Podcast Transcript Located in the middle of San Francisco Bay is one of the Bay Area’s most iconic landmarks: Alcatraz. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country, with over a million visitors every year. Most people know of Alcatraz as a prison, yet it only served as a prison for …
Podcast Transcript If you were to ask most people what year they associate with the American Revolution, it would be 1776. That was the year that the Continental Congress declared Independence. However, 1776 wasn’t the start of the revolution, nor was it the end of the revolution. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the …
Podcast Transcript One of the most important substances throughout world history has been salt. Salt might seem mundane, but it is actually necessary for the functioning of life. For millennia, Salt has been used as a preservative, a seasoning, and even a medium of exchange. Salt is one of the universal things that has remained …
Podcast Transcript For centuries, the English Channel served as a moat that kept the conflicts of Continental Europe away from the island of Great Britain. While it served as a barrier for armies, it also served as a hindrance to commerce. The movement of goods and people across the English Channel was much more difficult …
In 1610, Galileo Gallieli used a new invention called the telescope to observe the planet Jupiter. What he found revolutionized the science of astronomy and our entire understanding of the universe. He discovered four moons in orbit around the planet, the first objects in the solar system to have been discovered since antiquity. Today, astronomers …
Podcast Transcript In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France was shaken by a crisis that shook their entire society. An army officer was wrongly convicted in a sham trial. Then over the next several years, the French military doubled down, refusing to acknowledge what they had done, and punished everyone who attempted to …
Podcast Transcript In 1970, the United States passed the Organized Crime Control Act, which established the Witness Security Program or WITSEC. Since being enacted, WITSEC has had thousands of witnesses and family members enter the program, none of whom, to date, have been lost under their protection. The program is a key weapon in the …
Podcast Transcript When you think of evil, characters like Hannibal Lecter, the Joker, and Michael Myers probably come to mind. But what is evil really? Evil can take different forms: sadistic and brutal, but it can also be boring and normalized. During the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the …
Podcast Transcript Today, cookbooks are ubiquitous. Go to any bookstore and you can find dozens, if not hundreds, of different cookbooks. Search online, and you can find tens of thousands of websites that provide recipes. The story of cookbooks is fascinating because it mirrors the entire evolution of human civilization. Not just how we cook …