Shows
Spoken Wikipedia PodcastNorthern pintailThe pintail or northern pintail (Anas acuta) is a duck species with wide geographic distribution that breeds in the northern areas of Europe and across the Palearctic and North America. It is migratory and winters south of its breeding range as far as the equator. Unusually for a bird with such a large range, it has no geographical subspecies, although the possibly conspecific duck Eaton's pintail is considered to be a separate species.
The Northern Pintail is a large duck, and the long central tail feathers of the male give the species its English and scientific names. Both sexes have...
2026-10-0617 minSpoken Wikipedia PodcastGolden swallowThe golden swallow (Tachycineta euchrysea) is a swallow endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (split between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and was once native to Jamaica, but is now extirpated there. It is restricted to isolated montane forests that primarily consist of the Hispaniolan pine (Pinus occidentalis). This species is considered to be a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The exact cause of its extirpation from Jamaica is unknown, but likely factors include predation by introduced mammals and habitat loss, although the habitat loss theory is not supported by much evidence. The...
2026-09-2115 minSpoken Wikipedia PodcastArctic ternThe Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea) is a tern in the family Laridae. This bird has a circumpolar breeding distribution covering the Arctic and subarctic regions of Europe (as far south as Brittany), Asia, and North America (as far south as Massachusetts). The species is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later. Recent studies have shown average annual round-trip lengths of about 70,900 km (38,300 nmi) for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland, and about 48,700 km (26,300...
2026-09-1817 min
Spoken Wikipedia Podcast1968 Illinois earthquakeThe U.S. Midwestern state of Illinois was struck by its largest recorded earthquake (a New Madrid event) in 1968. Striking at 11:02 a.m. on November 9, it measured 5.3 on the Richter scale. Although no fatalities occurred, the event caused considerable structural damage to buildings, including the toppling of chimneys and shaking in Chicago, the region's largest city. The earthquake was one of the most widely felt in U.S. history, largely affecting 23 states over an area of 580,000 sq mi (1,500,000 km2). In studying its cause, scientists discovered the Cottage Grove Fault in the Southern Illinois Basin.
Within the region, millions felt the...
2026-08-2016 min
Spoken Wikipedia PodcastBlack American Sign LanguageBlack American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: Black deaf signers at Black schools and White deaf signers at White schools. As of the mid-2010s, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite public schools having been legally...
2026-08-0915 min
Spoken WikipediaCalifornia Condor<div style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGymnogyps_californianus_-San_Diego_Zoo-8a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="By Stacy from San Diego (california condor Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Gymnogyps californianus -San Diego Zoo-8a" height="133" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Gymnogyps_californianus_-San_Diego_Zoo-8a.jpg/512px-Gymnogyps_californianus_-San_Diego_Zoo-8a.jpg" width="200" /></a><br /><div...
2013-09-2535 min