A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars . Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers : they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . A more recent development is the Mars hel...
Jun 21, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity . The nearest star to Earth is the Sun . Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night , but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms , and many of the brightest stars have proper names . Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and prov...
Jun 14, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed the Maverick Marine, was a senior United States Marine Corps officer. During his 34-year career, he fought in the Philippine–American War , the Boxer Rebellion , the Mexican Revolution , and World War I . At the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received sixteen medals, including five for heroism; he is the only Marine to be awarded the Br...
Jun 07, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
May 31, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast William Stephen Belichick ( / ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɪ k , ˈ b ɛ l ɪ tʃ ɛ k / ; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach and general manager [a] of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Widely regarded as one of the greatest head coaches of all time, [2] [3] [4] he holds numerous coaching records, including the record of most Super Bowl wins (six) as a head coach, all with the Patriots, along with two more during his time as the defens...
May 24, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christian video games are a video game genre and a form of Christian media that focus on the narrative and themes of Christian morals and Christianity . And, though not a categorical requirement, they all suck. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
May 17, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast A delicacy is usually a rare and expensive food item that is considered highly desirable, sophisticated, or peculiarly distinctive within a given culture. Irrespective of local preferences, such a label is typically pervasive throughout a region. Often this is because of unusual flavors or characteristics or because it is rare or expensive compared to standard staple foods . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you ca...
May 10, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast MOUNT PLEASANT CEMETERY SITS ON the northern side of Seattle ’s Queen Anne Hill. Since its opening in 1879, the graveyard has been the resting place for the victims of some of Washington ’s most infamous tragedies. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
May 03, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. (1921 [1] – June 7, 1982) was an American impostor . He was the subject of a movie: The Great Impostor , in which he was played by Tony Curtis . Demara's impersonations included a naval surgeon , [2] a civil engineer , a sheriff's deputy , an assistant prison warden , a doctor of applied psychology , a hospital orderly, a lawyer , a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. One teaching job led to six months ...
Apr 26, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast ChatGPT [a] is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI and released in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 families of large language models (LLMs) and has been fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning ) using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques....
Apr 19, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Wright brothers , Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), [a] were American aviation pioneers generally credited [3] [4] [5] with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane . They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina , at what is now known as Kill Devi...
Apr 12, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Miyamoto Musashi ( 宮本 武蔵 , c. 1584 – 13 June 1645), [1] also known as Shinmen Takezō , Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name , Niten Dōraku , [2] was a Japanese swordsman , philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin , who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 61 duels (next is 33 by Itō Ittōsai ). Musashi, as he was often simply known, is considered a Kensei , a sword-saint of Japan. [3] He was the founder of the Niten Ichi-ry...
Apr 05, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Acali was a raft which was used in the Acali Expedition or Acali Experiment . [1] It has also been nicknamed the Sex Raft . [2] The raft had a complement of eleven people: five men and six women. It left Las Palmas , Spain on 12 May 1973 and took 101 days to drift across the Atlantic Ocean and reach Cozumel , Mexico , with a single stopover in Barbados. The experiment was conceived by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés (who had previously been a crew member of Thor Heyerdahl 's Ra exped...
Mar 29, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Münster rebellion ( German : Täuferreich von Münster , "Anabaptist dominion of Münster") was an attempt by radical Anabaptists to establish a communal sectarian government in the German city of Münster – then under the large Prince-Bishopric of Münster in the Holy Roman Empire . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Mar 22, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Benjamin Jonson ( c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) [2] was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours ; he is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour [3] (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. "He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after Wi...
Mar 15, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mass psychogenic illness ( MPI ), also called mass sociogenic illness , mass psychogenic disorder , epidemic hysteria , or mass hysteria , involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for contagion. [1] It is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhi...
Mar 08, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Energy resources bring with them great social and economic promise, providing financial growth for communities and energy services for local economies. However, the infrastructure which delivers energy services can break down in an energy accident , sometimes causing considerable damage. Energy fatalities can occur, and with many systems deaths will happen often, even when the systems are working as intended. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the ...
Mar 01, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Horatio Nelson Jackson (March 25, 1872 – January 14, 1955) was an American automobile pioneer. In 1903, he and driving partner Sewall K. Crocker became the first people to drive an automobile across the United States. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Feb 22, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, Tom explores a series of forgotten sports, many of which should never have been lost. And the rest of which are cruelty to animals with a scoring system. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Feb 15, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Catcher in the Rye is an American novel by J. D. Salinger that was partially published in serial form from 1945–46 before being novelized in 1951. Originally intended for adults, it is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation , and as a critique of superficiality in society. [4] [5] The novel also deals with complex issues of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, sex, and depression. The main character, Holden Caulfield , has become an icon for teenage reb...
Feb 08, 2023•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson (née Kennedy ; October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as Sister Aimee or Sister , was a Canadian Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s, famous for founding the Foursquare Church . McPherson pioneered the use of broadcast mass media for wider dissemination of both religious services and appeals for donations, using radio to draw in both additional audience and revenue with the growing appeal of popular entertainment and incor...
Feb 01, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is a list of automobiles known for negative reception . There are no objective quantifiable standards. Cars on this list may have been judged by poor critical reception, poor customer reception, safety defects, and/or poor workmanship. Different sources use a variety of criteria for including negative reception that includes the worst cars for the environment, [1] meeting criteria that includes the worst crash test scores, the lowest projected reliability, and the lowest projected residual ...
Jan 25, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Charles Hahn (October 30, 1976 – September 27, 2016), sometimes called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout" , was an American nuclear radiation enthusiast who built a homemade neutron source at the age of seventeen. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Jan 18, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Battle of Thermopylae ( / θ ər ˈ m ɒ p ɪ l iː / thər-MOP-i-lee ; Greek : Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν , Máchē tōn Thermopylōn ) was fought in 480 BC between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I . Lasting over the course of three days, it was one of the most prominent battles of both the second Persian invasion of Greece and the wider Greco-Persian Wars . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like ...
Jan 11, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience. It is a way to disturb "smug, complacent and hypocritical" people. [2] While the art form's proponents argue that it is "imbedded with social commentary" and critics dismiss it as "cultural pollution", it is an increasingly marketable art, described by one art critic in 2001 as "the safest kind of art that an artist can go into the business of making today". [3] [4] But while shoc...
Jan 04, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast The battle of Castle Itter was fought on 5 May 1945, in the Austrian village of Itter in the North Tyrol region of the country, during the last days of the European Theater of World War II. Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr. , a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl , SS- Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader , and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against a...
Dec 28, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sherman's March to the Sea (also known as the Savannah campaign or simply Sherman's March ) was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by William Tecumseh Sherman , major general of the Union Army . The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces followed a " scorched earth " policy, destroying milita...
Dec 21, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection ) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington . The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey. Rum distillation in the United States had been disrupted during the American Revolutionary War , and whiskey dist...
Dec 14, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charles Eugène Bedaux (10 October 1886 – 18 February 1944) was a French -American millionaire who made his fortune developing and implementing the work measurement aspect of scientific management , notably the Bedaux System . Bedaux was friends with British royalty and Nazis alike, and was a management consultant , big game hunter and explorer . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here ....
Dec 07, 2022•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily . Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael , a tramp who died from eating rat poison , dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain ( Acting Major ) William Martin . Correspondence between two British generals that suggested that the Allies planned to inv...
Nov 30, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
