Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPyramid of the Sun: Teotihuacan's Nameless Giant and the Cave Beneath It
Episode 12240
Nobody knows what the builders of Teotihuacan called the Pyramid of the Sun; the Aztecs named it after arriving centuries after the city was abandone…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Kinkaku-ji: The Golden Pavilion, a Shogun's Heaven, and the 1950 Arson
Episode 12239
Kyoto's Golden Pavilion, officially Rokuon-ji or Deer Garden Temple, began when shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu bought a statesman's villa in 1397 and bui…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Bishop Castle: Jim Bishop's One Man Stone Fortress in the Colorado Woods
Episode 12238
Along State Highway 165 southwest of Pueblo, in Colorado's San Isabel National Forest, stands a 160 foot stone castle with towers, wrought iron walkw…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Central Park: Seneca Village, Gettysburg Gunpowder, and Robert Moses
Episode 12237
Creating New York's Central Park took more gunpowder than the Battle of Gettysburg. In the 1840s Manhattan had only about 165 acres of public squares…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Cologne Cathedral: Magi Relics, 14 Bomb Hits, and a 632 Year Build
Episode 12236
Beneath Cologne Cathedral lie a late antique Christian meeting house, a sixth century Merovingian church, and the Carolingian Hildebold Cathedral of …
5 days, 21 hours ago
Brutalism: How Raw Concrete Went From Utopian Ideal to Hated Eyesore
Episode 12235
Brutalism has nothing to do with brutality. The term began as nybrutalism, coined in 1950 by Swedish architect Hans Asplund to describe Villa Goth, a…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Rockefeller Center: The Failed Opera House That Built a Depression Icon
Episode 12234
Rockefeller Center sits on the site of the Elgin Botanic Garden, which physician David Hosack opened in 1801 as the country's first public botanical …
5 days, 21 hours ago
Three Gorges Dam: How China's Mega Dam Slowed the Earth's Rotation
Episode 12233
According to NASA, the water held back by China's Three Gorges Dam lengthened the day by 0.06 microseconds and made the planet slightly rounder at th…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Todai-ji: Nara's Great Buddha, a Plague Emperor, and a Tooth in the Knee
Episode 12232
Todai-ji in Nara, Japan, was born out of catastrophe. After an alleged coup in 729, a smallpox epidemic from 735 to 737 killed roughly a third of Jap…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Christopher Wren: The Astronomer Who Secretly Built St. Paul's Dome
Episode 12231
Christopher Wren was born in 1632 in a Wiltshire village to a royalist clergyman who became Dean of Windsor, and he grew up a sickly child as the Eng…
5 days, 21 hours ago