The New Books Network History of Science podcast channel recently released an interview by Dr. Morteza Hajizadeh of Prof. Al Coppola about his 2016 book The Theater of Experiment; Staging Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain. As Prof. Coppola is Associate Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, this is a cross-disciplinary examination of the practice of public experiment and demonstration in the study of natural philosophy of the period, with particular attention paid to the use of spectacle and entertainment in the broadening of the public interest in (then) recent discoveries by the natural philosophers. All those familiar with the presentations of The Royal Institution will likely be already familiar in the types of presentations discussed in this interview and in the book.
