Professor Buzzkill History Podcast

What a great way to get taxes lowered! Get your land-owning husband to agree to lower property taxes if you ride naked on horseback right down main street. That's just what Lady Godiva agreed to do in...

30 Mar 20182min

Robert Sherrod was the pioneering journalist who portrayed the Pacific battles in World War II, and risked his life in doing so. In a time when stark battle news was largely kept from the American pub...

26 Mar 20186min

It's an exciting and romantic tale: a future Roman hero had to be cut out of his mother's womb as she's dying in childbirth. The procedure is later named after the famous baby who survived -- Julius C...

23 Mar 20182min

We usually hear that surgery and medical treatment during the Civil War was backward butchery. But was it? Let's cross over the inter-sphere to listen, as historian Nic Hoffman from Kennesaw State Uni...

20 Mar 20181h 2min

Cold War Berlin was a tense place, and certainly not the place to make an embarrassing gaffe in a major speech. So it's a good thing that President Kennedy didn't call himself a jam doughnut while spe...

16 Mar 20183min

After his first speech as prime minister, Winston Churchill's "blood, toil, tears, and sweat," got shortened and re-arranged. As "blood, sweat, and tears," it's become one of the most quoted Churchill...

13 Mar 20185min

The Great Escape (1963) is in the pantheon of World War II films, and deservedly so. Generations of Buzzkillers have grown up watching Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, and other film stars try to ...

9 Mar 201817min

We interview Professor Marcus Rediker about his new book, Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist. Benjamin Lay was one of the most famous anti-slavery protester...

6 Mar 201847min