James Vincent on Beyond Measure

Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

(11/2/2022) Senior reporter for the Verge and Vox Media site devoted to technology and society, James Vincent finds the correlation from the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, and shares measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In his book Beyond Masure James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking readers from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the “quantified self.” Join us when Vincent touches on the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control on this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large. Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge.