The Lions of Tsavo, Pt. 1
In 1898, two male lions killed and ate dozens of people in Tsavo and shut down construction of the Uganda Railroad. Lt. Col. John H. Patterson, a civil engineer working on the project, made it his per...
16 Dec 201333min
The Axman of New Orleans, Part 2
The second half of the Axman story involves his famous letter to the New Orleans Times-Picayune warning that he would descend on the city, but would spare anyone with a live jazz band playing in their...
11 Dec 201325min
The Axman of New Orleans, Part 1
In 1918 and 1919, a rash of attacks had all of New Orleans on edge. While the Axman has turned up in modern storytelling, no fiction could top the real story of late-night break-ins and assaults by a ...
9 Dec 201319min
Sei Shonagon and the Heian Court
Thanks to the pillow book of lady-in-waiting Sei Shonagon, we have a first-person account of court life in Heian Japan. It's part diary, part commonplace book, part essay collection, and thoroughly fa...
4 Dec 201335min
The Boston Massacre
The name "Boston Massacre" sounds as though it was the slaughter of a bunch of innocents in colonial Boston. The reality is much smaller - and not nearly so one-sided. But there's a reason why we call...
2 Dec 201326min
Zenobia and the Roman Empire
Our focus today is on a woman who was actually covered in the podcast several years ago. But she's a figure so mythic and with so many variations to her story that we wanted to give her another look a...
27 Nov 201328min
Hessians
If you've only seen the Hessians referenced in movies or TV, you probably don't have a clear picture of who these very capable soldiers actually were. Hessian troops were skilled, disciplined armies f...
25 Nov 201340min
Edward Jenner, Father of Vaccines
Smallpox has been around longer than recorded history. It killed royalty, shifted the tides of battles, and was so terrifying that many religions have gods, saints and martyrs associated with it. And ...
20 Nov 201340min
