Short Wave - The Lightbulb Strikes Back

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Humans have a long history of inventions: electricity, telephones, computers, music — the list goes on. It's clear we're shaping the world around us. But as Ainissa Ramirez explains in her new book, The Alchemy of Us, those inventions are shaping us, too.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody. Maddie Safaya here. Today we are chatting with Anisa Ramirez, a materials scientist. Or, as she describes it. I'm an atom whisperer, and that's what I do. I learn how atoms interact, and then I try and get them to do new things. To say form steel, glass, or copper, materials that we've used throughout history to create the inventions all around. us. But Anisa takes it a step further. She argues that those inventions have shaped us in return.

When we talk about invention, we usually say, I invent this. And then we put a period at the end of that sentence. And what I'm saying is replace that period with a comma and say, and this invention changed me this way. She writes about this in her new book, The Alchemy of Us, how humans and matter transformed one another. I'm trying to impress upon people that there's a dance. We create something, but then it changes us somehow, sometimes in ways that we predict and sometimes in ways that we don't predict. Today on the show, we focus on an invention that's transformed how we live, work, and even sleep. And while learning about the process of invention as well as the personalities and the flaws of our favorite inventors is so important. So we're talking with Anisa Ramirez, a material scientist about her new book on inventions,

the technologies that we've created, that in turn, have shaped us. One chapter that captures this dance and really threw me for a loop was the one on artificial light. I mean, it's all around us, and yet I don't give it a second thought, or barely even a first thought, if I'm honest. Yeah, I had no idea. You know, the light bulb is such a simple invention, and I used to be a professor for many years, and if I were to give a lecture on it, I would just say, this is on and this is off. End of lecture. Go home. Well, don't go home. Because in her book, Anisa serves us up some late 1800s drama.

Our characters are Thomas Edison, who you probably know, and William Wallace, who you probably don't. See, Edison, who's largely credited with the lightbulbs invention, was actually inspired after going to visit Wallace one night. Wallace was super excited to have the Thomas Edison at his house, Cooked him a meal, showed him his light contraption. But at the end of the night, Edison's like, Great start, buddy.

Now watch me make this without you. He's leaving the man's house, and he's saying, yeah, I'm going to beat you, Wallace. You're going in the wrong direction, and he does. I'm just going to say it. I feel like William Wallace got robbed. William Wallace did get robbed. And what's so bad about him, I live two cities over from William Wallace lives. I've been here about 10 years.

I never heard of Wallace. Right. And I go over to that city, nobody. He's heard of Wallace. He's been completely erased. Even more complicated than the history of the light bulb is how artificial light has affected our lives. Our body has two modes. It has a daytime mode and a nighttime mode. And how it knows what mode to be in is by the type of light. It needs blue light to know that it should be in daytime mode where we have a higher temperature, higher metabolism. And then as the light changes where it has less blue, sort of in the evening or when our ancestors were alive when we lived under candlelight,

our bodies would enter into nighttime mode and we would be in this rest or repair mode. Right. But most of us live by artificial lights. Yeah. And so we're getting continuous blue light all the time and we're in daytime mode all the time. Right. And so being, you know, constantly bathed in blue light can throw off our melatonin levels, right? That hormone that tells us kind of that it's sleep time.

That's right. That's right. It's an old molecule and we have it in our bodies. It tells all of our cells to go into. nighttime mode. But I've heard that very small marine animals, they have it too. And it lets them know when to rise to the surface, when it's safe, and want it to go back down. So it's a very old molecule and it tells the cells that it is nighttime mode and so you should be in rest mode. And so melatonin is going throughout our bodies and it tells us to go into rest mode. But melatonin is suppressed when

blue light is detected by the photosensor in our eye. Yeah, right. So some of the advice in the book is to reduce the amount of blue light you're exposed to later at night. So you kind of want redder light, less blue light. So powering down your cell phone, computers, and maybe having kind of a nighttime only light in your room that's more red light. Is that right? Yeah, it sounds corny, but I actually did it after I started writing this book. And my brother, who I live with, he now wears these funky yellow glasses from time to time. I'm like, you look crazy. But he wants to put himself in nighttime mode. But in the mornings, we should have bluer light. So go outside, the sun has blue light, or blue LEDs, or compact fluorescence. As the sun sets, we should reduce

those bluer lights. If you don't have non-blue lights, you know, you just dim them, so there's not a lot of light going into your eye. But if you can, use redder lights, so there's red LEDs and incandescent bulbs. Yeah. And then also change the setting on your computer so that it's in nighttime mode. Nice. Okay. So it'll come as a surprise to probably nobody, but our creation of artificial light has, you know, in turn really negatively affected the natural world in some ways. So one really concrete example of this is the courtship of lightning bucks. Yeah. Well, I love fireflies and I didn't know that there was a bar scene going in my backyard when I saw fireflies. And what's going on is the firefly male is announcing himself, you know, saying, hey, I'm a male, I'm a photondis green eye. And the female's looking, and if she likes what she sees, she'll flash back, I like you, and then they go meet and future fireflies. But what I've learned is that the number of fireflies is decreasing, and it has to do with

