A Popular History of Unpopular Things

Join Kelli as she goes over the ORIGINAL Dracula- Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. Although the fictional character is only loosely based on Vlad, the two are inextricably linked forever because of Bram Stoker's Dracula. So today, we'll go over the real Vlad Dracula - who is he, what did his world look like, and how did he earn the moniker "the Impaler?" Then, we'll look at the...

Join Kelli as she goes over the legend of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a torturess from New Orleans who tortured, mutilated, and killed at least 20 slaves at her mansion on 1140 Royal Street. But like we saw with the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory... is LaLaurie's story grossly exaggerated? How much is fact, and how much is fiction? Let's dive into the mysterious world of New Orleans lege...

Join Kelli as she goes over ANOTHER shipwreck that ended in cannibalism - that of the Mignonette, a sailing yacht that went down in the South Atlantic. But the Mignonette wasn't really seaworthy, and should never have been out that far... so when a rogue wave destroyed it, and the four men on board had to take their chances on a small dinghy with essentially no supplies... it didn't end...

Join Kelli as she goes over the history behind the Spanish Inquisition. How and why did Spain hunt down heretics to purge the country of non-Catholics? And there will be a LOT of medieval torture devices in today's episode! Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric Find him on all streaming services and YouTube ! Support the show Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake Follow me on Insta...

Join Kelli as she goes over the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666, which ended in part thanks to the Great Fire of London, 1666. These are two big events that killed off a good chunk of London's population and destroyed four-fifths of the city. The new London that was built was better suited to withstand fires and plague, and though it still had some sanitation problems, the days of plague-in...

Join Kelli for her fiftieth episode where she explores her favorite topic - The Black Death! It's an all-out disease fest, where she goes over the symptoms of plague, how it spread, who it impacted, what it was like for people living with it, and how it impacted the Medieval world. Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric Find him on all streaming services and YouTube ! Support the show Intro and...

Join Kelli as she goes over the Hindenburg Disaster. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg Zeppelin exploded and caught fire as it was landing at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. 36 of the 97 people on board died - some in the initial explosion, some from jumping off the airship at height, and some from some horrific burns once they escaped the flaming vessel. It had huge ramifications for...

Join Kelli as she goes over the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, where a massive 9.0/9.1 earthquake 80 miles off the eastern coast of Japan triggers a tsunami that killed tens of thousands and caused millions in damages. But the earthquake and tsunami also knocked out power to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which had terrible, terrible consequences... In this episode, we briefly revisit what happen...

Join Kelli as she goes over the tragedy of the Medusa Shipwreck. When a French frigate bound for Senegal hits a sandbank and sinks, some get on the lifeboats, while a large portion are stuck on a hastily erected raft. The raft was too heavy and abandoned by the boats, and 147 people on board this flat wooden rectangle were left to try and survive without provisions, a compass, a proper sail, or a...

Join Kelli as she talks about Victorian-era hospitals in London, known as the Houses of Death because of their fatality rates. These were the most unsanitary of places, and today we'll go into all the nitty-gritty details of what they looked like. We'll also learn about some of the gross surgeries that went on inside Houses of Death before going over how they changed with the advent of a...

Join Kelli as she goes over the tale of Liver-Eating Johnson, a mountain man in the early 19th century American frontier who became legendary for how he avenged the murder and scalping of his Flathead indigenous wife. A book, called Crow Killer , really popularized his life - so much so that it was turned into a movie, Jeremiah Johnson, released in 1972 and starring Robert Redford. But is this a t...

Join Kelli as she dives into the world of the Freemasons, Secret Societies, Religious Tension, Political Conflict, and... pugs? In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a papal bull denying any Roman Catholics from joining the Freemasons. It was a targeted hit at the religious and political tensions surrounding two sects of the Freemasons - the Jacobite Lodge and the Hanoverian Lodge - who argued over the...

Join Kelli as she tells the story of Levi Boone Helm, a frontiersman-turned-outlaw who committed murders across the West at the height of the California Gold Rush. But that's not all this serial killer did - he was also a cannibal. And he bragged about it. It's another mid-19th-century tale of the dark side of western expansion. With lots of cannibalism. So let's dive into the histo...

