We’ve been talking about life beyond Earth for decades and one of the best places to look (for starters) are the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could land a probe on one of them to have a little look around? But that won’t happen for decades, right?
Wrong. It already happened. In 2005, the Huygens probe descended to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It was a monumental achievement in space exploration.
Oh. Forgot that that one, huh? Okay, let’s try another.
Anyone remember when an entire country went bankrupt? You would if you were from Iceland. In 2008, the entire Icelandic banking collapsed forcing the nation to declare bankruptcy. But Iceland recovered by actually holding bankers accountable and initiating a series of financial reforms that are worth studying by other countries.
Don’t remember, huh? All right, one more.
What about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010? It was the largest marine oil spill in history and caused an incredible amount of environmental and economic damage. They made a movie about it along with a bunch of documentaries. Wiped from your mind, I see…
My point is that news and world events come at us so fast and from so many angles, they occupy all our attention for a hot minute. But then we either become overwhelmed, bored, or distracted by something else. We move on and forget—or bury the information deep.
I sometimes think we’re approaching the human limit of being able to process all the information that comes at us every second and if we can’t do that, we can’t learn any lessons from the past, we can’t understand why we are where we are now, and we can’t even predict where we might go in the future.
That’s why it’s important for us to stop, look back, and see what happened. This is chapter 9 of The 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the 21st Century—So Far.
Songs heard on this episode:
- Moby, Porcelain
- Chris Cornell, Nothing Compares 2 U
- Linkin Park, In the End
- White Stripes, Blue Orchid
- Thea Gimore, Mainstream
- U2, Until the End of the World (Live)
- Jack White, Lazaretto
- Eagles of Death Metal, I Love ou All the Time
- Man with No Name, Teleport
As usual, we have this playlist from Eric Wilhite.
The Ongoing History Music can be heard on these stations. Don’t forget that there’s a podcast version, too, in case you miss any episodes. Get them for free wherever you get your podcasts.
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 10am and 10pm
- 107-3 The Edge/Calgary – Sundays at 10am and 10pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sundays at 10anm and 10pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
Don’t forget about my other podcast, Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. If you love true crime with your music, you’ll love this. Get Uncharted wherever you get your podcasts.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Ad Choices