Joe Medicine Crow: The Last Crow War Chief

The Last Crow War Chief

This episode is the story of a man, who if you don’t know his name, you probably should: Joe Medicine Crow.  Joe Medicine Crow was a scholar, an author, a historian, a spokesperson, and a warrior. In fact, he was the last person to have earned the title of War Chief in the Crow Nation, …

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The Army That Never Was: The First US Army Group

The Army That Never Was

Transcript Bluffing is one of the most important aspects of playing poker. In any strategic game, in fact, deception can be critical to success. Warfare is no different. Deceiving an enemy can often mean the difference between winning and losing. Between life and death. During WWII, the allied forces unleashed the largest and most complicated …

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Zero, My Hero: A History of the Number Zero

Zero, My Hero

Transcript This episode is about nothing. Not in the sense that Seinfield was a TV show about nothing, but rather this is literally about nothing.  It is about the number zero.  A number that few people bother to give much thought to, yet without it, modern mathematics wouldn’t exist, and neither would any of the …

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The Biggest Sports Blowouts of All Time

The Biggest Blowouts of All Time

Transcript In the world of sports, most people enjoy very close fought, exciting games that go down to the wire. If you were to take a poll on what the best games or matches in history were in any given sport, it would probably involve a close score with a last-second victory to put one …

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Harold Holt: The Prime Minister Who Disappeared

The Prime Minister Who Disappeared

Transcript What would happen if a world leader were to totally disappear? As in, the leader of a major country was to just vanish into thin air, without a trace? Such a thing actually happened 50 years ago when a nation’s prime minister disappeared and his body was never found.  Learn more about how a …

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The History of the Dollar as a Currency

The History of the Dollar as a Currency

Transcript The currency in the United States is the dollar. You probably already knew that. It is also the name of the currency in over 20 other countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. What is a dollar exactly, and why is that the name of the currency in these countries?  Learn more about …

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Who Discovered Calculus: Newton or Leibniz?

Who Discovered Calculus?

Transcript For the last 300 years, a debate has raged between mathematicians about who should be credited with the invention of calculus: Sir Isaac Newton or Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The sides of the debate have mostly been based on geography with English mathematicians advocating for Newton, and Continental Europeans siding with Leibniz.  Learn more about …

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Common Fallacies and Fallacious Reasoning

Common Fallacies and Fallacious Reasoning

Transcript We are often told that schools are where you learn how to think, not what to think. Sadly, almost no school curriculum deals directly with logic and the closely related subject of logical fallacies.  Fallacies are all around us. Just read something online or watch a few minutes of television and you’ll probably encounter …

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How The Fosbury Flop Revolutionized the High Jump

The Fosbury Flop

Transcript At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Dick Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the men’s high jump.  He did it by jumping an Olympic record 2.24 meters or 7 feet, four inches.  What was remarkable about his accomplishment wasn’t the height he jumped, but how it did it. He didn’t just win a …

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