John Wilkins and His 1640s Lunar Explora...

Edwin Howard Armstrong isn’t exactly a well-known inventor, but his work in radio literally changed communications around the globe. But his most famous invention – FM radio – became a source of constant frustration after he developed it. Research: Armstrong, Edwin H. “Frequency ... Show More

Before the ballpoint pen, people used their hands, reeds, bamboo, brushes, quills, and eventually nibs to write or draw. But how did things evolve from there to get to things like the fountain pen, and eventually, a ballpoint? Research: "pen." Britannica Library, Encyclopædia Bri ... Show More

This 2022 episode starts with the story of John Bibb, credited with cultivating Bibb lettuce. But his family’s legacy, good and bad, is all tied to having enslaved people build their familial wealth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

As John Wilkins began to put more serious thought into the idea of sending people to the moon, he reached out to fellow intellectuals in hopes of exploring the problem. So: How did they go about planning this ambitious endeavor, and how far did they get? Tune in to learn more in ... Show More

By all accounts, Robert Taylor wasn’t a man prone to exaggeration. Certainly, encounters of the strange were the furthest thing from his mind when he headed out to work on the outskirts of Livingston, in Scotland, one chilly morning in November 1979.  Soon, it would be all people ... Show More

On this episode of Our American Stories, Kentucky journalist Sam Terry tells the story of William King Solomon, a gravedigger who may have saved the town of Lexington during the Cholera epidemic of 1833; and TJ Stiles tells the humble story of Cornelius Vanderbilt and how he beca ... Show More

John F. Kennedy delivers a historic speech at Rice University on his daring and uncertain mission to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about y ... Show More

Unquestionably, the most popular clothing innovation of the last 150 years has been blue jeans. They can be found all over the world, yet they have become synonymous with American culture. While modern blue jeans are definitely American, their origin actually goes back centuries ... Show More

How an invention from the Hawai'ian islands changed the world. Featuring Hawai'ian musician and educator Alan Akaka and historian John Troutman, curator of American music at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Learn more about your ad-choices at htt ... Show More

The universe is billions of years old. If, in the future, humanity were to explore the galaxy and visit other planets around other stars, we might be visiting places where at one time, an advanced civilization once existed. However, if such a civilization existed, it might have b ... Show More

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was a man obsessed with the profits that came with colonization. Using smokescreens of charities and shell corporations, he claimed a private landholding 76x larger than his own nation, and unleashed decades of horror on the land's inhabitants. L ... Show More

How did prehistoric people in Britain view and understand the world around them? What did they smell, hear and see? Francis Pryor, one of Britain’s leading archaeologists and the author of Scenes from Prehistoric Life, delves into the sensory world of our prehistoric ancestors. ( ... Show More

In the 1760’s a clever, young, ambitious Scotsman named Alexander Dalrymple began advocating a theory as to the existence of a great southern continent. The idea of a landmass that would counterbalance the known world had long been the stuff of legend. Now Dalrymple wanted to pro ... Show More