Hosted by Greg and Sharon Ross, Futility Closet is an interactive exploration of the popular website that catalogs more than 7,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. Each episode will answer listener questions, discuss recent popular posts on the site, share readers' contributions on previous topics, present intriguing leads that we've encountered in our research, and offer a contest in which listeners can match their wits.
Will New Year's Day fall on a weekend in the year 2063? If calendar reformer Moses Cotsworth had succeeded, anyone in the world could have answered that question instantly — any of us could name the day of the week on which any future date would fall, no matter how distant. We'll examine Cotsworth's plan and discover how it found a home inside one well-known American company.
We'll also look at how an antique dollhouse offers a surprising window into 17th-century Dutch history, explore a curious puzzle in an Alfred Hitchcock film, and invite you to participate in the first Futility Closet Challenge. (See show notes for the episode.)
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