- wöchentlichErscheinungsrhythmus
- 47 mintypische Länge
- vor 2 Tagenletzte Folge
Folgenzu den neuesten
The Boston Tea Party Was a Protest Against the East India Company Being Too Big to Fail
The Boston Tea Party is the most misunderstood event in American history. Every schoolchild learns it was an antitax protest, proof that Americans have always hated paying taxes. But the Tea Act of 1773 was actually a tax cut. Parliament lo
The 1873 Global Financial Meltdown that Cause 20 Years of Deflation and Destroyed 2 Empires
On May 9, 1873, as the Vienna Stock Exchange collapsed and thousands of speculators were wiped out in a single afternoon, young Salbert von Rothschild and two colleagues from the Schey and Goldschmidt banking families were nearly lynched on
Johnny Appleseed's Trees Were for Booze, Not Pies, and He Dressed Like a Hobo for Marketing Purposes
The Disney version of Johnny Appleseed has a cheerful barefoot man in a tin pot hat scattering apple seeds for grateful pioneers to bake into pies. The real John Chapman collected his seeds for free from cidery waste, planted them into stra
All the World’s Empires Became Nations in Less Than 100 Years, and What That Means for the Next 100
For the last 5,000 years, empires ruled the world — Rome administered hundreds of languages across three continents, and the Ottomans governed Christians, Jews, and Muslims under a single legal canopy. The nation-state as we know it is bare
Five Cambridge Graduates Became Soviet Spies and Built Stalin’s Empire
The Cambridge Five did more damage to the Western Bloc than any other intelligence outfit of the Cold War. They were five Cambridge graduates who drank gin at the right clubs, moved through the right corridors of British intelligence at the
Washington’s Power Went Beyond President or General – He Was a Full-Fledged Patriarch
Washington was the perfect man for an impossible moment — aristocratic enough to command the respect of erudite founders like Hamilton and Jefferson, yet only a mid-level Virginia planter who understood ordinary life and could relate to com
Abigail Adams Beat Warren Buffet’s Rate of Return and Ben Franklin Loved Debt: Personal Finance Lessons From Colonial America
Many so-called timeless beliefs about money pitched by financial advisors today (compound interest, real estate, index funds, retiring early) are not timeless pieces of wisdom, but a set of ideas invented within the last century, mostly by
The Highs and Lows of Roman Slavery: From the Emperor's Advisor to Suffocating in Sulfur Mines
When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul he boasted that he killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. This is the truth about the Roman empire: Rome could not function without slavery as it underpinned every single part of their economy.
A Day at the Gladiatorial Games: Beast Hunts, Mass Slaughter, and Flooding the Colosseum to Reenact Roman Naval Battles
A gladiator named Diodorus defeated his opponent Demetrius in the arena, accepted his submission, discarded his own helmet and shield, and reached for the palm branch that marked his victory. Then the referee refused to honor the submission
The Black Death’s Global Ripple Effects, and How They Were Felt Outside Europe
Of the millions of victims of the Black Death, one was a teenager named Joseph ben Meir Abulafia, who died of the plague in Toledo in 1349 alongside his new wife. His tombstone was inscribed as a conversation with the dead: "I am the man wh
The Part of the Declaration of Independence Nobody Reads (Grievances Against King George) Is the Part That Actually Mattered
On July 9, 1776, a group of American soldiers listened to the Declaration of Independence read aloud in New York City, then rushed down Broadway and spent several minutes prying a two-ton golden equestrian statue of King George III off its
Children of Abraham: The 1,400-Year History of Jewish–Muslim Relations
For more than 1400 years, the history of Jewish and Muslim engagement has been a complex story of cooperation and conflict. The best known events are hostile encounters (like the 1066 Granada massacre or modern Arab-Israeli wars), they’ve h
How 10 Whalers Survived Three Years Shipwrecked in the South Pacific
In 1832, a New Bedford whaleship called the Mentor struck a reef in the remote Pacific archipelago of Palau. The tiny, 100-foot-long ship began sinking immediately, and the 22 men who made up its crew were thrown into one of the most extrao
The Nobels Built Russia’s Oil Industry, Invented Dynamite and the Oil Tanker, But Were Still Crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution
The Nobel family (which are the namesake of the Nobel prize), had a rags-to-riches story bigger than the Rockefellers or Morgans. The Nobel patriarch Emanuel fled debtor’s prison in 1837. He then travelled east and built a foundation for th
The American Revolution Went Way Outside of America, Pulling in Caribbean Colonies, African Forts, and Chinese Trading Houses
