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Things You Don’t Know

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Did Columbus really think that he was going to reach Asia?

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What little do we actually know about Shakespeare, the person?

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Why is it misleading to apply the word “religion” to Judaism and Hinduism?

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How did Tisquantum (popularly known as Squanto) already know how to speak English before the Pilgrims had ever arrived?

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Ever heard that Florida has no history? Dr. Sam wants you to know how incorrect that common perception actually is…

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How did so much of the Epic of Gilgamesh remain hidden and forgotten – but preserved – for over 2,000 years until being rediscovered in modern times?

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What did Netflix’s movie “The Dig” miss about the most dramatic part of the whole Sutton Hoo discovery?

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What does the English Civil War of the 1640s tell us about the American Civil War, and about the present?

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What can we know about enslaved Africans who were held in a specific New England house, even without written records?

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Who were the Freemasons of the 1700s? How did they grow from a local Scottish fraternity to a global network?

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How can one mid-sized U.S. city – Tulsa, Oklahoma – serve as a microcosm of so much of the triumphalism and tragedy of American history?

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Why can no one agree on what “capitalism” actually is? And why does a lack of clear definition call into question so many other myths of the modern world?

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How – and why – did universities begin in the Middle Ages, long before the scientific revolution and the “Enlightenment”?

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Was there really an Exodus from Egypt like the one described in the Bible?

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How did accusing people of witchcraft further several political agendas of the time?

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Why did every Renaissance-era ruler in Europe have a court astrologer?

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Does a single coin prove that Vikings came all the way to what’s now the United States?

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Why is the dramatic 2019 fire at Paris’ Notre Dame actually a common occurrence for cathedrals around Europe?

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Why don’t US citizens directly elect their President? Or have a more proportional Senate?

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Are people really becoming less religious than they used to be?

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What did followers of the ancient and secretive branch of Christianity, Gnosticism, actually believe?

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How did changes in the climate in the 1600s lead people to think they were living in the Apocalypse? How did this help spur the creation of institutions and forces that still shape the world today?

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Could all of British history have turned out differently if the winds on the English channel had shifted direction on just one day in 1066?

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Watch Dr. Sam’s Appearance on The Katie Halper Show
– A Year in Review

Katie and Sam look back on 2022, bringing a historical perspective to the year that was – from the tumult at Twitter and its echoes of the private-enterprise telegraphs of the 1800’s, to the government’s intervention into railroad-labor relations that continues a century-long pattern of dictating to railway workers what they must accept, to the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and much more…

Watch on YouTube
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on SoundCloud

And explore the companion Historiansplaining episode:
“2022 in Historical Context – How Do You Like Your New Gilded Age?”

Hot Off The Presses:

Doorways in Time:
The Great Archaeological Discoveries #6:
Early Audio Recordings

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the most brilliant and ambitious minds in both Europe and America were bent upon solving the problem of capturing sound waves from the air and playing them back. Most… were either forgotten or lost to decay and degradation. In the past fifteen years, however, scientists and engineers, including the First Sounds collective, have located the surviving remnants…revealing much of the auditory world of the nineteenth century…
Currently available to patrons only. Become a patron at any amount to keep commercial free.

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History of the United States in 100 Objects #18: Jesuit Brass Medallion with Image of Ignatius Loyola

Unlocked after one year for Patrons only:

A small brass religious medallion found in the house of a French fur trader inside a fortress on the remote Straits of Mackinac shows the immense power of small numbers of merchants and missionaries to control sprawling networks of diplomacy and trade, stretching from Europe all the way into the deep interior of North America, and to sway the course of wars and imperial power struggles…

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The Vikings, pt. 1 –
In the Norsemen’s World

We have all seen images of axe-wielding Vikings raining destruction upon the shores of medieval Europe — but who were these berserking Norsemen and where did they come from? What society produced them? How did the Scandinavians of the Viking age understand the world and their place in it? We examine the Norsemen’s complex and mysterious cosmos described in the poems and prophesies of the Eddas, and compare it to the realities of survival, trade, kingship, politics, warfare, art, gender, and the family in Scandinavia…

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2022 in Historical Context –
How Do You Like Your New Gilded Age?

We consider some of the major events of this year in light of their historical roots, from the abortion ruling to the Ukraine war; in particular, we consider the Twitter controversy in light of the history of media monopolies beginning with the telegraph, and the crisis over railroad labor in light of the railways strike of 1922, exactly one century ago.

