History Mystery

Episode 10 | History's Mysteries — Science & Deception In this Mystery episode we focus on the Stanford Prison Experiment — the 1971 study that showed ordinary people placed in roles of authority would spontaneously become cruel, was taught in psychology courses around the world for fifty years, and then in 2018 evidence emerged that the guards had been coached to be cruel and the most abu...

Episode 9 | Human History — Civilizations & Empires In this History episode we focus on the Inca Empire — the most sophisticated civilization in the pre-Columbian Americas, governing 12 million people across 4,000 kilometers of Andes with roads, storehouses, relay runners, and precision engineering that still impresses modern engineers — built without writing, without the wheel, without iron,...

Episode 8 | Human History — Groups & Movements In this History episode we focus on the Age of Exploration — roughly 1420 to 1520, one of the most consequential half-centuries in human history, when European sailors mapped the globe, connected its civilizations, and initiated the processes that would kill 90 percent of the indigenous population of the Americas. This episode covers the Portugues...

Episode 7 | Human History — Individuals In this History episode we focus on Queen Victoria — who became queen at 18, ruled for 63 years, and oversaw the British Empire at its greatest extent covering a quarter of the earth's surface, while her descendants sat on virtually every throne in Europe. This episode covers her childhood under the controlling Kensington System, her remarkable marriage...

Episode 6 | Human History — Civilizations & Empires In this History episode we focus on the Plague of Justinian — the first pandemic caused by Yersinia pestis, arriving in 541 AD at the exact moment when the Emperor Justinian was on the verge of reunifying the Roman Empire, and the most compelling counterfactual in history. This episode covers Justinian's extraordinary legal legacy and the...

Episode 5 | History's Mysteries — Unexplained Events In this Mystery episode we focus on the Library of Alexandria — and the myth that a single dramatic fire destroyed it. Julius Caesar didn't burn it. The Christians didn't burn it. The Arabs didn't burn it. The real story of what the Library was, how it was actually lost, and what that loss actually means is more disturbing than t...

Episode 4 | History's Mysteries — Unsolved Events In this Mystery episode we focus on the Black Dahlia — the January 1947 murder of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, found in a vacant lot with the crime scene staged with extraordinary deliberateness and precision, and still unsolved more than 75 years later. This episode covers Elizabeth Short's life and actual circumstances, the...

Episode 3 | Human History — Individuals In this History episode we focus on the Mongol Empire — the largest contiguous land empire in history, stretching from the Pacific coast of China to the Danube River, built by a boy whose father was poisoned when he was nine, who was abandoned by his clan, enslaved, and by 1206 had united all the Mongol tribes. This episode covers the meritocratic military s...

Episode 2 | Human History — Civilizations & Empires In this History episode we focus on the Renaissance — the shift in how Western civilization understood what a human being could be and do, and the specific conditions in Florence that made it possible: the Medici banking dynasty, the recovery of Greek texts after the fall of Constantinople, and the psychological aftermath of the Black Death....

Episode 1 | Human History — Individuals In this History episode we focus on Alexander the Great — the man who became king of Macedon at 20, conquered the Persian Empire, marched his army 22,000 miles to the borders of India, never lost a battle, and was dead at 32. This episode covers his education under Aristotle, his identification with Achilles, his father's assassination, the campaigns at...

Episode 20 | Season 4 Capstone — History Episodes In this History episode we close out Season 4 by drawing together all four seasons to articulate the patterns that have run through everything — Catherine the Great and Julius Caesar and Mao Zedong and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Cold War and the Ottoman Empire and the Maya. This episode deepens the central pattern set: that resilience i...

Episode 19 | Season 4 Capstone — Mystery Episodes In this Mystery episode we step back from the individual cases and draw the thread that runs through all of Season 4's mysteries — Roanoke, the Antikythera Mechanism, MKUltra, Puma Punku, the Dancing Plague, and the Overtoun Bridge. This episode makes the argument that the limit of what we know is usually not a limit of what is knowable — it is...

