General Curiosity

Jamestown continues to be less “new world opportunity” and more “chaotic group project where everyone hates each other,” as leadership drama, starvation, and wildly bad decisions pile up. John Smith alternates between being the colony’s most capable leader and its most exhausting menace, bullying food from the Powhatan while also helping keep the settlement barely afloat. Meanwhile, the Powhatan C...

**TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of torture/execution around minute marker 58:00-59:30. Today we dive straight into 1607 Jamestown… again– this time focusing less on fort drama and more on those first, messy, fascinating encounters between the English and the Powhatan. Through a mix of curiosity, confusion, and occasional audacity, the English explore nearby villages, attempt diplomacy (sometimes sin...

In 1607, Jamestown’s settlers arrived in Virginia after a turbulent voyage, only to face immediate challenges from leadership conflicts, fragile relations with local Algonquian groups, and a harsh environment. Infighting among leaders like Edward Maria Wingfield and John Smith, combined with drought, disease, and dwindling supplies, pushed the colony into crisis. By winter, starvation, suspicion,...

Today (a day late, I know!) we officially set off on our deep dive into the founding of Jamestown by focusing on the high-stakes, top secret planning and chaotic voyage of 1606–1607. Driven by a desperate need for profit and backed by the newly formed Virginia Company, England’s colonization effort was a risky business venture shaped by secrecy and competition with Spain. We start introducing some...

In this kickoff episode to a deep-dive series following the Jamestown Colony, we introduce the messy, dramatic, and often brutal first two decades of Jamestown—from desperate survival and nonstop infighting to uneasy relationships with the Powhatan Confederacy, the Starving Time, and the major turning point(s) of 1619. Along the way, we start to see how this scrappy, barely-holding-it-together col...

In the final episode of the Pocahontas series, we untangle the myth from the much more complicated—and tragic—reality of Pocahontas’s life. Drawing from both English records and Mattaponi oral history, the episode follows her captivity by the English, her conversion and marriage to John Rolfe, and the political role she was forced to play as a symbol of colonial “success.” After traveling to Londo...

In this episode, we look beyond the legend to meet the real Matoaka—later known as Pocahontas—through Powhatan perspectives and sacred Mattaponi oral history. Raised in the Powhatan capital and deeply loved by her father, Wahunsenecawh, Matoaka became a child ambassador to the struggling English settlers at Jamestown, bringing food and messages of peace while learning their language. But as Englis...

In this episode, we introduce the story of Jamestown by shifting the focus away from the English colonists and onto the Powhatan people—especially the girl history flattened into myth: Pocahontas, born Matoaka. Drawing from both academic research and sacred Mattaponi oral history, we explore the political sophistication, cultural traditions, and leadership of Wahunsenacawh (known by the English as...

In this finale of the Roanoke series, we trace what happened after the colonists were left behind—following John White’s failed return, Raleigh’s convenient indifference, Jamestown’s lackluster searches, and centuries of rumor, propaganda, romantic revisionism, white supremacist myth-making, and headline-grabbing hoaxes like the Dare Stones. We dig into what archaeology actually tells us, unpack h...

In need of a buffer to finish the final episode of the "Lost or Left Behind?" series, today's episode is an introduction to a mini-series coming soon. It's a deep dive into the U.S. Constitution born out of equal parts curiosity and concern. Starting with the often-forgotten Articles of Confederation, Alex breaks down how America’s first attempt at self-government prioritized s...

In this episode, we revisit the so-called “Lost Colony” of Roanoke and why it was never truly lost. From John White’s disastrous attempts to return with supplies, to political indifference, imperial distractions, and missed chances at Croatoan, we unpack what likely happened to the settlers—and why the mystery has endured. Along the way, we explore Indigenous perspectives, question long-standing c...

The English head back to Roanoke despite everything that should have stopped them: broken alliances, recent violence, and the very clear message that the Secotan did not want them there. In this episode, we follow appointed governor John White and a small group of men, women, and children as they’re inexplicably deposited back into a tense Indigenous landscape shaped by power, memory, and hard-ear...

