The Dave Bowman Show

In August of 1939, the world watched in shock as two bitter enemies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, suddenly became partners. Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Stalin’s loyal diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov signed a deal in Moscow that promised peace, but in reality it was a pact to carve up Eastern Europe. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact gave Hitler the freedom to inva...

The year 1928 was not kind to submariners. It began with the aftermath of the USS S-4 tragedy, a disaster that left all forty men aboard entombed just a few hundred yards from Provincetown, Massachusetts. The submarine had been rammed by the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding and went down in less than a minute, settling at about a hundred feet. Six men trapped in the torpedo room signaled by tapping...

In the summer of 1614, the city of Frankfurt erupted in one of the darkest chapters of its history. While many of us think of ghettos as a phenomenon of the twentieth century, Frankfurt’s Judengasse had already been in existence for more than 150 years, a crowded street where thousands of Jews lived under strict rules and constant restrictions. It was here that Vincenz Fettmilch, a gingerbread bak...

It's what fairy tales are all about, right?

On August 21, 1942, the still night along a small stream on Guadalcanal exploded into chaos. The Marines called it Alligator Creek, though the name was wrong, and history remembers it as the Battle of Tenaru. Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki marched nearly a thousand men straight into the Marine perimeter, convinced that victory was already his. What followed was hours of screaming charges, machine gun fire...

The USS Muskallunge (SS-262) was one of the U.S. Navy’s steel hunters, a Gato-class submarine that prowled the Pacific during the Second World War. Her name, chosen in honor of the fierce fish that lurks in the lakes and rivers of North America, could not have been more fitting. Fishermen know the muskie as the “fish of ten thousand casts,” a prize hard to land and nearly impossible to forget. For...

On August 20, 1943, the submarine USS Gar went to battle carrying more than torpedoes. She carried damage. Earlier that day, she struck a floating log that bent her port screw and left her nearly crippled. On the surface she could barely make eleven knots, underwater only four. Most commanders would have turned back. But Gar pressed on. That afternoon, she sighted a Japanese freighter with an esco...

Sometimes... it just takes time...

On this episode we turn to one of the most haunting figures in American literature, H.P. Lovecraft. Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1890, Lovecraft lived a life marked by frailty, financial struggle, and obscurity. Yet after his death in 1937, his stories took on a life of their own. He is now seen as the father of cosmic horror, the creator of a mythology that stretches from New England stree...

France helped un in the revolution... does that mean we have to help Ukraine?

On this episode of Dave Does History we travel back to November 19, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln rose at Gettysburg to deliver what would become one of the most enduring speeches in American history. Lincoln was not the featured speaker that day, yet his brief two minutes transformed the way the nation understood itself. With 272 words he tied the bloodshed of the Civil War to the promise made in 17...

Everything changed on the night of August 18. That evening, Rasher picked up radar contact on a large formation. It was no ordinary convoy. This was one of the most important Japanese supply efforts of the war, bound for the Philippines with troops and materiel. The convoy stretched in multiple columns, bristling with escorts, and covered by aircraft. To the American submarines waiting in the area...

Computers can't be trusted

I stood on the cliff at Cape Disappointment, wind in my face, the Pacific grumbling below. Behind me, the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center kept watch like a lighthouse for memory. This is where the Corps of Discovery met saltwater and fog, where maps ran out and America looked bigger than any drawing on parchment. I went to touch that edge, and to meet the shadow of a man who helped find it. To...

Am I just getting old?

In August of 1942 the USS Argonaut left Pearl Harbor on a mission unlike any she had ever undertaken. Built as a mine-laying submarine, she was slow, heavy, and awkward in comparison to the fleet boats that now carried the war westward. But her broad hull and ample internal space made her a fit for something no one had tried before. Along with USS Nautilus, Argonaut carried Carlson’s Raiders, two...

If you thought politics could not get stranger, this week’s What the Frock? proves otherwise. Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod manage to turn an ordinary Sunday into a feast of Arby’s jokes, courtroom absurdities, global diplomacy, and even a debate over artificial intelligence. It is a ride that feels equal parts late-night comedy and kitchen table conversation.

Lena Marlow and graham Calder take a deep dive into the latest episode of Whast The Frock to see what they can learn from Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod

On August 16, 1777, a battle was fought that was about much more than a pile of supplies in a frontier town. The British, deep in their Saratoga campaign, thought they had found an easy target at Bennington. What they found instead was John Stark, Seth Warner, and hundreds of determined militia from New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Facing some of Europe’s best soldiers, these farmers and...

Its a great smell

On the night of August 14, 1945, Japan stood at the edge of two very different futures. The Emperor had decided to accept the Allied demand for surrender, and a recording of his announcement was ready to be broadcast to the nation the next day. But not everyone agreed that the war should end. A group of determined army officers believed surrender was dishonorable and set out to stop it. They plann...

Is this really the definitionof "violent crime?"

On August 14, 1959, in a Chicago meeting room far from the bright lights and big stadiums of the NFL, a small group of stubborn, ambitious men shook hands on something most thought was doomed. They called themselves “The Foolish Club,” not because they lacked resources or vision, but because they knew exactly what they were up against. The NFL had just twelve teams, no appetite for expansion, and...

In the early hours of August 13, 1961, Berliners awoke to find their city changing before their eyes. Soldiers from East Germany’s army and police fanned out across streets that had been open the day before. They carried coils of barbed wire, concrete posts, and shovels. In the dark and stillness of the night, they began to seal off the crossings between East and West. The world would come to know...

In this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, the Liberty 250 series explores the Declaration of Independence as a masterfully constructed work of political design. Dave Bowman asks listeners to picture the document not as a relic locked behind glass, but as a building made to stand for centuries. Each section, from the preamble to the conclusion, serves a specific purpose, fitting toget...