The King's Letters

The King's Letters

Author: DamnInteresting.com August 6, 2016 Duration: 19:40
The 15th-century scholar who upset the Korean aristocracy by creating a native script for the Korean language, and thus wean it off Chinese characters.

The stories that shape our world are often hidden in plain sight, waiting for the right moment to reveal their strange and significant details. That's the territory explored by Damn Interesting, a narrative-driven podcast from the team at DamnInteresting.com. Each episode is a deep and immersive dive into a true story, told with the care and pacing of an audiobook. You'll find yourself pulled into meticulously researched accounts from the overlapping realms of science, medicine, history, and human behavior. One week might unravel a forgotten medical mystery, while the next could detail a pivotal, overlooked moment in technological history or a psychological phenomenon that explains more than we'd like to admit. This podcast is built on the conviction that reality, when examined closely, is far more compelling than fiction. The narration is clear and engaging, designed to make complex subjects accessible and to transform historical footnotes into gripping narratives. It’s for anyone with a restless curiosity about the how and why of things, offering those satisfying moments of connection where disparate facts suddenly click into place. Listening feels like uncovering a series of fascinating secrets, each story selected for its inherent ability to surprise and make you reconsider a piece of the world.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 73

Damn Interesting
Podcast Episodes
The Derelict [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:53
Under ordinary circumstances, the final evening of a cruise aboard the luxury turbo-electric ocean liner SS Morro Castle was a splendid event. Hundreds of lady and gentlemen passengers would gather in the Grand Ballroom…
Surface Tension [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:22
Low-pressure weather systems are a familiar feature of the winter climate in the northern Atlantic. While they often drive wind, rain, and other unpleasantness against Europe’s rocky western margin, this is typically on…
Welcome To The Jungle [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:15
In 1744, a young geographer living in Spanish-colonial Peru with his wife and children decided the time had come to move the family back to his native France. Jean Godin des Odonais had come to Peru in 1735 as a part of…
The Clockmaker [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:12
It was the middle of a cool September night in Munich, Germany. The year was 1939. In an otherwise unoccupied auditorium, a man knelt on hands and knees chiseling a square hole into a large stone pillar. The lights were…
White Death [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:59
In April of 1938, representatives from the USSR approached the Finnish government and expressed a concern that Nazi Germany could attempt to invade Russia, and such an attack might come through parts of Finland. The Finn…
Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Spuds of War [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 13:13
Staple though it is today, the lowly potato had a hard time reaching its preeminent status in Western cuisine. Perhaps its lengthy purgatory has something to do with the tale that when Sir Walter Raleigh gave some potato…
Absolute Zero is 0K [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:17
Near the heart of Scotland lies a large morass known as Dullatur Bog. Water seeps from these moistened acres and coalesces into the headwaters of a river which meanders through the countryside for nearly 22 miles, until…
It Came From Beneath The Sea [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:36
Alarming events were in store for Sicily at the beginning of the summer of 1831. On 28 June, small earthquakes rocked the western end of the island, and these continued occurring day after day. On 4 July, the unpleasant…
The Supernatural Bunnymother Of Surrey [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:48
The men from London arrived just in time to see Mary Toft give birth to her fifteenth rabbit. It was the winter of 1726, and Nathaniel St. André and Samuel Molyneux arrived in the market town of Godalming in Surrey to me…
Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo's Nest [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:39
Sometime in the 1940s an improbable encounter occurred at a mental institution in Maryland. Two women, each of whom was institutionalized for believing she was the Virgin Mary, chanced upon one another and engaged in con…