Podcast Transcript In 1885, the Russian Tsar Alexander III commissioned an Easter gift for his wife. It was a rather unusual gift. He asked one of the finest goldsmiths in the country to create a jeweled egg. However, it wasn’t just to be an expensive bauble. Inside the egg was to be another exquisite surprise. …
Podcast Transcript One of the biggest problems that humanity has faced for thousands of years is heat. Excessive heat made it difficult to work in the middle of the day. Heat was especially problematic in the tropics, where a shockingly large percentage of humanity lived. As cities became more developed, excess heat, all year round, …
Podcast Transcript Sometime between the 7th and 13th century BC, a man was born in Eastern Persia who had a revolutionary idea. He claimed that there weren’t multiple gods, but rather just one god. He established a religion which, at various times, was one of the most followed in the world. Thousands of years later, …
Podcast Transcript For thousands of years, food preservation was a significant challenge for humanity. Even if you were successful in hunting or gathering food, if you could not preserve it, it would be difficult to keep enough for survival. One of the most important advancements in the history of food preservation was the development of …
Podcast Transcript Between 1830 and 1850, the United States forcibly displaced 60,000 Native Americans living in the Southern United States under the ‘Indian Removal Act.’ While being moved, thousands would die due to starvation, disease, and exposure. Its impact has led some scholars to classify the event as a genocide. Regardless of how it is …
Podcast Transcript Between 1706 and 1718, a group of pirates established a haven in the Bahamas. Using a system of rules that they developed themselves, the pirates created their own forms of self-governance to maintain order within a society that was otherwise lawless. This grew into a community of thousands of pirates before the British …
Podcast Transcript The English language is weird. We have words that are spelled the same but sound different. We have words that are spelled differently but sound the same. We have words that sound nothing like how they are spelled, and a host of exceptions that you just have to know and remember. …and then …
Podcast Transcript The Ivory Coast, or as it is officially known, the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, is a country located in West Africa. Geographically, it is a small nation known for its agricultural production. Despite its small size, the Ivory Coast is one of the most populous countries in West Africa, with a population of …
Podcast Transcript Just one week after President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman set out to execute one of the most audacious plans of the US Civil War. His plan involved violating several central tenants of warfare which had been established for thousands of years, yet in the process, …