Episode 18 | History's Mysteries — Unexplained Events In this Mystery episode we focus on the Baltic Sea Anomaly — the 60-meter disc-shaped object found on the floor of the Baltic Sea by a Swedish salvage team in 2011, which prompted equipment malfunction reports, comparisons to the Millennium Falcon, and a geological assessment that is probably correct but has never been tested by a proper ex...

Episode 17 | History's Mysteries — Unexplained Structures & Places In this Mystery episode we focus on Puma Punku — the site at 12,800 feet above sea level in Bolivia where stone blocks weighing up to 440 tons were cut to millimeter precision, transported from sources up to 90 kilometers away, and assembled in ways that mainstream archaeology has not yet fully explained. This episode cover...

Episode 16 | History's Mysteries — Unsolved Events In this Mystery episode we focus on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand — the most consequential act of individual violence in modern history, and told as a true crime story, one of the strangest. This episode reconstructs the full morning: six assassins positioned along the route, the first attempt that failed, the decision to chang...

Episode 15 | Human History — Civilizations & Empires In this History episode we focus on the Maya — a civilization whose Classic cities collapsed in the 9th century, whose books were burned by the Spanish, whose people survived conquest and genocide and cultural suppression, and whose 7 million living descendants maintain traditions across 30 languages today. This episode covers the great city...

Episode 14 | Human History — Groups & Movements In this History episode we focus on the Cold War — a conflict that killed millions in proxy wars across four continents, came within minutes of nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions, and shaped the political geography and institutional arrangements of the world we live in today. This episode covers the Berlin Blockade, Korea, the Cuban Missi...

Episode 103 | Historical Events In this History episode we focus on the Byford Dolphin diving accident of November 5th, 1983 — the moment a dive tender released an external clamp before the inner door was sealed, dropping the pressure inside a North Sea oil rig's saturation diving system from nine atmospheres to one in a fraction of a second and killing four men instantly. Five men went to wor...

Episode 13 | Human History — Individuals In this History episode we focus on Mao Zedong — the man who unified China after a century of chaos and also caused a famine that killed between 15 and 55 million people in four years, the worst in human history. His face is still on every Chinese banknote. This episode covers his childhood in Hunan, the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the Long Mar...

Episode 12 | History's Mysteries — Unexplained Events In this Mystery episode we focus on the Overtoun Bridge near Dumbarton, Scotland — where approximately 50 dogs have jumped to their deaths since the 1950s, almost always from the same spot, almost always on clear days, with hundreds more surviving the fall and some climbing back up and jumping again. This episode covers the documented histo...

Episode 11 | History's Mysteries — Unexplained Structures & Places In this Mystery episode we focus on Angkor Wat — a 12th-century complex covering 400 square kilometers, the center of a city that housed perhaps one million people and was the largest pre-industrial city on earth, abandoned and swallowed by jungle until European missionaries stumbled on it in the 16th century. This episode cove...

Episode 10 | History's Mysteries — Conspiracies & Cover-Ups In this Mystery episode we focus on MKUltra — the CIA program that administered LSD to unwitting subjects, funded psychological torture experiments in Canada, caused at least one death that some investigators call a murder, and then shredded the records. In 1977 the CIA Director confirmed it before Congress. This episode covers th...

Episode 9 | Human History — Civilizations & Empires In this History episode we focus on the Ottoman Empire — the state that conquered Constantinople in 1453, governed 30 million people across three continents, and produced the political geography of the modern Middle East when it finally collapsed after 469 years. This episode covers Mehmed II's conquest, the devshirme system of Christian...

Episode 8 | Human History — Groups & Movements In this History episode we focus on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade — the four-century institution that transported approximately 12.5 million African people across the Atlantic, killed 1.8 million in the crossing alone, and was legal, endorsed by governments and churches, and producing consequences that are still being lived today. This episode co...

Episode 7 | Human History — Individuals In this History episode we focus on Julius Caesar — the man who crossed the Rubicon, was stabbed twenty-three times by the senators who thought killing him would save the Republic, and whose adopted heir became Rome's first Emperor within two years of his death. This episode covers his early career and enormous political debts, the nine-year Gallic Wars...