Podcast Transcript A little over 400 years ago, a group of Dutch investors had a revolutionary idea. They were embarking on an incredibly risky endeavor, and to spread the risk, they were going to share ownership of the new venture. Even better, each part of the ownership in this venture could be bought and sold …
Podcast Transcript Before the Ideas of March, before he crossed the Rubicon, and before he became Rome’s dictator for life, Julius Caesar had led a very interesting existence. We know more about his early life than most Romans simply because of his accomplishments later in life, but what he did and experienced clearly shaped the …
Podcast Transcript Before the development of electricity and electronic communications, the fastest information could travel was the speed of a horse. Maybe a ship might have been a bit faster depending on the route, but for the most part, the speed of information was limited to the speed of a human. However, there was one …
Podcast Transcript The United States federal agency charged with gathering foreign intelligence is the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA. The CIA is tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information as well as conducting covert action and clandestine operations. It was created in the shadow of the Second World War and became one …
Podcast Transcript Behind almost every web page, email address, and podcast is a system that translates addresses understandable by humans to something that can be understood by computers. The system is one of the foundations of the Internet, yet its origin was in a handmade list that was placed on a single computer. Unbeknownst to …
Podcast Transcript Every military in the world is a hierarchal organization. There are people at the top who make decisions, people down below who follow those orders, and people in between who make it happen. Today, most militaries have an elaborate rank structure with multiple ranks in the chain of command. However, it wasn’t always …
Podcast Transcript In the late 19th century, the American frontier became famous for its outlaws and gangsters. Men like Billy the Kid and Jesse James became notorious for their criminal exploits. While this was happening in the American West, there were similar outlaws in the Australian bush. One, in particular, has captured the imagination of …
Podcast Transcript Nestled in the heart of West Africa lie two nations with distinct identities yet tied together by a common geography and history: Senegal and The Gambia. The landscape of this region wasn’t always as fragmented as it is now. It wasn’t until the 19th century that it was carved into the separate entities …
Podcast Transcript One of the most important advancements in the 20th century was the identification of the structure of the DNA molecule. However, that discovery didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was part of a century-long process that included many advancements in biology, chemistry, and physics. Solving the secret of the DNA molecule was a …