The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

By Mark Chrisler

Arts Natural Sciences History Design

What's The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong about?

Did you know that Europeans used to believe that sheep grew from Mongolian trees? Have you heard about the misbegotten discovery of a new form of water in the 1960s that set off a cold war arms race? Ever seen the gleaming Las Vegas hotel that accidentally shoots heat rays at poolside guests?

The Constant is an audio history of getting things wrong. From ancient science to contemporary blunders, we take you on journeys of misadventure and misapprehension, filling your brain with juicy nuggets of the sometimes comical, sometimes tragical and always fascinating ways people mess things up.

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The Lead Age

06.15.2021

Clair Cameron Patterson discovered the true age of the Earth, and in the process, the greatest environmental catastrophe in human history.Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant)Get a free trial of Literati by going to ...

The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong episodes:

06.15.2021 The Lead Age Clair Cameron Patterson discovered the true age of the Earth, and in the process, the greatest environmental catastrophe in human history.Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant)Get a free trial of Literati by going to ...
06.01.2021 It's a Date How old is the world? There're only fifteen or twenty ways to find out!Get $75 credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/theconstant (http://www.indeed.com/theconstant)Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstantGet a free trial of Literati by ...
05.21.2021 Introducing The Vaping Fix Two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs set out to rid the world of smoking with an incredible new product. The device stands to disrupt the tobacco industry and make them rich, until it falls into the wrong hands and lives are ...
05.18.2021 Death Rays (Part Two (Electric Boogaloo)) Here it is! The Big Bad Boys of Death Ray History: Axis vs. Allies, Marconi vs. Tesla, and barely anything about the mysterious Japanese WWII monkey shortage that is picking the inside of my brain bloody. Get $75 credit to ...
05.04.2021 Death Rays This one does what it says on the tin: instantly kills you with a beam of indeterminate provenance! What other podcast can promise that? Aside from Roman Mars, obviously.Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant)Visit ...
04.23.2021 Introducing In God We Lust A woman named Becki is lounging by the pool at the Fontainebleau Hotel when she decides to proposition a strapping pool attendant. Go on a date with her...and her husband. What begins as an unconventional proposition will soon throw them ...
04.20.2021 Don't Know Much About History Nobody paid much attention to Jean Hardouin in 1729 when he said that all of history was faked. But since then, his message has found a lot more receptive ears. Meet your newest conspiratorial friends: The Chronology Truthers. Get $75 ...
04.06.2021 It's All a Lie What if I told you everything you knew was a lie? Okay, well what if a 17th century French librarian told you everything you knew was a lie?Check out Don't Stop for Monkeys (https://dontstopformonkeys.weebly.com/), or else.Get 10% off your first ...
03.23.2021 Zoo Story On March 8th, 1874, the animals escaped from The Central Park Zoo. Check out Don't Stop for Monkeys (https://dontstopformonkeys.weebly.com/), or else.Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant)Visit our Patreon here (https://patreon.com/theconstant).BUY OUR MERCH, YOU FILTHY ...
03.09.2021 Crackpots Some things are ordered and some are chaotic. This story is neither.Get $75 credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/theconstant (http://www.indeed.com/theconstant)Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant)Visit our Patreon here (https://patreon.com/theconstant).BUY OUR MERCH, YOU ...
02.23.2021 On The Rocks What do the modern flat earth movement, the history of animal experimentation, the invention of civil engineering, ballet, pantomime, and the first British robot all have in common?The Eddystone Lighthouse.Get $75 credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/theconstant (http://www.indeed.com/theconstant)Get ...
02.09.2021 How to Solve a Murder (Pt 3) We no longer make people walk hot coals, or swim witches, or touch dead bodies. But everything we know about solving crime is still wrong.The National Registry of Exonerations (https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx)2009 NAS Report (https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf)The Innocence Project (https://innocenceproject.org/)The Story of Gary Dotson ...
01.26.2021 How to Solve a Murder (Pt 2) On part two of this three part series on forensics, we're bridging the gap, between the ancient and modern means of solving crimes. How did forensic science get into courts in the first place? And is it actually science at ...
01.12.2021 How to Solve a Murder (Pt 1) Fingerprints, DNA, blood spatter, ballistics. Before any of those forensic sciences, investigators and courts had a very different suite of tools for solving crime. On this episode, we're looking at some of them. Get 10% off your first month of ...
