Big Science and The Launch of the Military Industrial Complex

We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory.

Today science, or at least big science, is a global effort. It involves governments, private enterprise, universities and vast institutional support.  Think about the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, and even before all of that, the Manhattan Project and even the development of the Internet itself.

All are part of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Hiltzik writes about in Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.

My conversation with Michael Hiltzik: