History Impossible

Sometimes the best way to convey the weight of history is to read the words of just one person who lived it. In this special episode of History Impossible, we'll be looking at the life of Joseph Samuels, whose incredible journey and profound resilience throughout his 90 plus years on this planet deserved examination. From the dusty streets of Baghdad, where he escaped the first and worst massacre...

What do you get when all of your best laid plans seem to be falling apart around you with nothing but the suffering of your people to show for it? Bitterness. As the 1920s turned into the 1930s, Hajj Amin al-Husseini's power started to look increasingly fragile and precarious, largely thanks to the effects of the violence that rocked Palestine in the summer of 1929 that only served to raise the te...

1929 was, in a lot of ways, the year the world began its final descent into hell. The stock market crash in the United States would lead to untold misery in much of the Western world and allow for the rise and spread of particularly noxious ideologies across the whole of Europe. However, on the other side of the world, another "beginning of the end" was taking place, this time between the Jews and...

"Palestine is my country and the country of my ancestors—I will sacrifice myself for the sake of its sons." —Hajj Amin al-Husseini In the second episode of History Impossible's first series, we'll be diving head first into the early life of our story's central character, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the future Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in Palestine. We'll see how he developed his identity as a Palestinia...

"The peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France. ... Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poiters, then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world." -Adolf Hitler The first episode of H...

This is a quick announcement I'd like to make regarding History Impossible's immediate future, which is mostly tied up in this inaugural long-term series--a season really--which needs a bit of explaining and reassuring (specifically to folks who prefer one-off stories). In addition, I couldn't resist making a quick comment about history being essentially made on January 6th, 2021 in Washington D.C...

The Impossible Interviews series is back with a different, but still special conversation I had with the amazingly talented and insightful Aaron Sibarium. Aaron is an associate editor over at the Washington Free Beacon, as well as a writer for various publications including National Review, Quillette, and American Purpose, the last of which published one of Aaron's essays on October 26th, 2020, th...

History Impossible is back sooner than some may have anticipated for another installment of the Infinitesimal Impossibilities series, this time recorded in the spirit (and in the last hours) of Halloween 2020.   This time, we cover a story that takes place in early 19th century New Orleans. It begins with a fire, or rather perhaps concludes with one. A large mansion whose hosts had been entertaini...

This episode is dedicated to Franco Bolelli. Since it's the year of our lord 2020, it was only inevitable that we'd talk about pandemics on History Impossible. What follows is an exploration of not just a pandemic and not just the most physically destructive pandemic in all of human history. What follows is an exploration of what a pandemic actually does. And by "does," we're talking about what it...

As many of you are aware, I was recently featured among many other, far more talented history podcasters on Daniele Bolelli's History on Fire podcast in which we all discussed various figures and events in history that created massive ripples that no one could have predicted. My segment was focused on Confucius and how he basically shaped Chinese civilization forever, from the level of the family...

As History Impossible reaches its two year mark and the episodes get longer and longer, I figured that now was the time to do something different, namely to add a new show to the History Impossible family, as I've been calling it: Infinitesimal Impossibilities. These are stories that are simply too small--bite-sized, if you will--in comparison to the epic stories that have come to characterize His...

Japan in the 16th and 17th century was going through profound changes, not least of which being the ongoing civil war that had been ripping it apart for over a century, with warlord fighting warlord on a whim, the famed samurai chopping each other to bits on scales rarely seen elsewhere in the world. The other profound change involved men in black robes preaching the word of a god that the Japanes...

In the mid-19th century, as one country in the West was on its way toward the most famous civil war, another country in the East was in the grips of one far larger and more significant than any that had come before or would come afterward, if only in terms of numbers. By the end of this conflict, known as China's Taiping Rebellion, over 20 million people would lay dead, and China's relationship wi...

In this newest entry into the Impossible Interview series, I had a chance to sit down (via Zoom) with the incredibly talented and generous-with-his time J.D. Huitt, the brains behind and face of History Underground and the excellent History Traveler series on YouTube (remember: LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!). He ranks among the top three history content creators that I diligently follow on YouTube for his e...

Surprise! In light of the current quarantine in which becoming starved for content is actually a very real possibility, as well as a way to say thank you to all of you for your patience as I toiled away at this most recent episode, I decided the time would be right to toss a freebie everyone's way, with a special thank you directed at all of you kind enough to be financially supporting History Imp...

Let's set the stage: The most explosive event of the 20th century has just occurred and it has nothing to do with Nazis or atomic bombs or American blue jeans. In 1917, the world's largest terrestrial imperial power began to rip itself apart and would continue to do so during the next half decade, leading to the only other power with the ability to challenge the United States. The First World War...

In this inaugural 2020 episode of History Impossible (and on the one year anniversary no less!), I sit down with CJ Killmer, host of the long-running and incredibly well-done Dangerous History Podcast. CJ has been one of my long-time inspirations for his capacity for detailed, deep dives into parts of history I literally had no interest in for most of my life (i.e. The American Civil War) and mana...

Content Warning: This episode contains graphic depictions of physical and psychological torture. A world away from the war raging across the European continent, a completely different theater of warfare was being conducted by the Empire of Japan and the Allied forces in Asia. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, attacks were made against the British Empire's...

Content Warning: This episode contains extremely graphic depictions of genocide, torture, and human experimentation. On April 29th, 1945, one day before Adolf Hitler killed himself, the true evil of the National Socialists--and the necessity of crushing them--finally became known to the American men fighting through Germany. It all began with seeing a set of boxcars, filled from stem to stern with...

It's the end of one era and the beginning of another. With the launch of History Impossible's Patreon, things with the Pop Quiz are different. This will be the final free episode the Pop Quiz series, which will now be accessible to the supporters of History Impossible at the 5 dollar level or higher (along with other great goodies). So to celebrate, Molly and Alex took a trip down memory lane abou...

On April 30th, 1945, Adolf Hitler's brain was ripped apart by the bullet he'd fired through his skull. That is how we believe the Second World War ended. But in reality, the struggle to crush the most evil of regimes and its ideas was just beginning and arguably never ended. This is the story of how that struggle began with the Germans who refused to believe that the end--their end--had come, and...

In this special edition of History Impossible, a trend is broken: this is not about a particular story in history. This is about a man. Or rather, a conversation with a man. The one, the only, Daniele Bolelli, host of popular podcasts History on Fire and The Drunken Taoist and known for semi-regular appearances on popular podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience and the Duncan Trussell Family Hour....

After a mega-sized two-parter episode of History Impossible, it seems only fitting that listeners get a pseudo-mega-sized Pop Quiz episode (if only because there was indeed more ground to cover). Ms. Molly's recap of the Great Hollywood Coverup is certainly fun and full of the usual holes and minor errors that chip away at her final grade, but in the end, she did (relatively) well recapping all th...

When we last left the side of renowned and loved silent film director William Desmond Taylor, he was lying dead on the floor of his bungalow and his valet was shrieking for someone--anyone--to help. Little did the valet know that "help" would indeed come, but the only people being helped were the ones who hired William Desmond Taylor to clean up the tarnished image Hollywood had earned for itself....

Nearly 100 years ago, scandal after scandal was rocking the new kid in town, the motion picture business; Tinseltown; Hollywood. Overdoses on mercury bichloride, cocaine-addicted starlets, prostitution and drug rings, suicides, and an alleged raucous orgy ending in the rape and murder of an actress by one of the top stars. This was all occurring while this new art form was under constant scrutiny...