This episode unpacks the first Roanoke colony and reveals that the real mystery isn’t what happened to those left behind, but why the English thought it was a good idea to try at all. What starts as an ambitious venture quickly devolves into lost supplies, cultural arrogance, spreading disease, and a series of violently bad decisions. While observers like John White, Thomas Harriot, and Joachim Ga...

**Content Warning**: This episode includes a very brief description of the gruesome atrocities by the Spanish against Native Americans. If you wish to skip it, skip from minute marker 8:20 to 8:50. This episode strips away the myth of Roanoke as a spooky disappearance and instead digs into the context that doomed it from the start, exploring England’s late-1500s colonial ambitions, rivalry with Sp...

This episode is more a summary, kicking off a deep dive into the infamous Lost Colony of Roanoke and peeling back the layers of myth to ask whether the colony was ever truly “lost” at all—or simply abandoned. Driven by imperial rivalry, dreams of gold, and the ever-elusive Northwest Passage, we'll cover the colony’s rocky beginnings, its fraught relationships with local Native nations, the po...

For millennia, the tradition of telling ghost stories around the fire was a Christmas/Yule/Solstice tradition. I'm personally disappointed the practice has died down, so here I am, bringing it back! Merry Christmas, Blessed Yule, Happy Solstice, and enjoy! The short story read is "The Ghost's Summons" written by Ada Buisson and published posthumously in 1868.  For other content...

Welcome to tales of my travels! From James Oglethorpe’s utopian (and wildly short-lived) vision of a sober, lawyer-free, anti-slavery colony, to a booming slavery-dependent economy, this episode traces how idealism, alliance, exploitation, and resilience shaped the charming city of Savannah, Georgia (the US State, not the country!). Along the way, we wander through cotton-fueled wealth built on en...

In this episode, we pick up right where we left off—Plymouth on the brink, alliances hanging by a thread, and Ousemequin suddenly kidnapped in a swirl of Wampanoag-Narragansett rivalries. As the Pilgrims scramble to rescue their tenuous lifeline, we dive into the tangled politics, uneasy trust, and cultural misunderstandings that shaped the colony’s fragile first year and later spread.  We wrap up...

In this episode, we dive back in with the Mayflower Pilgrims as they limp into Patuxet—land they’ve commandeered from the Wampanoag—and struggle through a brutal winter of illness, hunger, and chaotic colonial drama, all while the Wampanoag, led by Massasoit Ousemequin, weigh whether to wipe them out or work with them.  From glacial-paced house-building to the shock of an unexpected Native visitor...

This Thanksgiving mini-episode untangles the myths around Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, and that famous 1621 feast—spoiler, it was way less magical than the storybook version—and shows how the real meaning of the holiday actually comes from Lincoln using Thanksgiving to help reunite the country during the Civil War. By zooming out and telling the whole messy, fascinating truth, we can still celebra...

Today, we put a pin in the Pilgrims and focus (extra long) on the world they were walking, or rather stumbling, into. Long before the Pilgrims commandeered one of their abandoned villages, there existed a widespread population of sachemships, rich creation stories, highly sophisticated agricultural techniques, and engineering that outclassed the colonists’ "civilized" huts. We cover thei...

The Separatists who founded Plymouth Colony set out to build God’s perfect community—and immediately met with obstacles. After fleeing England, ditching the Dutch, and surviving a miserable Mayflower voyage, they landed way off course and wrote the surprisingly secular, and later influential, Mayflower Compact to keep the peace. What followed was an exhausting exploration, stolen corn, and divine...

The definition of "curiosity":  1. A strong desire to know or learn something or 2. A strange or unusual object or fact. This podcast is all about my passion for learning and what I am currently learning about. And I have to do something with all that information! So if you would like to learn some new things, please follow! Learn more by following @thecuriousalexjones on Instagram, Thre...

They left England for “religious freedom”… but only for themselves. As we explore the deep roots causes of the American War for Independence, which started in Massachusetts, we dive into the real, detailed story of the Mayflower Pilgrims — from sneaking out of England and clashing with the Dutch to surviving a leaky ship and founding Plymouth Colony. It’s a tale of faith, stubbornness, irony, and...