The Weird History Podcast

Thankful

23 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I couldn’t do this without you.

144 The Immovable Ladder of Jerusalem

20 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe the most famous part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a ladder that’s been propped onto the side of the building since at least the 1750...

143 Brandon Seifert on Werewolves

11 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Brandon Seifert has written horror comics such as Witch Doctor, Hellraiser, and The Fly. Lately, he’s been studying werewolf folklore. We talked abo...

142 Icelandic Dracula

31 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Icelandic Dracula, also known as Makt Myrkranna or Powers of Darkness, is amazing. The translator/author Valdimar Asmundsson made significant deviatio...

141 How Dracula Was Dracula?

24 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Dracula, anymore, is as much of a character type and a trope as he is a single character. Different takes on Dracula abound, from Bela Lugosi to Sesam...

140 The Adventures of Oliver Cromwell’s Severed Head

15 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When he died, Oliver Cromwell was embalmed and given a funeral befitting a head of state. However, upon restoration of the British monarchy, Cromwell ...

139 Rosenstrasse

06 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In February of 1943 the Nazi regime arrested between 1500-2000 Jewish men in Berlin, and imprisoned them in a former Jewish community center with the ...

September

04 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Find out why I’m taking September (mostly) off.

138 Confederate Statues

22 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Confederate statues have been in the news lately. Memorials always reflect the time they were built in moreso than the time they commemorate, and the ...

137 Isaac Newton and the Cat Door

07 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Popular legend holds that Isaac Newton invented not only calculus, but also the cat door. Unfortunately, this colorful legend is not supported by good...

136 Durer’s Rhinoceros

31 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

For almost three hundred years Europeans were not entirely sure what rhinos looked like. The most popular image of the beast was a print made by Albre...

135 Pad Thai, Nationalism, and Mandatory Hats

18 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Pad Thai is now heavily associated with Thai cuisine, but it’s a relatively modern invention. Noodles were probably imported to Thailand via either ...

134 The Imaginary Islands of Benjamin Morrell

10 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

There’s no shortage of things on old maps that turned out to be fictional. Regions such as the Mountains of Kong or the continent of Lemuria dot ant...

133 Hachiko

05 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

A statue of a dog sits outside Shibuya station in downtown Tokyo. The statue commemorates Hachiko, an Akita who walked to and from the train station e...

132 Crystal King on Feast of Sorrow

19 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Crystal King is the author of Feast of Sorrow, a novel about ancient Roman cooking that takes the first known cookbook as its inspiration. We talked a...

131 Polyamory, Polygraphs, and Wonder Woman

13 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Wonder Woman’s origin story is a fascinating one. Diana of Themyscira was created in 1940 by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist who helped inve...

130 Human Mail

05 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Sending human beings through the mail is not generally allowed, but plenty of people have tried it. The most notable person in US history to mail them...

129 Phantom Time, the Dumbest Conspiracy Theory Ever

30 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most dramatic (and dumbest) conspiracy theories of all time is the Phantom Time Hypothesis, put forward by the conspiracy theorist Heriber ...

128 Quest For Thundercows

22 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In 1910 the United States almost imported hippos as a meat animal. Had it done so, the US would have imported the single most dangerous large land ani...

127 Bummer and Lazarus, the San Francisco Superdogs

15 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Bummer and Lazarus were a pair of stray dogs beloved of San Francisco in the 1860s. The two dogs were known for their exceptional rat-catching ability...

126 Jenni L. Walsh on Becoming Bonnie

08 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Jenni L. Walsh is the author of Becoming Bonnie, a historical fiction novel about how Bonnie met Clyde, and what happened afterward. We talked about t...

125 Italian Fascism Part Fourteen, The Fall of Fascism

04 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

After the Kingdom of Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, Mussolini was a prisoner. But, during a German invasion of Northern Italy, he was sprung...

124 Italian Fascism Part Thirteen, Italy in WWII

24 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Italy did not perform well in WWII. The Italian economy was not able to support an effective industrial war machine, and Italy saw defeat in Greece, E...

75 Redux, About Mussolini and Those Trains…

17 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

There’s no new episode this week. instead, we’re re-running episode 75 which debunks the persistent myth that Mussolini made trains run on time.

123 Italian Fascism Part Twelve, Eve of Destruction

10 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Italy was not well-positioned going into World War II. The Italian economy was still largely agricultural, and its industrial output was small compare...

