the Show Notes.
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, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Today, we will be talking about how a particular person, a scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla has been portrayed in both popular media, such as films and books, and a few of the last previous episodes we spoke with Annie of the five foot, two blog about the movie and the book, the prestige, what shows Tesla as the archetype, all mad scientists.
We also talked with the producer and lead actor of the movie, the American side, they use the idea of Tesla as the futurist who predicted and developed the ideas that could radically change the world. As we know it. Today, we’re going to focus in on who exactly Nikola Tesla was his life and [00:01:00] times and how he was portrayed, how his portrayal in these films matches up to his real life.
I am very happy to be joined by Chad Davies of the scientific Odyssey podcast to discuss all these fascinating films in this fascinating person of Nikola Tesla, Chad Euro scientists. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your podcast? Sure. Steve, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Um, my background actually is a little bit different than the subject that we’re going to be talking about on the show. Um, my, I have a PhD in computational astrophysics. Um, I’m a professor of physics at, uh, a little access institution called Gordon state. Um, and then my podcast, as you mentioned, is a scientific Odyssey, which, um, is a show where we really look at the process of scientific inquiry.
In other words, how science has done, how it asks questions and answers, questions, and that sort of thing through, um, the history and philosophy of science. And so, you know, my [00:02:00] background coming from that is I’m really interested in not just. What the results of science are, because I think oftentimes there’s a lot of that that goes on.
But the process at which we arrived at those results in the people who did the work and what they did and the types of questions they asked and the things that they sort of thought were important, how they, you know, stumbled around sometimes in the dark and sort of search their way to the answers, how sometimes they get the right answers for the wrong reasons, or they got wrong answers, but we’re on the right path.
It’s all just really fascinating to me. Let’s excellent. I think that you are the exact person when I was thinking about who to have on, I actually put it out there and I was like, who could this be? And then when somebody mentioned your name, I was like, why didn’t I think of that in the first place?
Excellent. Uh, just to set things up a little bit of context of some of the background that we’ll be using here, Nikola Tesla has been used as a character or a literary device in a number of fictional movies and films today. A few of the [00:03:00] pieces that we’ll at least reference a little bit are the prestige by Christopher priest, which was also a movie, the movie, the American side produced by Jenna Ricker and Greg stewer.
Along with the novel, the city of light by Lauren for that gets a little bit into Tesla at Niagara falls. I thought we’d start off with just two quotes from Tesla that I thought really got to the point of where we’re going here. And then the one is Tesla said, one must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
And the other one is the present is there’s the future for which I really worked is mine. And I thought that those were just two really cool quotes. That book-ended what Tesla was all about. Um, now Chad, can you just tell us a little bit about Tesla’s early life? Yeah, absolutely. So Tesla’s kind of an interesting guy.
One of the things that, you know, probably [00:04:00] your listeners should know is the, the biggest problem with Tesla is. Just so much information out there that’s probably apocryphal or, you know, folklore. I mean, some of it even, you know, borders on almost fairy tale or mythology, um, it’s, you know, until probably the last 15 years, 20 years, something like that, um, there wasn’t a lot of good scholarship on his life.
There wasn’t a lot of folks looking in and really digging into the documents that sort of, you know, laid out what his life was going to be like. And so there’s all kinds of stuff that, especially if you go back before that, about 20 years or so, there’s a, you’ll find all sorts of information. That’s really.