The Ramblings of an Ordinary Man: Recent Episodes
Warren
For the last episode of the year, and Season 2, I'd have been completely remiss to not make it a Christmas episode. But one that might answer a few questions that have troubled you so. :-) Why is Christmas on December the 25th? What is the difference between Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, Kris Kringle and St Nicholas? Where did Christmas crackers, Christmas trees, hanging stocking for Santa and many others Christmas traditions come from? Oh, and as a bonus, how is the name of the NBA basketball team, the New York Knicks, linked to Christmas? Consider this an early present...you're welcome! :-)
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No AUKUS this month but the Australian government still managed to continue damaging it's reputation on the world stage at COP26, the Wallabies do something they haven't done since 1976 on their tour of the U.K., two Australians perform amazing acts of compassion, the Taronga Western Plains Zoo helps another endangered species and fungi are enlisted to help solve a major pollution problem.This is some of what happened last month in Australia.
Join me again as I do another one of my regular reads through the latest discoveries in science. For example, did you know that they've developed fabric that can make payments at the supermarket with a sweep of your arm? Or that NASA is planning to crash a space ship into an asteroid? Or that spiders build webs totally by touch? Well, you will after this episode! :-)
This episode started as an introduction to some iconic Australian foods but rapidly became an extended episode on one particular Australian food. Vegemite! Loved by Australians, under appreciated by the rest of the world. So what is the story of this thick, black, yeast-based spread? Sounds delicious, huh! Where did it come from, how has it become such a household name in Australian culture and why does everyone else hate it so much? Lets find out.
Happy Little Vegemites ad
Hugh Jackman on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Down Under by Men At Work
My brother suggested an episode on ukuleles. I'm not sure if he was joking, but here it is!:-) The ukulele is an interesting, versatile and very popular instrument. If you don't believe me, have a listen. In fact, even if your do believe me, have a listen. There is a lot more to the ukulele than you might think.
The Australian government continues to damage it's relationship with France over a $100 billion dollars for submarines, an Australian legend sadly passes away, the Panthers beat the Rabbitohs in another of the biggest sporting events of the year, an inconsiderate Australian disturbs a large pythons sleep :-), the Canberra Fire Brigade respond to fruit-based emergency and a very cute pandemic baby boom happened at an Australian zoo. This is some of what happened last month in Australia.
Something a little bit different this week. Join me as I do one of my regular reads through the latest discoveries in science. For example, did you know that they've identified the genes responsible for weight gain and weight loss? Or that some parasites replace the tongues of fish they infest. Or that they are developing a helmet that helps minimise the impact of dementia? Well, you will after this episode! :-)
Australia is probably not the first country that comes to mind when you think about inventions. You are more likely to think about sun-drenched beaches, putting another shrimp on the barbie and laid back larrikin types. Actually, I'm not sure what the current world perception is of Australia and Australians...but it is probably not that of a nation of great inventors. This episode will hopefully change you opinion on this...one invention in particular might really surprise you.
If you have heard of any Australian bushrangers it is probably Ned Kelly, he of the impressive, but ultimately pretty ineffective, iron body armour. But what do you know about where the term 'bushranger' came from? Or why Ned Kelly is so iconic in Australia? Or who the first and last bushrangers were? Or how Moondyne Joe escaped prison while chained and under surveillance from his own dedicated guard? All these questions and other will be answered in this episode.
I think I have said this before, I’m not a big an of war. But I do think that it brings out amazing acts of courage and sacrifice...two things that I am a fan of. So, on the theme of courage and sacrifice, this episode is about some bad-ass women who showed both in times of war. Three young Dutch girls who acted very directly against the Nazi's and collaborators from their own country. A young Belgian woman who risked her life getting downed airmen out of Belgium and back to the UK. And a Polish aristocrat who rivaled James Bond 007 with her feats of daring and ingenuity as a spy.
The Australian government managed to damage it's relationship with both France and China while spending over $100 billion dollars on submarines, the emus were migrating, the Demons beat the Bulldogs in the biggest sporting event of the year and 1000's of Western Australians over-indulged on fairy floss or candy floss or cotton candy...whatever you might call it. This is some of what happened last month in Australia.
This week's episode is pretty self-explanatory. I'll be sharing with you a little bit about the podcasts that I'm listening to at the moment. Hopefully you'll find something new to enjoy in here.
Why have we heard of some people from history and not others, even though their contributions might have been equally as impressive and significant. We've touched on this in a previous episode with the Le Chevalier St Georges....a contemporary of Mozart's, every bit as talented, and yet, until very recently, consigned to the bargain bin of history. In today's episode we take a look at why you've probably heard of Charles Darwin but possibly not Alfred Wallace, and why you might know of Paul Revere and his famous Midnight Ride but not know of the people who rode with him that night, or of others who made similar rides.
