Episode summary: The design evolution of the seemingly simple, but not all that simple, skateboard

Episode summary: We investigate Oxfam’s claim that “since 2020, the five richest men in the world have seen their fortunes more than double, while almost five billion people have seen their wealth fall”. With the help of Johan Norberg, Historian and Author of ideas and Felix Salmon, Financial Corres...

Episode summary: On November 1898, North Carolina Democrats won a sweeping victory at the polls – confirming the success of their campaign based on white supremacy, intimidation, and fraud. But in Wilmington, the state’s largest city, white supremacist leaders were not satisfied. This episode tells...

Episode summary: In the 1950s the CIA weaponized culture to capture hearts and minds in Europe and Africa. We meet three writers (Richard Wright, Kenneth Tynan, and Dwight Macdonald) who got caught up in this battle both as collaborators and targets between the years of 1956 - 1960. We also meet a p...

Episode summary: Featuring author Robert Caro covering The Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2.

Episode summary: We investigate how the vast possibilities in a game of chess compare to the vastness of the observable universe.Dr James Grime helps us understand the Shannon number – a famous figure on the chess side of the equation - and astronomer Professor Catherine Heymans takes on the entire...

Episode summary: Jess begins by documenting Ernesto, a 20-year-old, newly sober fashion model. The plan is to pay Ernesto and let him be in charge of the story he wants to tell in the documentary. Things go sideways when Jess and Ernesto grapple with what will need to be cut out of Ernesto’s life to...

Episode summary: Ken Eto worked for the Chicago Outfit for 30 years. He was known as the mob’s bolita expert, bringing in millions of dollars a year for them. But in 1983, they turned on him. Dan O’Sullivan wrote about Ken Eto for Chicago Magazine and Epic Magazine - you can read his piece here. Cr...

Episode summary: By 1898, two decades after the end of Reconstruction, white elites, backed by violent terror groups, have installed Jim Crow across most of the South. North Carolina, led by its largest city, Wilmington, is different. A Fusion coalition, made up of mostly-Black Republicans and mostl...

Episode summary: The fake villages and role players used to train US soldiers