122 Italian Fascism Part Eleven, Race and Racism in Mussolini’s Italy

03 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Italy’s alliance with Nazi Germany certainly influenced the adoption of racist and anti-Semitic policies by Mussolini’s government. In a 1938 docu...

121 Italian Fascism Part Ten, Mussolini and Hitler

27 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Hitler and Mussolini never had a great relationship. The German dictator modeled his career on the Italian fascist, imitating Mussolini’s speech and...

120 Italian Fascism Part Nine, War With Ethiopia

20 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

It wasn’t enough for fascist Italy to adopt the rhetoric and imagery of ancient Rome, it also hoped to have a present-day empire. To do that Mussoli...

119 Italian Fascism Part Eight, Illusions of Empire

13 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Italy’s fascist regime sought legitimacy by packaging itself as an extension of past Italian glory. Under Mussolini Italy “restored” numerous Ro...

Monday is the New Thursday

09 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Hello all! My schedule has changed dramatically. The podcast will now update every Monday. Talk to you then!

118 Italian Fascism Part Seven, Meagan Zurn on Antonio Gramsci

02 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is an interview with Meagan Zurn (or “Zee,” co-producer of The British History Podcast) about Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a...

117 Italian Fascism Part Six, Church and State

23 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Italian fascism came to power (and solidified power) by co-opting existing political organizations and interests in Italy. That included the Catholic ...

Plague Has Taken Me

16 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I’m sick. The harrowing tale of Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI will have to wait until next week.

116 Italian Fascism Part Five, “All Within the State”

10 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

After Mussolini proclaimed dictatorship in January of 1925 fascist Italy became the first modern totalitarian state. The regime extended its power and...

115 Italian Fascism Part Four, Voter Suppression and Murder

02 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Following the March on Rome Mussolini and the fascists cemented their grasp on power via an electoral reform known as the Acerbo Law, voter suppressio...

114 Italian Fascism Part Three, The March on Rome

26 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The March on Rome is often cited as the beginning of Italian fascism. However, there was a fair amount of a run-up to the actual blackshirt invasion o...

113 Italian Fascism Part Two, What is Fascism, Anyway?

19 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we try to answer (or at least clarify) one of the most vexing questions of political science, history, philosophy, and contemporary sc...

112 Italian Fascism Part One: The Idea of Italy

12 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Fascism is the most malignant of the major political ideologies, and one of the least understood. For fascism, the nation (and therefore state) are pa...

111 Heather Arndt Anderson on Chilies

05 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s show is an interview with Heather Arndt Anderson, author of Chilies: A Global History. We talk about the origins of chilies, their sprea...

Mystery Series Announcement!

29 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

We’re still on break, but we’ll be back with an interview episode on January 5th, and the start of a long-form series on January 12th.

110 Years of the Reaper

15 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

2016 has been a year marked by death. In this episode we get into a few other years notable for being especially deadly, and why this past year has fe...

109 Moose Cavalry

08 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we tackled one of the major issues of our time: Why haven’t more countries used moose as Cavalry? Sweden tried it. The Soviet Union ...

108 How Not to Kill Fidel Castro

01 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Fidel Castro, after being in power in Cuba since the 1950s, is finally dead. Castro was known for his long reign as Cuba’s dictator, but he was also...

107 Squanto, Tisquantum

24 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Squanto and other Native Americans are a fixture of popular depictions of what has retroactively been termed the First Thanksgiving, such as in the fa...

106 Live at the Jack London, the Portland Vice Scandal

17 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In 1950s Portland, police and racketeers worked hand-in-hand to provide the city with gambling, protitution, and other in-demand vices such as pinball...

105 The Giants of Patagonia

10 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

For about 250 years, Europeans thought that giants lived in Patagonia. The inventor of this myth was Antonio Pigafetta, a member of the Magellan exped...

104 Thomas Jefferson, Mastodon Hunter

03 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Jefferson loved mastodons, in part because he wanted to prove that American animals were not degenerate. In the late 1700s a French naturalist,...

103 How Gothic Got Goth

27 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“Gothic” has described a lot of things: Mustachioed barbarians just outside the Roman empire, grand cathedrals such as Notre Dame and Chartres, ee...

102 Five Scary Clowns

20 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Anymore it seems like scary clowns outnumber standard, whimsical clowns. Clowns are monsters, figures of fear, and they seem more likely to laugh with...

