Podcast Transcript In the early 19th century, the most abundant bird in North America, and perhaps the entire world, was the passenger pigeon. An estimated three billion of them would fly in flocks so large that they could blot out the sun. However, within a century, the entire species had gone extinct. It was one …
Podcast Transcript In 1688, a palace coup took place in England. The King of England and Scotland was usurped and was replaced by his daughter and her husband from the Netherlands. The act forever changed the British Monarchy and created an alternative line of succession to the throne, which still exists today. Learn more about …
Podcast Transcript On December 21, 1891, a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts, looking to keep athletes occupied during the winter, hung some peach baskets on the balcony of the gymnasium. With these peach baskets and an old soccer ball, he created something that revolutionized sports and became one of the most popular games in …
Podcast Transcript For thousands of years, one of the most terrifying and destructive diseases which afflicted humanity has been leprosy. Leprosy is a condition that affects the nerves and skin, and in extreme cases, it can result in the loss of appendages. Those who were diagnosed with leprosy would often be consigned to a lifetime …
Podcast Transcript About 2,500 years ago, a Greek philosopher by the name of Zeno of Elea proposed several paradoxes about the natural word. His ideas were actually really simple, but they were incredibly difficult to explain away. For the last two millennia, philosophers have been trying to resolve his paradoxes, and they are still trying …
Podcast Transcript Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, situated between South America and Africa, lies the most remote human settlement on Earth. There, a community of a little over 250 people eke out a living over 1,500 miles from the next closest humans. Getting there is difficult, and living there is probably even harder. Learn …
Podcast Transcript When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he declared his new regime to be The Third Reich and that it would last 1,000 years. It turned out he was off by 988 years. The big question for many people outside of Germany was and still is, if that was the third Reich, …
Podcast Transcript In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern-day city of Naples, erupted. Vesuvius had erupted before, but this eruption was different. It ejected an enormous amount of ash which completely buried several towns and cities below the mountain. Almost 2,000 years later, the largest of those cities, Pompeii, …
Podcast Transcript Early in the morning of August 21, 1986, in a valley near Lake Nyos, Cameroon, something horrible happened. 1,746 people were killed, as were over 3,500 cattle and almost every other animal that breathed air. There were no signs of violence or destruction. Everyone and everything seemed to have simply died. They were …