Professor Buzzkill History Podcast

I live a happy life. I really do. I've got Lady Buzzkill and the Buzzlings, a fulfilling career, and money in the bank. But I guess I never knew true happiness until I was asked to be on The Reality C...

5 Maalis 201822min

Was Civil War Union General Joseph "Fightin' Joe" Hooker's last name the origin of the slang term for prostitute? He had a perhaps undeserved reputation as a party animal, but did that reputation actu...

2 Maalis 20184min

Alison Palmer was a pioneer in gaining increased women's rights and human rights in the American State Department. While working there in the 1950s and 1960s, Palmer ran up against the glass ceiling w...

28 Helmi 201819min

The rule of thumb about history myths is that they're persistent. Ever hear the one about an ancient law that allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick as long as it was not thicker than his thumb? ...

23 Helmi 20183min

Professor Phil Nash helps us explain the complicated and much-mythologized history of the Pentagon Papers, which is shorthand for the government-funded study of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to ...

20 Helmi 20181h 7min

Professor Marie Hicks joins us again, this time to discuss the yummy history of computer dating. Did it start with Operation Match at Harvard? Or was it a young entrepreneur in London? What were their...

13 Helmi 201858min

Herr Hitler gets credit for an awful lot, Buzzkillers, including the invention of the Volkswagen. The story is that he demanded a "people's car" that the average German could afford. Alas, Buzzkillers...

9 Helmi 20185min

Impeachment? The 25th Amendment? Resignation? How do the American people remove a president from office? Why is it so complicated, and what's the history behind each way to get a dangerous, criminal, ...

6 Helmi 201850min