El Sueño de Arquímedes was a Spanish science podcast and radio program which was broadcast by Radio Nacional de España (RNE) from September 2006 until June, 2007. The program was created by

Ángel Rodríguez Lozano Ángel Rodríguez Lozano is a Spanish radio journalist and popularizer of science, best known as the creator and presenter of the program Vanguardia de la Ciencia, which was broadcast without interruption every week from April 1995 until June 2007. ...

. A total of 35 programs are still available for download. In addition to El Sueño de Arquímedes, Ángel Rodríguez Lozano also hosted

Vanguardia de la Ciencia ''Vanguardia de la Ciencia'' was a Spanish science podcast and radio program which was broadcast on the shortwave band by Radio Exterior de España, one of the stations of Radio Nacional de España (RNE). The program aired weekly, without interr ...

, which was broadcast weekly without interruption from April 1995 until June 2007. The name of the program means "the dream of

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse (;; ) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists ...

", and alludes to Archimedes' statement that given a

lever A lever is a simple machine consisting of a beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or ''fulcrum''. A lever is a rigid body capable of rotating on a point on itself. On the basis of the locations of fulcrum, load and effort, the lever is div ...

and a fixed point, he could move the world. To Ángel Rodríguez Lozano, the dream was moving the world by popularizing and sharing knowledge.

Format

Before the startup of El Sueño de Arquímedes, Ángel Rodríguez Lozano had been hosting Vanguardia de la Ciencia for more than a decade. When RNE asked if he would host a second popular science program, Ángel Rodríguez Lozano realised that the scheduled timing, Sundays between 3 and 4 p.m, meant that it would be sandwiched between sports broadcasts. Therefore, he would have to capture the attention of listeners who were not looking for this type of program. The intention was therefore to make the program even more accessible than Vanguardia de la Ciencia, with shorter interviews and more music. Ángel Rodríguez Lozano stated that it had been a marvellous experience, and that the response had been tremendous. The program included science news, interviews, and biographies of great scientists, written b
Carmen Buergo
In the final, humorous section of the program, Ángel Rodríguez Lozano paid a visit to the archetypical

mad scientist The mad scientist (also mad doctor or mad professor) is a stock character of a scientist who is perceived as " mad, bad and dangerous to know" or "insane" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabashedly amb ...

br>Alejandro Laguna
who supposedly lived and worked in a hidden laboratory in the basements of Radio Nacional de España, seven floors below ground level. Alejandro would demonstrate one of his latest inventions, which usually defied the laws of physics, and Ángel played the role of a rather gullible spectator. Alejandro then explained the physics of the corresponding real-world device. Finally, the demonstration of his invention usually had some highly unpleasant consequence for Ángel.

Termination of El Sueño de Arquímedes

In June 2007, El Sueño de Arquímedes and Vanguardia de la Ciencia were abruptly terminated. In the correspondence section of one of the last programs of Vangurardia de la Ciencia, Ángel Rodríguez Lozano explained, in response to a letter from an outraged listener, that the decision to terminate the program was made due to a re-structuration of RNE, and that he was but one of 4,150 employees who had to leave. In the previously referenced interview, he explained that everyone older than 52 years had to retire early, and that he was 54 years old at the time. The decision to terminate the programs was widely criticized in Spanish-speaking blogs.

Available programs

At the web-site of RNE, 36 programs are still available.

Notes and references

External links

* * Web site of Vanguardia de la Ciencia http://www.rtve.es/programas/vanguardia * El Vanguardia de la Ciencia at eSnips: https://web.archive.org/web/20110121042457/http://www.esnips.com/web/VanguardiaDeLaCiencia {{DEFAULTSORT:Sueno De Arquimedes Audio podcasts Spanish radio programs Science and technology in Spain Science in society Science podcasts Science education 2006 podcast debuts 2007 podcast endings