Podcast Transcript The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus oversaw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe. In 1626, he ordered the construction of a warship that would be the most powerful floating platform in Northern Europe. Its maiden voyage in 1628 was one of the most memorable of any ship in …
Podcast Transcript There are some subjects that are perceived to be mind-numbingly dull and boring. One such subject is accounting. Yet, believe it or not, accounting and bookkeeping have not only have been around since the dawn of human civilization, but they also had a hand in shaping it. Without it, the world would be …
Podcast Transcript 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno posited a quandary. If you want wanted to travel from one place to another, you first have to go half the distance, then you have to go half the distance again, and then again. You can do this infinitely and never reach your goal. This was …
Podcast Transcript Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco. Monaco has several distinctions among the countries in the world, not just for its size, but for its population and its history. Learn more about Monaco, …
Podcast Transcript For several hundred years, the British navy was the most powerful in the world. One of the things which the British navy ran on was rum. Every sailor on a British ship was given a daily ration of rum. However, on one dark day, the tradition of the daily rum allotment came to …
Podcast Transcript Every so often you might hear something on the news about a record high or low temperature being set. Usually, these might be records for a particular month, or maybe for a particular place. Temperature records, especially global records, can be very contentious and there are rigid rules surrounding how such recordings are …
Podcast Transcript People who love to dance are said to have dancing fever. Dancing fever is just a phrase and not something meant to be taken literally. However, could there really be an actual dancing fever? Could there be a disease that caused people, many people, to dance until they fell from exhaustion? Well, maybe. …
Podcast Transcript In 1994, a German archeologist named Klaus Schmidt was investigating a site in southeastern Turkey which had been know to be a source of ancient stone tools. What he found was far greater. His discovery totally upended the world of archeology and has changed everything we thought we knew about early human civilization. …
Podcast Transcript Throughout human history, people have killed, robbed, and put their lives at risk in the pursuit of power. In fact, almost all of history can be thought of as people, tribes, and nations all competing for power. However, occasionally there are those who have the ability to seize power but refuse to do …