All Episodes

Ep. 41: Christmas is out of control. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I love the whole Christmas season, it’s magical, but it’s been expanding exponentially like a sparkly red balloon for decades and sometimes I wonder when it will burst. When has a holy day, one with origins specifically linked to a single event in the beliefs of one religion, ever transformed so fully into an extravagant secular holiday celebrated by the masses. What does Santa Claus have to do with the birth

Ep. 40: “You can’t compare it to any other competitive event in the world! A race covering 1000 miles of the roughest, most beautiful terrain Mother Nature has to offer. She throws jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of windswept coast at the mushers and their dog teams. Add to that temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs an

Ep. 39: A news article dated December 21, 2012 reads quote “A man in Phoenix keeps 1,000 fish in his swimming pool, which he says he plans to survive on if the worst comes. One couple says they have collected 25,000 rounds of ammunition and gathered enough food inside their gated-home to survive for 50 years. A California company has sold 50 survivor bunkers in the past three months alone. An estimated 3 million Americans have been actively preparing for the end of the world,

Ep. 38: Agatha Christie is the best selling novelist of all time, like still. She has sold an estimated 2 billion copies of her books which have been translated into 103 different languages. This puts her just below the bible and William Shakespeare. During her long career as an author, she wrote 66 novels, 14 short story collections, and 20 plays. One of her plays, “The Mouse Trap,” is the longest running, uninterrupted show, of any kind, in the world, ever. Agatha perfected

Ep. 37: When I think of rum, I think of pirates. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, right? And when I think of pirates, I think of treasure chests full of gold, silver, precious gems, buried treasure. The rum seems recreational, dastardly, debaucherous, trivial. The treasure, now that’s serious. That’s the job. There’s no messing around with the treasure. But, did know, for many in the business of maritime trade and, yes even piracy, the rum was the treasure? Did you know that rum

Ep. 36: I remember the pilgrim hats, the buckles on the shoes, the feather headdresses and beads, the fun, cutesy crafts we did in school, the smell of construction paper and tempera paint as we stamped out handprint turkeys, glued on brightly colored feathers. You dress like a pilgrim. You be an Indian. We’ll all sit down and have a feast together. I remember learning about the first Thanksgiving in school. I remember teachers talking about a day of peace, a day that colonis

Ep. 35: It’s 1947 and getting late. Frances Gerety glances at the clock, then shuffles the ads she’s just finished designing back into a folder marked N.W. Ayer and Son, Philadelphia - the advertising agency where she works. She gets ready for bed then lays down to rest for a few short hours before another busy day. She has a meeting in the morning with the marketing team, a meeting about - ugh. Frances sits up in bed, bringing her palm to her forehead. She was supposed to co

Ep. 34: In 1949, 13 year old Pamela Smedley boarded a ship with 27 other girls from a Catholic orphanage in Britain. The nuns told them they were going on a day trip. The girls were excited, happy to be out in the world, on an adventure. According to Pamela, quote “We thought it would be like going to Scarborough for the day because we were so innocent and naive.” But they weren’t going to Scarborough. They were going to Australia, for good. Four extremely difficult decades w

Ep. 33: Halloween is weird y’all. I mean, I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it is weird. The costumes, carving faces into pumpkins and putting candles in them, trick or treating - walking around to stranger’s houses at night, costumed stranger’s houses asking for candy, putting the candy into a bucket shaped like a pumpkin with a face. It’s bizarre, really. What a bizarre holiday. And it’s spooky too, right? It’s scary. I feel like it’s scarier than ever - monsters and demon

Ep. 32: Burial has always been a sacred thing, undertaken with utmost reverence and respect for the dead. Graveyards and cemeteries, while yes often creepy, are peaceful, quiet places. The wind rustles the leaves of a tree, a dove coos mournfully, a tearful widow silently places flowers on her late husband’s grave. We typically think of graves as final resting places for the dead - the end of their stories here on Earth. But did you know, that wasn’t always the case? 200 year

