A Distilled History of Gin
Like many spirits, gin was originally meant for medicinal or alchemical use. But eventually, people started combining juniper with alcohol to make a beverage rather than a medicine. And that's the jus...
22 Sep 202144min
The Rise and Fall of Charles Colchester
Colchester claimed to be psychic and probably did warn President Abraham Lincoln that he was going to be assassinated. He became an icon for Spiritualism in the U.S. in the 19th century, only to be re...
20 Sep 202135min
SYMHC Classics: Who was the real Sherlock Holmes?
This 2010 episode from past hosts Sarah and Deblina covers Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant protagonist Sherlock Holmes, who became world-famous. But was Sherlock Holmes based on a real person? Learn m...
18 Sep 202124min
Behind the Scenes Minis: Apples and Grace
Holly and Tracy talk about the apples from the childhoods, fruit-based desserts, and a cocktail that Holly stumbled across while researching nachos. Grace Humiston's tricky name is mentioned, as well ...
17 Sep 202118min
Grace Quackenbos Humiston, aka Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
Grace was an attorney and an investigator who did a lot of work to exonerate people who were wrongly convicted, expose corruption, and, in one particularly dramatic case, solve a murder that police ha...
15 Sep 202143min
Three Eponymous Foods
Lots of foods are named after people, but sometimes the stories of those names are hard to pin down. This episode looks at where Granny Smith apples, nachos, and the Cobb salads get their names. Lear...
13 Sep 202132min
SYMHC Classics: Emma Lazarus
This 2018 episode covers one of the United States' first successful Jewish American writers, moving in the New York literary scene of the late 1800s. She also wrote one of the most famous poems of all...
11 Sep 202128min
Behind the Scenes Minis: Laënnec and Eunice
Holly and Tracy talk about the aspects of the stethoscope story that didn't make it into the episode, including the classism related to cleanliness standards that often comes up in writeups about it. ...
10 Sep 202113min
