All Episodes

Ep. 140: You’ve likely heard of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, maybe Tecumseh. And if you’re a serious History Fix listener you’ve probably heard of Wingina too, who also went by the name Pemisapan. If you’re scrambling to place the name, I’ll help you out. Wingina was the weroance, or leader, chief, of the Algonquian speaking Secotan people who lived in coastal North Carolina when the first English colonists arrived in the 1580s. Wingina’s story, as we know it, mostly

Ep. 139: We know there were vast and impressive cities in the Americas before European contact. The stone buildings and pyramids are still there: Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula, Palenque, Tikal, La Danta pyramid at El Mirador, greater in volume than the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the mystical remains of Machu Picchu, nestled in the Andes Mountains of Peru. We know these once great cities flourished in Central and South America because the stones are still there to prove i

Ep. 138: Last week I came to you with the story of the French crown jewels recently stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris. All 8 pieces included diamonds, most of which probably came from India, and many of which were once part of the jewel collection of France’s King Louis the fourteenth. Diving into the world of Louis the fourteenth’s Indian diamond collection, however, led me directly to a stone that I failed to mention last week, a stone that is, quite possibly, the most

Ep. 137: Two weeks ago on Sunday, October 19th something rather extraordinary happened at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. During broad daylight, thirty minutes after the museum opened for the day, and as hundreds of visitors streamed inside, 8 pieces of France’s crown jewel collection valued at an estimated 102 million dollars but actually priceless when considering historical value, were stolen in less than 8 minutes. I don’t often cover current events on this show, I’m

Ep. 136: It was a Wednesday afternoon, December 4th, 1872. Captain Morehouse squinted into the distance aboard the ship Dei Gratia on its way from New Jersey to Genoa, Italy. Only moments ago, the helmsman had called him out on deck, and now he could see why. In the distance, still some six miles away, a ship was heading towards them. But, something was off about this ship. The way it moved was all wrong, drifting unsteadily one way and then the other, rolling and bobbing lik

Ep. 135: Back in July, I did an episode about Joan of Arc. She was someone who had been on my list for a long time. Her story is honestly bananas: an illiterate teenaged peasant girl with no military training leads an army to victory resulting in the crowning of a French king during the Hundred Years War. Oh and on top of that she claimed to hear the voices of Saints. Oh and on top of that they burnt her at the stake for said claims. It’s truly stranger than fiction. Today Jo

Ep. 134: Grace Sherwood ducked into a twisted patch of rosemary on a crisp winter day in 1697. She snapped off sprigs of the aromatic herb and placed them into a woven basket at her hip. Later, she’d hang them in the kitchen window to dry. She paused to adjust the waistline of her rough spun cotton trousers, pants her oldest son, John, had outgown. Grace knew the neighbors talked. A woman in pants? It was preposterous. That simply wasn’t how things were done in the Virginia c

Ep. 133: The clock strikes midnight, March 19th, 1919 in New Orleans, Louisiana. One would expect, on this day and time, for most residents to be asleep in their beds, especially outside of the busier city thoroughfares, but that is not the case on this particular night. Instead, walking down a would be quiet street, you’d find lights on in each home and, what’s more, you’d notice the sounds of jazz music drifting out into the street, a discordant cacophony of noise issuing f

Eps. 131 & 132: You guys know how I’m always going on about how we still basically live in ancient Athens? Well I’m back at it this week. No, Athens isn’t considered a lost city, I’ll get to the point soon. After last week’s Shakespeare episode I’ve been trying to think up other literary greats that were even halfway on his level and the first guy I thought of was Homer. Homer, like Shakespeare much later, was a bard, the original bard. He was a poet from ancient Greece who l

Ep. 130: When thinking of literary greats, several come to mind but all of them, all of them pale in comparison to one name. This man, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time, a playwright, a poet, you all know him - William Shakespeare. Encyclopedia Britannica even sets aside its impartiality writing quote “It may be audacious even to attempt a definition of his greatness, but it is not so difficult to describe the gifts that enabled him to create ima

