History Fix

It’s finally Spooktober! All October long I’ll be telling spooky, mysterious true stories from history, starting with zombies. Zombies are a big deal. They are all over pop culture in movies and TV shows, even video games. People love a good zombie apocalypse story. But the pop culture zombies of today are quite different than how zombies started out. They’re almost a different beast entirely. So where did the idea of a zombie come from? How did they get so twisted? And could zombies possibly...

Despite the results of my recent poll, I'm making the executive decision to cover Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532. But, trust me, you won't be disappointed. This story is insane. We have rags to riches characters, we have mighty kings, we have brothers fighting amongst themselves, partners backstabbing each other. We have lies and deceit and secret ambushes. We have murder, lots and lots of murder, and we have the rise of a new world order, for better, or...

Of course we’re going to El Dorado! Or, at least, we’re going to meet him? Because, when you take a look at the primary sources, where this myth of El Dorado, the city of gold, really came from, it becomes immediately apparent that El Dorado was never a city at all… he was a person. El Dorado, the gilded one, was first described as a wealthy leader who covered his body in gold dust and then washed it off in a sacred lake. The Spanish simply took that and ran with it. If this king had enough g...

I have wanted to talk about Sir Walter Raleigh for so very long. He had a lot of power and influence during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and impacted the world we know today more than people realize. He's even the one who came up with the name Virginia! And yet, most don't know the first thing about Raleigh. Who was he really? And how did he go from the queen’s favorite golden boy to beheaded at Westminster in the span of just a few decades? Let's fix that. Episodes about the Roanoke ...

So many important lessons to be learned from the late and great Dolly Parton! I'm back with a bang this week Fixies to uncover the unexpected legacy left by super famous, super loved, greatly missed Dolly Parton. How does a girl from a poverty stricken tobacco farm in the mountains of Tennessee, one of twelve children, with an illiterate father, come to be one of the most famous performers, business women, philanthropists, and all around enigmas of all time? More importantly, how is it possib...