John von Neumann

Cat litter, it could be argued, kicked off the pet products industry. After its invention in the 1940s, other inventors started to come up with products that today are standard in the homes of people ...

19 Nov 202531min

Ballooning became a huge fad starting in the late 18th century, and there was a surprising amount of rioting associated with it. Fervor, excitement, and intoxication in some instances, meant that ball...

17 Nov 202535min

This 2018 episode covers the period in the late 1820s when north Georgia became the site of a gold rush that predated the California gold rush by two decades. It's also tied to some of the darkest par...

15 Nov 202522min

Tracy shares the surprising benefit of not having access to a lot of specifics regarding the work of Mary Golda Ross. Holly talks about Marjorie Merriwether Post being a serial monogamist.See omnystud...

14 Nov 202530min

Marjorie Merriweather Post is most often mentioned today as the person who built Mar-a-Lago. But she was a unique figure as a woman who helmed a huge corporation when she was still in her 20s in the e...

12 Nov 202543min

Mary Golda Ross was the first Indigenous woman in the U.S. known to have become an engineer. Her impact on the field of aerospace engineering is hard to quantify, because much of her work is still cla...

10 Nov 202536min

This 2019 episode covers Alexandre Dumas, who wrote hundreds and hundreds of works, including “The Three Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and even a dictionary of cuisine.See omnystudio.com/...

8 Nov 202531min

Tracy discusses the challenge of parsing all the nuance of the French Revolution. Holly talks about how little Clarence Birdseye shared of his interior thoughts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

7 Nov 202525min