Ignaz Semmelweis: The Doctor Punished for Saving Lives
In 1840s Vienna, pregnant women begged to give birth in the streets rather than enter a hospital ward where up to one in six died of childbed fever. This episode tells the tragic story of Ignaz Semmel...
30 Jun 24min
Lake Retba: The Pink Lake That Turned Green Overnight
Senegal's Lake Retba, known as Lac Rose, looks like a giant strawberry milkshake, its water so salty and pink you can float effortlessly. Then in 2022, the world-famous marvel lost its color almost ov...
30 Jun 19min
Trepanation: Why Humans Drilled Holes in Skulls for Millennia
Archaeologists keep finding ancient human skulls with perfectly round, intentional holes, and the impossible part is that the patients survived. This episode synthesizes archaeology, medical history, ...
30 Jun 21min
The Ford Nucleon: The Atomic Car That Physics Killed
In 1957, Ford unveiled the Nucleon, a concept car powered by a small nuclear reactor that would be swapped out at service stations every 5,000 miles. This episode dives into the vast chasm between mid...
30 Jun 19min
The Golden Toad: How a Species Vanished in 24 Months
In 1987, a scientist watched thousands of dazzling orange golden toads mating in a Costa Rican cloud forest. Two years later, she found a single solitary male, and then the species was gone forever. T...
30 Jun 21min
The Segway: The Invention That Was Supposed to Beat the Internet
In 2001, venture capitalist John Doerr called a mystery device more important than the internet, and Steve Jobs said it was as big a deal as the PC. The secret invention turned out to be a two-wheeled...
30 Jun 20min
When a Bomber Hit the Empire State Building in 1945
On a fog-blanketed Saturday morning in July 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber flew blind through the Manhattan skyline and slammed directly into the 78th and 80th floors of the Empire State Building. It so...
30 Jun 21min
The Sewer Tunnel Heist That Cracked a French Bank Vault
Picture this: on trial for the biggest bank heist in history, you hand the judge a coded document, leap out the window onto a parked car, hop a waiting motorcycle, and vanish. Then you mail the car's ...
30 Jun 26min
