Not a Colonel of Truth
In the 1960’s, many young men joined the fight for equality in the civil rights movement. Boycotts, marches, and protests were organized by groups like Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Georgia, organizing...
The Dose Makes the Poison
A few years back, there was a study saying that the caramel coloring used in colas and other products had been linked to cancer in lab rodents. I knock back a couple or three diet sodas a day, but I know that I am not, in fact, a rodent. To get the same amount of...
I Fought the Law
Lifelong drifter and frequent non-violent criminal, Clarence Earl Gideon, was charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit a misdemeanor, a felony, in Florida in 1961. At trial, he asked the court to appoint him a lawyer because he couldn’t afford...
Episode 150!
Think you’ve got a cool skill that could break a Guinness World Record? It cost $5 to apply, but if you want an official adjudicator with a stopwatch and a clipboard to come watch you do it, that’ll cost $10,000. An adult queen bee’s body can be 25% ovaries by...
Founding Mothers of Sci-Fi
You’ve got your popcorn, the theater darkens, orchestral music blares, and text crawls up the screen. And crawls, and crawls. Then we meet some characters who don’t matter, get jokes where there shouldn’t be jokes, there’s tons of unnecessary backstory, and it all...
Ananas Bonanza
Picture it, Chatham, ON, in the 1960’s. Greek immigrant Sam Panopoulos has two concerns which are soon to find a common solution. His first problem is that he’s still settling in and trying acclimate himself to life in Canada and trying to become more Canadian. His...
ExcommuniCATion
In 1451, a Swiss farmer was concerned about unwanted trespassers in the ponds of his property, fearing that they would harm the much-needed population of salmon. He took his complaint to the Bishop of Lausanne, who listened intently to the man’s concerns and ordered...
Over, Under, Around & Through
Dirk Deckert and Karsten Kluender dreamt of traveling, surfing, sailing and freedom. Those were pie-in-the-sky dreams for two men living in tightly-controlled East Germany. They hatched a plan to use their passions in a bid for freedom. There were some patrols...
That’s Lore, Folks! Shape-shifters
For everything that makes people different across the world, there is something that makes us the same, a cultural universal. Cultural universals include things like gender roles, jokes, death rituals, and mythology. It’s in that last cultural universal where we...
Scientific Serendipity
In 1968, a 3M chemist named Dr. Spencer Silver was attempting to create a super-strong adhesive when instead he accidentally invented a super-weak adhesive, which could be used to only temporarily stick things together. The seemingly limited application of Silver’s...
You Probably Think This Song is About You
“Closing time, one last call for alcohol/So, finish your whiskey or beer/Closing time, you don't have to go home/But you can't stay here.” You couldn’t go a week in 1998 without hearing Semisonic’s second big single. It was nominated for Billboard Music Award for...
Papa Had a Rolling Stone
Content warning: We’re getting medical today and that includes the naughty bits and fetal development, so if you haven’t had The Talk with the kids, your car ride’s about to get awkward. Health is foremost on people’s minds these days, thanks to the virus and...