Synopsis
The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend were experts. Because this is the internet, and thats how it works now.
Episodes
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"Rube" Waddell
01/10/2025 Duration: 33minGeorge Edward "Rube" Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). A left-hander, he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National League, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns in the American League. Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and raised in Prospect, Pennsylvania, Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Waddell is best remembered for his highly eccentric behavior, and for being a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters were expert at making contact. He had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curveball, a screwball, and superb control; his strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost 3-to-1, and he led the major leagues in strikeouts for six consecutive years.
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History's Most Expensive Party
24/09/2025 Duration: 40minThe 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire,[1] officially known as the 2,500-year celebration of the Empire of Iran (Persian: جشنهای ۲۵۰۰ ساله شاهنشاهی ایران, romanized: Jašn-hây-e 2500 sale’ šâhanšâhi Irân), was hosted by the Pahlavi dynasty in the Imperial State of Iran in October 1971. Concentrated at Persepolis, it consisted of an elaborate set of grand festivities that sought to honour the legacy of the Achaemenid Empire, which was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC.[2][3] The event was aimed at highlighting ancient Iranian history and also showcasing the country's contemporary advances under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been reigning as the Shah of Iran since 1941.[4][5] The site brought sixty members of royalty and heads of state from abroad.[6]
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ChatGPT convinced a guy that he's a superhero
17/09/2025 Duration: 47minOver 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/technology/ai-chatbots-delusions-chatgpt.html
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Victorian Mummy Mania and Sundry Weirdness
10/09/2025 Duration: 31minMummia, mumia, or originally mummy referred to several different preparations in the history of medicine, from "mineral pitch" to "powdered human mummies". It originated from Arabic mūmiyā "a type of resinous bitumen found in Western Asia and used curatively" in traditional Islamic medicine, which was translated as pissasphaltus (from "pitch" and "asphalt") in ancient Greek medicine. In medieval European medicine, mūmiyā "bitumen" was transliterated into Latin as mumia meaning both "a bituminous medicine from Persia" and "mummy". Merchants in apothecaries dispensed expensive mummia bitumen, which was thought to be an effective cure-all for many ailments. It was also used as an aphrodisiac.
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The Vasa
03/09/2025 Duration: 39minVasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. Between her recovery in 1961 and the beginning of 2025, Vasa has been seen by over 45 million visitors.[2]
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Exxon Valdez
27/08/2025 Duration: 39minThe Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes)[1] of crude oil over the next few days.[2]
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How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive
20/08/2025 Duration: 59minhttps://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/essays/jungle-wedding/
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Olestra / Olean
13/08/2025 Duration: 33minOlestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute food additive that adds no metabolizable calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby lowering or eliminating their fat content. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996,[2] concluding that such use "meets the safety standard for food additives, reasonable certainty of no harm".[3]: 46399 In the early 2000s, olestra lost popularity due to supposed side effects and is largely phased out, but products containing the ingredient are available in some countries.
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Pluto
06/08/2025 Duration: 40minPluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third its volume. Originally considered a planet, its classification was changed when astronomers adopted a new definition of planet.
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Patreon Bonus Episode Teaser - July Bonus - My Immortal Fan Fiction
31/07/2025 Duration: 08minThis is a teaser episode of our Patreon Bonus Episode. This is the first few minutes of that particular episode to let non-patrons sample that content. You can become a patron here: http://patreon.com/citationpod
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Defenestration
30/07/2025 Duration: 36minDefenestration (from Neo-Latin de fenestrā[1]) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.[2] The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague's New Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led to the Hussite war.[3] The word comes from the Neo-Latin[4] de- (down from) and fenestra (window or opening).[5] By extension, the term is also used to describe the forcible or summary removal of an adversary.[6]
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Moving Day
23/07/2025 Duration: 40minMoving Day was a tradition in New York City dating back to colonial times and lasting until after World War II. On February 1, sometimes known as "Rent Day", landlords would give notice to their tenants what the new rent would be after the end of the quarter,[1] and the tenants would spend good-weather days in the early spring searching for new houses and the best deals.[2] On May 1,[3] all leases in the city expired simultaneously at 9:00 am, causing thousands of people to change their residences, all at the same time.[4][5]
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Mark Twain
16/07/2025 Duration: 36minSamuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced",[1] with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature".[2] Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),[3] with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."[4]
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The Juniper Tree
09/07/2025 Duration: 36min"The Juniper Tree" (also "The Almond Tree"; Low German: Von dem Machandelboom) is a German fairy tale published in Low German by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812 (KHM 47).[1] The story contains themes of child abuse, murder, cannibalism and biblical symbolism and is one of the Brothers Grimm's darker and more mature fairy tales.
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Optograms and Wife Salves
02/07/2025 Duration: 34minOptography is the process of viewing or retrieving an optogram, an image on the retina of the eye. A belief that the eye "recorded" the last image seen before death was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a frequent plot device in fiction of the time, to the extent that police photographed the victims' eyes in several real-life murder investigations, in case the theory was true. The concept has been repeatedly debunked as a forensic method.
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Charge of the Light Brigade
25/06/2025 Duration: 34minThe Charge of the Light Brigade was a military action undertaken by British light cavalry against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, resulting in many casualties to the cavalry. On 25 October 1854, the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan, mounted a frontal assault against a Russian artillery battery which was well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The charge was the result of a misunderstood order from the commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan, who had intended the Light Brigade to attack a different objective for which light cavalry was better suited, to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions. The Light Brigade made its charge under withering direct fire and reached its target, scattering some of the gunners, but was forced to retreat immediately.
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The Barkley Marathons - The Immortal Horizon - Part 2
18/06/2025 Duration: 34minThe Barkley Marathons is an ultramarathon trail race held each year in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee, United States. Described as "The Race That Eats Its Young", it is known for its extreme difficulty, purposefully difficult application process, and many strange traditions, having been completed only 26 times by 20 runners since 1995.
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The Barkley Marathons - The Immortal Horizon
11/06/2025 Duration: 01h02minhttps://www.thebeliever.net/the-immortal-horizon/ The Barkley Marathons is an ultramarathon trail race held each year in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee, United States. Described as "The Race That Eats Its Young", it is known for its extreme difficulty, purposefully difficult application process, and many strange traditions, having been completed only 26 times by 20 runners since 1995.
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Operation Channel Fireball & Operation Fantasia
04/06/2025 Duration: 41minPsychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda.[1][2] The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".[3]
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Donkey Kong
28/05/2025 Duration: 34minDonkey Kong[a] is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo. It follows the adventures of Donkey Kong, a large, powerful gorilla, and other members of the Kong family of apes. Donkey Kong games include the original arcade game trilogy by Nintendo R&D1; the Donkey Kong Country series by Rare and Retro Studios; and the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series by Nintendo Software Technology. Various studios have developed spin-offs in genres such as edutainment, puzzle, racing, and rhythm. The franchise also incorporates animation, printed media, theme parks, and merchandise.