The Passenger Pigeon (Encore)
In the early 19th century, the most abundant bird in North America, and perhaps the entire world, was the passenger pigeon. An estimated three billion of them would fly in flocks so large that they co...
12 Jul 202413min
The Worst Roman Emperors (Encore)
Depending on how you define it, there were somewhere between 70 to 100 Roman emperors between the ascension of Augustus to the fall of the western empire in 476. A period of about 500 years. Some of t...
11 Jul 202413min
The Origin of Words and Phrases: Common Idioms
Let me cut right to the chase. This episode is going to be a deep dive into the origin of some common idioms. I don’t want to dance around the subject or have to walk on eggshells, so I’m using this i...
10 Jul 202413min
Unintended Consequences
One of the most famous lines in poetry comes from the poet Robert Burns, who spoke of ‘The best-laid schemes of mice and men.’ The line has been used in reference to the fact that no matter how good t...
9 Jul 202416min
The English Premier League
The most popular sports league in the world in terms of the number of people who follow and watch is the English Premier League. Unlike other sports leagues, the English Premier League is relatively ...
8 Jul 202415min
The Horrible Voyage of the 1905 Russian Baltic Fleet (Encore)
In February 1904, the Russian Empire found itself at war with the Empire of Japan over what was territory in the current nation of China. The problem for Russia was that a big chunk of its navy was l...
7 Jul 202411min
How to Lie With Statistics
Mark Twain once said, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' The reason why he placed statistics into its own category is because it is possible to use numbers to misrepre...
6 Jul 202413min
Questions and Answers: Volume 20
The month of July is named after Julius Caesar. In 44 BC, after his assassination, the Roman Senate renamed the month of Quintilis after him in honor of the month he was born. The fact that he was app...
5 Jul 202417min