Ep. 129: The ground beneath our feet tells many tales. Look down at where you’re standing now. It may look like a regular ordinary floor be it tile or carpet or wood planks. Maybe you’re outside looking at the grass or sidewalk. Maybe you’re driving over a road or parked in a parking lot. Nothing too interesting there. But what might you find beneath that layer? Evidence of times come before? An older floor or foundation? Artifacts, bones, fossils? What story does the Earth b

Ep. 128: Game of Thrones is typically considered to be the most popular television show of all time based on its massive global reach and deep cultural impact. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an 8 season historical fantasy series based on a book series by George R. R. Martin about different houses, different families, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Targaryens, the Baratheons, all battling and plotting and backstabbing each other to try to sit on the iron throne. It’s pretty awe

Ep. 127: Walk into any classroom anywhere in the world today and it will look pretty much the same. The students may look different. They may be speaking different languages. There will be slight variations but the overall set up is the same. Education, schooling, is an almost universally shared experience for most humans today. Most of us spent years of our lives in classrooms and if you were to reminisce on it now, to share a story from your school days with someone from a

Ep. 126: Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was a man with lofty goals. He was a big man. Not physically but in character. He had a big personality. Incredibly charismatic, he was an exceptional leader. He was very good at inspiring loyalty in others, at rallying people together. He was very, very ambitious, some might say over confident. Because, despite his big personality, despite his ambition and natural leadership skills, despite being knighted, despite his later f

Ep. 125: Dr. Alexis Turner is a historian of science at Harvard University. While pursuing his PhD, he chose to focus his studies on a particularly interesting drug known as LSD. He says in a Harvard News article by Paul Massari quote “At different times throughout its history, LSD has been a psychiatric wonder drug, a means to world peace, a distraction from political progress, and a poison corrupting the youth of the country. Intellectually, I want to know how it can be all

Ep. 124: It’s 1428. Lady Jane Grey was just 16 years old when she was beheaded at the tower of London in 1554. A secret plot had unexpectedly placed Jane on the English throne, usurping Mary Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Just nine days later, an outraged Mary stormed into London with a crowd of supporters and swiftly took back her throne. Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London and later executed. If ever there was a political pawn, it was Jane Grey, a child wh

Ep. 123: It’s 1428. A16 year old peasant girl stands in a field outside her family’s modest stone cottage. Her face is upturned towards the heavens as if listening intently for something. Her mother, watching warily from the window, calls her back inside. This is not a safe time or place to be a girl standing alone in a field, not a field in Domremy (Do-ray-me), France anyway, positioned directly between two enemy forces who had been at war for almost a hundred years now. Joa

Ep. 122: When you think of the word crystal you may think of a fancy chandelier, elaborate drinking glasses, or perhaps priceless gems adorning the décolletage of a wealthy woman, the crown jewels of royalty through the ages. If I asked you what crystal has left the biggest impact on human history, has had the greatest overall value to us throughout time, you may be tempted to say diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, but you would be wrong. There is another type of crystal

Ep. 121: Thomas Jefferson is America’s golden boy. I mean along with George Washington I guess but he already has his own episode, episode 69. In the eyes of many Americans, these guys, these founding fathers could do no wrong. They built our country on the ideals of liberty and freedom for all. And it was Thomas Jefferson of course who wrote those fateful words down for the very first time. Thomas Jefferson who drafted the Declaration of Independence and wrote quote “We hold

Ep. 120: Pretty much everyone knows the story of Noah’s Ark. God decides to flood the whole Earth to punish humans for their wickedness, but he selects Noah and his family as the sole survivors. He instructs them to build a massive boat, to gather animals inside it, and then for 40 days and 40 nights it rains and the floodwaters rise. When the floodwaters finally recede, Noah’s ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noah releases a dove which returns with an olive bran