HISTORY This Week

November 8, 1864. Election Day. Abraham Lincoln watches from a White House window, convinced he might lose. Three thousand miles away in Los Angeles, a Confederate hotbed in a so-called free state, Biddy Mason has more riding on the result than almost anyone in the country.

Sixteen years earlier, she walked from Mississippi to Utah at the back of a Mormon wagon train, enslaved, with three young daughters in tow. Her owner then carried her into California, where slavery was illegal and where, for years, nobody enforced the law. In 1856, a sheriff’s posse rode into the owner’s camp in the Santa Monica Mountains with a court order. What followed was a trial before a former slaveholder, a verdict that freed fourteen people, and a second act in which a formerly enslaved midwife became one of the wealthiest Black women in America.

How did a slave ranch operate in plain sight in a free state? And how did Biddy Mason win, not once, but twice?

With Kevin Waite, Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of The Boundless Biddy Mason; and Jackie Broxton, President and Founder of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation.

This episode includes a mention of sexual violence. Please listen with care.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

Happy Halloween! Today, we're bringing back a particularly spooky episode from the archives...

June 10, 1692. Bridget Bishop is loaded into a two-wheeled cart and brought from her Salem jail cell to a pasture on a hill, where a rope is hanging from freshly-installed gallows. A crowd forms around her: law officers to read the death warrant, ministers to offer last rites, and onlookers, curious to see a witch in the flesh. Bishop’s execution raises doubts that could have stopped the Salem witch trials in their tracks. But instead, it became the first in a deluge of convictions, trials, and hangings that made the summer of 1692 go down in infamy. What happened that summer to cause a witch hunt? And what can we learn from the story of 19 supposed witches condemned to death?

Special thanks to our guest, Marilynne Roach, author of The Salem Witch Trials: a Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege.

** This episode originally aired June 7, 2021.

October 28, 1065. The king’s council meets in Oxford and throws a man out of England. His name is Tostig Godwinson, and the north of England already hates him. His own brother Harold, the most powerful earl in the realm and the likely next king, refuses to save him.

Tostig does not take it well. Over the next year, he sails from royal court to royal court, pitching anyone with ships on an invasion of England. He finds takers. And the year that follows, 1066, becomes the most pivotal in English history: three men claiming one crown, two invasions in a single month, a Viking king sunbathing at the wrong moment, and a duke from Normandy who trips face-first into the mud and gets up a conqueror.

Sally is joined by historian Greg Jenner, host of the BBC podcast You’re Dead to Me, as the Bayeux Tapestry goes on display in Britain for the first time in nearly a thousand years. Together they ask: how did a scorned little brother help push England over the edge?

Special thanks to our guest Greg Jenner. His series, You’re Dead to Me, is available wherever you get your podcasts.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

From world events to everyday decisions, economics explains it all. Platypus Economics makes it clear, useful, and actually fun. Available now: http://link.pscrb.fm/f0281/PE_HTW

October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it back home—history’s first up-close glimpse at a world other than our own. Venus, our closest neighbor, is similar in size to Earth and may even share some planetary material. It’s why scientists sometimes call it our twin planet. Yet its rock-melting temperatures and poisonous atmosphere make it profoundly different. If anything, it is our evil twin. What’s behind humanity's long fascination with Venus? And what can the differences between these cosmic twins teach us about our home planet…its present, and its possible future?

**This episode originally aired October 17, 2022.

Special thanks to our guests, David Grinspoon, author of Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet; and Sally's twin sister, Eliza Helm.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

October 12, 1820. John James Audubon—a failed shopkeeper, grist miller, and steamboat investor—sets off from Cincinnati on a flatboat down the Ohio River. He is bankrupt. The bank has taken everything except his clothes, his gun, and a portfolio of 62 bird drawings. His plan is to float south, paint every bird in America at life size, and sell the results. Somehow, it works. The Birds of America becomes one of the most valuable books ever printed, and Audubon’s name becomes shorthand for loving nature.

But the man behind the myth is harder to pin down. He hid where he was born. He invented a species to impress European investors, took credit for scientific firsts he never did, and publicly argued against the abolition of slavery. Decades after his death, a former student of his widow’s founded a conservation society in his name, and the legend of the gentle naturalist grew. Today, the Audubon Society is fighting over whether to keep that name.

How did John James Audubon build his own legend? And what happens when it comes home to roost?

Special thanks to our guests: Robert Francis, author of the upcoming book Republic of Feathers (find him at http://birdhistory.substack.com), and 12-year-old bird-call prodigy Samuel Henderson (on Instagram with his mom Lori at @lorisamuelsmom).

