All About Zombies

All About Zombies

Podcast Transcript One of the most popular forms of fiction today involves zombies. There are TV shows, movies, and books that all envision life during a zombie apocalypse.  Zombie stories are a relatively new form of fiction. However, zombies didn’t come out of nowhere.  They have a basis in legend, religion, and fact….. well, sort …

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Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden

Podcast Transcript On August 4, 1892, an incredibly grizzly event took place in Fall River, Massachusetts.  Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were brutally murdered by repeated strikes with a hatchet to their heads.  The primary suspect in the case was their daughter, Lizzie. In the subsequent trial, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict, and …

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East and West Berlin

East and West Berlin

Podcast Transcript From the end of the Second World War through 1990, the city of Berlin, the former capital of Germany and its largest city, was split in two.  The two Berlins, East and West, were in a geopolitical situation unlike any that the world had seen before or since.  This one city split into …

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Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars

Podcast Transcript Ever since the dawn of the space age, there have been some who have dreamed of establishing a human presence on Mars. However, in addition to being really far away, Mars is not exactly hospitable to humans.  Some suggest that the answer might be to completely change Mars’s environment, to radically change its …

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Conflict of the Orders: Patrician vs Plebeian

Conflict of the Orders: Patrician vs Plebeian

Podcast Transcript After the founding of Rome as a city in the 8th century BC, it created a social system based on an elite few and a majority of commoners.  This social arrangement wasn’t unique to Rome, and it has appeared in cultures and civilizations around the world. However, Rome was one of the first …

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The Solar Cycle

The Solar Cycle

Approximately every eleven years, our sun experiences a cycle in which its magnetic poles flip. During this cycle, solar flares and sunspot activity increase, and then the sun returns to a state of relative calm.  These solar cycles have been tracked for over two hundred years and are among the best-recorded aspects of solar astronomy. …

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Compound Interest

Compound Interest

Podcast Transcript One of the most powerful forces in economics and finance is compound interest.  Not everyone understands compound interest, even though they may reap its benefits or suffer its consequences.  Compounding has the potential to build fortunes and wreck empires. The effects of compounding are also not limited to interest payments. It can apply …

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The History of Breakfast

The History of Breakfast

Podcast Transcript Every day, billions of people around the world wake up and have breakfast.  Breakfast is very different than the other meals you eat in a day. The types of food that people consume for breakfast are usually much more narrow than what they might be for lunch or dinner.  Moreover, the way we …

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Guam And The Northern Mariana Islands

Guam And The Northern Mariana Islands

Podcast Transcript Two of the United States’s most distant territories are located in the Western Pacific Ocean: Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.  Despite being separate political entities today, the two groups of islands have a shared geography, history, and culture. Today, they find themselves on the doorstep of Asia and straddling …

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