Aristotle classified living things by how much air, water, earth, or fire they possessed. The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance brought us animals, vegetables, and minerals. It took a former cobbler's apprentice named Carl Linnaeus to give us the current system that organizes every living thing on earth. This week's show talks about how that's done--and gives us a pretty cool mnemonic to remember it by. 

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Leo Tolstoy didn't consider War and Peace a novel. Sure, there's a story in there about a bunch of families told through the backdrop of a (spoiler!) war, but there's so much more in those 587,000 words that we might have to spend a little more than five minutes talking about all of it. 

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Happy Labor Day! As you (hopefully) get to enjoy some time off, take in a football game, and put away your white clothes, stop in and learn how two unrelated guys with the same name, a couple of riots, and President Grover Cleveland gave us a day to celebrate our hard work.

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Broadway began as a Native American trail carved into the swampland of Manhattan island and today runs almost thirty miles from lower Manhattan to Westchester County. But Broadway is so much more than a street. In this episode, we cover the 400 years it took for Broadway to become America's theater capital...in about 5 minutes.

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There are four countries, one body of water, and a pet rodent named after Guinea. Three of the countries are in Africa, one is near Australia, and guinea pigs are from South America. How did this name take over the world? Tune in and find out!

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In the late 19th century, a Russian eye doctor had a vision for bringing peace and understanding to the world. He created a new language that would unite everyone under a common tongue. He called it Esperanto, and it would eventually become the official language of the post-WW1 League of Nations. Learn all about it in this week's show.

Thank you to Kevin Luce and Freesound for the recording of Le Marsellaise featured in this episode.

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A colony of ants. A parliament of owls. A bed of oysters. Where did all this come from? In this episode, we explore how a boss nun and a lot of wealthy people with too much time on their hands came up with all these names for animal groups. 

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Who writes a book and then puts someone else's name on it? Well, the writers of 1984, Jane Eyre, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Confessions of a Shopaholic. And that's just a small handful. Join us on the show to learn about where some of these pen names came from and why anyone would  even use one. 

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In Part 1, we learned how Pluto became a planet. In Part 2, we take it all away. This episode explains why Pluto, ninth planet from the sun and inspiration for Mickey Mouse's pet dog, is no longer welcome at planetary parties.

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Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was considered the ninth planet in our solar system until 2006, when it was demoted. So how did it come to be and then...not to be? Join us for this two-part odyssey on the little planet that wasn't.

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