Common Knowledge About The Middle Ages That Is Incorrect, Part 4: The Medieval Technological Explosion
The Middle Ages was not a thousand-year period of technological stagnation between the fall of Rome and Leonardo da Vinci. It was an incredible period of invention and scientific innovation that saw m...
28 Feb 201943min
Common Knowledge About The Middle Ages That Is Incorrect, Part 3: Witch Burnings
At the height of the witch burning craze, thousands people, largely women, were falsely accused of witchcraft. Many of them were burned, hanged, and executed, typically under religious pretense. But t...
26 Feb 201951min
Common Knowledge About The Middle Ages That Is Incorrect, Part 2: Were Indulgences a Get-out-of-Hell-Free Card Or Something Else?
Was it really possible to buy your way out of hell in the Middle Ages? If so, how much did it cost? And what did the Catholic Church do with all this money? In this second episode in our five-part ser...
21 Feb 201925min
Common Knowledge About The Middle Ages That Is Incorrect, Part 1: Why the Middle Ages, Not the Renaissance, Created the Modern World
The popular view of the Middle Ages is a thousand-year period of superstition and ignorance, punctuated by witch burnings and belief in a flat earth. But the medieval period, more than any other time ...
19 Feb 201945min
Civil War Barons: The Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, and Inventors and Visionaries Who Forged Victory and Shaped a Nation
The American Civil War brought with it unprecedented demands upon the warring sections—North and South. The conflict required a mobilization and an organization of natural and man-made resources on a ...
14 Feb 201953min
Women Have Been Running For President Since 1872. Here Are 4 Of Their Stories
2016 was the first election in which a woman won the nomination of a major political party to be president of the United States. But women have been legally running for president as far back as 1872, ...
12 Feb 20191h 7min
War Animals: How 55 Birds, Dogs, and Horses Saved Thousands of Lives in World War Two
Did you know that in World War Two there were “para-dogs,” or dogs that parachuted along with paratroopers in anticipation of D-Day? Or that carrier pigeons were dropped into France in their bird cage...
7 Feb 20191h 2min
Hunting the President: Threats, Plots and Assassination Attempts, Part 5: Barack Obama
With the election of America's first African-American president in 2008, many feared that the presidency of Barack Obama would bring out the most reactionary elements in society and end his life in as...
5 Feb 201939min
