Noel Armstrong
The History of Being HumanEpisodes
Episodes of The History of Being Human
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Hitler was a failure who achieved the opposite of nearly all of his stated intentions. But was he insane as well? His life and legacy might argue he was, but what do the experts say?If he was insane, what was the diagnosis? And if he was not i
He's one of the most reviled people in Western history -- a man whose cruelty, jealousy, and violence are proverbial. And yet his legacy is much more nuanced, his person more complicated than most of us know. One thing that is not in question i
I have released my first TouTube video and this is the audio -- see the episode here:https://youtu.be/uVfn5Ar1rmg?si=e3TE_6tCWEuQxf7hSchrodinger's Cat Quick and Easy Yes, this is based on a longer podcast episode -- but hey, you've got to start
The OG, greatest generation of Human ever! At least if your metric is a dogged determination to keep existing.For 2 million years these prehistoric hominins wandered far and wide, high and low, filling every available lakeshore and riverbed. Wh
This week I wander off the topic of Life Extension (more next episode) to take advantage of an opportunity to interview an anthropologist about the White Sands footprints.Not since the Laetoli Australopithecus prints has a set of human footprin
It is time to take a trip to that Undiscovered Country and visit our greatest teacher. How long do we live, how long did we live, and why don't we just keep on going?Never mind that we do the world and our gene pool a great service by only tak
In this episode we cover the underpinnings of the either/or, cause-then-effect, deterministic, distance-separates-things, no-info-travels-faster-than-light, orderly world of classical physics. It is the world inhabited by such luminaries as New
To paraphrase Richard Feynman: If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.Along the same lines, if you have made sense of Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, you don't understand it.But that's not to
At Long Last - Pilate's Old Question Will Get an Answer!
In this episode, the massive, rapacious king power lizards of the Cretaceous are finally taken off the board by an asteroid. We trace the origins and progress of the skulking night vermin that are unleashed in their absence. These night vermin,
Continuing with the origins of everything that is, I present the history of planet Earth, from its birth to the age of mammals. Included:How old is the earth?What are the oldest rocks ever found?How old is life itself?When did multicellular org
In this episode:9 billion years of prehistory made dangerously accessibleThe broadest, easily understood, fascinating ideas of the "Big Bang"Mysteries of the Big BangWhat can we theorize?Where do our theories fail?What are the strengths and wea
Attention: This is the episode that started the podcast -- the story of the maxim Know Thyself, the Prophetess at Delphi, Apollo and the python, Zeus and the omphalos, and the much more ancient Egyptian origins of the injunction.What did it mea
In this brief announcement I discuss the philosophy and rationale for content choices and discuss a few changes coming to the podcast.It is my belief that these changes will add value to my listeners, albeit indirectly, as they will enable me t
From the new Studio P, provided by Peyton, comes the death of Poe. In a sad case of life imitating art, Edgar Allen Poe, the master of the macabre and father of the mystery story presents us with a real-life masterpiece of both genres in his ow
Alexander was a prodigy in all things military and administrative, as unaccountably great in his own field as Mozart was in music or Michelangelo in art. By age 32, he had conquered the mightiest empire ever known and extended the boundaries of
At the age of 44, Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential philosophers and writers of his age, suffered a psychotic breakdown. For the next 11 years until his death from pneumonia, he evidenced profound dementia and was totally depende
Even King Tut had a mother. Once. And not for very long, it seems. This episode is actually several mysteries in one. Who was King Tut's mother? Why did she die, esecially so young? Was it sickness, childbirth, accident, or murder most foul? A
Tutankhamen died at 19 years old. No one is sure why or how. His tomb, his mummy, and his DNA offer some tantalizing clues, but no definitive answer. Here is the life and death of one of the best known mummies, from one of the least known Ph
The third and final member of the Milesian school, once considered the weak little sister of the philosphers, now appreciated in all his Air-udite glory. This is his story, as we have it, which may or may not correlate roughly to some things he
Today we take a long, hard look at the great Anaximander, the second member of the Milesian School, and possibly one of the most influential thinkers of all time. The first metaphysician, the greatest astronomer of his age, the teller of time
In this episode we begin a series on the beginnings of "Western" thought and science. We start with the catastrophy of the Mycenean Collapse, the Greek Dark Ages, and the Archaic Age, then continue with a discussion of Miletus and its most reve
Today, part 2 of the Dyatlov Pass mystery. What killed the 9 expert, fit trekkers on Dyatlov Pass in 1959? Is the mystery finally solved? In this episode we dig deep and look hard into what we can know about what happened to the ill-fated expe
This is actually the story of the Dyatlov Pass deaths of 1959 -- an event that remains mysterious and controversial to this day. 9 healthy Russian Athletes on a ski trip die under stange circumstances. The location and conditon of the bodies
There are some things you just have to know to keep up with the headlines. Things that, in some cases, provide crucial insights into who we are and how we and the universe we are part of work. It might be that a big picture concept of the fun
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