Dynamite!

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In its heyday, dynamite was a transformative tool; it could blast rock quarries, excavate tunnels, and demolish buildings with power and reliability never before seen. But it also proved to be useful in some surprising ways. In this special episode of Sidedoor, we team up with the history podcast Backstory
to explore two less-typical applications of the explosive: the artistic blasting at Mount Rushmore, and how anarchists used dynamite to advance their political agenda in 1886.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.4	I'm Lizzie Peabody. I need to warn you this episode begins with a bang.
0:27.0	Oh so it may be a dud.
0:29.0	Whoa!
0:31.0	Oh my God.
0:32.0	Okay. Well, it worked.
0:35.0	Six and a half minutes.
0:40.0	So, a whole stick of dynamite imagine multiplying by like 30 or 40.
0:46.0	30 or 40.
0:47.0	Whoa from that?
0:48.0	Yeah.
0:49.0	Okay.
0:50.0	Yes, that was an explosion.
0:52.0	Yes, it was an explosion. Yes, it was surprising.
0:54.5	And yes, this episode is going to be a little different from usual.
0:58.3	In this episode, we're teaming up with backstory,
1:01.0	a history podcast from Virginia humanities to revisit an incredible
1:05.4	invention, dynamite. And here to help me with that is Brian Ballo, a historian and
1:11.1	one of the hosts a backstory.
1:13.0	So Brian, I was really glad that you were able to take the trip up to D.C. from Charlottesville
1:18.0	for this... Oh, I had a great time.
1:20.0	We headed over to Howard University to visit Dr. John Harkless, he's a chemistry professor there,
	...

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