Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPalace of the Parliament: Ceausescu's Sinking Nine Billion Pound Palace
Episode 12230
Bucharest's Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest administrative building in the world, weighing over nine billion pounds, sinking about six milli…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Chateau de Chambord: Francis I's 440 Room Hunting Lodge and Da Vinci
Episode 12229
Built in France's Loire Valley from 1519 to 1547, the Chateau de Chambord was a hunting lodge for King Francis I, who already had palaces at Blois an…
5 days, 21 hours ago
The White House: Burned, Hollowed Out, and Rebuilt Around a Steel Cage
Episode 12228
George Washington chose the design and laid the cornerstone but never spent a night in the White House. After dismissing Pierre-Charles L'Enfant, who…
5 days, 21 hours ago
The Reichstag: From Kaiser's Monkey House to Berlin's Glass Dome
Episode 12227
After German unification in 1871, the new imperial parliament spent 23 years working out of a former porcelain factory in Berlin while the government…
5 days, 21 hours ago
St. Basil's Cathedral: Ivan's War Trophy, a Naked Saint, and Stalin
Episode 12226
In the mid 1550s, after capturing Kazan and Astrakhan, Ivan the Terrible ordered a stone church on Red Square to replace the temporary wooden churche…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Washington Monument: Know-Nothings, a Civil War Stump, and an Aluminum Cap
Episode 12225
In 1884 New Yorkers stepped over a small aluminum pyramid on the floor of Tiffany's so they could say they had stood above the top of the Washington …
5 days, 21 hours ago
Masada: Herod's Desert Fortress and the Mass Suicide Myth
Episode 12224
Masada is a flat-topped rock above the Dead Sea with a 400 meter drop on its east side and a 90 meter cliff on the west. Between 37 and 31 BC, Herod …
5 days, 21 hours ago
Louis Sullivan: The Father of Skyscrapers Who Died Broke in Chicago
Episode 12223
Louis Sullivan, born in Boston in 1856, entered MIT's architecture program at 16 and left within a year. After working for Frank Furness in Philadelp…
5 days, 21 hours ago
Tower of London: Seven Executions, Royal Lions, and a Victorian Myth
Episode 12222
Before the 20th century, only seven people were executed inside the Tower of London in about 800 years. The fortress began in 1066, when William the …
5 days, 21 hours ago
Lighthouse of Alexandria: The Pharos, a Hidden Name, and a Sunken Wonder
Episode 12221
In 1994 French divers in Alexandria's murky eastern harbor found nearly 50-ton granite blocks, sphinxes, and columns from the Pharos lighthouse, one …
5 days, 21 hours ago