30 years ago, Lou Montulli set out to solve a fundamental problem with the internet, and accidentally created an entirely different one. On today's show, how the cookie went from an obscure piece of code designed to protect anonymity, to an onl
Thomas Midgley's inventions caused his own death, hastened the deaths of millions of people around the world, and very nearly extinguished all life on land. Midgley and his employers didn't set out to poison the air with leaded gasoline or wre
What do you do if your invention becomes a weapon? This happened to Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired Magazine, who launched DIY Drones, an open source community that helps anyone build their own flying machines. Chris and his community ev
We chronicle the epic struggle to get drugs that treat very rare diseases on the market, and the unintended consequence of that fight, which affected the cost of all kinds of drugs. This is a strange story that involves a hit 70s TV show, a fak
Have you ever made a catastrophic mistake? What if your mistakes could cause an empire to fall, a war to start, or thirty million people to starve to death? History and politics are defined by catastrophic miscalculations -- those "oops" moment
The discovery of one of the most hazardous elements on earth helped spark the greatest underdog story in the history of human labor relations. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener
Across America, feral pigs are on the rampage, wrecking fields of crops, hunting local wildlife to extinction, and even attacking humans. In the United Kingdom, Japanese knotweed is taking over the landscape: banks deny mortgages to infested pr