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Ask a five year old why the sky is blue and you'll get a shrug. Ask an adult and you'll get a confident sentence with the word atmosphere in it, followed by a long pause when you ask the follow up.

We get into what's actually coming at you from the sun, what the air does to it on the way down, and why the tidy explanation most people carry around falls apart under one simple question.

Everybody thinks they know this one. Almost nobody can finish the sentence.

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- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

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There are something like 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Run the numbers and the universe should be crowded.

But nothing has ever shown up. A physicist noticed that contradiction over lunch in 1950, and it has bothered scientists ever since.

There's an equation that tries to work out how many civilizations are out there. Seven variables, and almost nobody agrees on a single one of them.

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Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For two thousand years the Library of Alexandria has stood in for everything humanity has ever lost. It's near the top of every list of history's great tragedies.

Ask what was actually in it, though, and the answers get vague fast. Scrolls, obviously. How many? Which ones? Gone how, and gone when?

Historians have been arguing about it for longer than the library was open. Today, we answer it.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everybody learns the same fact in school. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. It's on the patent, it's in the textbooks, and it leaves quite a lot out.

On the very same day Bell filed his patent, another man filed a claim of his own. And a third had been working on the idea for years before either of them, but couldn't afford to keep his paperwork current.

What happened next involves a courthouse, a great deal of money, and an argument that outlived all three of them.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seven days, seven names. You say them constantly and have probably never once wondered where they came from.

The trail runs through Roman planets and Norse gods, and some of the names sitting on your calendar are older than the calendar itself.

One day broke ranks with all the others, and it isn't the one you'd guess.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For most of human history, nobody knew what was making them sick. The leading theory blamed bad air, and it held for centuries.

Then a few people started noticing things nobody else was looking at. A hospital ward with a death rate that made no sense. A neighborhood water pump. A flask with a strangely shaped neck.

Almost nobody believed any of them at the time. One of them was ruined for being right.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every other business in America wants your money seven days a week. Car dealerships, across most of the country, will not sell you a car on a Sunday.

It isn't tradition, and it isn't dealers being generous with their weekends. The real reason is written into law in a surprising number of states, and it started long before anyone was selling cars.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's on t-shirts, on posters, and on the walls of coffee shops in the ‘90s.

Everybody can recite it. Almost nobody can tell you what it means. Three letters and a number, written by a 26 year old patent clerk in a paper only three pages long. He wasn't sure he was right at the time.

What it's actually claiming about the chair you're sitting in is stranger than the physics lesson you're expecting.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somewhere in the history books there's a war so short most people assume the number is a typo.

Real warships, real casualties, two actual governments.

It started with a sudden death, a palace, and a man who decided not to ask permission. Britain gave him a deadline. He ignored it.

How long it actually lasted is the part nobody believes.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everybody knows Van Gogh cut off his ear. Almost nobody knows why.

The real answer starts about ten years earlier, with a man who had already failed at four careers and hadn't yet picked up a paintbrush. What happened between then and that night in Arles is stranger than the version you've heard, and so is what he did in the hours right after.

One argument, one night, and a century later historians still can't agree on it.

────────────────

Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.