As above really.
I have a wide variety of interests so random topics are fine.
I never really get into novels so just looking for interesting short stories about... whatever really.
For example, how a certain war started or a some interesting detail about a famous person, place, etc
Any thoughts please!
Try some podcasts ie
Stuff you should know &
Stuff you missed in history class, (but have some re occuring annoying ads). They have a wide range of topics, some better than others, but most are worth a listen.
If you go down the podcast Route then radiolab is good
Wikipedia is pretty good for that. Once you get going you can follow link after link to things you never you knew you wanted to know about.
The BBC also has a long reads section. A mix of more detail on current news and some pretty random stuff: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cxqvep8kqext/long-reads
If you like the more arcane end of science then you might like https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
I personally like a guy who can answer a question as stupid as:
If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?
Also don't discount youtube.
There is lots of great content on there on every topic
My current favourites are Kurzgesagt, VSauce and Veritasium
I think there's a web forum somewhere that purports to be about mountain biking but is full of random expertise on a surprising range of topics.
Sauce?
Definitely recommend Radiolab. Also The Memory Palace, which is almost exactly what you are after, but in podcast form. And wonderful.
Podcasts of In Our Time are good.
Also, you can liven up your Facebook feed with stuff like Atlas Obscura or Phys.org which are quality.
And seriously - this forum. Particularly for history but plenty of other topics - you can ask a fairly random question and get some in-depth responses and discussion from people who know stuff.
Wikipedia?
e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Crean_(explorer)
edit - nick beat me to it. Missed his first time round.
nickjb
Member
Wikipedia is pretty good for that. Once you get going you can follow link after link to things you never you knew you wanted to know about.
I used to subscribe to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_I_Know_(newsletter) (linking the Wikipedia page, because nowiknow.com seems to be a spam site despite the Google search preview looking legit)
Reddit r/TIL (Today I Learned) throws up some interesting ones quite regularly (although not all are 100% correct...)
I'm about half way through the book Outlaw Ocean, which is written by journalist Ian Urbina. To accompany the book there's also podcasts about different issues regarding the sea his various adventures in capturing the stories, and a music playlist. Below is a link to the podcasts
https://www.theoutlawocean.com/appearances/
the '99% Invisible' podcast has grown into long-form, quite conventionally structured radio programmes but the early episodes and supporting web stories were almost pop-song short bits of factual story telling - enjoyable for the factual content but also nice little audio objects in their own right - here's a nice example https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-11-99-undesigned-but-still-evil/
The "Futility Closet" website that backs up their podcast is an interesting trawl too - the podcasts themselves are nice, thoroughly researched programmes about odd and obscure facts and happenings but the website is a mix of bibliography of sources and links for further readings from the podcast content and repository for all the little oddities that don't make it into the podcast.