Join Kelli as she goes over a trial from the peak years of Early Modern Europe's so-called werewolf panic - the trial of Peter Stumpp, the Werewolf of Bedburg. Peter confessed to all kinds of horrible, evil, depraved things. As a result, he was executed on the breaking wheel in a particularly gross and bloody fashion. But was he actually guilty? Was he a murderer? Or was he tortured into conf...

Join Kelli as she talks about the inspiration for the Silent Hill games and movies - the ghost town of Centralia! In 1962, a fire set the underground coal mines on fire, and they've been burning to this day. Experts believe that the fires will continue to burn underneath Centralia for another 250 years! While Silent Hill and its scares don't exist, the horrors inflicted on Centralia may...

Join Kelli as she takes a look at a historic killer - Lizzie Borden - who was accused of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet in 1892. But despite everything pointing toward her, she was acquitted by the jury. Kelli offers up an explanation as to why she was not found guilty of a crime she most likely committed, and it (of course) has to do with the historical context! What was life li...

Join Kelli as she talks about THREE expeditions to Antarctica in the Heroic Age of Exploration. The first, led by Roald Amundsen, was the first to reach the geographic South Pole. At the same time, Robert Falcon Scott was leading his own expedition to the South Pole, but Amundsen beat him there. Unfortunately for Scott, his expedition faced extreme weather and bad luck on the way back, and none re...

Join Kelli as she goes over the difficulties of the early years of the first successful English settlement in North America - Jamestown. From the bloody flux to survival cannibalism, brutal executions to starvation and madness, the foundation of what would later become the United States was built on all the gross, nasty stuff we love here on the APHOUT podcast. Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric...

Join Kelli as she goes over what happened to the USS Indianapolis, the ship that brought atomic bomb parts to Tinian Island so they could be assembled - and dropped - on Hiroshima. Though the ship completed her mission, making  Oppenheimer's and the Manhattan Project's work come to life in the form of a nuclear bomb, the USS Indianapolis suffered a catastrophic - and fatal - blow when it...

Join Kelli as she talks about a prion disease called Kuru. Prion diseases occur when misfolded proteins duplicate and clog up the brain, and cause things like Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and Kuru. Kuru was specific to the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, and at its peak, killed 200 women and children people a year. But to get Kuru, they must have consumed the brains of the infected...

Join Kelli as she discusses the Inca Empire and their religious practices - including capacocha, the practice of sacrificing children and leaving them to mummify on mountain peaks. Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric Find him on all streaming services and YouTube , and check out his debut EP, Yello Kake! Audio Credit: Carlos Carty , Pan Flute Solo Support the show Intro and Outro music credit: Ne...

Join Kelli as she discusses the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, an experiment on black men (without their consent) where the US Public Health Service and the CDC allowed them to live with untreated syphilis infections for 40 years - despite there being a cure: penicillin. In this episode, Kelli goes over the scientific context of what syphilis is and how one contracts it, then ties it to the historical c...

Join Kelli as she discusses a Stalin Soviet-era plan to deport unwanted citizens and petty criminals to an island in the middle of Siberia - without proper shelter, supplies, or food. It only took a few days before the island's new inhabitants broke down and started to consume the flesh of their fellow prisoners. In this podcast, we review the historical context of 1930s Stalin-era plans to s...

Join Kelli as she explores the history that led up to the Waco Siege, where ATF agents conducted a failed raid against Branch Davidian leader David Koresh at his Mount Carmel compound in Waco, Texas. The result of this botched mission was a 51 day standoff. In the end, 4 ATF agents and 82 Branch Davidians were dead, and the whole place burned to the ground. It was a massive failure in communicatio...

Join Kelli as she explores the Celtic roots of Halloween - from Samhain and Celtic mythology, to Puritan fun-sponges, to Irish immigration, and into Spirit Halloween stores, we'll learn the history behind the second biggest holiday in the US! Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric Find him on all streaming services and YouTube , and check out his debut EP, Yello Kake! Want to start your own pod...