Showing results for "A Secret History" in Science & Engineering

Get up close and personal with an amazing creature that has invaded our lexicon as well as our restaurants. It breathes with tubes, it has no head or brain, it feeds through a filter, and it is the source of dozens of familiar proverbs ("happy as a clam!"). Clams, it turns out, have been worshipped (by the Moche people of ancient Peru), used as money (by the Algonquin Indians), and consumed by people for thousands of years.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii in Italy, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet, the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from Rene Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case.

Mysteries and Histories of a seed that shaped the world.Start at Episode 1 and follow this hidden history podcast as we explore the mystery and history of the spice Nutmeg and the way it has shaped our world as we know it.From the birth of capitalism to the discovery of MDMA, The Secret Story of Nutmeg will show you how this seed from the Myristica fragrans tree has played a role in human discovery, from major world-shaping events and mystic traditions to human evolution and our innermost self-development. It will blow your mind.Disclaimer This podcast explores history, chemistry, cultural ...

On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen US aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. To the Iraqi air defenses, the planes seemed to come from nowhere. Each aircraft was more than 60 feet in length and with a wingspan of 40 feet, yet its radar footprint was the size of a ball bearing. Here was the first extensive combat application of Stealth technology. And it was devastating.

Have you ever wondered how peas, kale, asparagus, beans, squash, and corn have ended up on our plates? Well, Adam Alexander has. In The Seed Detective, Adam shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday food heroes. Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization, and serendipity—describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.

Discover the enchanting world of nature through Birds and All Nature, a monthly publication by the Nature Study Publishing Company of Chicago. This captivating magazine, published from 1897 to 1907, features delightful short poems and vivid descriptions of birds, animals, and other natural wonders, all accompanied by stunning color plates. Originally released under various titles such as Birds, Nature and Art, and Birds and Nature, it invites readers to explore the beauty of the natural world. - Summary by J. M. Smallheer

The discovery of DNA’s structure is the story of five towering minds in pursuit of the advancement of science, and for almost all of them, the prospect of fame and immortality: Watson, Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. Howard Markel skillfully recreates the intense intellectual journey, and fraught personal relationships, that ultimately led to a spectacular breakthrough. But it is Rosalind Franklin - fiercely determined, relentless, and an outsider at Cambridge and the University of London in the 1950s - who becomes a focal point for Markel.

Secret Lake Stories is a standalone immersive audio project created by sound designer and composer Emily Zurowski for Levenshulme Old Library. The work focuses on the Secret Lake, a small, enclosed body of water between Levenshulme and Reddish that is largely hidden from view and reached by footpaths through surrounding woodland. Using field recording, binaural sound and the voices of those who use the space every day, the piece builds an intimate acoustic portrait of the site and its immediate environment. The project sits alongside the place-based podcast You Are Here and is designed for ...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE OCKHAM NZ BOOK AWARD BEST ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF NONFICTION** An illuminating tour through the native sea creatures of Aotearoa, by the bestselling author of The Meaning of Trees Secrets of the Sea is a fascinating introduction to New Zealand's fish and shellfish, weaving...

The Secret Life of Science is a dispatch from the frontlines of modern science. It paints a startling picture of a complex scientific ecosystem that has become the most competitive free-market environment on the planet. It reveals how big this ecosystem really is, what motivates its participants, and who reaps the rewards.

In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the listener onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.

The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. Between 1941 and 1944...

In The Secrets of Alchemy, Lawrence M. Principe, one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, brings alchemy out of the shadows and restores it to its important place in human history and culture. By surveying what alchemy was and how it began, developed, and overlapped with a range of ideas and pursuits, Principe illuminates the practice. He vividly depicts the place of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and then explores how alchemy has fit into wider views of the cosmos and humanity.

After rewriting history with their discovery of a Nazi U-boat off the coast of New Jersey, legendary divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler decided to investigate the great enduring mystery of history's most notorious shipwreck: Why did Titanic sink as quickly as it did? To answer the question...

Our current exile is confusing and dark, but redemption beckons at every corner. The great, prolific 18th-century sage, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, wrote what was to be Ma’amar HaGeulah as a letter to his students, at the age of twenty-three, revealing to them the nature of the process of redemption. Today, we are blessed with the illuminating commentary and translation of Rabbi Mordechai Nissim, whose words transform the Ramchal’s esoteric, often cryptic ideas into practical life lessons. Every reader cannot help but be astonished at the prescience of the Ramchal, and riveted by the ...

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of "Beaver Believers" recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Trinity' was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. This exceptional book - Trinity - tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of...

Albert Richardson was a daring reporter for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune who took on the perilous task of going undercover in the American South, documenting the rising secession crisis. When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, he joined the Union armies as a war correspondent, tirelessly sending dispatches from the front lines for two years. His journey took a harrowing turn in May 1863 when he was thrown from a burning barge into the Mississippi River while trying to evade a Confederate battery near Vicksburg. Captured as a prisoner, Richardson believed his status as a civilian ...

Antarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen desert have long tempted explorers, but its brutal climate and glacial shores notoriously resist human intrusion. Land of Wondrous Cold tells a gripping story of the pioneering 19th-century voyages, when British, French, and American commanders raced to penetrate Antarctica’s glacial rim for unknown lands beyond. These intrepid Victorian explorers laid the foundation for our current understanding of Terra Australis Incognita.