Transcript On April 30, 1943, a Spanish fisherman came across the floating body of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. Handcuffed to the corpse was a satchel with top-secret plans for the Allied invasions of Greece and Sardinia. With the information gathered from this intelligence, the Germans moved their troops into position to counter …
Transcript We are often told that schools are where you learn how to think, not what to think. Sadly, almost no school curriculum deals directly with logic and the closely related subject of logical fallacies. Fallacies are all around us. Just read something online or watch a few minutes of television and you’ll probably encounter …
Transcript Many people think that politics and elections in the United States are the most controversial they have ever been. History, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the oddest and most controversial presidential election in American history was the election of 1824. It is an election that doesn’t get a lot of attention given who won …
Transcript The Roman Catholic Papacy is one of the oldest institutions in the world, second only to the Chrysanthemum Throne in Japan. Since its inception, there have been 266 popes, and a couple of anti-popes as well. The pope is not only the head of a religion but also the leader of a sovereign, albeit …
Transcript Here is a question you’ve probably never bothered to think about before….What is the oldest man made object orbiting the earth? Which, if any, of the really early satellites are still whizzing around up in space? It turns out, the fourth satellite ever put in orbit is still there, 62 years after it was …
Transcript People didn’t travel much in the ancient world. But, for those who did they developed the ancient equivalent of guidebooks. These were often lists of manmade sites and attractions which any traveler should take the time to see. Over time, one such Greek list was written down and it became known to us as …
Podcast Transcript It is arguably the world’s oldest game, yet it is one of the most popular cybersports. It has been called the game of kings, and yet it can be mastered by children. Its origins are truly global having passed through several of the world’s greatest civilizations, and it can and is played almost …
Podcast Transcript In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a 24-year-old woman in Ukraine volunteered to join the Red Army. She was initially pressured to become a nurse like most women who volunteered, however, that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to be on the front lines. Within a year, …
Podcast Transcript Located in the heart of Paris, along the banks of the River Seine, lies the Louvre. It has over 750,000 square feet of gallery space, over 615,000 items in its collection, and in a non-pandemic year, gets over 10 million annual visitors. Yet, it wasn’t always a museum, and the way it acquired …