Podcast Transcript Money is a very strange thing. All of us use it. We spend it, earn it, and save it. We know it when we see it. Yet, even some of the world’s best economists have a very hard time defining it. It has been around for thousands of years, yet there is still …
Podcast Transcript One of the most successful enterprises of the Middle Ages was a collection of free cities located in Northern Germany and along the North and Baltic Seas. These cities created one of the greatest trade networks that the world had ever seen and for several centuries dominated trade and economics in Northern Europe. …
Podcast Transcript Ever since people have had secrets, people have taken measures to protect those secrets. The first methods to hide secrets were simple and mechanical. Over time they became more elaborate and used machines. Today, they are mathematical and would require an enormous amount of computing power to decipher. Learn more about cryptography and …
Podcast Transcript The election of 1860 was unquestionably the most important election in American history. The presidential election after that was still important, but it has the distinction of being perhaps the oddest presidential election in history, if for no other reason than it was conducted in the middle of a civil war. Learn more …
Podcast Transcript In 1945 after the conclusion of the Second World War, a Dutch man was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and plundering the Netherlands of some of its greatest artistic works. During the trial, he came up with a defense that seemed to everyone to be preposterous, yet wound up being true. Learn …
Podcast Transcript During the US Civil War, over a quarter million African-Americans served and fought on the Union side with distinction. After the Civil War, in a reorganization of the United States Army, permanent, albeit segregated, units of black soldiers were created. These units served with distinction in almost every military conflict fought by the …
Podcast Transcript At the 1862 London International Exhibition, an inventor by the name of Andrew Parkes introduced a new product based on cellulose that he called Parkesine. Little did he know that this material which could be made elastic when heated and molded into almost any shape imaginable would be the basis for an enormous …
Podcast Transcript Starting in the early Renisanase and going through to the early 19th century an intellectual community developed in Europe and later in the Americas. This community wasn’t in any particular geographic place, but rather was a network of intellectuals who shared their ideas about philosophy, science, and politics. This network was informally known …
Podcast Transcript In the 1880s, a Polish ophthalmologist set out to create a universal language. A language that could be a second language for everyone around that world that no one country or one people would control. It was a good idea, but things didn’t quite pan out as he had hoped, and along the …