Exoplanets (Encore)
Ever since astronomers figured out that the stars in the sky are just like our sun, they began wondering if those stars had planets just like our sun. For centuries this remained an unanswerable ques...
26 Aug 202413min
Mos Maiorum and Unwritten Rules
Every day, whether or not you even realize it, you are subject to a host of unwritten rules. These are rules that are not written down and are not part of any formal law, but they are fundamental to t...
25 Aug 202414min
The Unification of Italy
Italy as we know it today is a relatively recent invention. Ever since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian Peninsula had been a patchwork of city-states, dutchies, kingdoms, and lan...
24 Aug 202414min
A Brief History of Texas
Each of the fifty US states is like a separate country. Its area, population, and economy are comparable to those of other independent nations. Yet, the histories of each state, while different, all ...
23 Aug 202414min
The Lighthouse of Alexandria (Encore)
When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals and best friends, Ptolemy, took Alexander’s corpse and went to Egypt to establish a new Pharaonic dynasty. One of the things he did during his reign ...
22 Aug 202413min
Supercomputers and the Evolution of Computing Power
If you’ve been around long enough, and by that, I only mean a couple of years, you have probably observed the one fundamental truth about computers: they always get faster. While games and web browni...
21 Aug 202416min
Dr. Sun Yat-sen (Encore)
For over two thousand years, China lived under imperial rule. A series of dynasties and emperors were the defining feature of Chinese governance. However, in the early 20th century, China threw off i...
20 Aug 202412min
The Scramble for Africa
In November 1884, representatives from a dozen European countries met in Berlin. The reason for the meeting was audacious. They were going to carve up the continent of Africa between them. No one fro...
19 Aug 202415min
