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Wonders of the World: the podcast that visits the great places on Earth to tell the story of our people, our civilization, and our planet.
I blundered and started working on the wrong episode. I can't cover the Red Fort without having first talked about the Taj Mahal because tha...
The Himalaya are the highest and greatest mountain range on earth, and their importance to Asian culture and history cannot be overstated. 1...
The Naqsh-e Jahan Square is a remarkable example of urban planning, the centerpiece of the grand imperial capital of Esfahan, Iran. The capi...
Perhaps the most ethereal and beautiful astronomical sight available to regular old humans, the auroras borealis and australis, the Northern...
February 8th! Got to https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ for tickets! And use the promo code WONDERS to get 10% off! It'll be great!
The Rhine River flows through the heartland of western Germany, through a gorge passing an average of one castle per mile. Reisling vineyard...
Nestled on a bend of the Vltava River, the beautiful town of Český Krumlov is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe. It's also...
They say a giant man of clay sits in the attic, waiting for centuries for his instructions. The story of the Golem in Prague is one of the c...
You've seen it on a million pizza boxes, in a thousand Italian restaurants, and in photos of your Dad pretending to hold it up. It's the Lea...
The youngest of the world's seven largest religions is Sikhism, founded in Punjab in the 16th century. Nanak, a guru, or teacher, from outsi...
One of the world's great museums of Renaissance art: the Uffizi. Meaning "the offices," the Uffizi were quite literally built as an office b...
A quick bonus episode about how eclipses connect with human history
Towering above the city of Madurai, the gopurams or gateways of the Meenakshi Amman Temple are medieval skyscrapers, awash in color, writhin...
In the late 1500s Poland and Lithuania joined to create the Commonwealth, a remarkable, if flawed, experiment in constitutional monarchy tha...
Suleiman the Magnificent? Suleiman the Lawgiver? Suleiman the Bisexual Poet? No matter how you label him, Suleiman was a fascinating sultan...
The world-famous "lost city of the Inca". It wasn't a city, and it wasn't lost, but yes, it was made by the Inca. The incredibly scenic form...
It's all too much for me to take - the Beatles, 1969
He was from the richest city in Ming China, or one of the richest, and after his checkered political career, he came home and planted a gard...
Monarch butterflies are tiny, ephemeral creatures, whose audacious color patterns makes them beloved across a continent, yet few realize how...
A brief update about the show!
Just a little 440-room hunting lodge built among other chateaux in France's Loire Valley, Chambord is the grand dame of them all. Built for...
The largest episode on the smallest country. It's the city-state home of the Catholic Church, a neighborhood of Rome, home to some of the gr...
The enormous church on the banks of the Tejo, carved with ropes and knots and anchors as though it were going to sea itself, represents the...
The best example of Sahelian mud-brick architecture, the great mosque seems like a sandcastle rising from the Niger Inland Delta in Mali. Or...
Officially, this episode is on the amazing glowing algae living in the waters of three of Puerto Rico's bays, most notably Puerto Mosquito o...
The once and future political center of Russia, the brick-walled Kremlin dates from the Middle Ages, but received its boost when a Byzantine...
Is it the world's most famous prison? Or a magnificent medieval castle steeped in history? The Tower has stood over London since the days of...
A quick apology for the delay in the next episode
It stands on a promontory jutting into the Bosphorus, a pleasure palace of sultans and their harem. Its tiled walls, fountains and pools are...
Welcome to the Wonders of the World! In this podcast, we'll visit the Earth's great places to tell the story of our people, our civilization...
Like a giant bell covered in gold, Shwedagon Pagoda lords over Yangon, Myanmar (Burma)'s skyline. Its story is much like Burma's: elusive, m...
Ulugh Beg was the Astronomer King of Samarkand, who in one of the richest cities of the Silk Road, built a madrassa and observatory to chart...
It's the largest masonry dome ever built, its terracotta curves dominating the Florence skyline. The story of how that dome was built is the...
It's one of the most glorious seascapes on earth: thousands of limestone pillars rising from the bay, clothed in jungle green. Listener Emma...
It's unfathomably huge. The Forbidden City, a city within the city, and the Yongle emperor's crowning achievement, is almost too big to comp...
A Star Wars special! For May 4, 2021, I contributed a mini-episode for the No Redeeming Qualities podcast's annual Star Wars Day special. To...
A majestic pavilion crowned in blue, the Temple of Heaven stands as one of the crowning architectural triumphs of the Yongle Emperor, a man...
The largest brick castle of its day sits along the delta of the Vistula, a testament to the power and prestige of the order of crusading kni...
A bonus episode introducing the new host of Wonders of the World
Its gold walls reflected in the pond at its feet, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kinkaku-ji, is glorious in any season. It was originall...
Stunning medieval monasteries perched on infinitely steep precipices, the monasteries of Meteora are sanctuaries in the sky. But what happen...
Nestled in the mountains of southwestern Andalucia, Granada's magnificent Alhambra palace represents the last hurrah of Moorish architecture...
It was the world's tallest building, 632 years after work started: an exercise in persistence. Cologne Cathedral is a Gothic masterpiece. Co...
A Hindu island in the world's largest majority Muslim country, Bali is world-renowned for its natural and cultural beauty. But underneath th...
Some call him the richest person in human history. Whether that's true, Mansa Musa of Mali shook up the world with his gold-laden hajj throu...
East vs West? Maybe. We're off to Iran to greet the rise of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the world's greatest by this point in history. Be...
Note: This episode contains a bit of profanity. The swampy county of Flanders was the richest part of Europe in the 14th century, fueled by...
It's a great wall. A really great wall. It also never really did its job. Among those who so easily moved past the Great Wall were the Mongo...
Chartres Cathedral and its magnificent stained glass represent perhaps the greatest achievement of the High Gothic. Its story is linked to t...
When you think of Ethiopia, you might think of famine in the 1980s. You might not think of a millenia-old culture, one of the powers of the...