CLASSIC: When did ALL-CAPS type become YELLIN...

For a lot of folks in the modern day, knitting is more a relaxing hobby than a household necessity. However, not too long ago, this needlecraft was a genuine -- and effective! -- tool for spies. In the first part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the fascinatin ...  Show more

Language is beautiful and, in many cases, continually evolving. As a result, we end up with hundreds of strange idioms and figures of speech that we use on a daily basis, with little to no understanding of what they originally meant. Join Ben and Noel with special guests Frank Mu ...  Show more

Who’s to blame for the downfall of Al Capone?This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) welcomes writer Seth Reiss to take on the downfall of one of history’s most infamous mobsters, Al Capone. And we nailed it! Or did we? If indeed Capone had a downfall, who was ultimately ...  Show more

A reCAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA-like system designed to establish that a computer user is human. So how does the reCAPTCHA checkbox i.e. the "I'm not a robot" checkbox actually work? Why can't bots just check 'I am not a robot' and fool the system?   ... We explain like i'm five!   Than ...  Show more

How do we know what we know about the deep past? What languages did people speak in prehistory? And why, if the life of an early farmer seemed to be so miserable, did farmers have so many children? I answer all of these questions and more in our first prehistory mailbag episod ...

Who spoke English first and what was it like? Nothing like it is today. Listen in to learn all about it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.