Podcast Transcript Every few years, somewhere on Earth is witness to one of the planet’s greatest sights: a total solar eclipse. A total solar eclipse is rare, but it can be calculated centuries in advance. However, that wasn’t always the case. For thousands of years, solar eclipses were rare events that were considered to be …
Podcast Transcript There is an old saying that April showers bring May flowers. However, that saying doesn’t really address where the April showers come from in the first place. I believe they come from the questions of curious people. When they are answered, they bring tears of joy which manifests in the form of rain. …
Podcast Transcript On April 15, 1947, a rookie infielder took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. All eyes in the world of baseball, and indeed the United States, were focused on this player and this game. However, this wasn’t the normal debut of a rookie player. This game marked the breaking of the long-standing color …
Podcast Transcript Ever since the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, astronomers have noticed that something was not right. The orbit of Neptune was being gravitationally influenced by some other, unknown body that was dubbed Planet X. In 1930, it was thought that this body had been discovered with the discovery of Pluto, but …
Transcript When Europeans began sailing the high seas on extended voyages, the most deadly thing they encountered wasn’t enemy navies, starvation, or even shipwrecks. It was a painful disease where your body would literally start falling apart and it killed more than 2,000,000 sailors between the voyage of Columbus to the middle of the 19th …
Transcript In the year 52 BC, the Roman General Julius Caesar fought the last major battle in the conquest of Gaul. The implications of the battle have reverberated throughout history and can still be felt in the world today. But the real story isn’t the implications of the battle, but how it was won. It …
Transcript In 1941, a young artistic prodigy released his first motion picture. It had enormous anticipation, received incredible reviews, and earned nine Academy Award nominations. However, the film was a financial failure because the vast majority of theaters refused to show it. In the 80 years since its release, it has been named the greatest …
Transcript What do lasers, photovoltaic cells, the transistor, digital cameras, cell phone technology, the communication satellite, computer networking, radio astronomy, and the UNIX operating system have in common? They were all invented or developed at the same place by the greatest collection of scientists and engineers ever assembled. Learn more about Bell Labs, the greatest …
Transcript The rise of civilization is sometimes defined as the urbanization of humanity. The transition from hunter-gatherers to living in settlements was a fundamental transformation of human society and allowed for advanced social institutions such as kings, priesthoods, and standing armies. Since then, our settlements have gotten larger and larger, resulting in the megalopolises we …