101 Kara Helgren on Witches, Puritans, and the Salem Tourist Experience

13 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Kara Helgren has previously worked for the city of Salem, Massachusetts as a tour guide, leading visitors through the ominously-named Witch House. Acc...

100 Q & A

06 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

We made it to 100 episodes! For the occasion we’ve a new name, a new logo, and your questions and my answers.

99 Live Your Life Like You’re Examining a Platypus

29 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The platypus appears to be some kind of melding or mashup between a duck and a beaver. It is not, though the first Western scientist to examine a spec...

98 Blood and Types

22 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Belief that one’s blood type affects personality is common in Japan. Dating sites, celebrity profiles, and vital statistics for fictional characters...

97 American Exiles

15 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Immigration from Mexico to the US is not new. Workers have been deciding to immigrate to the US, legally or not, for over a century. However, legal ch...

I’m Not Dead

08 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

It was bound to happen eventually. There’s no new episode this week.

96 Funeral on the Moon, the Story of Fallen Astronaut

01 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

There is a statue on the moon. In 1971 the crew of Apollo 15 placed a small figurine and a plaque on the lunar surface to memorialize American and Sov...

95 Live at the Jack London Bar: Teddy Roosevelt and the Mystery of the Missing Time Capsule

25 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Teddy Roosevelt buried a time capsule in Portland in 1903. One hundred years later, Roosevelt’s time capsule was nowhere to be found. The box laid b...

94 The Know-Nothings, Part Two

18 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In 1854 the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings made their debut into American politics. They ran candidates in 76 of the 82 available House of Representativ...

93 The Know-Nothings, Part One

11 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Decades before the modern versions of the Democratic and Republican parties formed, the US also had a few other major political parties. One was the F...

92 We Don’t Know Things About the Mesoamerican Ball Game

04 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The ancient Mesoamerican ball game is very probably the oldest ball game in the world. We know that it was played with a rubber ball on a stone court,...

91 Kory Bing on Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Megafauna

28 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is an interview with artist and cartoonist Kory Bing about dinosaurs and other extinct megafauna. We talked about drawing dinosa...

90 The Fiji Mermaid

21 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Today PT Barnum is remembered as one of the founders of modern advertising and one of America’s greatest hucksters. His first successful hoax was to...

89 Live at the Jack London, Robertson V Baldwin

14 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In 1897 the US Supreme Court carved out an exception the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery and involuntary servitude. Robertson v. Baldwin held that ...

88 The Unknown Origins of Pasta, A Wonder of the World

07 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

As far as your humble podcaster is concerned, pasta is a wonder of the world right up there with the Pyramids and the Internet. We don’t exactly kno...

87 Stalin’s Nonexistent Human/Chimp Hybrid Supersoldiers

30 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most bizarre myths about the Soviet Union is that Joseph Stalin attempted to create human/chimp hybrid supersoldiers. This bit of pseudohis...

86 Mandeville, Part Three

23 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

No one knows who wrote The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. There is no record of an English knight alive at the right time with that name who could ha...

85 Mandeville, Part Two

16 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

As the Travels of Sire John Mandeville move away from the familiar and the Holy Land, they get progressively more bizarre. The laws of convention and ...

84 Mandeville, Part One

09 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Supposedly, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is about an English knight who sets out for the Holy Land in the 1330s. However, the journey to Jerusal...

83 Bill Lascher on Eve of a Hundred Midnights

02 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is an interview with author Bill Lascher about his upcoming book Eve of a Hundred Midnights, about two American war corresponden...

82 For Amusement Only

26 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Anymore, pinball is an archaic amusement found in the corners of old arcades and bars, but in the mid twentieth century it was the center of a moral p...

81 Dancing Goats and Other Coffee Legends

19 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The origins of coffee are encircled by myth and legend, sometimes involving goats. It’s one of the most popular beverages on Earth, and for many peo...

80 Live at the Jack London, the Rise and Fall of Claymation

12 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Claymation was a dominant force in American popular culture during the late 1980s, which characters such as the California Raisins and the Noid achiev...

79 Cecelia Otto on the Music of the Lincoln Highway

05 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Before the interstate highway system spread over the US, the country was knit together through a network of railroads and auto trails. One of the long...

78 A Statue of Crazy Horse

28 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

If it’s ever completed, South Dakota’s Crazy Horse Memorial will be the largest statue in the world. The gigantic structure will feature the Lakot...

77 Molly Newman on Crafting Good Trivia Questions

21 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is an interview with Quizmistress and Jeopardy! contestant Molly Newman. Molly runs multiple successful trivia nights in Portlan...

