Ep. 159: It’s August of 1905 in the small village of Commugny, Switzerland. Jean Lanfray, a French laborer stands before three coffins, weeping. “Tell me I haven’t done this!” he sobs. “I loved my family. I would never do this.” In the coffins lay the bodies of his wife and two daughters, ages 6 and 2. Jean shot them all with his rifle after a day of binge drinking. At the trial, his defense paints a picture of Absinthe madness. They call in a psychiatrist who claims that only the absinthe Jean

Ep. 158: I have talked about a lot of Tudors. If you want to go back and do some digging, I have episodes about the War of the Roses and Richard III which explain how the original Tudor monarch, Henry VII, won the throne on the battlefield without much of a claim at all, beginning the unlikely Tudor dynasty. I have episodes about his son, Henry VIII, of course, and all of his six wives. I have an episode about Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII and the first queen regnant of England. I’ve

Ep. 157: My youngest son has always been a precocious child, speaking full sentences at a year and a half old. I’ll never forget one night, when he was probably 2 years old. I was laying him down in his crib, tucking him in at bedtime. I covered him with his blanket and laid my hand on his head, if only to feel his soft, warm baby hair. “Goodnight buddy,” I said, expecting a “night night mama” in return. What he said instead unsettles me to this day. “I used to be a grown up,” he said, suddenly