Podcast Transcript Every year parts of the planet are hit by devastating typhoons and hurricanes. They can cause billions of dollars of damage and can take hundreds if not thousands of lives. But why do these storms exist? What causes their distinctive spiral shape with an eye in the middle? And why do they only …
Podcast Transcript Ninjas are awesome. They’re silent, they can turn invisible, and they can totally flip out and kill people, especially their mortal enemies…pirates. …or at least that is what popular culture would like you to believe. Were ninjas really as powerful as they are made out to be? Were they the ultimate silent assassins? …
Podcast Transcript Born in 1815, Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of the famous poet Lord Byron. Unlike her famous father, Ada did not pursue a literary career. Guided by her mother, she took a diametrically different path studying math and logic. At the age of 17, she had a chance encounter with Charles …
Podcast Transcript It seems like the sort of thing humans have used throughout our existence, but historically speaking, footwear is a relatively new invention. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans spent their entire lives barefoot. Then someone got the bright idea that it might be a good idea to put something between our feet …
Podcast Transcript In the summer of 1971, Stanford professor of psychology Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to determine if cruelty amongst people of authority was because of the position or the people. Twenty-four men were selected and randomly assigned roles of guard or prisoner. The results were shocking and are still being debated over 50 …
Podcast Transcript Every so often, astronomers will publish photos taken with an astronomical telescope and say that the object they captured is so many billions of light years away. But how could they know the distance of something from just looking at it? Furthermore, astronomers claim that the universe is almost 14 billion years old. …
Podcast Transcript In the 1920s and 1930s, one of the most cutting-edge and exciting forms of transportation was the zeppelin. Germany’s Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company created lighter-than-air airships that transported passengers millions of miles worldwide. This new form of transportation which seemed to be the future, came to a sudden and dramatic end on one horrific …
Podcast Transcript English is a very strange language. It is a Germanic language where half of the words come from a Romance language. We have a host of words that make absolutely no sense in terms of spelling or pronunciation. Perhaps strangest of all, some of the greatest literary works in the English language are …
Podcast Transcript After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American military was on the defensive. They had been hit hard, and it would be months before they could regroup and strike back. However, one American officer had an idea. He hatched a plan where the Americans could strike back immediately to let the Japanese …