12.15.2020 Lick The Earth For the last episode of 2020, we're returning to our fair city, Chicago, for the unlikely story of a hard-scrapple hobo who formed his own independent, autonomous district on the non-existent east side of town, which he managed to keep ...
12.01.2020 It's a Secret to Everybody For The Constant's third birthday, here are three stories out of the secret feed. Medicinal gold, the story of theater's greatest Hamlet, and a melancholy Christmas tale, all for you. Visit https://andstillivote.org/YOUR-Story-Matters/ (https://andstillivote.org/YOUR-Story-Matters/) to join the fight for voting rights ...
11.17.2020 Deserted In September of 1822, a ship carrying 70 immigrants left London bound for St. Joseph, a bustling city on The Mosquito Coast in the small Central American nation of Poyais. They were followed by hundreds more pilgrims, all looking for ...
11.03.2020 Presidents in Bathtubs How do you thread the needle between political and apolitical, frivolous and serious, fun and relevant, on this extremely stressful election day? I don't know, but here's an episode about presidential bathtubs. Visit andstillivote.org (https://publish.blubrry.com/content/andstillivote.org) to join the fight for ...
10.20.2020 Gef It's almost Halloween, so how's about a spooky bonfire tale. The spookiest story from the spookiest place we can think of. The story of Gef, The Talking Mongoose. Visit andstillivote.org (andstillivote.org) to join the fight for voting rights today. Get ...
10.06.2020 1876 This is the story of the worst American presidential election (so far). Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus by going to https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant (https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant)Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant) Visit our Patreon ...
09.22.2020 The Rest of The Story In 1899 a plan was hatched. To start a war? To sell newspapers? Or to tear down The Great Wall of China?Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus by going to https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant (https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant)Get 10% off your first month ...
09.08.2020 In The Air Tonight (I Can Feel It) You know what you haven't heard enough about recently? How disease spreads. On this episode we finally circle back to the oft mentioned miasma theory, AKA Bad Air Make You Sick. Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus ...
08.25.2020 Run for Your Life There was no Olympics this year, but it's almost the anniversary of the single worst event in the history of the games: The 1904 Olympic Marathon. Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus by going to https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant (https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant)Get ...
08.11.2020 Apocalypse Now and Then Some days it feels like we're living at the end of the world. And by "some days" I mean "literally every day ever". Take a ride with us through some of the best apocalypses to never happen! Check out Heather's ...
07.28.2020 Real Facts, and Beer Here is a story about the city I love, Chicago.Get a free trial of The Great Courses Plus by going to: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant (https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/theconstant)Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant) Visit our Patreon here (https://patreon.com/theconstant).Music by:Blue ...
07.14.2020 Reductio Ad Absurdum The Earth is Flat! That is the conclusion that many ancient societies once drew. Then, in the 19th century, belief in the flat earth started to return, and in the last decade this easily disprovable fallacy has celebrated a remarkable ...
06.16.2020 Fish Story Sharks have been known to eat a lot of weird stuff. Fur coats, license plates, cannonballs, chicken coups, even a suit of armor. But the strangest thing ever found within the belly of a shark was... a bundle of papers. ...
06.02.2020 The Cold, Hard Truth, Pt 2 Two men, two islands, two claims for The North Pole. In part two of The Cold, Hard, Truth we're looking at the expedition formed in the wake of Peary and Cook's battle for The Pole. An expedition formed with the ...
05.19.2020 The Cold, Hard Truth, Pt 1 On September 7th, 1909, The New York Times announced that Robert Peary was the first person to ever reach The North Pole. But a week earlier, The New York Herald had said the same thing about Frederick Cook. Only one ...
05.05.2020 The Airship In December of 1909, the vice president of a Worcester Massachusetts steamfitting company decided he wanted to fly. This is his story. Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant) and entering discount code "theconstant". Visit ...
04.21.2020 Use The Accident Here's a change of pace: what about stuff we got wrong for the better? On this episode we've got 13 short stories of mistakes that went right. From jazz to physics to chemistry to frozen dessert, we've got it all. ...
