El Cid: The Baddest Knight in Spain
Medieval Spain was a chaotic battlefield of rival Christian kingdoms, powerful Muslim emirs, shifting alliances, and nonstop war - and in the middle of it all rode Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the legendary...
11 Mar 1h 10min
Kondo Isami: Last Samurai Standing
The samurai weren’t supposed to go quietly. This week, host Ben Thompson is joined by guest Mike Primavera to tell the story of Kondo Isami the peasant-born swordsman who rose to command the most fea...
4 Mar 53min
Josephine Baker: The Most Dangerous Woman in Paris
In the 1920s, she scandalized Europe in a banana skirt and became the most famous entertainer in the world. But when war came, Josephine Baker traded applause for espionage—smuggling secrets for the F...
24 Feb 48min
George Washington: Ice-Cold and Unkillable
Wooden teeth? No. Cherry tree? Probably not. Absolute unit of a leader? Undeniably. Ben Thompson welcomes EpicLLOYD from Epic Rap Battles of History for a Presidents’ Day breakdown George Washington ...
16 Feb 1h 12min
Fridtjof Nansen: North of Insanity
Ice. Starvation. Total darkness. And somewhere out there — a polar bear that would very much like to eat you. On this episode, Ben Thompson is joined by producer Andrew Jacobs to break down the life ...
11 Feb 53min
Olympias: Snakes, Curses, and the Birth of an Empire
Empires don’t begin with heroes — they begin with mothers who refuse to lose. Olympias ruled from the shadows using fear, religion, and assassination, making sure history remembered her son as a god ...
4 Feb 1h 3min
Marguerite de la Rocque: Alone on the Island of Demons
In 1542, a teenage French noblewoman is marooned on a frozen island off the coast of Newfoundland - deliberately abandoned by her own family, left with a failing matchlock gun, a handful of supplies, ...
28 Jan 58min
Gilgamesh: Immortal Power, Very Mortal Consequences
Five thousand years before Batman brooded, before Achilles sulked, before Hercules punched a god in the mouth, there was Epic of Gilgamesh - the original badass origin story. Gilgamesh starts as a tyr...
21 Jan 1h 6min
