Dave Seminara is a writer and former diplomat based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is the author of four books. Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth (June 1, 2021) is a deep exploration of wanderlust, focused around the true story of William Baekeland, a young Brit …
Transcript Have you ever known someone who was really cheap? Like they would wear clothes until they disintegrated? Or they would never pick up the tab? Or maybe they are horrible tippers? Well, there is cheap and then there is cheap. Some people are so cheap that they appear to live in destitute poverty, even …
Transcript The second Roman emperor was Tiberius. His right-hand man was the leader of his Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Seianus, known to us as Sejanus. Over the years, Sejanus slowly gained power and influence as well as a host of enemies throughout Rome. Eventually, however, all of his social-climbing and power acquisition eventually came to …
Transcript Located on a peninsula off of Southern Spain, best known for the massive rock which dominates its landscape, Gibraltar is one of the most strategic locations in the world. It has been fought over for millennia, been the focus of many sieges, and is still the subject of diplomatic disputes in the 21st Century. …
Transcript According to legend, in 1945 an engineer by the name of Perry Spencer was working in front of an active radar installation. As he was working, he noted that a candy bar that he had in his shirt pocket started to melt. His investigation into the phenomenon resulted in a new technology that has …
Transcript World War II was unquestionably the greatest bloodletting in world history. Never before had so many people lost their lives in such a short period of time. Of all of the many tragedies which took place during the war, one of the largest actually took place after the war. It was the largest single …
Transcript In 1961, at the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia, a small conference was held for astrophysicists. The meeting was organized by Cornell University professor and astronomer Frank Drake. The subject of the conference was the search for extraterrestrial life. In preparation for the conference, he jotted down his thoughts in the form of …
Transcript In April 1920, two men who were delivering the payroll to the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts were killed in broad daylight. The payroll was taken by the killers, and they jumped into a getaway car. A few weeks later, two Italian immigrants with known ties to radical anarchist groups were arrested for …
This week’s guest is Fran Golden. She is an award-winning travel writer whose work regularly appears in Bloomberg, Travel + Leisure magazine, and other leading media outlets. She is the author of numerous cruise and travel books, including “100 Things To Do In Alaska Before You Die” (Reedy Press, 2021). The Alaska book is available …
