Very Old Animals

Rebecca Smith Pollard published a book of poems to mark the U.S. centennial in 1876, and also a novel with some questionable messages. She also developed a method to teach children to read that was ahead of its time. Research: Chetwynd, Sally Morong “Sam.” “Birth of Rebecca Smith ... Show More

Pulaski is often built up into an almost mythic figure who represents patriotism, bravery, freedom, independence, and the U.S. as a melting pot. a nation of immigrants. But there’s also a very different version of his story. Research: “Benjamin Franklin to George Washington, 29 M ... Show More

This 2022 episode covers the 1901 discovery of Ada Maria Redpath and her son Jocelyn Clifford dead in their home. What exactly happened between the two of them is something we will likely never understand.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

How might a bowhead whale tell the history of the Arctic? Grounding us in a history of the Bering Strait that listens deeply to ecology and the more-than-human, Bathsheba Demuth invites us to expand our future and past visions of human society in this episode. Adding nuance to ou ... Show More

<p>In the Middle Ages, animals were often the means for survival and the source of great wealth.&nbsp;No wonder then that in the medieval imagination, animals are not just animals.&nbsp;Animals were thought to have traits and characteristics that meant that they could be sorted i ... Show More

<p>Roughly 40,000 years ago, Ice Age Britain was undergoing a transformation.&nbsp;</p><br><p>The first modern humans, <em>Homo sapiens, </em>were arriving and beginning to settle in the British Isles. Their evolutionary predecessors, the Neanderthals, were on their way to extinc ... Show More

After Napoleon occupied Egypt, Europeans became obsessed with the ancient cultures of the Nile. In Britain, the center of Egyptology research was University College London (UCL). At the heart of the UCL program was the Egyptologist, Margaret Alice Murray. During this golden age o ... Show More

<p>You can learn a lot from an animal's scat, even if that animal hasn't walked the Earth since prehistoric times. In this episode, Robert and Julie explore the fascinating world of coprolite and ponder just what ancient humans and creatures ate.</p><p> </p> Learn more about your ... Show More

What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication. “When a whale is in t ... Show More

<p>When you think of the 'Ice Age', tales of saber-toothed predators and hulking megafauna probably come to mind - but what else do we know about prehistoric culture that lived 25,000 years ago, and how did they live? From hunting Woolly Mammoths, to thriving in freezing temperat ... Show More

<p>Killer whales — orcas — eat all sorts of animals, including humpback calves. But one day, biologists saw a group of humpback whales trying to stop some killer whales from eating… a seal. And then it happened again. And again. It turns out, all across the oceans, humpback whale ... Show More

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of the encounter between Europe and the Americas that reveals the crucial role of animals in the shaping of the modern world. When the m ... Show More