The Curiosity of a Child

This episode we go treasure hunting, exploring three stories from around the world focussing on our obsession with greed and wealth.

We sail around the globe the wrong way telling an epic tale of survival, visit a tropical island in search of lost treasure and learn about an unusual hermit. Each story is about more than glittering gold and priceless gems, it’s a tale of the lengths man will go to in the pursuit of fame and fortune.

I have uploaded the correct audio this time!

In celebration of Margaret Ann Neve’s birthday we’re re-releasing our feature about her 110 year life! It was buried at the end of episode 19 so deserves to be surfaced. Listen to how much Anton has changed in the 2 and a bit years since release then imagine what 110 years of change must have felt like for Margaret. She was the first person recorded to have lived in 3 different centuries...

This feature was researched and written by Anton!

Have you heard of the 1903 Potato boom? No? Neither had we until recently. Join Anton as he tells you all about Archibald Findlay and his amazing potatoes that were reaching prices of £5000 a ton - that’s half a million in today’s money. But are they all they’re cracked up to be?

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This episode we take a break from talking history and science and interview Paul Mayze MD of Avid Games, the creators of Cards, the Universe and Everything affectionately known as CUE Cards.

CUE Cards is a great fun mobile game that’s chock-full of facts about… well everything! It’s a deck building and battling game where you can learn about everything from Chinese Folklore to the Higgs Boson and Corn Beef Sandwiches to the Macrauc...

The potato, it’s been with us forever, it’s so mundane and everyday it’s hardly worth thinking about, right? Wrong!

A relatively recent arrival to Europe and much of the world this not so simple vegetable has had a very big impact on the modern world. Easily outstripping the nutritional value of grains and other primary crops it can be argued the modern world - and Europe’s - would not have been possible without it.

We travel from ...

Artificial intelligence is set to transform the world altering how we work, access content and create. Many visions of AI show it as robotic, machinelike and impersonal but is this really the case? In this first AI revolution it’s creativity and artistic disciplines that are most touched. But can a computer really be creative and what does creativity mean? Trained on our data - our images, writings, stories - they have only ever ha...

Last episode we were dragged down to hell through our naive use of magic and magical elements - this time we break free thanks to the real elements that make our world - the atoms.

Anton and I recreate a Roman casting technique, melting tin in cuttlefish bone moulds to get a closer look at one of the earliest metals humans would have worked.

From our obsession with gold to burning diamonds with giant magnifying glasses we’ve long s...

Magic has a long and complex history. From the earliest times people have sought to understand and control the world around them. The Babylonians would be guided by celestial movements, the Romans would give young boys a Divine Phallus to ward off the evil eye. We start at the beginning and work our way through magical practice taking in stories of witchcraft, meetings with the devil and the burning of babies. Taking all we learn a...

We were honoured to be invited to talk at Intelligent Speech 2022 on the theme of crossings. https://www.intelligentspeechconference.com/

We selected the Balmis expedition - a Spanish attempt to vaccinate their empire from smallpox in the early 1800s but in an age before air travel and refrigeration how do you transfer a delicate vaccine across the world’s oceans? Enter 22 orphans to save the world...

We had a few technical issues ...

Ahoy me hearties, weight anchor and lets be off!

We look at the life of one of the most amazing but forgotten men of the 1600s, William Dampier. Ever curious he was an explorer, navigator, naturalist, writer and so much more. The author of A New Voyage Around the World, his accounts opened the world to the public. Never before had people experienced such exotic locations from their own homes or had such detailed descriptions of the...

Time is one of the biggest mysteries of science but also one of the fundamental aspects of our reality. It’s nature has been discussed for centuries, from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein, we’ve sought answers but only found more questions as we’ve peeled back it’s layers. There is no fixed ‘now’, every point in space has it’s own flow of time. Does time even exist? How much of what we feel is simply our brain attempting to make sen...

In this bonus episode we present Anton’s short story Guilty Chocolate read by Anton himself! He claimed second prize in the Guernsey Literary Festival WriteStuff competition judged by leading international author Anthony Horowitz.

The competition gave students the following brief: ‘Write an imaginary 300 word story inspired by Detectives or Spies’. Anton’s story was described as ‘a very dark and mature story that relates closely to...

Legend tells of an early pioneer of rocketry who, in 1633, blasted off over Istanbul in celebration of the birth of the Sultan’s daughter. There are stories of an eccentric French couple flying horses and bulls into the sky to entertain the masses. There were inventors who saw the future of travel in personal balloons that allowed us to bound across the landscape as if we were an astronaut on the moon. These tales my sound absurd b...

We are very excited and proud to announce that we will be talking at the 2022 Intelligent Speech conference! Our talk will be about 22 orphans packed onto a ship to America and deliberately infected with cowpox! We would love our listeners to join us. Tickets cost $20 for the early bird (and 8 hours of talks) or $30 thereafter, but if you use promo code curiosity at checkout you get an extra 10% off.

https://www.intelligentspeechco...

We travel downunder to meet one of Australia’s most unusual creatures: Ornithorhynchus anatinus, better know as the Platypus. Few animals have caused such debate as our duckbilled friend, for nearly a century leading scientists across Europe (maybe they should travel a bit closer to their subject) debated exactly what this paradoxical animal was – mammal, lizard, something entirely new? What are the eggs all about, and where are th...

This episode Anton takes the lead as he explores the development of Norman castles in the British Isles. Whilst fortifications dotted the English landscape long before the 1066 Norman invasion nothing quite like their castles existed before. Anton and I talk about early motte and bailey fortifications that offered only rudimentary protection to vast concentric circle castles like Beaumaris in Wales that dominated the surrounding la...

Pepper, king of the spices. Found in every kitchen and on every restaurant table pepper is a spice that’s ‘just there’. Today we take this spice for granted but this wasn’t always the case as great European powers fought over it’s control wanting to monopolise the trade and the wealth it brought. The Portuguese, Dutch and British sent countless sailors and soldiers on voyages to the mystical east. But they weren’t only there to tra...

We are honoured to be joined by Greg Wah, science communicator from Australia and co-host of the excellent Smart Enough to Know Better podcast. We discuss the size of the universe and how the JWST is going to help us look back further than ever, iconic images from Hubble, the beauty and importance of science and more.

Podcast: https://smartenough.org/

Greg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thewah

SE2KB on Twitter: https://twitter.com...

Keeping with our space theme we chat to Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy about how he captures his incredible images, space travel, aliens and more. You have to check out Andrew’s photos, they’re mind-blowing. He definitely has an eye for creating something beautiful but it’s backed up by a sound scientific knowledge and genuine love for the wonders of space.

Follow Andrew: Twitter, Instagram, website store

Show notes: https://the...