Hello and welcome to this Our Fake History throwback episode. Today I'm throwing you all the way back to season two, episode,

episode 34, did Archimedes build a death ray? This one was really fun to revisit.

Sometimes when I go back and listen to the older episodes, especially from the first couple of seasons,

I often cringe a little bit. I was still kind of figuring out the podcast, especially

in that first season, and there's so many things that I hear in it that I certainly wouldn't do

now. But this one made me feel really good, because when I listened back to it, I was like,

oh yeah, this is when the show was really clicking. By season two, I think I more or less had it

figured out. I think episode 34 still stands as one of the stronger one-offs I've ever created.

Now, it doesn't hurt that there's a very cool story at the heart of this episode.

Archimedes is a fascinating character, and there's nothing more fun than evaluating the reality of ancient superweapons.

Now, I'm throwing you back to this episode now because it acts as a perfect bridge between our last

topic and our next topic.

As we talked about in the last episode, Edgar Allan Poe was deeply interested in science,

and as such was a lifelong admirer of Archimedes.

In fact, before Edgar Allan Poe died, the last significant work that he

created was a lecture entitled Eureka. This was an obvious reference to the famous story of

Archimedes having a breakthrough in the bathtub and then running naked through the streets screaming

Yorika.

And of course, that's one of the stories we get into today on this throwback episode.

So what does it have to do with the next topic?

Well, this episode is all about Archimedes' amazing superweapons, like the claw of Archimedes,

his adjustable catapults, his highly accurate scorpions, and of course, the fabled death ray.

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