A podcast about science, technology and history
Archimedes of Syracuse is remembered mainly for the impressive machines he built to defend his city against the Romans: the heat ray and the terrifying 'claws' that lifted ships from the water and shook them like fish on a hook. But his most important discovery, the one that preceded Newton and Leibniz by almost 1900 years - infinitesimal calculus - remained unknown, because of a Christian monk who decided to turn his important manuscript into a prayer book
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Episode Description: The mortgage is not only one of the most important and largest loans most of us will take in our lifetime - it is also a vital tool for managing economic life in a modern state. In this episode we will discover the winding history of the mortgage: Why is the Land Management Department in the State of Israel named after an Ottoman bureaucratic institution that is over one hundred and fifty years old? Why does the Bank of Israel limit the amount of the mortgage to a certain percentage of the property value - and what is the connection between this limitation and the subprime crisis of 2008?
The words 'Hollywood film' represent a set of values and perceptions that are identified, for better or worse, with American culture: for example, doing things big, or dividing the world into 'good and evil.' These values and perceptions were born, to a large extent, in the thirties and forties of the last century, an era that earned the nickname 'the golden age of classic Hollywood.' But you might be surprised to hear that those who shaped these values, and who are largely responsible for the way we perceive America, and the way Americans perceive themselves - were a group of people who were outsiders to this culture. People who wanted with all their might to be part of the American dream - and were rejected by it. This is the story of the Jews who built Hollywood.
The fall of Napster was the catalyst for the rise of a new and improved file sharing technology - FastTrack. Software such as Kazaa, Grokster and eMule flooded the file sharing world - and now, also in the field of pirated movies and software. Record and film companies continued to fight them in court, and when they failed - they turned to dirtier tactics. And then came BitTorrent, and shuffled all the cards...
Napster was a groundbreaking file sharing software written in a single 60-hour programming marathon – and from the moment it emerged into the world, it stood at the center of a brutal and unprecedented legal attack. How did Napster's founders hope to evade the terror of the courtroom, and what role did Metallica play in this whole story?
One thousand and five years after it disappeared - the Roman Empire is still around us, almost everywhere in the Mediterranean basin and in Europe: both in impressive remains and antiquities, and in the cultural heritage it left behind. Rome prospered and flourished for an amazingly long period - hundreds of years - a fact that suggests it had solid foundations to rely on. But if so - what crumbled these solid foundations? What led to the fall of the greatest and most glorious empire the world has ever known?
The assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his soldiers in the year 235 CE marked the complete breakdown of the inheritance mechanism of the Roman Empire, and was the opening shot for fifty years of chaos known as 'The Crisis of the Third Century.' At the end of the crisis, Rome was fragmented and divided - and only a series of tough emperors and harsh, painful reforms was able to return the sick empire to functioning, even the most basic. The price of this stability was paid by the citizens of the empire themselves.
Rome of the fourth century was no longer the same great Rome of the first and second centuries: decades of civil wars, inheritance struggles and inflationary crises had greatly weakened the mighty empire. It seemed that one decent push was enough to bring Rome to its knees again - and in the year 370 CE, this push came from an unexpected source. Hunnic tribes that migrated from the Asian steppes to Europe led to the mass flight of Germanic tribes seeking refuge within the empire's borders. A bloody battle that took place near the city of Adrianople marked the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire.
A little over five million years ago, something terrible happened to the Mediterranean Sea. Global climate changes led to the blocking of the Strait of Gibraltar, and water from the Atlantic Ocean could no longer replace the water that evaporated from the Mediterranean basin. Within less than a thousand years, the wide sea dried up and disappeared - and its place was taken by a desert so hot, salty and desolate that our Dead Sea looks, in comparison, like a pleasant desert oasis... Five million years later, a German architect named Herman Sörgel decided to try to dry out the Mediterranean again - but this time intentionally.
