Futility Closet

Futility Closet is a blog, podcast, and database started in 2005 by editorial manager and publishing journalist Greg Ross. As of September 2017 the database totaled 9,840 items. They range over the fields of history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and recreational mathematics.

The associated Futility Closet Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Greg and his wife Sharon Ross. It presents curious and little-known events and people from history, and poses logical puzzles.

In January 2005, Greg Ross started the Futility Closet website, an online wunderkammer of trivia, quotations, mathematical curiosities, chess problems, and other diversions. The site has spawned two printed collections, and continues to be updated daily.

Futility Closet has sometimes been a conduit for results by John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy, Solomon W. Golomb, and many other well-known mathematicians when they dabbled in recreational mathematics. Puzzles from Futility Closet have frequently been featured in the New York Times puzzle section and the New York Times blog. Futility Closet was recommended by the Honduran newspaper La Tribuna. Its puzzles and paradoxes have been cited by El País and Il Post.

In March 2014 Futility Closet launched a thirty-minute weekly podcast hosted by Greg and Sharon Ross. A typical episode lasts thirty minutes and consists of three segments: first the week's core topic, typically a curious story from history; second, listener mail; third, a lateral thinking puzzle, posed by one of the hosts for the other to solve. Some episodes depart from this format, for instance by presenting several short items or open questions culled from research, or by presenting several puzzles in lieu of other content. Most episodes include an advertisement.

The podcast has a wide scope and is not restricted to any particular era, but most episodes concern colorful personalities and strange events from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Victorian oddities are a mainstay of the show, as are unexplained mysteries, forteana, hoaxes and impostors, sensational murders, remarkable animals, and the adventures of mariners, aviators, and explorers. Subjects are often prompted by listener suggestions.

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