Last week we played for you the only known recording of Sigmund Freud’s voice (1938). Now it’s time to revive the voice of another intellectual giant, Albert Einstein. In this recording, the physicist offers the briefest explanation of the world’s most famous equation, E=mc2. When was this recorded? We’re unfortunately not sure. Let’s just say somewhere between 1932 (a date Einstein mentions in the clip) and his death in 1955. Somewhere in those 20+ years, give or take a few. Don’t miss the recently-opened Einstein archive and many free Physics courses in our collection of Free Online Courses from top universities.
Now it’s time for more good culture links, all previously featured on our Twitter stream.
BBC Radio 4 Profile of William S. Burroughs Narrated by Laurie Anderson (2008)
The New Yorker Wants You to Write a Facebook Status Update for any Literary Character
The Inequality Speech That TED Won’t Show You and Why
New Yorker Covers That Were Too Provocative to Print
Oxford University’s Lectures on Great Writers and Why They Inspire (on iTunes)
Ancient Language Discovered on Clay Tablets Found in 2800 Year Old Middle Eastern Palace
Graphing Jane Austen: Using Science to Extrapolate the Human Condition from Victorian Literature
Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize Winning Chemist, Recounts His Moving Story of Hiding from the Nazis
Janis Joplin’s Last Interview on The Dick Cavett Show
Time to Get Ill: Beastie Boys Lyrics in the Oxford English Dictionary
Picasso’s Light Drawings: Still Shining from 1949
Albanian Refugee Works as Janitor by Day, Student by Night, Earns Columbia Degree with Honors at 52
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Sometime after 1932 since he mentions that date in the recording.
Given that Einstein refers to the 1932 experimental verification of E=mc2, this at least narrows the time to sometime between 1933 and 1955!
Good observation! I updated the text to reflect it.
Thanks for catching that,
Dan
More Einstein audio where this was ripped from (E=mc2 is from 1947):
http://being.publicradio.org/programs/einstein/einstein-archivalaudio/player.htm