The Wild Hippos of Pablo Escobar

Words are everywhere -- and we're grateful, because we can't do this show without them. But all words were, at some point, just made up. So how does society decide what counts as a "real" word? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the history of language, and the oddly ...  Show more

What if you could hop from France to New York in less than four hours? Traveling twice the speed of sound, with caviar, lobster, champagne and cigars? This was the pitch of the Concorde jet -- a revolutionary, utterly ridiculous and brilliant craft that promised to fundamentally ...  Show more

We all know that Pablo Escobar exported cocaine out of Colombia in record amounts. What a lot of people don't know is that he had some problematic imports into the vibrant nation, as well. Meet Pablo Escobar's hippos. The cocaine cowboy brought what turned out to be an invasiv ...

When drug kingpin Pablo Escobar died in 1993 having built a billion dollar cocaine empire, he left behind a zoo. While his rhinos, giraffes, elephants and kangaroos were re-housed, the hippos were left in Escobar’s abandoned ranch in the Colombian countryside. In 2007 they starte ...  Show more

Pablo Escobar had a private zoo at his estate in Colombia, with zebras, giraffes, flamingoes - and four hippopotamuses. After Escobar was killed in 1993, most of the animals were relocated except for the so-called "cocaine hippos." Authorities thought they would die but they did ...  Show more

Today, we’re recalling an odd moment in the life of Colombia’s “King of Cocaine,” Pablo Escobar. According to his son, when the family was once holed up in one of Escobar’s hideouts in the mountains of Medellin, his father resorted to drastic measures to keep the family warm. Lea ...  Show more