Quarter-Arsed History presents: the story of Victor Lustig, a conman who managed to scam someone into buying the Eiffel Tower - potentially more than once.

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In this week's episode, get across a crisis that posed a potentially existential threat to official international cricket in the 1970s, when media mogul Kerry Packer established a private, unofficial cricketing competition known as World Series Cricket.

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Coinage has supported local, regional, and global economies for millennia, ever since we figured out that having a convenient way to store and transfer value was actually a pretty good idea.

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Quarter-Arsed History presents: a brief (and woefully inadequate) overview of humanity's maritime history - from prehistoric wooden canoes to mighty oceangoing container ships.

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In this week's episode, get to know Xerxes I of the Achaemenid Empire, and think about why his historical legacy is perceived in the way that it is today. 

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Concrete is, unbelivably, the second-most-used substance in the world - second only to water - and has a truly fascinating history, its secrets lost to time for a millennia or so before re-emerging in the modern era.

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Apologies - I didn't manage to get today's episode recorded and edited in time before leaving on a brief overseas trip. I'll be back next week and should have the show up by the 1st or 2nd of March.

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Quarter-Arsed History presents: the story of how humanity mastered fire, and the many ways in which this changed us as a species - technologically, culturally, and even biologically.

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In this week's episode, meet Harriet Tubman, the US activist and abolitionist who aided countless enslaved people in securing their freedom before she went on to take part in the American Civil War. 

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Rubber has a history that is a lot longer than you might expect - it dates back over 3,500 years, to ancient Mesopotamia, and has had a long and interesting journey to become the commonplace material it is today.

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