Madame Curie's Scientific Genius changed the world in priceless ways, but beyond her contributions to physical and medical sciences, perhaps her most important achievement was opening doors for, and inspiring women (and men) in the fields of science and medicine. 

W. F. Strong:    [email protected] 

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Sharing Hemingways' famous Switzerland Christmas post which he wrote for the Toronto Star in 1923 when he was 24 years old.  He was on a skiing holiday with his first wife Hadley and his best friend, Chink.  

Special thanks to Daryl Missen, podcast audio pro of Australia, who re-mastered this piece to add some magic to this classic story. 

W. F. Strong:    [email protected]

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Marcus Aurelius is enormously popular today, even though he lived nearly 2000 years ago.  Quotes from his famous Meditations are ubiquitous.  It is now the Bible of stoicism.  In this episode I take a look, with the help of classical scholar and author, Lindsay Powell,  at how Marcus Aurelius was perceived in his time, how his private notes to self survived the dark ages and wound up as a best selling book today, and why his wisdom is so embraced still.  

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Dr. Bass tells two stories about fascinating cases he worked on to identify people from their remains.  

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How Dr. John Snow solved the cholera riddle and changed the medical world forever.  

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A man dies in fiery crash in Mexico.   Dr. Bill Bass, father of CSI and creator of the first body farm, is brought in to identify the charred remains of the victim.  I talk with Dr. Bass about how he created the body farm and how he identified the skeletal remains of man said to be "burned beyond recognition."  Evidently, dead men tell a lot of tales these days.  

Here's a link to photographs taken at the body farm: https://www.sallymann.com/body-farm

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This story traces Dr. Gorgas's inspirational saga from Brownsville to  Cuba to Panama, in which he constantly sought a cure for,  or containment of,  Yellow Fever.  He ultimately succeeded in the latter,  which made the completion of the canal possible and made the whole world a bit smaller.  Because of his success there, he has been called "the Medical Hero of the Panama Canal."  

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The story of Robert Falcon Scott's heart-wrenching effort to be the first man to the South Pole. 

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