Running from the north coast of Western Australia to the south of Western Australia is a fence that was intended to stop the rabbit plague from spreading from eastern Australia into the West. It was, for a long time, the longest fence in the world, and was imaginatively called...the Rabbit Proof Fence. This is the story of the fence itself and the significant place it had in three young girl's lives, and in Australian culture in general.
Sourceshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/02/a-long-trek-to-the-truth/e95d996c-91a6-44a9-85b5-7341e3fad3cc/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-Proof_Fencehttps://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/04/the-rabbit-proof-fence-of-australia.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-proof_fence
Have you ever wondered how LEGO came to be? What LEGO actually means? Why it hurts so much to step on a LEGO brick? This episode will answer these, and many other questions you hadn't even thought of. So put on some headphones and have a listen!
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New York in the 1800's / early 1900's was a rough, rough place history tells us. Neighbourhoods like the infamous Five Points and Hell's Kitchen were places of extreme poverty and deprivation, as well as violence and crime. Famous gangs like the Bowery Boys, the Dead Rabbits and the Shirt Tails ruled the streets. The mayhem wasn't confined to men though and some truly bad-ass women rose to prominence at the time...let me introduce you to a few of them.
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Two well known citrus fruits immortalised in a poem supposedly about child sacrifice...or public executions...or Henry the XVIII's marriage difficulties...and probably about none of them. But how much do you know about this amazing species of plants? That they are regularly stolen in large volumes? That they led to an embarrassing incident between Elton John and Bob Dylan? That they have saved million of lives in the past couple of centuries? If all of this is news to you then listen on...even if it's not, listen anyway...you just might learn something! :-)
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Joseph Bologne, or Le Chevalier De Saint-Georges to his friends, was the best fencer of his era in Europe. He was also the best shot, the fastest runner, a very good boxer and could swim the Seine with one arm tied behind his back...literally. Away from athletics he was a decorated officer in the French Revolutionary war and a fierce advocate for the abolition of slavery. Oh, and did I mention he was a violin virtuoso who played duets with Queen Marie Antoinette and a composer considered by many to be the equal of his contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Have a listen to find out more about this amazing man and why you haven't heard of him.
In this episode I introduce you to another side of crabs, a truly amazing species. For example, a crab has possibly saved your life at some point. There is also a crab that can lift a small child, one that is over 3 metres from claw tip to claw tip, one that looks like an orangutan and another one that can, and I can't believe I'm writing this, only be described as 'cute'.
This episode explores colour. We look at what colour actually is and how do we see it. We also explore some amazing stories about colour...the bitter rivalry over the blackest black, the invention of purple dye, and whether ancients Greeks could see blue.
In this episode I introduce you to Edmund Kean, an actor from the early 1800's who is often considered to be the greatest actor of all times. He was also a deeply flawed man who is one of the first examples of true celebrity and all the bad behavior that can bring. As Greg Jenner describes him in his book, Dead Famous....Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience.
For some people, the Tour de France is just a bunch of guys pedaling around France for a few weeks...it is. For some people the Tour de France is a bunch of drug users pedaling around France for a few weeks...it definitely was and possibly still is. But for some other people the Tour de France is a remarkable event with an amazing history, complicated tactics and supremely talented athletes. I am one of these people and I hope by the end of this podcast you are, if not a fully-fledged convert, at least more interested and impressed by the Tour than you were before.
This episode was going to be about the Tulsa Race Massacre where, 100 years ago in May, white rioters killed over 40 black people in the US city of Tulsa. The event is only being truly acknowledged now after years of being ignored and effectively scrubbed from US history. But then it occurred to me that the same thing has happened here in the small Western Australian town of Pinjarra, where I went to school. For years we were told that the death of at least 15, and probably many more, local Binjareb Noongar tribespeople was the result of a battle. It has now generally been accepted as what it was...a massacre. Here is the story of the Pinjarra Massacre.
Some of you will be old enough to get the reference in the title. It is from the Boney M song about Rasputin, a famous Russian monk from the late 1800's / early 1900's. If you don't know the song, you might well have heard his name in pop culture...reference to him are a regular feature of movies, tv series, cartoons, comics as well as music and video games. But how much of what we know, and hear about him, is fact and how much is fiction? Was he the puppet master of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia? Was he unkillable? Did he really cure the haemophilia in the young son of the Tsar and Tsarina? Well, lets find out. :-)
I'm not a big fan of war but it often gives us amazing stories of human endeavor, human stupidity and human duplicity. The Winter War had it all. Russia versus Finland...an army of one million against a country with a total population of just over three million...might seem like a done deal. But this war would take much longer than expected, extract a serious cost from Russia and have major implications for the rest of World War II. It also involved some amazing individual feats, some major tactical blunders and some seriously dubious arrangements between 2 global powerhouses.
