All Episodes

Ep. 133: The clock strikes midnight, March 19th, 1919 in New Orleans, Louisiana. One would expect, on this day and time, for most residents to be asleep in their beds, especially outside of the busier city thoroughfares, but that is not the case on this particular night. Instead, walking down a would be quiet street, you’d find lights on in each home and, what’s more, you’d notice the sounds of jazz music drifting out into the street, a discordant cacophony of noise issuing f

Eps. 131 & 132: You guys know how I’m always going on about how we still basically live in ancient Athens? Well I’m back at it this week. No, Athens isn’t considered a lost city, I’ll get to the point soon. After last week’s Shakespeare episode I’ve been trying to think up other literary greats that were even halfway on his level and the first guy I thought of was Homer. Homer, like Shakespeare much later, was a bard, the original bard. He was a poet from ancient Greece who l

Ep. 130: When thinking of literary greats, several come to mind but all of them, all of them pale in comparison to one name. This man, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time, a playwright, a poet, you all know him - William Shakespeare. Encyclopedia Britannica even sets aside its impartiality writing quote “It may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not so difficult to describe the gifts that enabled him to create ima

Ep. 129: The ground beneath our feet tells many tales. Look down at where you’re standing now. It may look like a regular ordinary floor be it tile or carpet or wood planks. Maybe you’re outside looking at the grass or sidewalk. Maybe you’re driving over a road or parked in a parking lot. Nothing too interesting there. But what might you find beneath that layer? Evidence of times come before? An older floor or foundation? Artifacts, bones, fossils? What story does the Earth b

Ep. 128: Game of Thrones is typically considered to be the most popular television show of all time based on its massive global reach and deep cultural impact. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an 8 season historical fantasy series based on a book series by George R. R. Martin about different houses, different families, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Targaryens, the Baratheons, all battling and plotting and backstabbing each other to try to sit on the iron throne. It’s pretty awe

Ep. 127: Walk into any classroom anywhere in the world today and it will look pretty much the same. The students may look different. They may be speaking different languages. There will be slight variations but the overall set up is the same. Education, schooling, is an almost universally shared experience for most humans today. Most of us spent years of our lives in classrooms and if you were to reminisce on it now, to share a story from your school days with someone from a

Ep. 126: Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was a man with lofty goals. He was a big man. Not physically but in character. He had a big personality. Incredibly charismatic, he was an exceptional leader. He was very good at inspiring loyalty in others, at rallying people together. He was very, very ambitious, some might say over confident. Because, despite his big personality, despite his ambition and natural leadership skills, despite being knighted, despite his later f

Ep. 125: Dr. Alexis Turner is a historian of science at Harvard University. While pursuing his PhD, he chose to focus his studies on a particularly interesting drug known as LSD. He says in a Harvard News article by Paul Massari quote “At different times throughout its history, LSD has been a psychiatric wonder drug, a means to world peace, a distraction from political progress, and a poison corrupting the youth of the country. Intellectually, I want to know how it can be all

Ep. 124: It’s 1428. Lady Jane Grey was just 16 years old when she was beheaded at the tower of London in 1554. A secret plot had unexpectedly placed Jane on the English throne, usurping Mary Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Just nine days later, an outraged Mary stormed into London with a crowd of supporters and swiftly took back her throne. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London and later executed. If ever there was a political pawn, it was Jane Grey, a child wh

Ep. 123: It’s 1428. A16 year old peasant girl stands in a field outside her family’s modest stone cottage. Her face is upturned towards the heavens as if listening intently for something. Her mother, watching warily from the window, calls her back inside. This is not a safe time or place to be a girl standing alone in a field, not a field in Domremy (Do-ray-me), France anyway, positioned directly between two enemy forces who had been at war for almost a hundred years now. Joa

Ep. 122: When you think of the word crystal you may think of a fancy chandelier, elaborate drinking glasses, or perhaps priceless gems adorning the décolletage of a wealthy woman, the crown jewels of royalty through the ages. If I asked you what crystal has left the biggest impact on human history, has had the greatest overall value to us throughout time, you may be tempted to say diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, but you would be wrong. There is another type of crystal

Ep. 121: Thomas Jefferson is America’s golden boy. I mean along with George Washington I guess but he already has his own episode, episode 69. In the eyes of many Americans, these guys, these founding fathers could do no wrong. They built our country on the ideals of liberty and freedom for all. And it was Thomas Jefferson of course who wrote those fateful words down for the very first time. Thomas Jefferson who drafted the Declaration of Independence and wrote quote “We hold

Ep. 120: Pretty much everyone knows the story of Noah’s Ark. God decides to flood the whole Earth to punish humans for their wickedness, but he selects Noah and his family as the sole survivors. He instructs them to build a massive boat, to gather animals inside it, and then for 40 days and 40 nights it rains and the floodwaters rise. When the floodwaters finally recede, Noah’s ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noah releases a dove which returns with an olive bran

Ep. 119: Fernão de Magalhães (fernow de magalyaisch) later known as Fernando de Magallanes, better known as Ferdinand Magellan, is a rather famous guy. In fact he’s really only famous for one thing in particular. I mean, there is a strait named after him, the Strait of Magellan which passes through the southern tip of South America, but the real reason he’s famous is for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe, to sail all the way around the Earth, a full circle. T

Eps. 117 & 118: It’s July 19th, 1545 and King Henry VIII sits aboard his flagship, the Mary Rose. He admires the intricate woodwork, the lavish decor of his private dining cabin. What an exquisite ship, he thinks, the pride of all of England. Suddenly there is shouting from the sailors and soldiers on deck. A man rushes into his cabin, Vice Admiral Sir George Carew. “You must leave the ship at once your majesty,” Carew informs him. Enemy French ships have entered the Solent,

Ep. 116: Situated over 200 feet above Lake Nasser, near the village of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, four massive figures stare out at the vast landscape. Seemingly cut into the cliff face itself, this man’s face, repeated four times, is vaguely familiar. He is seated 65 feet tall, with his feet side by side, his hands resting upon his knees, four of him flanking a much smaller temple doorway. At his feet, reaching only halfway up his shins, stand other figures - his favorite

Ep. 115: It’s December 1, 1969 and TVs and radios all over the United States are tuned to a live government broadcast. 366 blue plastic capsules, like oversized pills, are poured into a large canister. Each contains a date, one of the possible 366 birthdates throughout the year, including leap day. Lieutenant General Lewis B. Hershey, Director of the Selective Service, an elderly bespectacled man in a suit and tie, addresses the crowd and explains that the birthdate capsules

Ep. 114: There has long prevailed in popular imagination a historical myth of epic proportions: The Lost Colony of Roanoke. It has all the makings of a great story. A group of 117 civilized English men, women, and children journey to an unknown land across the ocean, a land inhabited by quote “savages” so unlike themselves. When times grow tough, their fearless leader returns to England, leaving them behind, stranded on the island. It carries undertones of classic literary ad

Ep. 113: Since the beginning of mankind, mothers have breastfed their babies. It is as natural and as necessary as any other bodily function - a heart beating, oxygen filling the lungs, blinking of the eyes. In fact, it is so necessary that to forgo it, up until very recently, the last hundred years or so, was a death sentence for the infant. We don’t often think about feeding babies. It’s something mothers take care of behind the scenes, part of the invisible load. We certai

Eps. 111 & 112: Throughout all of history there is one name that rises above all the others possibly as the most depraved, heinous, vile human being ever to have walked the planet. Humans worldwide almost unanimously agree, some from the start but most in hindsight, that this man was pure evil. Yes, I am talking of course about the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. BBC writes quote “Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adol