Category: DailyShorts

For the last 300 years, a debate has raged between mathematicians about who should be credited with the invention of calculus: Sir Isaac Newton or Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. The sides of the debate have mostly been based on geography with English mathematicians advocating for Newton, and Continental Europeans siding with Leibnitz. Learn more about the war over calculus, even if you’ve never taken a calculus course in your life, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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We are often told that schools are where you learn how to think, not what to think. Sadly, almost no school curriculum deals directly with logic and the closely related subject of logical fallacies. Fallacies are all around us. Just read something online or watch a few minutes of television and you’ll probably encounter examples of people using fallacious reasoning and logical fallacies. In fact, you’ve probably engaged in it yourself. We’re all guilty of it.

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At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Dick Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the men’s high jump.  He did it by jumping an Olympic record 2.24 meters or 7 feet, four inches.  What was remarkable about his accomplishment wasn’t the height he jumped, but how it did it. He didn’t just win a gold medal, he revolutionized the sport of high jumping. Learn more about the Fosbury Flop on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of independent podcasts from PRX.

A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.

Music

• Them by Nils Frahm

• Feathers by Poppy Ackroyd

Notes

• You can read Myles Horton’s book.

• I found The Birth of Citizen Schools: Entwining the Struggles for Literacy and Freedom by David P. Levine particularly useful.

• And especially Clare Russell’s “A Beautician Without Teacher Training: Bernice Robinson, Citizen Schools and women in the Civil Rights Movement.”

Thomas Edison is often credited with the invention of the light bulb. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. If there is any modern invention that really can’t be attributed to a single person, it would be the incandescent lightbulb. Learn about the history behind the incandescent light bulb, perhaps the most significant invention of the 19th century, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Eliud Kipchoge is unquestionably the greatest marathon runner in history. He’s won an Olympic Gold Medal, holds the world’s record, and has won 12 of the 13 marathons he has ever entered. However, there was one accomplishment that had been out of reach for Kipchoge and every other marathoner: The 2-hour marathon. On October 12, 2019, Kipchoge managed to break that barrier under some very special circumstances.

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Today the world can communicate with text, images, audio, and video at the speed of light. Most of this is done via undersea fiber optic cables which connect the various continents to each other. All of this modern long-distance communication has its start with the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The first long-distance submarine communications cable which connected Europe and North America in 1858.

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Many people think that politics and elections in the United States are the most controversial they have ever been.  History, however, begs to differ. Perhaps the oddest and most controversial presidential election in American history was the election of 1824. It is an election that doesn’t get a lot of attention given who won and the lack of major issues at stake, but it is one which more people should be familiar with.

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