Why Did Presidents Seem Incredibly Rich Yet Were Completely Broke Most of the Time?
Was Harry Truman really our poorest president or simply a man up at 2 a.m. struggling with financial anxiety? Did Calvin Coolidge get bad advice from his stockbroker to buy stocks in 1930 as the marke...
17 Sep 202448min
A 1,300 History of the Middle East in Seven Religious Wars
From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Mus...
12 Sep 202448min
When Good Ideas Were Bad Medicine: Why Vitamin C and Handwashing was Rejected by the Medical Establishment
More Americans have peanut allergies today than at any point in history. Why? In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strict recommendation that parents avoid giving their children peanut...
10 Sep 202444min
Appleton Oaksmith: The Confederate Blockade Runner Who Became Lincoln’s Public Enemy #1
Appleton Oaksmith was a swashbuckling Civil War-era sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California ...
5 Sep 202449min
The Bible Triggered Two Communications Revolutions: The Codex and the Printing Press
For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. But it has been received by different cultures and language groups in (sometimes) radically different ways. Following Jesus’s departing instructio...
3 Sep 202452min
Steering an Aerial Plywood Box Through Enemy Fire: The Glider Pilots of WW2
In World War II, there were no C-130s or large cargo aircraft that could deliver heavy equipment– such as a truck or artillery piece – in advance of an airborne invasion. For that, you needed to put t...
29 Aug 202441min
Why Few Presidents Had Beards, And Only One Had a Mullet
From George Washington’s powdered pigtail to John Quincy Adams’ bushy side-whiskers and from James Polk’s masterful mullet to John F. Kennedy’s refined Ivy League coif, the tresses of American leaders...
27 Aug 202434min
How Much Did Average Germans Know About the Holocaust During World War Two?
This is the question that historians have argued since the end of World War Two. How much did an average person know, and, more importantly, how responsible were they? What made people “perpetrators,...
22 Aug 202440min
