Omnibus

In which John Wayne buys a decommissioned minesweeper as his luxury yacht and it outlasts its more famous French sister ship, which is probably now full of slugs. Certificate #28232.

In which a failed periscope inventor predicts the greatest disaster of his time with apparently paranormal accuracy, and special guest Aimee Mann is warned away from the supernatural in no uncertain terms. Certificate #27264.

In which the west is won by long fleets of covered wagons "sailing" on to the Oregon Territory, and Ken thinks it was mistake to capitalize the Northwest Passage. Certificate #18089.

In which the European powers scramble to claim an infant pile of basalt in the Mediterranean, and John wonders how steampunk the Libyan submarine fleet might be. Certificate #50204.

In which John describes environmentally friendly modern alternatives to burial, and refuses to apologize for leaving an urn full of ashes under his piano for a decade. Certificate #37628.

In which amateur algebra experts figure out where the planets in the solar system should be, and are (briefly) proven right, and Ken gets his hair cut by a ghost. Certificate #36737.

In which the modern insurance industry is born when medieval Italian merchants form syndicates to manage risk, and Ken manages risk by making people order pancakes. Certificate #46598.

In which dumb campus fads return to the American spotlight in 1973 thanks to a mild winter and legions of nude undergrads, and John gradually remembers his own complicated streaking history. Certificate #41916.

In which the Great White North is serviced and explored by the greatest bush plane of all time, and Ken decides that aircraft shouldn't be named after bugs. Certificate #35435.

In which pre-Columbian civilizations spend thousands of years banging each other up with heavy rubber balls, and John tries to replace professional sports with stick-fighting. Certificate #28586.

In which a droll Long Island reporter and his newsroom buddies accidentally create one of the all-time great dirty books, and Ken is skeptical of the nudist lifestyle. Certificate #50150.

In which a hippie-hating cartoonist accidentally creates a (slightly) gender-equalizing campus tradition, and John spends hours poring over newspaper bridge columns. Certificate #44390.

In which a very old Native American trading pidgin becomes a regional language and 20th-century slang, and Ken goes to a movie theater that basically confessed to genocide. Certificate #5725.

In which the world's tallest tribe, if they even exist, are enslaved by Ferdinand Magellan and downsized by subsequent visitors, and John reminds us of the importance of good posture. Certificate #33392.

In which one rough night for a traveling salesman in Akron, Ohio births a new spiritual approach to addiction recovery, and Ken suggests some interesting anagrams for post-human Presbyterian listeners. Certificate #19544.

In which a generation of traumatized Japanese young people increasingly decide never to come out of their bedrooms, whereas John insists on dying alone. Certificate #50644.

In which we learn that ruminants are eating a lot more metal nowadays than they used to, and that Ken would like to have a gravel spoon at dinner. Certificate #28929

In which British documentarians and Austin slackers alike use the movies to unveil the mysteries of aging and mortality, and John leaves a series of women waiting for him at train stations in Spain. Certificate #48149

In which the 1980s fad for charity pop singles inspires an ambitious geographic stunt, and Ken plans a foolproof way to assassinate Jamie Farr. Certificate #26004

In which the bizarre 1989 American invasion of Panama kicks off our modern era of on-the-nose Pentagon naming conventions, and John is reminded of a dominatrix, as usual. Certificate #19345.

In which the First World War begins in an unexpected fashion, with two ocean liners blowing holes in each other off the coast of Brazil, and Ken gets gaslit into buying a tuxedo. Certificate #32056.

In which an African tribe proves so eager to please that they convince generations of ethnographers that alien visitors from Sirius are real, and John gets annoyed that ancient astronauts never invented baseball. Certificate #26731.

In which an early fast food boom, Greek immigration, and (of course) the World's Fair conspire to trick Ohioans into redefining "chili," and John gets justifiably upset about bananas on spaghetti. Certificate #24598.

In which a Vermonter with an ill-conceived dream brings skiiing very briefly to the Sooner State, and Ken attempts to secure his family some very rare Pokemon cards. Certificate #17398.

In which an American candy company refuses to honor a longstanding bit of playground lollipop lore, and Ken tries to calculate the homeopathic healing power of Tootsie Rolls. Certificate #33486.

