Society / History - Website / RSS
The only history podcast that interviews famous authors and answers your history questions
Listen
-
Jul1321 hours agoMany of us assume that cars, computers, and batteries are modern inventions. Before that time we lived in a technological dark age too barbaric and boring to contemplate. But what if the 21st cent...
-
Jul122 days agoJoan of Arc has one of the most incredible stories in history. Consider this: How did an illiterate peasant lead an army into victory against England in the Hundred Years War? Learn about her upbr...
-
Jul113 days agoEowyn, the Shieldmaiden of Rohan, is one of the best characters from the “Lord of the Rings.” But J.R.R. Tolkien didn't invent her out of thin air. Ever the scholar of Anglo-Saxon England, Tolk...
-
Jul104 days agoAmerica attempted to legislate morality in the 1920s by outlawing the production, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquors through the Volstead Act. But that didn't stop the drinks from flow...
-
Jul077 days agoWas there a real life Dr. Frankenstein who tried to bring the dead back to life by science and alchemy? Yes there was, and his name was Johann Dippel. He lived in the transitional period between a...
-
Jul061 week agoIn the early 1800s there was no English explorer greater than James Holman. He covered a distance almost twenty times farther than Marco Polo on foot or cart—almost never using trains or steamships...
-
Jul051 week agoFew will dispute that China has one of the most ancient cultures on earth, but is there any truth to the claim—made by many residents of China—that there is a 5,000-year-long line of continuity in ...
-
Jul041 week agoWhy do Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks? Are we trying to take the National Anthem as literally as possible, creating “Bombs Bursting in Air”? Or is there another reason? It t...
-
Jul032 weeks agoProbably the most contentious—and politicized—issue in history has to do with the origins of the nation of Israel. That's because the heart of the historical debate is who is the “rightful” owner o...
-
Jun302 weeks agoAny fan of Shakespeare knows how much the English language has changed over the last 400 years. A student of Chauncer knows even better. A brave student of Beowulf knows almost better than anyon...
-
Jun292 weeks agoRome didn’t fall in 476 when Romulus, the last of the Roman emperors in the west, was overthrown by the Germanic leader Odoacer, who became the first Barbarian to rule in Rome. Nor did it fall in ...
-
Jun282 weeks agoThe horrors of the Holocaust are as vivid now as they were in 1945 when the world discovered the horrors of Nazi Germany's atrocities. But why did Hitler hate the Jews so vehemently? Furthermore, w...
-
Jun272 weeks agoBy the late 1800s Europe's Great Powers controlled nearly 80 percent of the African continent. Much research has analyzed the brutal aspects of its colonization—particularly in the Belgian Congo—bu...
-
Jun263 weeks agoIn today's episode we are possibly going to bite off more than we can chew... by discussing the entire history of Russia. OK, maybe not the entire history of Russia. But we will discuss how invasio...
-
Jun233 weeks agoDepression is not a modern phenomenon. Take the example of Abraham Lincoln. He is an unusual psychological case study. He was both chronically melancholy, and yet among the strongest people in hist...
-
Jun223 weeks agoThe ancients had abilities that have fallen into near-complete disuse in the modern age. Consider memorization. The average peasant of 1,000 years ago had 10x more memorized than you ever will. Th...
-
Jun213 weeks agoToday's question is a tricky one that has to do with global politics, colonialism, and threatens to enter the minefield of race. Why do so many African nations sit at the bottom of global developme...
-
Jun203 weeks agoDid the greatest king who ever lived ever live? That's a tricky question. The fabled first king of England, the mythological figure associated with Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, may h...
-
Jun194 weeks agoMichael Foley loves contradictions. He is a Catholic professor of patristics—a study of the lives of early Christian theologians—at a dry Baptist university. That didn't stop him from writing a boo...
-
Jun164 weeks agoToday's question comes from Nayeli Carpenter She asks about lost civilizations: pyramid builds, Egyptians, Mayans, Incans, especially the ones where cultures disappeared mysteriously. I'm going to ...