A cat lies on your lap, purring contentedly. Suddenly it snaps to attention. Its whiskers twitch. Its ears stand up. It launches itself at the windowsill. It makes a strange sound and bats at the window. It’s after a squirrel on the back fence.That’s a cat for you. Cats outnumber dogs as the favorite pet of Americans. The cat is also a skillful predator. It’s designed by nature for hunting mice and other small animals.
Crusades
The city of Jerusalem is a holy place to three religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Many important events in the history of these religions took place in Jerusalem and the surrounding Holy Land. Between the year 1096 and the late 1200s, Christians fought a series of wars against Muslims—followers of Islam. These wars were called the Crusades. The Crusades were fought for control of the Holy Land.
Who was the youngest man ever elected to be president of the United States? The answer is John F. Kennedy, the nation’s 35th president. Kennedy won the presidency at the age of 43.
Kennedy was the first American president born in the 20th century. He was also the first president of the Catholic faith. But Kennedy’s time as the nation’s leader was cut short. He was assassinated during his third year as president.
She was a simple peasant girl who couldn’t read or write. Yet Joan of Arc united France and helped free her country from English rule. Today, she is remembered as one of the greatest heroines in history.
When most people think about Earth, they think about land. You’ve probably spent your entire life on land. If you look at a globe, however, you can see that there is not as much land as water. Most of the Earth is covered by water, and most of that water is salty. Almost all of the salt water is connected into one huge ocean. The ocean covers almost two-thirds of the Earth.
Other waterfalls are higher than Niagara Falls, but Niagara Falls is one of the most famous. Why? Because the great beauty and immense size of Niagara Falls make it one of North America’s most spectacular natural wonders!
Learn about the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and other mysteries in Great Mysteries Series, a new series from English Plus Podcast. A new series that will fire up your imagination and lead you to think about some unanswered questions in science, people, history, religion, myth and more.
If a pig weighed as much as a pickup truck it might look something like a river hippopotamus. A hippopotamus, or hippo, is an animal that lives in Africa. Like a pig, it has a tubby body, big head, and short, thick neck. In fact, the hippopotamus is a distant relative of the pig.
Brave, bold, and brutally successful—he was known as Charlemagne (Charles the Great). Charlemagne is remembered as one of history’s great leaders. This warrior king succeeded in building an empire that united much of Europe.
As a boy, Jean Chrétien was often picked on. A childhood illness left his face partially paralyzed. It also made him deaf in one ear. When he was teased about these things, he would fight back, and sometimes get in trouble.
There was a moment when who you are started mattering more than how good you are. Here’s what changed, what we gained, and the quiet bill now coming due.
Fame isn’t random luck or a shadowy conspiracy — it’s a business model. A deep dive into superstar economics, the algorithm, and the dopamine lottery that keeps us all playing.
You don’t need to quit everything to be a writer. A warm, dryly funny journal entry on the day job, the starving artist myth, and why “give up all else” is the worst advice in the arts.
Five thousand years of history bring us to the hardest questions: what policies actually protect people, what evidence says about different approaches, and what it would mean to organize our response to commercial sex around the genuine interests of the most vulnerable people involved.
The internet transformed commercial sex as radically as anything since the industrial revolution — enabling greater autonomy for some, creating new vectors for exploitation for others, and producing a legislative and ethical landscape that nobody has figured out how to navigate. This episode examines FOSTA-SESTA, OnlyFans, the trafficking-platform debate, and where we actually stand.
Beneath the historical narrative is an economic structure — one characterized by specific mechanisms of recruitment, control, and profit extraction that have remained remarkably consistent across centuries and continents. This episode examines the business of commercial sex as a business: how it actually operates, how exploitation is maintained, and where the money actually goes.