76 The Yellow Kid

14 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Nowadays, comic books are mainstream. Movies about superheroes dominate the box office, and you can’t go ten feet in a major retail outlet without s...

75 About Mussolini and Those Trains…

07 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“Sure, Mussolini was bad, but at least he made the trains run on time.” You’ve probably said it. Or, you’ve been in a conversation and you hea...

74 The Wizard of Oz, Populism, and Dubious Fan Theories

31 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

You can be forgiven for thinking that L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz is all about monetary policy and populism. More than a few scholars, critics,...

73 Jamie Jeffers on the Dating of Easter

24 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Easter jumps around. Sure, it’s always on a Sunday, but unlike, say, the U.S.’s Labor Day (which always falls on the first Monday in September) Ea...

72 There’s No Such Thing As Lemuria

17 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

You’ve probably heard to Atlantis, but that’s not the hypothetical lost continent out there. There’s a whole subgenre of supposed submerged cont...

71 Live at the Jack London, The Story of Oregon Trail

10 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Oregon Trail is arguably the most successful education video game of all time. Created in 1971 by student teacher Don Rawitsch, the popular simulation...

70 Shirtless Zeus-Like George Washington Versus Alexander Hamilton

03 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton is an antidote to the traditional (and boring) way that America’s founding fathers have often been portrayed...

69 Kingdom of the Mahdi, Part Three

25 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Mahdist Sudan died violently. The religious state persisted for approximately a decade and a half but after that the British, eager to solidify their ...

68 Kingdom of the Mahdi, Part Two

18 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

After successfully defeating the Ottoman-Egyptian and British forces at Khartoum, Sudan formed an independent government based around Muhammad Ahmad, ...

67 Kingdom of the Mahdi, Part One

11 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1880s Sudan suffered under the heel of the Ottoman empire. Military occupation and heavy taxes led to widespread discontent that eventual...

66 Longest War Ever

04 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Depending on how you measure and define things, the longest war in human history may very well have been between the Netherlands and a tiny collectio...

65 The Amazing Oceanic Adventure of 28,800 Adorable Rubber Duckies

28 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In January of 1992 international trade routes, bad weather, and a shipping container full of bath toys all collided to form an amazing natural experi...

64 Yesterday’s Tomorrows

21 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

It’s always fun to look back on predictions about the future that were wrong. For instance, Victorian portrayals of the 20th and 21st century had ev...

63 The Forty-Seven Ronin, Part Two

14 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Last week Asano, Lord of Ako was ordered to commit seppuku, and his newly unemployed samurai were plotting revenge on Kira, the noble whom they blamed...

62 The Forty-Seven Ronin, Part One

07 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most famous and bloody incidents in samurai history is the story of the 47 ronin, a group of masterless samurai who extracted bloody reveng...

The Future!

31 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Happy New Year! There are some changes in store for 2016.

Remasters and an eBook

24 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

No new episode today, I’m taking a break for the holiday. But, I’m happy to announce that I’ve re-recorded episode one and episode two, and the ...

61 Puritans Versus Christmas

17 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

There is no war on Christmas. But there was. Contemporary political commentators have, in the past, complained and ranted about a supposed secular war...

60 The Goose’s Crusade

10 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the eleventh century, a group of would-be conquerors followed a goose on crusade. The standard (and almost certainly overly simplistic) ...

59 Man of Flames

03 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The Wicker Man is one of the most creative and fearsome execution devices of all time. A figure of a giant, made of bent wood and reeds, looms up over...

58 Malthus, Borlaug, and Feeding the World

25 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The planet Earth holds over seven billion humans. Somehow, against all manner of predictions to the contrary, we feed all of them. This would have ast...

57 The Mysterious Affair of the Irish Crown Jewels

19 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The Irish crown jewels were stolen in 1907. To this day, no one knows who absconded with the regalia. While known as the “Irish crown jewels” toda...

56 Live at the Jack London, Lewis and Clark Through History

12 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Nowadays, Lewis and Clark are lionized and mythologized as American heroes, but their reputation was not always so grandiose. The expedition was initi...

55 The Pig War

05 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Nowadays the US-Canada border is one of the most peaceful international boundaries in the world, but in 1859 the US almost went to war with British No...

54 The Uses and Abuses of Mummies

29 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

For years, mummies were a commodity. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans used mummy dust (as in real, actual, ground-up human corpse) as a m...