Podcast Transcript In the 18th century, a French astronomer who was a regular comet hunter kept finding things in the sky that weren’t comets, but they also weren’t stars or planets. So, he created a list of these objects, not because he was trying to catalog the night sky, but rather to help other comet …
Podcast Transcript For centuries, people have been transfixed by the “the big city.” Kids growing up in small towns would dream of going to the big city where they could find opportunity and fortune. People in the big city often looked down on those in smaller communities because they were from the big city. Believe …
Podcast Transcript In 1965, the world’s first fully enclosed sports facility, the Houston Astrodome, was opened to the public. The Astrodome itself was a marvel of engineering, but because it was enclosed, the grass that was initially planted soon died. It was replaced with artificial grass, which was basically a synthetic carpet that looked like …
Podcast Transcript For thousands of years, humans have used the power of water to do work for them. At first, it was very simple, then it gradually evolved to more complex and more efficient devices to harness the power of water. Eventually, we were able to harness some of the world’s largest rivers to produce …
Podcast Transcript Before the US Civil War, a group of abolitionists didn’t just sit around passively to wait for the end of slavery to arrive. They took matters into their own hands. They set up a clandestine network that operated over multiple states to bring escaped slaves to freedom. Their network wasn’t a top-down organization, …
Podcast Transcript Located in the Indonesian Archipelago, it is one of the newest countries in the world, Timor-Leste, or, as it’s sometimes known in English, East Timor. While geographically very close, and pretty much surrounded by Indonesia, Timor-Leste has had a history very different from Indonesia. Their histories diverged when they became colonized by different …
Podcast Transcript On May 16, 1929, 270 people assembled in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room. They were there to honor the highest achievements in filmmaking over the last year. It was not broadcast on radio, was not recorded, and the entire event only took 15 minutes. Those present on that day didn’t know it, …
Podcast Transcript Over 300 years ago, humanity was in the early stages of what would be its greatest transformation in history. Around the world, there were new ideas that were just starting to take root. That isn’t to say that all was great in the world, but seeds were planted that would bear fruit centuries …
Podcast Transcript March is upon us. It is a month of madness if you happen to be a basketball fan, a month with celebrations if you happen to be Irish, and the month where we celebrate the ratio of the circumference to its diameter. It is also the month of the equinox. Where the days …