Let's Keep It Simple

Let's Keep It Simple exists to make hard ideas feel manageable. Its range is wide. Presidential assassinations, the loss of the Titanic, the workings of the human body and a guide to learning resources all sit under the same banner, and each gets the same plain treatment. The history episodes are told as stories with a clear starting point. 'The Tragic Story Of The Titanic' opens on April 30, 1907, at a London dinner about building a fleet of luxury liners to rival the Cunard line. From there it moves through life on board, class by class. Third class, the host explains, had its own dining room and meals such as rice soup, biscuits, fruit and beef, while third-class passengers on most other ships had to bring their own food for the whole crossing. The story ends with survivors aboard the Carpathia and a telegram to the White Star Line's New York office. 'President For 6 Months and 15 Days' takes an unusual route into the story of James A. Garfield. It begins with his assassin, a man from Illinois who had drifted from city to city trying law and preaching, and only later reaches the president setting off for a summer in New England. Along the way comes a useful piece of context: most presidents of that era did not travel with bodyguards. The episode closes on the trial, where a claim of insanity failed and the jury took less than an hour to convict. The Kennedy episode uses the same method, pinned to dates from the Texas trip of November 1963 through Ruby's conviction, the presidential commission and the eventual release of classified documents. On the science side, episodes are numbered by season and often come in connected installments. The digestive system is covered once at a high level and then again in depth, starting with ingestion and a sorting of animals by how they feed. The circulatory material runs over two parts, and the heart installment traces blood chamber by chamber, from the pulmonary veins to the aorta. Definitions come back when they are needed, so the reminder of what a vein does arrives just before it matters. There is a study-skills streak as well. 'Best Apps/Websites to Learn New Things' covers Khan Academy, Crash Course and McGraw Hill Animations, and it is honest about drawbacks, noting that the first two can bury a learner in information. The case for McGraw Hill Animations is simple: watching a process is easier than reading about one in a textbook. The tone throughout is informal and unhurried, conversational rather than lecture-like. What a listener gets is orientation, a clear sequence of events or steps to hang further reading on.