Counterfactuals - War, Mosquitoes, and Human History
On today’s episode, we talk about an incredibly deadly creature, which has determined the course of nearly all human history just by existing: The Mosquito. How has the mosquito determined the course ...
21 Apr 1h 2min
Counterfactuals: Sticky History of Duct Tape
On today’s episode, we talk about something that has held together history, literally. Even though there’s probably a roll in just about every household in America, we often overlook the utility and u...
7 Apr 1h 3min
Counterfactuals: Japan's Turning Point at Shimonoseki Straits
On today’s episode, we talk about the USS Wyoming and the 1863 battle of the Shiminoseki Straits - a seemingly minor event overshadowed by the American Civil War. But this battle might have altered th...
24 Mar 1h
Counterfactuals: The Plastic Revolution
On today’s episode we talk about the first commercially successful ‘plastic’, the beginning of the plastic revolution that has so altered human society. But what if it happened differently?
10 Mar 1h
Counterfactuals: Nuclear Disaster Aboard K-219
On today’s episode, we talk about a soviet submarine disaster in the Atlantic, which averted potentially disastrous outcomes only by the heroism of its crew. But what might have happened if it went di...
24 Feb 1h 2min
Counterfactuals: Samoan Crisis of 1889
On today’s episode, we talk about the beautiful islands of Samoa, which were the background to a clash between the relatively nascent empires of the United States and Germany in the 1880s. As the cris...
10 Feb 55min
Counterfactuals: Wine Extinction
On today's episode, we discuss the Blight that nearly wiped out wine, and how wine and indeed the world might be different if it had unfolded differently.
27 Jan 59min
Counterfactuals: The Sensational 1876 Election
On today’s episode we talk about one of the most fraught elections in American history, where violence, initmidation and outright fraud precipitated a constitutional crisis - the 1876 election between...
13 Jan 1h 1min
