Podcast Transcript Most people in the world are required to have a passport when they travel internationally. Today, there is an international regime covering how passports are to be issued and honored between countries. However, in the past, the system was much more informal, and if you go back far enough, there was no system …
Podcast Transcript During the Second World War, one of the most distinguished American aviation units was one that no one thought would even have existed when the war began. It was a unit of African American aviators who were trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabam. Over a thousand airmen were trained and served in …
Podcast Transcript Centuries ago, the most expensive jewelry in the world wasn’t made of diamonds, rubies, or emeralds. Rather, they were made with an extremely rare substance that was occasionally found inside of clams and oysters: pearls. Pearls were so valuable that they could only be possessed by kings, queens, and emperors. Today, the manner …
Podcast Transcript The United States Constitution lays out a set procedure for the election of a president and how a winner is determined from various candidates. However, it says absolutely nothing about how those candidates are determined in the first place. Since the first presidential election, the process by which parties have chosen their candidates …
Podcast Transcript If you ever stay up at night scanning through frequencies on shortwave radio, there is a good chance you might come across something very odd and kind of creepy. You will find a station that is nothing but a disembodied voice reading off a seemingly random string of numbers. There is often an …
Podcast Transcript In the Pacific Theater in World War II, the leader of the combined Japanese fleet was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Yamamoto was villanized as the arch-enemy of the American forces in the Pacific, and to be fair, he was their enemy. But there is actually much more to the story. Yamamoto was the loudest …
Podcast Transcript In the year 732, one of the most important battles in world history took place between the cities of Tours and Portier in France. On one side was an unstoppable juggernaut that had amassed one of the largest empires in world history in less than a century. On the other side was a …
Podcast Transcript In the 19th century, a new discipline swept over the medical and legal professions. This belief held that a person’s personality could be determined by analyzing the contours or bumps on their head. The belief had a surprising amount of sway among certain people, and it developed a large following before eventually being …
Podcast Transcript If you take a look at the periodic table of elements, you will notice something interesting. Go to the bottom and take a look at any element over, say, number 94. You will find a bunch of elements you have probably never heard of. Don’t worry because most chemists probably aren’t familiar with …