Podcast Transcript In the third century BC, Rome faced its greatest enemy. One man, a Carthaginian general named Hannibal Barca, led an army into the Italian peninsula and terrorized Rome for over a decade, despite having fewer resources and fighting on Rome’s home turf. He handed the Roman Republic many of its most humiliating defeats …
Podcast Transcript In 1977, NASA took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the planets to send two probes to the outermost reaches of the solar system. They sent back the best images and data available at that time about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The program was a smashing success. However, the probes didn’t stop …
Podcast Transcript On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed into the Andes Mountains. For the following 72 days, survivors of the crash were stranded in the ice and snow, forced to survive in sub-zero temperatures, battling starvation and avalanches. Desperate to escape the mountains, two of the crash survivors trekked …
Podcast Transcript On February 22, 1946, George F. Kennan, a career diplomat working in the American embassy in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word cable to the State Department in Washington. In it, he explained why the Soviet Union behaved as it did, outlining its unique combination of a communist ideology and historical Russian paranoia and suspicion. …
Podcast Transcript You may have noticed, on occasion, that friends you have from totally different parts of your life sometimes know each other. It often comes as a surprise, but it actually shouldn’t. It turns out that the world is highly connected via personal relationships. In fact, it has been suggested that any two people …
Podcast Transcript Adolf Hitler was unquestionably one of the most evil people, not just of the 20th century, but in all of history. His very name has become a metaphor for someone bad or someone you want to associate with someone horrible. However, he was a person, and as such, he had parents, siblings, nieces, …
Podcast Transcript September is upon us. It means going back to school and the autumnal equinox. The days get shorter in the north and longer in the south. The name September means sevenths, even though it is now the 9th month of the year. Most importantly, it is the time when you have questions and …
Podcast Transcript In the first century, Rome underwent a major political transition when the Emperor Nero died after being declared an enemy of Rome by the senate. With his death, the Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an end, ushering in a period known as the Year of the Four Emperors. For the common people, many of …
Podcast Transcript In 1972, the Olympics returned to Germany for the first time since being hosted in Berlin in 1936. The Games were intended to present a new image of West Germany, one that would reject the image portrayed at the previous Nazi-hosted Games and showcase a modern, peaceful nation. That didn’t happen. Instead, it …