Ep. 31: “Skeleton of a Giant Found,” “Reported Discovery of a Huge Skeleton,” “Monstrous Skulls and Bones,” “A Race of Indian Giants,” “Giant Skeleton Unearthed at Buzzards Bay,” “Skeleton Found of a Man Over 9 Feet High With An Enormous Skull,” “New Mexico Discovery: 12 Foot Giant Found,” These are newspaper headlines and they’re not from the National Enquirer or any other disreputable tabloid like that, they’re all from the New York Times. These are just a few examples of h

Ep. 30: Picture a vampire. Yeah, you’re picturing Dracula. That’s Dracula. I mean unless you’re a Twilight fan, then maybe you’re picturing Robert Pattinson’s fine self. But no, chances are you’re picturing the title character from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” about a vampire named Count Dracula who moves from Transylvania to England in search of new victims of his undead curse. This character, who basically invented the genre of vampires in fiction, was loosely based o

Ep. 29: Think of a witch. You’re likely picturing an old woman, gnarled and stooped with a hooked nose and stringy unkempt hair. Maybe she’s wearing a black robe, a pointy hat. Maybe she’s flying on a broomstick. Does she have a black cat? A cauldron where she mixes up deadly potions? An ancient book of spells she uses to curse people? This witch you’re picturing is evil. She cavorts with the devil and uses black magic to hurt people. She’s no hero. She’s a villian. Now ask y

Eps. 27 & 28: Squinting into the sun, John White spots a tree-lined stretch of land across the muddy, brackish sound water. “There,” he says to the men rowing, pointing to a small, sandy stretch of beach emerging from the gently swaying salt marsh. They pull the row boat ashore and stagger out on wobbly, sea-worn legs. Cautiously, they make their way into the treeline and towards the site of the settlement White helped to build two years ago. He looks around. This island is f

Ep. 26: She could play the piano by ear at the age of 3 and was accepted into the prestigious Julliard school of music at age 8. By 19 she was headlining at Café Society, the first racially integrated club in New York City. She went on to become a successful Hollywood film star, fierce Civil Rights activist, and the first Black woman to host her own television show. She counted Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie as close friends, dominating the jazz scene as a

Ep. 25: “Okay, Houston we’ve had a problem here. This is Houston, say it again please. Uh, Houston we’ve had a problem.” That 7 seconds of audio has been immortalized throughout time, history, and culture. Even if that was your first time hearing the original audio, you’ve definitely heard the quote “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” That’s astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of NASA’s Apollo 13 mission to the moon in 1970. But did you know the context of that quote? What the actual

Ep. 24: Chief Powatan stands shrouded in flickering shade amongst the forests of coastal Virginia, his arm raised, wooden club poised to strike the man who lay cowering beneath him. This man, with his pale skin and fair hair, is one of them. The ones trying to claim their ancestral lands. The ones who steal their precious food and burn their villages to the ground. This man must die. Suddenly, a streak of golden skin, a flash of black hair, and his beloved Pocahontas now lies

Ep. 23: It’s 1719, Daniel Defoe flips through the freshly printed pages of his latest novel. It took him just six months to write but he has a good feeling about this one. He runs his finger along the title page, “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” printed in bold black ink. He feels good about this story, a story that landed on his lap, really. And his hunch would prove correct. The new novel would sell through 4 editions before the end of the yea

Ep. 22: "When we gazed upon all this splendor at once, we scarcely knew what to think, and we doubted whether all that we beheld was real. A series of large towns stretched themselves along the banks of the lake, out of which still larger ones rose magnificently above the waters. Innumerable crowds of canoes were plying everywhere around us; at regular distances we continually passed over new bridges, and before us lay the great city of Mexico in all its splendor." Those are

Ep. 21: The decade of the 1920s is often referred to as the “Roaring Twenties.” You can probably picture it now: jazz trumpets blare while women in shiny dresses dance the Charleston with their beaus and sip fancy martinis. It’s fast, it’s loud, it’s fun, it’s one big party, like New Years Eve every night. Night clubs, cocktails, rock and roll, all of these cultural staples evolved out of the roaring twenties. But take the alcohol away and, I’m not sure they would have roare