Innumeracy
Over the last several centuries, there has been a concerted effort to raise literacy rates around the world. For the most part, although there is still work to be done, we’ve done a pretty good job. T...
13 Aug 202214min
Lithium
With an atomic number of three, Lithium is the third lightest element and the lightest solid at room temperature and pressure. For almost two centuries after its discovery, Lithium didn’t have much i...
12 Aug 202213min
The Siege of Masada
Around the year 36 BC, the King of Judea, Herod the Great, built a fortress in the Judean desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Almost 100 years later, that fortress became the scene for what was one of th...
11 Aug 202212min
The Gunfight at the OK Corral
On October 26, 1881, one of the most defining moments in the history of the American west took place. That shootout between nine men defined the popular perception of what the old west was about, eve...
10 Aug 202212min
The Aurochs: The Once and Future King of Cattle
Tens of thousands of years ago, early paleolithic humans painted on cave walls things that were important to them and with which their entire lives revolved. One of the most prominent images which hav...
9 Aug 202212min
White Feather Girls
The First World War wasn’t just fought on the fields of France and Belgium. There were lesser battles fought on the homefronts of the nations which were fighting. In the United Kingdom and other Comm...
8 Aug 202214min
Did Vermeer Use A Camera Obscura? (Encore)
Johannes Vermeer was one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Unlike many of his contemporary painters, however, he didn’t leave a large body of work behind. The paintings he did create ...
7 Aug 202212min
Everything Is Made of Atoms
The Great Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman was once asked to convey in a single sentence the most important scientific knowledge that humans possessed. His answer was short and simple: “...
6 Aug 202211min
