The Hungry Historian

Send us Fan Mail "This war, like the next war, is a war to end war." - David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England (1916) Oh, how wrong Prime Minister David Lloyd George was.  1916 stands as one of the most devastating and defining years of the First World War. It was a year where industrialized warfare reached a grim new peak, and entire landscapes were transformed into symbols of end...

Send us Fan Mail "We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields." - Lt-Col John McRae 1915 was meant to be a brief detour on the road to victory. Instead, it became the year the war showed its teeth. On this episode, The Hungry Historian takes listeners deep into the second full year of the First World War....

Send us Fan Mail "We are about to engage in a battle on which the fate of our country depends...the moment has passed for looking at the rear...Troops that can advance no farther must, at any price, hold the ground they have conquered and die on the spot rather than give way."  - General Joseph Joffre, Order of the Day - September 5th, 1914. In the summer of 1914, Europe stood at the hei...

Send us Fan Mail “The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.” - Guglielmo Marconi, 1912 Long before the first shots were fired in August 1914, Europe had been quietly preparing for disaster. In this episode, join the Hungry Historian as he traces the tangled web of events, ambitions, and anxieties that pushed the continent towards the brink of tot...

Send us Fan Mail "In fourteen years Leopold has deliberately destroyed more lives than have suffered death on all the battlefields of this planet for the past thousand years..." - Mark Twain In this episode of The Hungry Historian, we dive into one of the darkest and most disturbing chapters of colonial history: the reign of King Leopold II over the Congo Free State.  What began as a sup...

Send us Fan Mail History isn’t just the tale of kings and queens, of armies and empires. It’s also the story of how we’ve suffered, how we’ve punished, and how far humanity has gone to make death a spectacle. In this Halloween special, The Hungry Historian ventures into the blackest corners of the past. To the places where execution was an art form, and pain was meant to echo.  From the slow scrap...

Send us Fan Mail "If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he's dead, then maybe he was a great man." - James Dean Before he was a legend frozen in time, James Dean was a small-town boy with a hunger for something greater. In this episode, The Hungry Historian explores the brief but blazing life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring icons.  Follow al...

Send us Fan Mail "The men were simply mown down. They advanced in lines which seemed to melt away under the enemy’s fire." — British officer reflecting on the Battle of Loos In this episode join The Hungry Historian as he turns back to September 1915 and the bloody fields of northern France to examine the Battle of Loos.  Often overshadowed today by the Somme and Passchendaele, Loos was...

Send us Fan Mail "Assassination has never changed the history of the world." - Benjamin Disraeli From Abraham Lincoln’s fateful night at Ford’s Theatre, to the near-misses that almost changed the course of American politics forever, presidential assassinations and assassination attempts have left lasting marks on the nation’s history.  In this episode, join the Hungry Historian as he div...

Send us Fan Mail “Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany . . . and Great Britain . . . and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.” - German Advertisement the day the Lusitania set sail On May 7th, 1915, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk...

Send us Fan Mail “Canada emerged as a political entity with boundaries largely determined by the fur trade. … The present Dominion emerged not in spite of geography but because of it.” — Harold Innis  From the fur-clad frontiers of Rupert’s Land to the corridors of British colonial power, the Hudson’s Bay Company stood as one of the most influential and controversial forces in North American histo...

Send us Fan Mail “The Beaver does everything perfectly well: it makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread; in short, it makes everything.” - Unknown Innu Hunter  On this episode of The Hungry Historian , our historical hero ventures deep into the northern Canadian wilderness to trace the origins and rise of one of the oldest and most influential commercial enterprises in North America — the H...

Send us Fan Mail "From Paints to Saints and the beachs between, visit the Normandie region through the eyes of the Hungry Historian." On this second episode of a two part look back at his travels through France and Belgium, the Hungry Historian is once again joined by his Mrs (The Hungry Herstorian) as he leaves the beaches of Normandy in the rear view and heads for his next adventure. ...

Send us Fan Mail "From Paints to Saints and the beachs between, visit the Normandie region through the eyes of the Hungry Historian." On this first episode of a two part look back at his travels through France and Belgium, the Hungry Historian lands in Paris and heads for his base of operations, the Normandie capital city of Caen. Follow along as he walks the beaches and bunkers that saw...

Send us Fan Mail "Yeah-yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes. Hoo, they send you down to war, Lord And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?" Hoo, they only answer, "More, more, more, more" - "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival On this last episode of his series that focused on The Vietnam War, The Hungry Historian is going to go thro...

Send us Fan Mail "The United States... will not turn from our obligation to help the remaining refugees... The situation in Vietnam is tragic, but America can’t fix every problem." - President Gerald Ford  By 1974, the Vietnam War had entered its twilight. In this penultimate episode of his series on the conflict, The Hungry Historian, explores the war’s dramatic final years, beginning w...

Send us Fan Mail "Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin' We're finally on our own This summer I hear the drummin' Four dead in Ohio." - Neil Young, "Ohio" On this seventh episode of his series on the Vietnam War, join the Hungry Historian as he journeys through the tumultuous years of 1970 to 1973—a pivotal period for both the Vietnam War and the United States.  As...

Send us Fan Mail “Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”—President Richard Nixon As the 1960s drew to a close, 1969 became a pivotal year that marked the end of an era—a time when the dreams of peace, love, and unity that defined the decade began to unravel.  It was a year steeped in blood, both in the jungles of Vietnam and in t...

Send us Fan Mail “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the streets. They will take pot, and they will get high. They don't want to go to school, 'cause they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam." - Eartha Kitt In Vietnam, 1968 marked the Tet Offensive—a massive, coordinated assault by North Vietnamese and Vie...

Send us Fan Mail “You could never tell who was the enemy and who was not. Therefore you treated everybody with suspicion and distrust. The enemy was everywhere and everybody at all times, and we were the foreigners in their country…" - Thomas Giltner, U.S. Soldier The two year run from 1965-66, was a period of intense escalation in Vietnam, as the U.S. became deeply entrenched in a war that b...

Send us Fan Mail “It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.” —Ronald Reagan In 1961, the Vietnam War was a conflict that seemed far away to many Americans, but it was quickly becoming one of the most defining struggles of the Cold War.  The US had been s...

Send us Fan Mail “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” —President Lyndon Johnson Between 1960 and 1964, the conflict in Vietnam escalated from a simmering insurgency to a full-blown international crisis. It was a time of political intrigue, military build-up, and ideological warfare. By the end of...

Send us Fan Mail “Just as Rome civilised the barbarians beyond its borders, we too have a duty to extend French culture and religion to the backwards peoples of the world.” - Paul Doumer, President of France  On 8 March 1965, 3,500 US Marines landed near Da Nang in South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war in Vietnam. It's important to distinguish this as the ground...

Send us Fan Mail "Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone." - Charles Schulz Twas the night before Christmas, and while everyone might be nestled all snug in their beds at your house, over at the House of the Hungry Historian  him and the Hungry Herstorian were cooking up one last minute gift. That's right!  Coming in hot on the heels of the first part of The Hungry...

Send us Fan Mail “Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality.” - Washington Irving With less than a week to go before the big bearded man in red makes his way down the chimney, the Hungry Historian is coming at you with a gift of his own. A holiday gift guide made up of his favourite historical reads! Sure, historical books might not be your bag, but when it comes to shopping for...