In today's episode, Zack has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Nudism! Or, as we learned it should be referred to, Naturalism! If you've ever wondered what it might be like to spend all your days sans clothes, this is the one for you. We learned about the intention/philosophy/mentality behind nudism, and you know what? It's pretty peaceful. Lots of retirees embracing themselves and the simplicity of life. You can purchase a one-day pass to a bunch of nudist spas across the country, so maybe go check it out. If you are feelin' breezy.

Highlights Include:

- The American League of Physical Culture

- Single women price: $30. Single man price? $175

- "Clothing Optional" (Obvs)

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... H.P. Lovecraft! Okay, "expert" is always a stretch, but it's a big one here. It's hard to learn about a person's whole life in 30 minutes, especially when that person wrote over 70 stories, over 100,000 letters, and inspired countless metal bands, games, and works of literature. Lovecraft even has a whole subgenre of horror named after him. "Lovecraftian" works are likely to be horrific, full of monsters and fear of the unknown, and to leave you feeling full of terror and despair - nice! Really this man was not a ray of sunshine by any means. Katie describes him as a "creepy racist vampire that wrote freaky-deaky stuff" at the end of the episode and that's pretty spot on. This dude was traumatized by a childhood full of death and nervous breakdowns, and then turned that trauma into some of the most world-class racism we'd ever heard of. This guy hated everybody! So when you consume Lovecraft, keep in mind that the man himself had some pretty horrifying beliefs, that could very well explain why he was so scared of the world and saw enemies and monsters everywhere. 

Highlights Include:

- Lots of long winded quotes

- Lots of mispronunciations of "Cthulhu"

- Lots of poor explanations of separating the "artist from the art"

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Zack has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Earthquakes! Fun fact - Zack is taking Geography this semester, so he was already a bit of an exert on the subject before his 30 minutes study period! But he became even more of an expert for us and for that, we are grateful. So let's shake, rattle and roll our way to tectonic brilliance. Zack schools us on the three different types of tectonic plate movement and explains why the kind that the San Andreas fault is is the most dangerous and potentially devastating (of course). But knowledge is power. We learned about the richter scale and how wild its valuation is, and confirmed that we experienced a 7.1 back in July of 2019! Wow. Crazy times. This might not be the happiest episode ever, since earthquakes can be incredibly devastating, but it was interesting. Stay safe out there, kids. Protect your heads!

Highlights Include:

- Tsunamis

- The biggest earthquake ever

- Katie's tips on how to protect yourself during an earthquake

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... The Mandela Effect! First of all, guess what?! This is 30 Minute Expert's One Year Anniversary! That's right, we've been at it for one whole year. Very proud to have made it this far - thank you so much to everyone who has listened and supported us. We did it! Back to scheduled programming: The Mandela Effect! If you thought the Berenstain Bears were the Berenstein Bears, or that Darth Vader said "Luke, I am your father," or that Tom Cruise wore sunglasses in that underwear scene in Risky Business, then you know what this is. It's when a group of people all share the same false memory, and really really believe it is true. The phenomenon is coined after a collectively shared false memory that Nelson Mandela died while in prison in the 1980s. This is completely untrue, yet thousands of people online all have the same memory of it happening. Why?! There are plenty of brain/memory related scientific explanations for it, including priming, post-event influences, and just the creation of false memories in general (look up Ronald Cotton's story!). But the explanation also could be a multiverse issue, time travellers messing things up, or plain out Satanic action. Pick what pleases you and stay for all the examples at the end. We love you! Keep listening!

Highlights Include:

- Somehow got to String Theory

- Purple giraffes tap dancing

- Mayer, Froot, SHAZAM!

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Vanilla! The plant, the spice, the flavor, we cover it all. And, at the risk/certainty of making a very embarrassing and overdone joke, there is nothing "vanilla" about vanilla. Vanilla is the second-most expensive spice in the world (after saffron). It has to be hand-pollinated using a method discovered by a 12-year-old boy enslaved on an island off Madagascar. And the flower blooms for one day before it dies, a la Dennis the Menace, so if you miss that one day, you're out of luck - hence, the second-most expensive spice ever. It all starts with a fascinating legend from the Totonac people, which involves a princess and murder. Come along to Tahiti, Madagascar, and Indonesia! And stick around 'til the end for Thomas Jefferson's recipe for french vanilla ice cream brought directly from France! 

