HISTORY This Week

Christmas Eve, 1913. For months, newspapers have been trumpeting an urgent message: Do your Christmas shopping early. It would be easy to assume this was the work of greedy department stores and slick ad companies. But it wasn’t – at least not at first. It started as the rallying cry of a labor reformer who was striving to improve the lives of retail workers. Ever since, Americans have been wrestl...

**For this HTW special feature, Sally interviews director Robert Eggers about his new historically inspired film, Nosferatu .** Winter, 1476. Vlad III is a prince in Wallachia, in present-day Romania. He is a violent man, so violent that he earns the nickname "Vlad the Impaler." He also has another name that he inherited from his father: Dracula. Dracula is constantly fighting for his crown, but t...

December 21, 1970. Elvis has entered the building. And today, that building is the White House. He's brought a gift for President Nixon, a framed Colt .45 pistol, which White House security won't be thrilled with. But he isn't just there to drop off a Christmas present. Elvis Presley has lived many lives in his brief 35 years that a child might dream of: he got to be a musician, a soldier, a movie...

December 11, 1934. Bill Wilson is on the subway, working his way through his third beer, heading to Towns Hospital. He isn’t injured, and he isn’t what would be traditionally classified as “sick.” But he knows he has a problem. And he needs help. What he doesn't know as he arrives at the hospital – with a fourth bottle of beer in his hand – is that this will be the last sip of alcohol of his life....

December 1, 1969. Millions across America are tuned in to the same TV broadcast. They see a bland stage with some government workers behind desks. But there's also a large, plastic container filled with small blue capsules. In each of these capsules, a birth date. The order in which they're chosen will determine who is eligible to be sent off to fight in the Vietnam War. This is the draft lottery,...

For this Thanksgiving, we're re-airing an HTW classic. This episode originally premiered November 23, 2020. November 24, 1966. Millions of spectators flood Broadway in New York City to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. The iconic floats – Superman, Popeye, Smokey the Bear – are set against a grey sky that can only be described as noxious. A smog of pollutants is trapped over New...

November 26, 1970. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, protestors gather under a statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who had made peace with the Pilgrims, and partook in the legendary Thanksgiving meal. This protest was organized by Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag activist who wanted to draw attention to the full story of Thanksgiving – a story of...

November 18, 2022. New York City is at war... with rats. And today, Mayor Eric Adams is set to announce four new pieces of legislation aimed at combating this scurrying problem. Two of these laws will target garbage, the rats' main source of food. If you put trash in places the rats can't get, their population will plummet, and New York will get a major victory in this long-running war. The garbag...

November 14, 332 BCE. Alexander the Great has conquered an unprecedented amount of territory in a relatively short amount of time. At just 24 years old, he's in control of Macedonia, much of Greece, and now, a huge part of Egypt. But Alexander doesn't want to just conquer each of these places - he wants to rule. And in a rare move for Macedonian royalty, he wants to rule in a way that honors local...

November 4, 2009. It's Game 6 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Yankees will clinch the series tonight on the back of one player, Hideki Matsui. He's a baseball player from Japan, one of the few who made the jump across the Pacific to play in America. In the last 15 years, many more Japanese players have made that move, including superstar Shohei O...

Oct 27, 1972. The planet Mars has many victims. Specifically, spacecraft. There have been so many failed missions to Mars, that scientists are rumbling about a "Mars Curse". But one mission is defying the odds. Mariner 9, an American space probe, has been orbiting Mars for the last year. But now, it's running out of fuel and will be deactivated, having met all of its mission objectives. Mariner 9...

October 24, 79 CE. Pompeii is one of the crown jewels of the Roman Empire, a bustling city that serves as a coastal retreat for Rome's elite. But Pompeii also has a large, often overlooked middle-class population. They don't live in Pompeii's massive villas. Instead, they live a typical urban life – shopping at small businesses and haggling with street vendors. They even go to restaurants. And one...

Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes.

October 18, 1887. At the Crystal Palace in London, hundreds of cats are ready to be judged. This is the first show put on by the National Cat Club, an organization seeking to bring order to the competitive cat world. But the NCC has another goal, to bring legitimacy and attention to a new idea: having a cat as a pet. Even just a couple of decades before this, you’d rarely find a cat living in a pe...

October 11, 1975. In Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City, Lorne Michaels and his cast and crew of 20-somethings scramble as the clock gets closer and closer to 11:30 PM. Wardrobes are being assembled, sets put together, and everyone—from NBC executives to viewers at home—anxiously awaits the start of what's supposed to be "a whole new dimension for TV." In just a few minutes, NBC's...

October 9, 1944. In California, 50 U.S. sailors are on trial for the Navy’s most serious crime, mutiny. It’s a rarely used charge, yet these 50 sailors—all of whom are Black—face the death penalty if convicted. But today, their chances of a fair trial get a little better.  Thurgood Marshall enters the courtroom. He is the lead attorney for the NAACP, and believes that this trial is a direct result...

October 5, 1871. In what some call the wildest town in the Wild West, bad blood has been building for a long time. Wild Bill Hickok, the sheriff of Abilene, Kansas, is facing down Phil Coe, a saloon owner with a history of antagonizing the law. Then, the guns come out. This kind of shootout isn’t uncommon in the Old West, but it’s a lot more complicated than good guys versus bad guys. And to under...

September 27, 1986. Just before sunrise in Cleveland’s Public Square, the city center is abuzz with thousands of volunteers working tirelessly to fill up balloons. The goal? To launch 1.5 million balloons into the sky at once - a record-breaking spectacle, organized by Cleveland's United Way. They hope this will bring money and inspiration to a city that desperately needs both. Why did Cleveland c...

September 16, 1968. Richard Nixon isn't exactly seen as a comedian. But tonight, he's trying to change that by appearing on Laugh-In, a TV show similar to Saturday Night Live. Nixon needs every vote he can get in the 1968 election, facing off against Hubert Humphrey, the vice president who became the Democratic nominee after Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the ticket. Nixon's Laugh-In appearance is a...

What happened this week 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 1,000? Listen to HISTORY This Week every Monday to discover for yourself. To stay updated: historythisweekpodcast.com

HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives. September 11, 2001. On a clear and sunny day, Captain Richard Thornton is piloting his ferry boat back and forth between New Jersey and New York City. But when he hears an airplane flying too low to the ground, he knows something is wrong. After the World Trade Cent...

HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives. September 2, 31 BCE. Two camps prepare for battle off the coast of Greece. On one side is Octavian, Julius Caesar’s heir apparent. On the other, Marc Antony and his lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. This battle won’t just determine the leader of Rome, but the fat...

HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives. August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana, Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned in its glass vial, turn the vial o...

HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives. August 21, 1911. On a Monday morning, a department store employee on a Paris street sees a man hurrying by. He carries a white-wrapped package and, as the employee watches, he throws something small and shiny over his shoulder...it’s a doorknob. Then the man disappe...

After a long, long wait, we are very happy to be bringing HISTORY This Week back to our listeners around the world. New episodes start releasing on September 16th, but in the meantime, we’ll be airing some favorite HTW classics in our feed. If you haven’t already, make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast app.  Please sign up at historythisweekpodcast.com to stay updated, and if you wa...