Podcast Transcript The Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a Hungarian noblewoman in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She was highly educated, spoke at least four languages, had eight children, and lived in a palace. And, oh, by the way, she was one of the most prolific and sadistic serial killers in world …
Podcast Transcript For a period of about 200 years, and really intensely for less than 50 years, the world’s monetary system functioned on a gold standard. During the gold standard, the world basically functioned for the first time under a single global currency. Economists have been debating the merits of the system ever since. Learn …
Podcast Transcript August Wilhelm Iffland was one of the finest German actors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. That fact alone would probably not make him worthy of a podcast episode. What does make him worthy of a podcast episode is a ring that bears his name which has been passed down from …
Podcast transcript Thousands of years ago, enormous furry elephants roamed the northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and North America. While these animals are now extinct, they were actually around much more recently than most people realize, and because of where and when they existed, we know a shocking amount about them. Learn more about Mammuthus …
Podcast Transcript Prior to the 19th century, capturing images required the talent of an artist and a whole lot of time. The transition from capturing images as an art to that of a science took multiple innovations and discoveries. Those innovations never really stopped as images went from being captured physically to being captured digitally. …
Podcast Transcript In the 1960s, billions of dollars were spent and 100,000s of people worked to land a human on the moon. After the success of Apollo 11, five more Apollo missions managed to land on the moon over the next three years. …and then everyone got bored of flying to the moon and it …
Podcast Transcript Five different times during the Earth’s history, the planet has entered a prolonged period of reduced temperatures. When this happens, massive ice sheets form, and sea levels drop. While some of these events occurred billions of years ago, not all of them were in the distant past. In fact, the last such event …
Podcast Transcript In William Golding’s 1954 novel, the Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys find themselves on a deserted island. Stuck there, they create their own civilization which eventually turns violent and savage. The book was a statement on the fundamental nature of humanity. The book was fiction, but many people have …
Podcast Transcript Around 10,000 years ago, someone in Southeast Asia captured a bird that lived on the floor of the jungle. Today, billions of descendants of that bird now live on six different continents and provide food for billions of people. Yet, the birds which exist today are often very different birds from the ones …