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

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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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What did Netflix’s “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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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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What did followers of the ancient and secretive branch of Christianity, Gnosticism, actually believe?

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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 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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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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Hot Off The Presses:

Latin America Inverts the World Map, with Margarita Fajardo:

Sam interviews historian Margarita Fajardo about her new book, “The World That Latin America Created,” which traces how a movement of scholars and statesmen centering around CEPAL, a UN economic commission based in Santiago, Chile, formulated a new world-view and far-reaching agenda to foster unity and development in Latin America, setting the policy agenda in Brazil and other countries in the 1950s and ’60s and set the stage for dependency theory which took the world by storm…

Margarita’s book opening Saturday Sept. 24th, in NYC with Dr. Sam in attendance

EXPLORE & Quick Sample >

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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China, pt. 2
Water and Music: Early Chinese Philosophy

We consider how the crisis of legitimacy and breakdown of order following the downfall of the Zhou dynasty spurred on a flowering of philosophy…giving rise to the enduring teachings of Taoism and Confucianism…

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UNLOCKED: Doorways in Time: The Nag Hammadi Library

Unlocked after one year for patrons only: The secretive Gnostic stream of Christianity, which taught a radically different metaphysics and spiritual cosmology from “orthodox” doctrine in the first four hundred years of the church, was largely lost to history, until 1945, when a camel-herder in a remote part of Egypt stumbled upon an old ceramic jar with 13 massive books…

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Fortresses on Sand: The History of Florida – pt. 5

We follow the southward-racing juggernaut of modern Florida, from statehood in 1845 to the 1930s – the insatiable quest of visionaries and megalomaniacs, from Jewish utopians, to slave-driving planters, to evangelical missionaries, to black politicians, to hotel magnates, to messianic cult leaders, to women’s suffragists, to Cuban revolutionaries, to bohemian poets, to impose a sense of order upon the chaotic and unruly wilderness of tropical Florida…

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China, pt. 1 – Making the Middle Kingdom

We follow the long struggle to build power, wealth, and lasting harmony on the rich but harsh and unforgiving landscape of China – from early farming villages, to the quasi-legendary early emperors, through to the dramatic quest for unification…

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History of the United States in 100 Objects:
Three Spanish Silver Higa Amulets from Louisiana

These three silver amulets…found among the remains of the Spanish colonial fortress of Los Adaes in modern-day Louisiana…reflect the fear, conflict, and struggle over control of sex and reproduction, as well as good and evil magic, at a remote colonial outpost.

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Doorways in Time: The Library of Ashurbanipal

…The largest trove of surviving documents from the ancient world that has ever been found…Over 30,000 tablets illuminated what had been the most mysterious empire of the Iron Age, brought to light the ancient masterpiece of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and provided the first window into the lost Near Eastern mythology that influenced the Biblical book of Genesis…

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

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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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Special Guest Conversations & Interviews