Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchCatamarans: The 1876 Amaryllis Win That Got Twin Hulls Banned for a Century
Episode 12672
A catamaran is simply two parallel hulls of equal size, and that wide stance gives it form stability without the heavy lead keel a monohull needs, so…
20 hours ago
Thor Heyerdahl's Errors: Ra Reed Boats, a Burned Tigris, the Odin Hunt
Episode 12671
Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian adventurer, zoologist, and ethnographer who lived from 1914 to 2002, nearly drowned twice as a boy in Larvik and grew u…
20 hours ago
Waterlines Explained: Plimsoll Marks, Hull Speed, and Waterline 50 on a Jet
Episode 12670
A 1960 US Air Force airframe maintenance manual sends mechanics to Waterline 50 to repair a supersonic jet. The episode explains why. A ship's hull i…
20 hours ago
Stockton Rush and the Titan: Expired Carbon Fiber and Ignored Warnings
Episode 12669
Stockton Rush co founded OceanGate in 2009 with shallow wreck dives off California and in the Gulf of Mexico, but he knew the Titanic was the name th…
20 hours ago
Sailor Superstitions: Bananas, Whistling Bans, Finnish Wind Knots, and Cats
Episode 12668
Commercial fishing is still the second most dangerous job in the US, and sailor superstitions grew as ways to feel in control of a sea that could kil…
20 hours ago
Sea Shanties Were Work Tools: Mobile Bay Cotton Screwers and the Dead Horse
Episode 12667
The viral sea shanty craze got the history wrong: most of the songs, including The Wellerman, are not shanties, and 18th century pirates never sang t…
20 hours ago
USS Constitution: Live Oak Hull, Jackson's Stolen Head, and a Penny Drive
Episode 12666
Launched in 1797, the 44 gun frigate USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat, though wooden warships of her day lasted …
20 hours ago
The Sextant: Double Reflection, Swinging the Arc, and Aldrin's Backup Math
Episode 12665
Artemis II astronauts carry an emergency backup built on a design about 300 years old: the sextant. Isaac Newton sketched the theory in unpublished w…
20 hours ago
Morse Code: Vail's Type Count, the Operator's Fist, and Denton's Blinks
Episode 12664
On July 12, 1999, the United States sent its last commercial Morse message, repeating the 1844 words What hath God wrought, and in January 1997 the F…
20 hours ago
Ship Figureheads: Sekhmet's Lionesses, Navy Budget Cuts, and the Ram Bow
Episode 12663
Dutch sailors believed tiny protective spirits lived in the carved figure at the bow, and that a ship lost without one doomed its crew's souls to hau…
20 hours ago