the streetlights. So the male firefly will announce himself, and female firefly won't see him, and so she won't flash back, no future fireflies. And another scenario, which is even worse, is that he'll announce himself with the streetlights above him, she'll see him. She's not impressed because female fireflies, like male fireflies with bright lanterns, and his lantern is looking pretty dim in front of that street light. It's right. Like he has game, but artificial light is coming in there and messing with him. Yeah, he's messing with him.

He's like, no, it's bright. It really is bright. And she's like, I'm sorry. And she swipes left. That's it. No future fireflies. Come on, humans. Like help a guy out.

Yeah, you're messing me up. I mean, gosh, what does it take? Oh, this is fun. Okay. So something that really struck me was how many historical figures we meet in your book who, you know, tinkered and tinkered away for months and years on those inventions. Like you spent pages describing Henry Bessemer's early experiments with making steel. Like, why was it important for you to kind of include that entire process?

Well, we kind of live in a microwave generation, and we think that in three minutes, things are going to happen right away. And science is fun, but science does take some work. And what I'm trying to impress upon people is that even though it was long and arduous for them, what motivated them is that they were passionate about it. And when you're passionate about something, the time doesn't seem to be so onerous. So I just thought it was important to show that people worked really hard to do things. And it's not an instant overnight success that it does require. some time and effort. Yeah. So throughout the book, the inventors are noted, you know, as frequently for their successes and their failures, not just in perfecting their inventions, but also their personalities. What made you decide to focus on that interplay? Well, I think storyers are stickier. I wanted people to really resonate with the technology and, you know, talking about

stuff by itself, a portrait of stuff, that works for some people. you hear about the people and the motivation and then you see, oh, you see their flaws, then you really are pulled into the story. And to be quite honest, I actually wanted to debunk a lot of geniuses too. I wanted to really get into people's stuff. And so I'm in the archives and I'm looking at old papers and I'm like, all right, I'm here to like get into your dirty laundry. Tell me about you. And Samuel Morris, I'm like, all right, I'm in you. I'm going to, oh, wow, you're not such a nice person. I'm going to write that down. I need people to know about that because we loft these geniuses and what I I want the next generation to feel like they

too can be inventors. Right. Because if we make these people seem so brilliant, they feel distance, it feels unachievable. But if we're like, wow, that guy was kind of a jerk. If he can do it, I can do it. That's my motivation. That's exactly what I want people to say. Yeah. Yeah. There were a couple of things that you writing about yourself and going through science that really spoke to me, things that, you know, that I could identify with a little bit. And one of those was when you were talking about, like, having all this joy going in to school. So you wrote about how when you were an undergrad, you know, remember heading into college with a sense of kind of wonder and appreciation for science, but that that was momentarily taken from you by college

classes that were designed to, you know, weed people out. And you swore that you would do what you could to make sure nobody suffered through science like that. Is that what this book is? Absolutely. I made this promise decades ago when I graduated from Brown. I said, science is not, it doesn't have to be this way. I fell in love with science as a child, and it wasn't until I got to these introduction classes at undergraduate,

that all the joy was squeezed out, and they were actually designed to reduce the number of students they had. In fact, when I went to school, the first semester, they're like, look to the left, look to the right, one of you won't be there next semester. Yeah. And I said, what kind of operation is this? We need people who know science. Why are you taking this posture with students? And I survived, even though I was top in my school in New Jersey, it wasn't top when I got to this Ivy League institution. And for me to survive, I had a lot of tutors, a lot of mentoring, and I spent a lot of time in the library, so much so that people knew where to find me. They're like fifth floor of the sideline over to the right.

That's exactly where she is. And when I graduated, I said, no one should have to experience science this way. It doesn't have to be this way. And so I made that promise decades ago, and now I finally get to fulfill it by writing about science for the general public so that they can feel included in this thing. Because the book is called The Alchemy of Us.

It's not the alchemy of a few smart white guys. It's the alchemy of all of us. And that's what I was trying to impress when I embarked on this project. Anisa Ramirez is an Adam Whisperer and the author of the book The Alchemy of Us, How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, which is out now. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, who also thinks William Wallace got robbed. It was edited by Viet Le, who is abstaining from the debate, and was fact-checked by Burley McCoy, who is skeptically on Team Wallace.

I'm your host and newly minted Thomas Edison hater, Maddie Safaya. You've been listening to Shortwave. from NPR.