In which Renaissance satirists and modern amateur historians accidentally create a physiologically impossible medieval device, and John has a theory about locksmiths and cocaine. Certificate #49406.

In which a forgotten medieval art of tree-harvesting is revived by the sustainability movement, and Ken blames the coming environmental catastrophe on "sugar energy." Certificate #22560.

In which the American architect of post-World War II global capitalism turns out to have a dark and traitorous secret, and John imagines he would be a huge hassle for his spy handlers. Certificate #25923.

In which we find General Motors and its corporate co-conspirators not guilty on the charge of killing American streetcar lines, and Ken gets very excited about funicular railways. Certificate #14871.

In which the president of the United States lies to the nation about how he got three ounces of crack cocaine into the Oval Office, and John is asked to leave a crime scene. Certificate #34620.

In which an ancient Mesopotamian board game briefly becomes a 1970s signifier for glamour and sophistication, and Ken's life is changed by an intense childhood game of Clue. Certificate #31179.

In which an outsider artist hides a rabbit by a statue and thereby gets a million people to start digging up the English countryside, and John "man-solves" a Satanic temple. Certificate #14162.

In which a room full of MIT train nerds becomes ground zero for modern American hacker culture and computer architecture, and Ken blames Star Wars for ruining children's toys. Certificate #33564.

In which the Byzantine throne is contested by various Machiavellian schemes willing to mutilate the noses of their political rivals, and John reveals which Marx brother he is most sexually attracted to. Certificate #34954.

In which a World War I army camp in northern Kentucky is chosen to house over $200 billion in gold bullion, and Ken proposes nationalizing America's safety deposit boxes. Certificate #2504.

In which we learn why new highway lanes, no matter how spacious, tend to fill to capacity within weeks of opening, and John takes on a hypothetical megacorporation called Goober. Certificate #38938.

In which ecologically problematic outdoor power tools accidentally become an official part of the Omnibus, all because John's neighbor refuses to call "Leafbusters." Certificate #25458.

In which a Spokane antique store creates a fake Bavarian holiday tradition from scratch, and John's beard makes him look bigger. Certificate #31503.

In which we examine the broadcast-jamming fad of the 1980s, including a puzzling incident involving a masked Chicago prankster, and Ken wants to be a font cop. Certificate #29692.

In which a strange, sticky new protein is declared—on the basis of very little evidence—to be a cure-all in the war against cancer, and Ken refuses to make the necessary sacrifices to become a skateboarding star. Certificate #40478.

In which a 19th-century countess overcomes her father's scandalous celebrity and her mother's love of parallelograms to become the world's first computer programmer, and John comes to regret renaming Alexa. Certificate #46507.

In which we learn that America's love affair with do-si-dos is a relatively recent and artificial form of nostalgia jump-started by Henry Ford's hatred for jazz, and Ken misremembers "krumping." Certificate #42537.

In which an oddly named model of Toyota pickup becomes the truck of choice for Marty McFly, Top Gear fans, polar explorers, and ISIS. Certificate #16197

In which one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting atones for her gossip scandals at court by inventing a brand new meal, and John blames museum docents for all his schedule problems. Certificate #48479.

In which an Irish immigrant pretending to be an old lady becomes a star of the American labor movement, and Ken ponders the death of middle initials. Certificate #12952.

In which Ken blames the weirdest ballet premiere of all time on class warfare, bad hair and costuming choices, and anti-Russian xenophobia, and John renames the sport of gymnastics. Certificate #31616.

In which one canny Detroit billionaire manages to gain sole control of the linchpin of American foreign trade, and John repeatedly insists he is not giving advice to terrorists. Certificate #36634.

In which lawns are revealed to be covering three times as much of America as any other crop, and Ken explains why the tallgrass prairies of the 19th century produced no great tennis players. Certificate #31632.

In which Victorian England becomes obsessed with the beautiful fronds and sexy lifestyle of ferns, and John brings the Arts and Crafts movement to the grunge era. Certificate #31358.

In which a Dominican diplomat cozies up to one of history's worst dictators, marries the two richest women in the world, and creates our modern image of the macho "Latin lover," and Ken tries to revive some slang from 1980s sex comedies. Certificate #41003.