Bygone Worlds: The Fascinating History of How We Used to Live
Bygone Worlds is history that pulls you completely out of your modern life and immerses you in another time and place. Through rich and meditative storytelling that vividly appeals to all your senses, you’ll travel from the kitchens of Elizabethan England where Turnspit Dogs helped cook meals to the Silk Road where two monks broke China’s centuries long monopoly on silk to the shores of America where the US Life Saving Service rescued over 170,000 people before the Coast Guard was even invented. While other history podcasts focus on wars and famous figures, we illuminate the captivating corners of daily life you've probably never heard about. Whether you listen at bedtime or during your day, kids and adults can step back in time to learn about lives you never knew existed and feel like you lived them.
Bygone Worlds: The Fascinating History of How We Used to Live
What Did People Do Before Raincoats?
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Getting soaked wasn't just unpleasant. Wet clothing in cold air pulls heat from the body continuously — over days and weeks of incomplete drying, it suppresses the immune system, worsens infections, and kills. Soldiers, sailors, agricultural workers and anyone else who spent long hours outdoors in wet weather knew this. Most of them had very little they could do about it. This is the story of what they tried: waxed linen in ancient Egypt, oiled silk in Han Dynasty China, unwashed wool reeking of lanolin in the Scottish Highlands, and eventually a Glasgow chemist who sandwiched dissolved rubber between two pieces of fabric and invented the mackintosh. But the best solution of all — a garment that was completely waterproof, fully breathable, and functionally identical to Gore-Tex — was invented and perfected roughly five thousand years ago.