First video segment of Dr. Sam’s appearance on the Katie Halper Show.

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Myth of the Month 21:
The Old West

“Cowboys and Indians.” For most Americans, the words evoke a sinister game, representing a timeless enmity between the forces of civilization and savagery. In actual historical fact, cowboys and Indians were symbiotic trading partners, and many cowboys were Indians themselves; but the image of the cowboy as a conqueror and as the bearer of civilization into the “Wild West” has become central to the American national myth…

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Monarchy, Honours, and the Molding of Modern Society – A Conversation with Tobias Harper

I speak with historian Tobias Harper about about the evolving and growing role of the British crown as the head of the voluntary sector in a neoliberal, atomizing, and celebrity-driven society. We examine both the “magic of the royal touch” and the hard-nosed bureaucratic calculations that it can serve to obscure, as captured in Toby’s book, “From Servants of the Empire to Everyday Heroes: The British Honours System in the Twentieth Century”…

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History of the United States in 100 Objects # 20: Silver Beaker with Devil & Pope Figures, 1750

A silver beaker engraved with figures of Satan, the Pope, and the “Young Pretender” (also known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”) shows how French, Dutch, German, and English colonists in colonial New York united around fear of Catholicism and the Jacobite menace…
Currently available to patrons only. Become a patron at any amount to keep commercial free.

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Myth of the Month 18:
Robin Hood – pt. 2:
Capturing the Fugitive

Unlocked after one year for Patrons only:
What is the significance of Robin Hood as an outlaw – a person declared legally dead – who lives in the greenwood, where life is constantly renewed? Why does Shakespeare heavily allude to Robin in his Henry IV plays? And most significantly, was there a real Robin Hood, or is he a pure creation of myth and folklore? We consider the possibilities and scrutinize the evidence…

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James II and the “Glorious Revolution” 1685-88

James II was Britain’s shortest-reigning monarch of the entire early modern age – yet his brief rule caused a dramatic rupture, which in turn opened the door to the transformation of the kingdom into the constitutional, commercial, imperial state that we know as modern Britain… We consider the complex life and personality of the ill-fated king, as well as the class conflicts and ideological shifts that let to the so-called “Glorious Revolution” and the beginnings of the modern state…

Also see Imbalances of Power: 10 Episodes on English Political Revolution and Evolution

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Doorways in Time: Gobekli Tepe

We examine the so-called “zero point of history,” the “first temple,” the “world’s oldest building,” the massive and deeply ancient complex of stone-age megalithic monuments on a hilltop in Turkey, which since being uncovered in the 1990s, has dramatically overturned received ideas about the beginnings of civilization…

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Myth of the Month:
Conspiracy Theories

Where do conspiracy theories come from? Why do people believe them?…We consider the merits and pitfalls of conspiracy theories, trace the history and evolution of the conspiratorial tradition from rumors about lepers in the 1300s to Alex Jones and Q-Anon, and examine the biases and double standards built into the very concept of “conspiracy theories.”

Currently available to patrons only. Become a patron at any amount to keep commercial free.

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Fortresses on Sand:
The History of Florida
– pt. 6

In the final lecture on Florida, we examine how the tropical state, thanks to innovations like DDT, orange-juice concentrate, and air conditioning, was able to boom at an unimaginable pace, rocketing into the top five biggest states in the union, with massive scientific and artistic communities, a diverse immigrant mosaic, and after the Civil Rights movement, exceptionally volatile and unpredictable politics…

Rolling Stone article outlining ways to help Florida, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico following Hurricanes Ian and Fiona.

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Special Guest Conversations:

Beyond Plymouth Rock: The Deep Beginnings of
New England

A Conversation with
Michael J. Simpson
The long history of contact, exchange, violence, disease, and acculturation among indigenous and European peoples…that created a complex creolized world before any Puritans were even on the scene…

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Uncovering the Medieval Slave Trade

A conversation with
Hannah Barker
Before Columbus had even set foot in America, medieval Europe and the Islamic Middle East already had a long history in trading and exploiting slaves…

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See all
Special Guest Conversations & Interviews

Watch Dr. Sam’s Appearance on The Katie Halper Show– A Year in Review

Watch Dr. Sam’s Appearance on The Katie Halper Show
– A Year in Review