The Dave Bowman Show

On the morning of June 30, 1908, something exploded over the Siberian wilderness with the force of a nuclear bomb—flattening over 80 million trees, lighting up skies across Europe, and shaking the Earth with a shockwave that circled the globe. But no crater was found. No rock. Just scorched forest and a century-old mystery. In this episode, we dive into the Tunguska Event, the most powerful impact...

This week on *What the Frock?*, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wade into the holy waters of absurdity with a story so bizarre it could only be real. When the Prime Minister of Armenia offers to prove his religious bona fides by flashing the head of the national church, our frocked duo cannot resist diving into the theological and anatomical madness. But that’s just the opening act. They also tackle Amer...

In the long and violent history of war, there are days when everything breaks. June 28, 1950, was one of those days. Just four days into the Korean War, the world seemed to come unglued on the Korean Peninsula. Chaos did not just reign, it roared. Orders were ignored or misunderstood, cities fell faster than anyone expected, and in the scramble to survive, soldiers and civilians alike were caught...

The Cornish Rebellion of 1497 wasn’t born in taverns or whispered in secret. It started openly, in the clear air of St. Keverne on the Lizard Peninsula, where a blacksmith named Michael Joseph spoke out against a tax that made no sense to his people. England was raising money to wage war against Scotland, supposedly to crush a Yorkist pretender named Perkin Warbeck. To the Cornish, it was lunacy....

In June of 1963, the Cold War stood like a concrete wall between freedom and tyranny—quite literally in Berlin. President John F. Kennedy, in one of the most electrifying moments of his presidency, traveled to the divided city to deliver a message not just to Germans, but to the world. With the phrase *"Ich bin ein Berliner,"* he declared solidarity with those trapped behind the Iron Curtain, turn...

It was just past 11 p.m. on a steamy June 25, 1906 when Harry Kendall Thaw, millionaire playboy and professional lunatic, stood up from his table at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. The show, a light musical romp called Mam’zelle Champagne, was wrapping up. The crowd was cheerful, a little drunk, and completely unprepared for what was about to happen. Across the room, at his usual tab...

In this episode of *Liberty 250*, we follow Benjamin Franklin’s journey from loyal servant of the British Crown to committed American revolutionary. It begins with the Hutchinson Letter Scandal, where Franklin’s attempt to ease tensions by quietly exposing colonial corruption backfires, igniting public fury and British outrage. Then comes the Boston Tea Party—a dramatic protest Franklin condemns a...

Before there were keyboards, before there were screens, there was the rhythmic clatter of metal keys striking paper. In this episode of *Dave Does History*, we’re rolling back to June 23, 1868—the day Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for a curious contraption called the “Type-Writer.” What started as a tinkerer’s solution to sloppy handwriting became one of the most transformative inven...

History doesn’t often repeat itself on the exact day. But sometimes, it seems to have a cruel sense of timing. Twice, on June 22, Europe’s most powerful warlords, Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 and Adolf Hitler in 1941, looked across their maps, stared toward the East, and decided they could break the Russian bear. Both gambled that a lightning campaign would bring Moscow to heel. Both sent enormous a...

This week on *What the Frock?*, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod explore the unexpected brilliance of artificial intelligence… and its tendency to ignore instructions entirely. What starts as a simple rant about Glenn Beck’s A.I. paranoia turns into a hilariously absurd deep dive into a 1972 Italian gibberish song and a modern A.I.-generated bumper track that may or may not have written better lyrics than...

He was a man who could have had it easy. Enoch Poor had built a comfortable life for himself in Exeter, New Hampshire. He was a skilled craftsman, a successful shipbuilder, and a respected merchant. He had a wife he loved, children he cherished, and a business that provided for his family and neighbors alike. But when the call to arms came, when the fires of rebellion lit up the colonies, Poor did...

It was a warm June afternoon in 1980, and I was sixteen years old when I walked into a movie theater in Tacoma, WA, and saw my very first R-rated film. It wasn’t some gritty drama or raunchy sex comedy. It was The Blues Brothers. And in that moment, somewhere between the blast of "She Caught the Katy" and Jake’s gravity-defying backflip at the Triple Rock Baptist Church, something changed. I didn’...

