Mark Twain Was a Terrible Investor, Part One:...

In this week's Classic episode: Bill Speakman, better known as the “Beer Bottle VC”, single-handedly took on a brigade of Chinese People’s Army Infantry in four hours of close-quarters combat. As he ran out of actual weapons, he began throwing beer bottles -- and, somehow, surviv ...  عرض المزيد

Potatoes are amazing. While these sturdy little tubers may not seem immediately impressive, they're one of agricultural's biggest success stories. So, how did they grow from a domestic crop in South America to an absolute global phenomenon? In the first part of this special two-p ...  عرض المزيد

In the late 1850s, a young man named Samuel Clemens started out piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River. Within a few years, he embarked on a writing career, adopting the pen name that became famous: Mark Twain. Armed with a wry sense of humor and a natural flair for stor ...

Most people know Mark Twain as one of America’s most popular writers and humorists. Some even know that as a young man, he was a Riverboat pilot. But did you know that during the Civil War, he volunteered for the war effort to fight for the South? Learn more about your ad choices ...  عرض المزيد

German immigrant John Jacob Astor was the first multimillionaire in the United States, and his descendants would go on to play prominent roles in the country's history -- but how exactly did he get this enormous fortune? According to the official story, he started off in the fur ...  عرض المزيد

Every so often, a new author tackles the work of expanding a classic novel to expand its reach. Even more rarely, they succeed beautifully. This week’s book, Adventures of Mary Jane is just such a rare gem. Mary Jane's author, Hope Jahren, is a scientist (a geochemist, no less) w ...  عرض المزيد