Professor Buzzkill History Podcast

Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball, and he didn’t do it in Cooperstown in 1839, Buzzkillers. Once again, a second- or third-hand story created a persistent myth. It was Alexander Cartwright in Man...

9 Jul 20153min

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...

2 Jul 20153min

Pity the poor Dutch, Buzzkillers!. They travelled all over the world and get almost no credit for it. Captain James Cook of England wasn’t the first European to discover Australia. Willem Janszoon was...

25 Jun 20152min

“The Great Train Robbery” (1903) was not the first feature film, despite what you learned in film studies class, Buzzkillers (or from some tiresome, drunken film-studies major at a boring film-studies...

19 Jun 20152min

June 15th is the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, Buzzkillers. But was it such a big deal? Does it deserve the attention and praise it’s gotten? Join the Professor’s Pre-Dawn Raid to find out!

18 Jun 20155min

Robin Hood did not force King John to sign Magna Carta. Neither did King Arthur or Merlin, or Gandalf for that matter. Magna Carta (800 years old today) is a cluster-bomb of myths. The Professor defus...

15 Jun 20154min

It’s a great and heart-warming story, Buzzkillers, but meek and modest Betsy Ross did not design or sew the first American flag. The story itself follows the classic myth pattern, a second-hand family...

12 Jun 20154min

Warner Bros Studios pumped out this myth, Buzzkillers, before production had even started on the movie. But Bogie had the part all along!

4 Jun 20152min