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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 even 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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How is the growing field of genetics being used to both tear down and reinforce the myth of ‘Race’ today?

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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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How did mountains on the Moon help bring about an end to the Earth-centric view of the universe?

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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 were churches in southern Europe becoming more and more highly decorated and elaborately embellished in the 1500 and 1600’s, while at the same time churches in northern Europe were being stripped of almost all of their ornamentation?

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

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How might a series of volcanic eruptions in the Americas have spurred the earliest Viking raids and the creation of the myth of Ragnarok in Scandinavia, halfway around the world?

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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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Hot Off The Presses:

Third Full-Video Lecture:
A Survey of Western Architecture Pt 3:
The Renaissance & Baroque Eras

In the third installment of our Survey of Western Architecture, we will follow the rise of Renaissance geniuses like Alberti, Bramante, & Michelangelo, their efforts to recover Roman grandeur and dignity in the basilica, the church, and the urban palazzo, followed by the outbreak of baroque extravagance from the streets of Palermo to the halls of Versailles, and then the gradual return to classical balance and understatement in the English country house…

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History of the United States in 100 Objects #22:
The Makauwahi Stone Mirror /
Kilo Pohaku

We examine the significance of a kilo pohaku, or “stone mirror” – a small volcanic stone disk used for viewing reflections – discovered deep inside the ancient Makauwahi Cave on the island of Kaua’i. This extremely rare specimen encapsulates the great mystery of Hawaiian archaeology, which relies on reconstruction from rare stone, bone, and shell objects, and also the threats facing the historical sites and artifacts of ancient Hawaii in a time of natural disaster and rapid development…

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Origins of the First World War pt. 5 –
Russia

We examine the geography and history of Russia, from the origins of the Kievan Rus in the Early Middle Ages, to the tumultuous time of industrialization, emancipation, and radical subversion at the start of the Twentieth Century. We try reconstruct the circumstances and mindsets that led the Russian state to back up their allies in Serbia, in order to maintain their tenuous foothold in the Balkans and their pretenses of leading and protecting the Slavic world…

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Myth of the Month 20:
Conspiracy Theories

Unlocked after one year for patrons only: Where do conspiracy theories come from? Why do people believe them? What do they mean? Did the CIA drug people with LSD against their will? Is Queen Elizabeth a reptilian? 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.” This is it: the most thorough, fair, and impartial examination of conspiracy theories that you will ever find anywhere…

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Doorways in Time:
The Great Archaeological Finds #7:
The Antikythera Mechanism

A stunningly complex piece of mathematical craftsmanship, the world’s earliest known analogue computer, and the so-called “scientific wonder of the ancient world” – the Antikythera mechanism was discovered by chance in 1900, by Greek sponge divers who stumbled upon the wreckage of an ancient ship that foundered on its way from Greece to Rome…

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Origins of the First World War pt. 4 –
Bosnia & the Assassination

We examine the unique and complex history of Bosnia, at once a borderland and a world unto itself, and the only Slavic country in which Islam has ever been the majority faith. With the help of readings from the classic novel, “The Bridge on the Drina,” we trace how Bosnians’ confused search for a national identity and a national destiny led ultimately to the fateful assassination that triggered a world war…
Currently available to patrons only. Become a patron at any amount to keep commercial free.

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Origins of the First World War, pt. 3 –
Austria-Hungary

At the height of their power in the Baroque Age, the Habsburgs aspired to rule the entire world; by the end of the ninetheenth century, they strove merely to maintain control over the volatile lands of the upper Danube valley. We trace how the Habsburgs’ domains evolved from a messy collection of local duchies into an absolutist empire, and finally into a complex military-industrian state, the home of artistic modernism, which was nonetheless threatened with destruction by a welter of nationalist movements and by the rising power of Serbia and Russia…

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Second Full-Video Lecture:
A Survey of Western Architecture Pt 2:
The High Middle Ages to the Renaissance

Dr. Sam continues the epic history of Western architecture by tracing how medieval builders and their patrons revived the art of building in stone once more, and used it to craft monumental edifices into intimate, atmospheric spaces in the Romanesque age, before reaching for the heavens with soaring Gothic vaults and spires, and then returning once more to earth with the simple, balanced dignity of the Renaissance….

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Guest Conversation:
Interpreting Solomon’s Temple

The center of every sacred mystery, the Temple at Jerusalem is the most famous building on earth, even though it has not existed for almost 2000 years and no one knows precisely what it looked like. We join with Michael of “Xai, how are you?” podcast to discuss Solomon’s Temple – both the real historical building as it can be reconstructed from ancient texts and archaeology, and the symbol that has been endlessly appropriated to represent humankind’s relationship to the cosmos…

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Unlocked:
Doorways in Time –
The Great Archaeological Discoveries #4:
The Library of Ashurbanipal

One moonlit night in 1853, an Iraqi excavator named Hormuzd Rassam and his team snuck into the hills outside of Mosul and began to uncover the massive palace of the last ancient Assyrian emperor, Ashurbanipal. Inside the palace was the largest trove of surviving documents from the ancient world that has ever been found…

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Origins of the First World War, pt. 2:
Serbia

We consider the history and explosive politics of the often-forgotten Eastern European nation that set the events of the First World War in motion: Serbia. We examine the country’s emergence and brief flowering as an Eastern Orthodox kingdom in the high Middle Ages, its fall to the Ottoman advance… through to its long-frustrated quest to fulfill its purported destiny of reunifying the Southern Slavs, which led a militant and conspiratorial secret society to murder their own country’s king and to smuggle teenage assassins across the border to kill their rivals’ crown prince…

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Myth of the Month 22:
Culture

What is “culture”? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? Am I doing “podcast culture” right now? However you define it, I make the case that it is the defining myth of our time, and that we should get rid of it…
Currently available to patrons only. Become a patron at any amount to keep commercial free

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Origins of the First World War
pt. 1 –
The Ottoman Empire

For over a century, scholars, politicians, and pundits have debated the supposed causes of the First World War, from German naval provocations to the rising global tide of nationalism. All of these explanations tend to ignore the simple fact that the war began in eastern Europe, triggered by regional feuding and violence in what had previously been the Ottoman provinces…

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India – pt. 3: The Rise of the South & the Islamic Conquests

We follow the dramatic evolution of Indian civilization after the fall of the Gupta empire, tracing from the spectacular rise of trade, art, and new religious movements in the southern kingdoms, through the tumult and fragmentation of the northern statelets and the cataclysmic invasions of raiders from Central Asia, and finally to the creation of Islamic states in the subcontinent just in time for the arrival of the first European ships in Indian ports…

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History of the United States in 100 Objects #21:
The Braddock/Washington Pistol

We consider the complex history and symbolism of an elaborately decorated sidearm weapon…which came across the ocean to America with General Edward Braddock, witnessed the catastrophic events in the Ohio valley that sparked the Seven Years’ War, and which then became a prized possession of George Washington…

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The Vikings, pt. 2 –
Into Distant Realms

They rained terror and destruction on Christian lands across Europe as far as Spain and Constantinople, before turning their attention away from raiding towards permanent settlement and the founding of new societies, from Ukraine to Normandy to Greenland. There has never been an explosion of exploration and aggression quite like the Viking expansion of the early Middle Ages…

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Special Guest Conversations:

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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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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