Claim OwnershipThe Weird History Podcast
Subscribed: 5,987Played: 164,069
Subscribe
Description
The Weird History Podcast explores the out-of-the-way, obscure, weird, and overlooked corners of history. New episodes appear every Thursday.
255 Episodes
Reverse
Crystal King is a long-time friend of the program, and has appeared previously to talk about her debut novel Feast of Sorrow, and her follow-up The Chef’s Secret. Her newest novel, In the Garden of Monsters, blends Greek and Roman […]
A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War is the latest book from Portland journalist and author Bill Lascher. Bill joined us to talk about WWII in Asia through the eyes of journalist Melville Jacoby, his own […]
1By all reasonable metrics Shek Yeung, who raided the South China Sea in the early 1800s, is one of the most successful pirates of all time. In her new novel Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea author Rita […]
William Shakespeare seems to have hated hedgehogs. We don’t quite know why, but it could have something to do with how the tiny animal is depicted by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder. Special Thanks to Jamie Jeffers of The […]
Before Valentine’s Day, ancient Romans celebrated a festival of fertility in the shadow of the Palatine Hill. Lupercalia was a popular holiday that featured blood, goat sacrifice, and getting whipped by naked guys.
During the Dust Bowl city officials in Los Angeles, fueled by anti-communist paranoia and xenophobia, were determined to keep migrants out of California. To that end, they dispatched the LAPD to remote border crossing points far outside the city in […]
Eric Tagliacozzo is a professor of history at Cornell University, and his new book In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds From Yemen to Yokohama outlines five centuries of maritime history in the Asian world. In this wide-ranging interview, we discussed how […]
Archaeology has changed considerably over the past century. In this episode, we spoke with Ann R. Williams of National Geographic about the new book Lost Cities Ancient Tombs, significant discoveries from the past century, and what it means to dig […]
After his death in 1945, Mussolini’s corpse was autopsied and thrown into a pauper’s grave. But, that was just the beginning of the cadaver’s posthumous career. Eventually the body was stolen by neofascists, hidden away for over a decade, and […]
The Marvel Universe is massive. Marvel comics go back well over half a century, and span thousands upon thousands of pages. Reading all of them would be a Herculean undertaking. And one man, Douglas Wolk, did exactly that, and wrote […]
In 1907 French waiters went on strike, and won the right to wear facial hair.
Nearly every English-language movie has a disclaimer in the credits that says something like “This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” Obviously this isn’t true. Historical epics, […]
Covid-19 has killed and sickened hundreds of thousands of people, and transformed our economy, how we work, and how we relate to each other. Even in the midst of this world-historic crisis, though, people deny it. Conspiracy theorists and naysayers […]
The Mexican-American War was not fought for good reasons. The war was one of imperial and expansionist ambition and territorial expansion, and even in the 1840s many Americans at the time knew they were on the wrong side of history. […]
Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the U.S. Constitution, and talk of treason has been in the air for the last four years. Carlton F.W. Larson is a professor of constitutional law at University of California at Davis, […]
It’s not enough to just talk about the history of the Grand Guignol. We also want to bring you a little bit of what it was like to take in a night of horror there. On this special Halloween episode, […]
The Grand Guignol was a small Parisian theater which regularly produced original works of horror. The theater, which operated from 1897 until 1962, showcased short plays about murder, insanity, dismemberment, disease, and other horrors, much to the delight of regulars […]
Sasha Abramsky is a journalist and author whose new book Little Wonder tells the story of Lottie Dod, the modern world’s first female sporting celebrity. Dod came to prominence as a tennis prodigy and later excelled in other sports like […]
Today’s show is a conversation with Michel Paradis, attorney and author of Last Mission to Tokyo. Early in WWII the U.S. launched the Doolittle Raids against Japan, attacking the Japanese mainland for the first time. Most of the raiders were […]
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
are you expecting the Vancouver Canadians to have horns or something? not a lot about the pig war in this pod.
I so wanted to like this podcast but it's hard to listen to someone push their agenda so hard. Even if I happened to agree with it I don't want it to be plowed over others instead of letting people make their own decisions. Isn't that what we should have learned from past history? Hatred for others starts wars and does more harm than good? It's too bad, it had potential of being worth listening to.
I know that this is very late, but I am a new listener. I greatly appreciate you opening up about this to tell your viewers the reality of your situation and others. I dont think that everyone realizes podcasters arent all full-timers and instead rely on the support of us. You do great work and I love your show. Im also sorry to hear about your family tragedy and want to extend my deepest condolences. My family lost the matriarch on my mom's side around this time. Even over a year later, I still greatly miss my grandma.
I like the stories as I am a big fan of history but like all of the folks of his generation, he seems to think he has the right to use the present to judge the past. His comments often take history out of context and when that is done people, places and things always look bad. Nellie Bly was a woman beyond her time in many ways but his comments demoted her to an "uneducated, racist, poor journalistic" self was decimated by his liberal views, which in turn was excessively misogynistic. I doubt his incredibly niave self could have done any better with his pandering motives. I try to ignore his comments and just listen to the facts of the story.
thanks CNN... but no thanks. you sound like a little twat...
why isn't there anything since March?
ok.... I wanted to hear your uneducated options on left v. right I would have tuned to CNN. one thing I did learn is that the difference between a "riot" and a "protest" is fire, accumulated footwear and flat-screen TVs and voicing outrage of an election stolen.
Audio levels are just awful.
post modern revisionist BS
📢This show needs to be featured on EVERY Podcast Outlet's Home Page‼️ - I KNOW this show would get tens of thousands of more downloads & subscribers if more people knew about it.
"So, that is one use of ground up mummies" you don't hear that often
l
Gods start talking sh*t about each other at a dinner party.
what if?
Ha! You almost had me until the "underrepresented in historical podcasts," part. well done. I think 10 of the ones in my queue are either about Rome or WW2. 😂😜
I MUST get that Kenny Rogers Remix you play at the end! Any tips?!
🇪 🇽 🇨 🇪 🇱 🇱 🇪 🇳 🇹 🇵 🇴 🇩 🇨 🇦 🇸 🇹 , 5 ˢᵗᵃʳˢ
SAVED???
great show, Joe! thanks!
Love your podcast. keep on keeping on, my friend.