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Zack has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... The Panama Canal! The Suez Canal got a lot of press earlier this year, so we thought the Panama Canal deserved some attention. Building the Panama Canal was a ten-year endeavor, and was extremely complicated, but (from our humble perspective) appears to have been worth it. Thousands of container ships use this shortcut now every year - a shortcut that cuts 8,000 miles off of a trip from the east to west coast of the United States. We can thank Teddy Roosevelt and the Panamanian rebels for the possibility of the canal, which the Colombians were not so hot on. The land and operation of the Panama Canal is back in the hands of Panama now, since 2000. Does it cost one million dollars to cross it or six thousand? We don't know. Hard to say. As will all internet research, the answers vary, but the overall gist is that this was a huge undertaking and remains an impressive feat today.

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Did England Send Convicts to Australia? Answer: Yes it did! This was a fascinating look into a really dark part of history. England only sent convicts to Australia because it couldn't send them to the Americas anymore, because duh, the Revolutionary War. We don't want your tea or your convicts anymore! And the hulks - the ships-turned-prisons floating in harbors in England - were full (plus everyone on them was dying of typhoid and cholera). Man, this was a rough one! Between 70-year-old ladies being shipped across the world and sentenced to 7 years in prison for stealing a wheel of cheese, to hundreds of thousands of indigenous Australians being decimated by smallpox and colonization, not a lot to smile about in this one. But it's good to learn about history. Why? So we don't repeat it, of course!

Highlights Include:

- 160,000 convicts sent to Australia from England

- 1 in 5 Australians are descended from convicts

- The oldest indigenous population in the world outside of Africa

Donate to the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/donate-to-aclu-multistep

Donate to the NAACP: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/naacp-1

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Catnip! That sprinkly stuff that makes the cats go wild! We figured, if there's something you regularly give your pets, why not understand it a little better? This was a fun one - simple to understand, and fun to picture all of those kitties having fun. Listen to hear Katie try and pronounce "nepetalactone" and to hear Zack get real uncomfortable with the more mature aspects of catnip's effects. You can grow catnip yourself - and even make some tea for you if your cat happens to be one of the 20-40% of cats who aren't into catnip. So chill out, relax, and dive into some catnip with us! 

Highlights Include:

- Even big cats - aka lions, tigers, etc. - also love catnip!

- Catnip alternatives: Silver Vine and Valerian Root

- A Cat Tony Montana

Donate to the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/donate-to-aclu-multistep

Donate to the NAACP: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/naacp-1

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvanksy

Music by Jake Radvanksy

In today's episode, Zack has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Dutch Tulip Mania! First of all, what is "Dutch," amirite? If you've ever wondered what the difference is between Holland, Amsterdam, and The Netherlands, this episode will clear all of that up for you. Great. Now that that's out of the way, what does tulip mania have to do with them? Turns out that tulips were at the center of the first financial "bubble" ever! Caveat - maybe. There's a lot of myth hyping up this story, but the story itself is pretty interesting nonetheless. Dutch people back in the day needed to latch on to a fad to show off how cool and rich they were, and tulips were just the thing. Think: housing market, dot com, and beanie babies, and you've got it. Was tulip mania as insane and devastating as the lore likes to make it out to be? Maybe not. But it's still a super interesting story, and a good lesson for all of us to learn. Should have read about this before I spent all my savings on pogs in the 90s. 

Highlights Include:

- A Gordon Gekko Reference

- An explanation of what "the Netherlands" is

- $3,000 tulips!

Donate to the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/donate-to-aclu-multistep

Donate to the NAACP: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/naacp-1

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Matches! Uh huh, those little cardboard or wooden sticks you use to light things on fire. Hopefully not a lot of things, but candles, maybe! Zack thought he knew that matches were invented after lighters, and he was right! For being such a handy little gadget, matches did not come around until late in the game of humanity. Probably because there are some seriously dangerous chemicals involved, and we were not ready to handle them. Ancient China (I'm talking 5th century A.D.) had little sticks soaked in sulfur, but it wasn't until the 1820s that we had anything resembling the self-lighting matches that we know today. of course, there's a dark side -  hence the highlighted "phossy jaw" below, which, please, don't say we didn't warn you not to image search. But overall, matches are an exciting little topic that really sparked our imagination! 

Highlights Include:

- Dr. Teutonicus and his putrefied pee

- Another happy accident invention!

- Phossy jaw... don't google it

Donate to the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/give/donate-to-aclu-multistep

Donate to the NAACP: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/naacp-1

Follow on instagram @30minuteexpertpodcast and twitter @30minexpertpod

Send us your expertise at [email protected]

And please rate and review!

Podcast artwork by Rick Radvanksy

Music by Jake Radvanksy