Podcast Episodes

The Bosphorus boat spotter tracking Russian military trucks

Yörük Işık is a ship spotter who logs all the boats that pass through the narrow Bosphorus Strait near his home in Istanbul, Turkey.

In October 2015,…

1 year, 9 months ago

The mystery of Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War Two.

Once Soviet troops reached Budapest, Wall…

1 year, 9 months ago

The invention of the hotel key card

In the 1970s, Norwegian Tor Sornes invented the hotel key card. He wanted to improve security in hotels after he heard the news that one of his favou…

1 year, 9 months ago

Charlie Hebdo attack

On 7 January 2015, 12 people were shot dead at the offices of a satirical magazine in Paris, the capital of France.

The two gunmen had targeted Charli…

1 year, 9 months ago

Marie Kondo

In 2011, Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo’s first book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published.

Overnight she went from tidying other …

1 year, 9 months ago

Creating Alexa

The smart speaker Alexa is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world every day, but did you know its voice was created by two people in…

1 year, 9 months ago

Klaus Fuchs: Oppenheimer’s atomic spy

German-born physicist Klaus Fuchs played a key role in the development of the first atomic bomb during World War Two.

The project, known as the Manhat…

1 year, 9 months ago

Robert Ripley and the ‘Believe It or Not’ empire

In December 1918, sports writer and cartoonist Robert Ripley was struggling to find some content for his column in the New York Globe.

So he compiled …

1 year, 9 months ago

Indian Ocean tsunami - Aceh

An earthquake off the coast of Indonesia on 26 December 2004, triggered a tsunami which cost the lives of an estimated 230,000 people around the Indi…

1 year, 9 months ago

Indian Ocean tsunami - Tamil Nadu

On 26 December 2004, an earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia sparking a tsunami which swept away entire communities around the Indian Ocean. …

1 year, 9 months ago