Episode
Joeri Witteveen on Golden Spikes
- Podcast
- Geology Bites
- Published
- Mar 16, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1521
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/geology-bites-159592/episodes/joeri-witteveen-on-golden-spikes/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/geology-bites-159592/joeri-witteveen-on-golden-spikes.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Golden spikes are not golden, nor are they generally spikes. So what are they, and, more importantly, what exactly do they represent? In the podcast, Joeri Witteveen explains how we arrived at our present system of defining the boundaries of stages in the rock record with a single marker. Paradoxically, it turns out that the best place for a golden spike is where “nothing happens.” Listen and find out why. Witteveen is Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Copenhagen.