Podcast Transcript In 1880, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was commissioned to compose a work in honor of the completion of a new cathedral. What he wrote became one of the best known, over the top, and difficult to produce pieces of music in history. Despite its popularity almost 150 years later, the composer …
Podcast Transcript Many of the foods that people associate with America didn’t actually originate in the United States. Hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza are all things that were popularized in the US, but didn’t originate there. However, there is one form of cuisine which is uniquely American; Barbecue. While it is American, it developed with …
Podcast Transcript Whether or not you know it, you use them every day. You were actually trained to use them as a child. Much of the world we live in today is directly or indirectly a result of their use. While they are ideally suited for computers, they were actually first developed thousands of years …
Podcast Transcript The Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She was highly educated, spoke at least four languages, had eight children, and lived in a palace. And, oh, by the way, she was one of the most prolific and sadistic serial killers in world …
Podcast Transcript For a period of about 200 years, and really intensely for less than 50 years, the world’s monetary system functioned on a gold standard. During the gold standard, the world basically functioned for the first time under a single global currency. Economists have been debating the merits of the system ever since. Learn …
Podcast Transcript August Wilhelm Iffland was one of the finest German actors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. That fact alone would probably not make him worthy of a podcast episode. What does make him worthy of a podcast episode is a ring that bears his name which has been passed down from …
Podcast transcript Thousands of years ago, enormous furry elephants roamed the northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and North America. While these animals are now extinct, they were actually around much more recently than most people realize, and because of where and when they existed, we know a shocking amount about them. Learn more about Mammuthus …
Podcast Transcript Prior to the 19th century, capturing images required the talent of an artist and a whole lot of time. The transition from capturing images as an art to that of a science took multiple innovations and discoveries. Those innovations never really stopped as images went from being captured physically to being captured digitally. …
Podcast Transcript In the 1960s, billions of dollars were spent and 100,000s of people worked to land a human on the moon. After the success of Apollo 11, five more Apollo missions managed to land on the moon over the next three years. …and then everyone got bored of flying to the moon and it …