The thirteen colonies that became the United States were just half of the British colonies that existed in the 18th century. The empire stretched from New England, south to Georgia and Florida and the islands of the West Indies, east to Ind
Ford’s Auto Domination Came From a 1909 Race Across America Through Mud-Choked Roads
In June 1909, five automobiles lined up in front of New York's City Hall to attempt something no car had ever done: drive all the way to Seattle. The Ocean-to-Ocean Race was supposed to be a publicity stunt for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo
Al Capone’s Missing $100 Million, and the TV Journalist Who Embarrassed Himself to Find It
On the night of April 21, 1986, an estimated 30 million Americans sat in front of their televisions waiting for a moment that almost no one alive had ever seen: a live, prime-time excavation of a gangster's secret vault. Geraldo Rivera, rec
How the Dollar Created America (Part 2)
Part 2 of our exploration of how the U.S. dollar is older than the United States itself and has a level of power beyond the Federal Reserve and even beyond the U.S. government. We’re joined by guest Brendan Greeley, author of The Almighty D
How the Dollar Created America (Part 1)
The U.S. dollar's origin story begins not in Philadelphia or Washington, but in a half-frozen mining valley in 16th-century Bohemia, where Saxon miners accidentally named their town after a saint and set the world's dominant currency in mot
From Patriot to Pirate: How Revolutionary War Hero Sam Mason Became a River Outlaw
One of the greatest threat to early America was piracy, but it wasn’t found in the Caribbean or Gulf Coast. It was pirates on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Samuel Mason fought bravely at the 1777 Siege of Fort Henry, became a Justice of
Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs
When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar Nicholas II in 1868, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she lived under the fear of this prophecy. It m
The Revolutionary War’s Charlie Wilson: A Spanish Spy Chief Funded the Siege of Yorktown, Helping Washington Win
Everyone knows the American Revolution was won at Yorktown in 1781, when Cornwallis’s Army was trapped, but almost no one knows that victory depended on a Spanish intelligence operative who raised 500,000 pieces of silver in Havana in just
Europe Dominated Because It Never Stopped Fighting Itself
Why did the West dominate all rivals on Earth? How did a group of states that were nearly wiped out in the late Middle Ages by enemies to the south and east grow to conquer the globe by the 16th century? To answer that question, we need to
A Land Flowing with Pork and Beef: Colonial America’s Rise to the World’s Meat Consumption Capital
When European settlers arrived in North America, they enjoyed a level of meat consumption that was absolutely unimaginable in the Old World. An average European was lucky to see meat once a week while even a poor American consumed about two
Passenger Pigeons Once Numbered in the Billions and Blotted Out the Skies for Days. They Went Extinct in 30 Years.
In America’s first hundred years, the animal you were most likely to see was a passenger pigeon. And you saw a lot of them. Flocks were so numerous they literally blotted out the sun for days and their combined weight snapped the branches o
Tooth Enamel Tells All: Genetic Testing and Why It’s Rewriting Our Understanding of Early Medieval Migration
Europe's borders in the Middle Ages were created by one man, and he wasn't even born in the Middle Ages, nor was he Christian. It was Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome from 284 to 305. His reforms that chained tenant farmers to land create
95% of Ancient Greek Theater Is Gone. Here's How One Classicist Resurrected 500 Lost Playwrights
Of the estimated 1,500 plays written in ancient Greece, only 33 complete works survive today—the rest were lost because medieval scribes deemed low-brow comedies and mass entertainment unworthy of expensive parchment during the transition f
How Medieval Monks Used the 7 Deadly Sins to Map Human Behavior…and LinkedIn Weaponized them Against Us
When medieval historian Peter Jones found himself spiraling into depression while teaching at a frigid Siberian university with icicles sprouting from his eyelashes, he asked himself what a medieval sufferer would do—and discovered somethin
1,000% Profit Per Voyage: The Economics of Civil War Smuggling and Blockade Running
In August 1863, as Lee's army retreated from Gettysburg and Vicksburg fell to Grant, the Union's Anaconda Plan deployed hundreds of ships to strangle 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline, triggering hyperinflation and economic collapse as t
The Lost Voices of Pompeii: Lives Cut Short When Vesuvius Erupted, Including a Fish Sauce Tycoon and an Isis Priest
Pompeii's story is usually told through the lens of catastrophe—perfectly preserved bodies frozen in ash, a civilization erased in hours, sort of like a Roman version of the Chicxulub impactor that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago
