Wonders of the World

I blundered and started working on the wrong episode. I can't cover the Red Fort without having first talked about the Taj Mahal because that's getting Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor's life all caddywampus, and we can't have that. If you have been to the Taj Mahal, please let me know!! I'd love to chat with you!

The Himalaya are the highest and greatest mountain range on earth, and their importance to Asian culture and history cannot be overstated.  1.6 billion people rely on fresh water that drains from the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau. In this episode, we focus on Ladakh, the northernmost territory in India, the "Land of High Passes" where the most prominent passes over the Himalaya could be found,...

The Naqsh-e Jahan Square is a remarkable example of urban planning, the centerpiece of the grand imperial capital of Esfahan, Iran.  The capital was built by hundreds of thousands of people for the glory of Shah Abbas the Great of the Safavid Dynasty. While I'm sure the story of his military triumphs is interesting, I find the drama of his family to be waaay more interesting.  From his poetry-hati...

Perhaps the most ethereal and beautiful astronomical sight available to regular old humans, the auroras borealis and australis, the Northern and Southern Lights have amazed and inspired us for our whole existence on earth. One of the better places to see the Northern Lights is northern Sweden, and this episode covers the five years in which Sweden was the dominant military force on the planet: the...

February 8th!  Got to https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ for tickets!  And use the promo code WONDERS to get 10% off!  It'll be great!

The Rhine River flows through the heartland of western Germany, through a gorge passing an average of one castle per mile.  Reisling vineyards, charming villages, and castle after castle after castle surround you as you drift along the river.  But almost 400 years ago, this idyllic valley was caught up in the most devestating war in pre-20th century European history. In this episode, we'll cover t...

Nestled on a bend of the Vltava River, the beautiful town of Český Krumlov is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe. It's also the site of a horrific true crime! (Oo, let's get those true crime junkies in on this!) Rudolf II had troubles, and the mental illness of his son Julius only adds to the load. But the decline and fall of Rudolf II and the murder of Markéta Pichlerová is only p...

They say a giant man of clay sits in the attic, waiting for centuries for his instructions.  The story of the Golem in Prague is one of the classics of western storytelling, yet did you know that the temple where the Golem is rumored to be is a real place? The Old New Synagogue, one of the oldest active synagogues in the world, sits in the heart of Josefov, Prague's Jewish district. In this episod...

You've seen it on a million pizza boxes, in a thousand Italian restaurants, and in photos of your Dad pretending to hold it up.  It's the Leaning Tower! Why does it lean?  And why is it so gracefully elegant in its leaning? Most of this episode, however, is about the most famous person to be associated with the tower: the astronomer Galileo.  Did he really drop weights from the tower? Probably not...

The youngest of the world's seven largest religions is Sikhism, founded in Punjab in the 16th century. Nanak, a guru, or teacher, from outside Lahore, spent three days lost along a river and returned with an undestanding of one God: the Ultimate Reality. Nanak created a religion founded on equality, service, and openness, yet his successors would soon find themselves under attack from vested inter...

One of the world's great museums of Renaissance art: the Uffizi.  Meaning "the offices," the Uffizi were quite literally built as an office buidling for the growing administration of Cosimo I de' Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, the leader who brought authoritarian rule, if also stablity, to Florence. Bry Rayburn from the Pontifacts podcast, joins me once again to talk about Cosimo, her hi...

A quick bonus episode about how eclipses connect with human history

Towering above the city of Madurai, the gopurams or gateways of the Meenakshi Amman Temple are medieval skyscrapers, awash in color, writhing in movement, beautiful and otherworldly at the same time. In this episode we'll discuss the rise of the Mughal Empire, the fall of Vijayanagara, and of course, masala dosa, that most incredible of South Indian streetfoods.

In the late 1500s Poland and Lithuania joined to create the Commonwealth, a remarkable, if flawed, experiment in constitutional monarchy that would last more than 200 years. Its legacy of religious tolerance and representative republicanism is strangely overlooked in American history books - and I would guess in other histories as well. One of the chief economic engines of the Polish-Lithuanian Co...

Suleiman the Magnificent? Suleiman the Lawgiver? Suleiman the Bisexual Poet? No matter how you label him, Suleiman was a fascinating sultan of the Ottoman Empire who strode upon the world stage, and his private life was worthy of a scandalous Netflix show.  Among his greatest legacies was commissioning this phenomenal mosque, designed by Mimar Sinan, one of the history's most successul and signifi...

The world-famous "lost city of the Inca".  It wasn't a city, and it wasn't lost, but yes, it was made by the Inca.  The incredibly scenic former estate of kings is a true marvel, as I can personally attest, but this episode is about so much more than the ruins that people come from all over the world to see. Joined by Nick Machinski of the History of the Inca Empire podcast, we talk about the dram...

It's all too much for me to take - the Beatles, 1969

He was from the richest city in Ming China, or one of the richest, and after his checkered political career, he came home and planted a garden.  500 years later, we can still visit his garden and marvel at the humility of Wang Xianchen, the Humble Administrator. This episode is a pleasant diversion beforewe get back to the big stories. And we'll have Suzhou "smoked" fish while we're here! Sources:...

Monarch butterflies are tiny, ephemeral creatures, whose audacious color patterns makes them beloved across a continent, yet few realize how remarkable their migration from Canada and the US to their winter ground west of Mexico City really is.  Listener Livia Montovani joins us to talk about visiting the mountain reserves where hundreds of millions of butterflies spend their winter. We'll also co...

A brief update about the show!

Just a little 440-room hunting lodge built among other chateaux in France's Loire Valley, Chambord is the grand dame of them all.  Built for François Ier, it betrays the influence of the Italian Renaissance, specifically of Leonardo da Vinci, François' teacher and mentor. Gary Girod, host of the French History Podcast, joins us to discuss François and his place in French history, while listener Sa...

The largest episode on the smallest country. It's the city-state home of the Catholic Church, a neighborhood of Rome, home to some of the greatest art in the western world. In the early 16th century, the Catholic Church began to turn Rome into a capital glorious enough to serve as the capital of Christendom, and in the process, the popes drove Christendom apart. And Michelangelo was there the whol...

The enormous church on the banks of the Tejo, carved with ropes and knots and anchors as though it were going to sea itself, represents the vast wealth and untold adventure of Portugal's Age of Discovery. Portuguese king Manuel I commissioned the monastery upon learning of the success of Vasco da Gama's first expedition to India, the longest sea voyage undertaken to that time, a voyage that would...

The best example of Sahelian mud-brick architecture, the great mosque seems like a sandcastle rising from the Niger Inland Delta in Mali. Originally built in the early days of the Mali Empire, the mosque also connects with the Songhai, Africa's largest and strongest empire, whose collapse came at key moment in world history. We'll follow the fates of two great kings and see how choices made in the...

Officially, this episode is on the amazing glowing algae living in the waters of three of Puerto Rico's bays, most notably Puerto Mosquito on Vieques, one of Puerto Rico's smaller islands. Listener and boriqueño native Roberto Cancel describes swimming in the bay on a dark night, surrounded by glowing blue waters. But most of the episode is devoted to perhaps the most important event in world hist...