04.07.2020 True Crime Hey! I think we invented a new kind of podcast this week! It's a crime story, but it's also true. We're calling it "True Crime". I think there might be a market for this!Get a free trial of The Great ...
03.24.2020 Light and Shadow of American Life In almost seventy episodes chronicling bad ideas and loopy frauds through the ages one name has come up again and again. From phrenology to mesmerism to a strange ghostly bowl of molasses, he's the Forrest Gump of 19th century pseudo-science. ...
03.10.2020 The Foolkiller Pt 5: The White Whale Here we are. We've examined arctic explorers, secret armies, zany daredevils, Wisconsin whiz kids and so many more only to come up empty. This is the end of the rope. Can we solve the mystery of The Foolkiller, the submarine ...
02.25.2020 The Foolkiller Pt 4: The Unusual Suspects We're onto the long shots now: An Irish-American secret society bent on war with Canada, a kid genius out of Oshkosh and an Indiana shoe factory owner. With so few options left, one of them--surely--must be the creator of The ...
02.11.2020 The Foolkiller Pt 3: The Man from The East Amid all the confusing and contradictory reporting that accompanied the discovery of The Foolkiller submarine in 1915 Chicago, there are a handful of mentions of an "Eastern man". On this episode, we look through the annals of submarine history in ...
01.28.2020 The Foolkiller Pt 2: Infinite Distress A proper story has three acts, but the story of The Foolkiller submarine is missing two of them. Today, we're looking at act 2: the brief window of time during which we know where this giant steel craft was. We're ...
01.14.2020 The Foolkiller Pt 1: Tears Falling from The Sky In November of 1915, a submarine was found at the bottom of The Chicago River. It had been there for at least ten years, was 40 feet long, and contained the remains of a man and his dog. To this ...
12.30.2019 It's Wonderful Redux For our last episode of 2019 and season 6, we're revisiting last year's Christmas episode. Stick around through the end to hear a tease for next season's big multi-part opening story, and check out these other podcasts from the top ...
12.17.2019 The Christmas Bullet Throw on another yule log and gather round the fire For a new Constant episode is about to transpire It's a holiday one, though it contains little joy About a con named Christmas and his terrible ploy Visit our Patreon ...
12.03.2019 Perpetuum Mobile Happy Second Birthday to The Constant! To celebrate, we're tackling the story that everyone advised Mark not to tell, that Mark himself failed over and over again to write: The Brownian Ratchet. And along the way, we're dropping into a ...
11.19.2019 Suck and Blow Everything you've ever learned about physics, chemistry, astronomy, and even biology, is wrong. That was the conclusion reached by Alfred Lawson, major league pitcher, avionics pioneer, populist political leader and the founder of the stupidest university ever: The University of ...
11.05.2019 Necessity In the first century BC, The Greek philosopher Carneades asked a question: is it moral to kill an innocent person to preserve your own life? Two thousand years later, a court in England settled the matter, once and for all. ...
10.22.2019 The Curse Did someone say "more mummies"? No? You didn't hear that? It sounded like "more mummies" but it was kind of muffled and droning? OH GOD WHAT'S THAT!? It's still October, and we're still being spooky. This week, it's the story ...
10.08.2019 Chewing The Fat In 2009, Peruvian police offered a disturbing solution to the murders of 46 people in the city of Trujillo. It was sensational, shocking and unbelievable. Yet, it was tied to a long, rich--and now largely forgotten--part of western history: using ...
09.24.2019 A Pain in The Glass In April of 1954, Seattle was home to one of the weirdest events in American history: residents were gripped with fear as a mysterious force roamed the city, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage in its wake. Despite ...
09.10.2019 A Dreamcast Deferred On 9/9/99 The Sega Dreamcast had the most successful product launch of literally any commercial product in history. It quickly came to dominate the market, outperforming all its competition. Less than a year and a half later, it was dead, ...
08.27.2019 The Forty Six Dollar Man While shooting an episode in a Carnival Funhouse, the production team of The Six Million Dollar Man made a gruesome discovery: a mummified human corpse, painted neon red and mistakenly hung from a noose as a cheap scare. And the ...
08.13.2019 Madagascar This is the story of an island, and the worst thing to never happen there. Find our Patreon here (https://patreon.com/theconstant). Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting http://betterhelp.com/theconstant (http://betterhelp.com/theconstant) and entering discount code "theconstant".And visit https://www.fullstackacademy.com/constant ...
07.30.2019 The Golden Episode It's our fiftieth episode! Our golden anniversary! You know what we got you? The Lost City of Gold: El Dorado. We know, we shouldn't have. Seriously, we really shouldn't have. Find our Patreon here (https://patreon.com/theconstant).Get 10% off your first month ...

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