Monday, May 12, 2014

A great new discovery!


I love history. Always have. Too bad we don't learn as well from history as we ought, both personally and societally.

Anyway, last week, my dear and lovely friend, Nancy, turned me on to this fantastic series of pod casts called Stuff You Missed in History Class. Produced by the website/show/people of How Stuff Works, the narrators delve a little deeper into the lives of the famous people and events of history. Sort of like the rest of the story, for those of you familiar with Paul Harvey!

So I've learned a little more about the lives of Laura Ingalls Wider and Jane Austen, as well the father of the private investigations Allen Pinkerton. I learned about five of the deadliest storms in history and that the Titanic was probably doomed from the start.

Each pod cast is usually shorter than an episode of TV and works well when I'm walking on the treadmill. They'd probably be great for road trips too.

Another great discovery are TED Talks--thank you to another dear and lovely friend, Regina, for those. TED talks are short talks (ten to twenty minutes usually) given by all kinds of people on all kinds of topics. Their slogan--Ideas Worth Spreading. Absolutely!

From anecdotal to entertaining to educational, this site is a treasure trove of information. For instance, I learned that not only do (obviously) humans have gender, but so do our cells. Certain diseases manifest themselves differently in men and women and the treatment may be different as well. Well worth the fifteen minutes!


Have you heard of either of these? Do you listen?

And if you know of any other cool sites or links to share, please do!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I shouldn't have but I went to the TED website. Oh my goodness! So much to learn and so little time :-)

Nancy

Jen FitzGerald said...

Yep, Nancy. A little like the History class podcast list! So many interesting topics to learn more about.