Curious Minds Podcast

This episode will focus on a few of the lesser-known children of the Solar System neighborhood: The Oort Cloud, Kuiper's Belt & Dwarf Planets.

In the early 1980's Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF): a socio-technological movement that revolutionized the software world. In this episode we'll hear Stallman himself talking about the roots of the movement, and learn of its early struggles.

Humans have yet to have set foot on a different planet, but today, from their limited vantage point on Earth, astronomers are able to notice a few breathtaking phenomena that are beyond human imagination. This episode reveals some of the greatest, most amazing, violent and impressive meteorological phenomena seen on other planets in the Solar System.

In the previous part of the episode we learned how linguists were able to reconstruct bits of the ancient & long lost Indo-European language. In this episode we'll discover what can these words tell us about life in the Bronze Age, family ties and nomadic relationships. We'll also learn about the links between Genetics & Linguistics: a recent genetic finding that explains the unprecedented success of that language: a single lucky mutation that enabled the Yamna People, as they are called today, to digest milk.

A surprising discovery made by a British judge in India uncovered the existence of an ancient language, the ancestor of an amazing variety of modern languages - from English and French, to the Persian Farsi and Indian Sanskrit. The speakers of this language didn't leave any written evidence behind, but researchers were able to reconstruct it never the less. How? it's a kind of a fairy tale, really... ;-)

A journey to outer space has many dangers and challenges; but for those courageous astronauts, the trip might be worthwhile. Some of the planets and moons in the Solar System have views that are really, but really, out of this world: The Caloris Basin, Iapetus and Miranda.

The universe we live in is really big: It's vastness is difficult to even comprehend. That vastness is why, even if our universe is teeming with life, it is unlikely that we will ever meet other intelligent life forms. Let's take a closer look at the scales of distances, speeds and volumes in our universe.

How a single navigation error cost the Royal Navy Four battle ships and 1,505 men - and led a humble carpenter to solve one of the most difficult & important engineering challenges of the last 300 years.

In this episode, the last of the series, we'll learn about Stuxnet's creators and their motives - and get to know Duqu & Flame, Stuxnet's sinister sisters...

One of the urgent questions following Stuxnet's discovery was the identity of it's target. When this was finally revealed, it also exposed the extent of it's creator's brilliance.

When it was discovered in 2010, Stuxnet was the most complicated and sophisticated malware ever known. The Stuxnet attack was a terrifying display of cyberwarfare and jarring proof of concept.

Dr. Timothy Leary help kickstart the LSD's involvement in the Hippie movement of the 1960's - and was imprisoned for it. But what really makes LSD so dangerous? We'll delve deep into the effects of LSD on the human brain.

When Albert Hofmann accidentally discovered Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – LSD – he hoped that the unusual compound would help psychiatrists treat patients by inducing ‘temporary insanity’. It was the CIA who tested the LSD’s mind-bending potential as a psychological weapon, in a top-secret and horrifically cruel series of experiments known as MKULTRA.

In the 19th century, two brave (and some might say - insanely brave) French physicians took to the streets of Hong Kong and Bombay, and risked their own lives in the name of ridding Mankind - and the fleas - from their worst nightmare: The Black Death. This is their story, and the story of the humankind's bitter enemy throughout the ages: the Bubonic Plague.

The male Y Chromosome holds tantalizing clues about our own, personal past - but that past can turn out to be very troubling. Tatiana Zerjal's research on DNA samples brought by Spencer Wells from central asia revealed uncomfortable truths, such as the extent of rape and murder in Genghis Khan's Mongol empire. Do we really want to know the secrets our DNA holds?