In 1932 Oskar Speck took off from the German town of Ulm on the River Danube in, what can only be described as, a totally unsuitable vessel. 7 years later he arrived in Australia, and not to the welcome he had been expecting. During that time he spent time on an island with a rotting corpse, was attacked and violently beaten and was feted by royalty in India, among lots of other things. An amazing adventure that has never been replicated.
Was America discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, as is commonly believed, or was it actually discovered in 1362 by a group of Norwegians and Swedes? It depends on whether you think the Kensington Runestone is an incredible historical artifact or a particularly ambitious hoax. In this episode we explore the runestone and it's remarkable story.
Okay, so I've been a bit deliberately sensationalist with the title...it is generally know as the Dyatlov Pass incident...but it is a genuine mystery. On January 27th 1959 nine experienced hikers set off on an expedition in the Ural Mountains in Russia to try to achieve the top national qualification for ski hiking. They were never seen alive again. Dangerous country in the middle of winter...what is the mystery I hear you ask? Well, their tent was cut open, some of the bodies were found naked with no serious injuries, others were found more fully dressed but with horrific blunt force injuries, radiation was found on two of the bodies...and this wasn't an avalanche area. Intrigued now?
You are probably not surprised to find that there is a lot more to prohibition in the USA than temperance groups, gangsters and bootleggers. In this episode I explore some of the less well known reasons for prohibition and many of the unexpected impacts.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been great in bringing the Norse gods back into the public eye...but the real stories, as told in the 13th century documents, the Edda, are so much crazier and more interesting that they need to be read to be believed. Here is a sample for you...maybe it'll whet your appetite to learn Medieval Icelandic and read them in their original form. :-) Apologies in advance for the butchering of some of the names...oh, and be warned, there is some strong stuff in this episode. :-)
Its a montage! No, wait, it's more of a mosaic...I think. Whatever! Sometimes there are cool facts or topics that don't warrant a full episode, but deserve more than a social media post. Here is the first collection of these...competitive pipe-smoking, the 'I am not a robot' box, elderly whales and Moby Dick!
We depend of them every day (or night) to light our lives...but how many of us know the story of the humble light globe. A story of competition, ingenuity and greed!:-)
Wasps are one of nature's most amazing creatures. Both a total horror-show and a crucial part of the ecosystem, they come in an incredible array of shapes, sizes and attributes. This episode will help you decide if they are friend or foe. :-)
Have you ever wondered what some of the most bizarre and weird things people have stolen are? Well, wonder no more because this episode looks at exactly that! Bridges, oil tankers, inflatable gorillas...basically anything that is not nailed down, and some that are!
I'm going to leave the rest of the hilarious, and very obvious, puns for the podcast itself....for now I'm just going to tell you that this episode is all about how amazing fungus is. From feeding people to making alcohol, from burial suits to making zombies, there isn't much fungus can't do, or be used for. Fungi are truly amazing organisms.
Something a bit different this time...a look at three people with an incredible single episode or thing in their lives. One is about a unique commitment that has saved thousands of lives, another is an amazing story of survival and the third is a truly astounding example of sacrifice for the greater good. And that is all I'm giving you...you'll need to have a listen.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Thanos clicked his fingers, and according to how the laws of probability actually work, in one scenario all humans disappeared from the planet? Oh, and, equally statistically plausibly, no animals did? Well wonder no more! In this episode we explore what would happen to the Earth if we were no longer here.
For centuries the mounted soldier had ruled the battlefield. But this all changed during the Hundred Years War where the longbowmen of England altered the landscape of war forever. The longbow meant that a battle was able to be fought at a distance and, at the Battle of Agincourt, this advantage was used by the English to devastating effect when they convincingly defeating a much larger French force. Although longbows had been used before, the scale of this victory cemented their place in history.
Strapped to a stretcher, weak from hunger, exposure and frostbite, and left under a rock for 9 days in freezing conditions...this is part of the amazing World War 2 escape and survival story of Jan Baalsrud. And you think you've got problems! :-)
In this episode I ask a question...how we will communicate with future generations of humans? And I mean thousands of year from now? There are some good reasons we need to do this but it is as simple as just writing it on something we hope will last long enough?
Humans are amazing! In this episode I introduce you to the amazing story of the crew of the HMS Terror. Living on board a ship trapped in Artic ice for 17 months, forced to eventually abandon the vessel to attempt to trek hundreds of kilometres overland in freezing conditions only to never be seen again.
Immortality is real! Well kind of. In this episode I introduce you to Henrietta Lacks, her cells that live on 70 years after her death, and what this has meant to the world.
In this episode I introduce my new and exciting weekly podcast...well, I think it is exciting....and as a bonus there are two episodes this week. It is a podcast about everything and anything by an ordinary man who knows very little about lots.