Art Rooney of the Steelers and Alexis Thompson of the Eagles agreed to merge their franchises for one season only. The league gave it a nod, and the team was officially listed as the “Phil-Pitt Combine.” But the fans, as fans do, came up with a much better name. The Steagles.

The morning of June 18, 1815, broke damp and heavy with the scent of churned mud and spent gunpowder. South of the quiet village of Waterloo, Belgium, two great ridges faced one another across a narrow valley, each bristling with men and iron. The ground, soaked by a night of rain, sucked at boots and wheels alike. The air hung with tension. The clouds were lifting, but thunder of a different kind...

In this explosive episode of Dave Does History, Dave Bowman joins Bill Mick to dissect the chain of events that lit the fuse of the American Revolution. From the biting street politics of the Sons of Liberty to the fatal musket blast on a snowy Boston night, Dave walks us through the Boston Massacre with sharp insight and sharp elbows. You'll meet a wigmaker’s apprentice, a furious redcoat, and a...

Pétain’s story is a tragedy in two acts. In the first, he was the disciplined general who saved France from annihilation. In the second, he became the face of national shame, a man who surrendered not only to the enemy but to fear, compromise, and moral collapse.

In this scorching episode of What The Frock?, titled Frockenheit 451, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod strike the match on a world increasingly allergic to free thought. Kicking things off with a curious domestic moment—Dave’s wife, a night-shift nurse, is unaware of major world events—the duo explores how political disengagement and echo chambers have become survival tactics in a polarized age. From the...

On June 15, 1776, in a little brick courthouse nestled along the banks of the Delaware River, something extraordinary happened. Long before the ink dried on Jefferson’s Declaration or the bells rang out in Philadelphia, a smaller, lesser-known group of patriots made a decision just as bold and perhaps even braver. Delaware, or what was then known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware, stood up, sq...

They didn’t call it the United States Army, not yet. They called it the Continental Army. It wasn’t much to look at. Ragtag farmers and tradesmen with worn boots and mismatched coats, some carrying their grandfather’s musket, others with nothing but a pitchfork and righteous anger. But it was the beginning of something that still stands strong today.

Every so often, history hands us a coincidence so odd, so strangely poetic, that it demands a second look. June 13 is one of those days. It’s not just your average square on the calendar. It also happens to be the birthday of not one, but two kings from the same royal bloodline. Both born on June 13, just sixteen years apart. Both named Charles. One called “the Bald” and the other “the Fat.” You c...

Boston in June of 1775 was already a city choking on powder smoke, rumor, and fear. Since the redcoats had marched out to Concord two months earlier and came running back under fire, everything had changed. The countryside had risen. Thousands of armed men now surrounded the city. The roads were blocked. Tempers were short. British soldiers camped uncomfortably close to colonists who hated their p...

In the hot, tense summer of 1776, as thunderclouds of rebellion gathered over the thirteen colonies, the Second Continental Congress found itself facing a decision that would change the world. The British Crown had slammed the door on reconciliation. The King wasn’t listening. His red-coated army was already spilling colonial blood. The time had come to stop pleading and start proclaiming.

This week on Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we peeled back the glossy myths of patriotism and peered into the grit and grime of liberty’s earliest champions: the Sons of Liberty. You’ve heard the name, you’ve probably imagined tricorn hats and righteous speeches. But what if the revolution’s first sparks looked less like a powdered wig convention and more like a gangland turf war?

Athens in the summer of 411 BCE was a city smoldering beneath the weight of its own glory. The golden age had cracked, and under the strain of war, pride, and poverty, the world’s first democracy was about to slit its own wrists. This wasn’t some minor squabble among politicians. It was an existential crisis. A full-blown betrayal from within. The people of Athens, people who once cheered for Peri...

Welcome back to *What The Frock?, where the robes are real, the satire is sharp, and the heresy is bipartisan. In this week’s episode, *It’s Fine…*, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod dive headfirst into the absurdity of modern life, starting with the battle of the broken states: Washington vs. California. Spoiler—Washington wins, and not in a good way. From a Pride flag kerfuffle at the state capitol to "m...