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

October 7, 1827. A body washes up on the shore of Lake Ontario. A Rochester newspaperman named Thurlow Weed believes he knows whose it is: William Morgan, a down-on-his-luck ex-Freemason who threatened to publish the order's secrets. He was pulled from a jail in Canandaigua a year earlier, and never seen again.

How does one man's disappearance set off a panic about secret societies, gut Freemasonry in America, and build the country's first third party? And why do the Anti-Masons, who vanish almost as fast as they rose, leave behind a playbook that shapes American politics for a century?

Special thanks to our guests: Mark Schmeller, Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University and author of the forthcoming A Man Cried Murder: The Masonic Conspiracy That Transformed American Politics; and Joshua Kastenberg, Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

A 5-min sample of our full interview about who Blackbeard really was, and the truth behind his pirate friends. Subscribe to HTW+ at http://htwpod.com or in your Apple Podcasts app to unlock full behind-the-scenes episodes.

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates.

September 26, 1960. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon meet in a CBS studio in Chicago for the first televised debate between presidential nominees. Kennedy arrives tan, relaxed, and fully prepped. Nixon arrives with a fever and a bad knee, turns down the studio makeup, and goes on live TV covered in a drugstore powder called "Lazy Shave."

It took CBS president Frank Stanton years of lobbying, and a change in federal law, to get the two men on stage. Seventy million Americans watched, and the night has been remembered ever since as the moment image beat substance. But is that really what happened? And did the TV audience and the radio audience really see two different winners?

Special thanks to our guest David Greenberg, professor of history, journalism, and media studies at Rutgers University and author of Republic of Spin: An Inside Look at the American Presidency.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

Introducing History's Greatest Mysteries–a new History Channel podcast from Rewind Studios–available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday.

One of the holiest and most powerful relics from the Bible has been missing for over 2,000 years. While some believe the Ark of the Covenant was destroyed, many people think it’s still out there. Could new clues finally tell us what happened to the Ark, and lead us to where it can be found?

September 24, 1955. President Eisenhower is asleep in his bed at his in-laws’ house in Denver. At around 2 AM in the morning, he’s jolted awake by chest pains. No one realizes it until the morning, but Eisenhower has had a heart attack. His cardiologist calms the public and tells them that their President will be alright – with some lifestyle changes partially inspired by new, cutting-edge research from a little-known scientist: Ancel Keys. And that very research will change the way Americans, and the world, will eat forever. How did Keys, an oceanographer-turned-nutrition-scientist, end up changing the world’s relationship with fats? And was this a change for the better?

Thank you to our guests, Dr. Steven Nissen, Chief Academic Officer, Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic; Sarah Tracy, Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor, History of Medicine and Food Studies at the University of Oklahoma; and Nina Teicholz, investigative science journalist and author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.

**This episode originally aired September 21, 2020.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

1381. In the English countryside, one peasant has had enough. His resistance leads tens of thousands of armed peasants to march on London. They’re furious about taxes, about wages held down by law, about a world that feels abandoned by God. But they aren’t marching to overthrow the king. They are marching to rescue him.

Paul Greengrass and Dan Jones join Sally Helm to talk about The Uprising, the new film starring Andrew Garfield as a fictional plowman who becomes the face of England's Peasants' Revolt. They get into what life was actually like a generation after the Black Death, why the rebels burned every written record they could find, and how a disturbed 14-year-old king ended up as the last hope of the people marching on his city.

Paul Greengrass is the writer and director of The Uprising, in theaters now. Dan Jones is the film's historical advisor and the author of Summer of Blood. You can follow him at http://danjones.substack.com for more.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

September 20, 1187. It’s daytime outside the walls of Jerusalem. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, ponders his next attack. His troops encircle and lay siege to the city. They vastly outnumber the Crusader knights inside, and Saladin is on the cusp of a victory he never dreamed possible. But he has a problem. Balian of Ibelin leads the Crusader defenses within the city walls. He threatens to destroy Muslim holy sites if Saladin attacks. The Sultan must make a choice. One that will impact his legacy, the lives of thousands, and the future of Jerusalem.

Special thanks to our guest, Dr. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion at Smith College and author of Ibn Asakir of Damascus: Champion of Sunni Islam at the Time of the Crusades.

**This episode originally aired September 19, 2022.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we're bringing you Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 – a collaboration between the History Channel and WNYC Studios. This was adapted from the complete nine-part series, which you can find by searching for Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 wherever you get your podcasts.

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 Center’s North Tower is struck, Thornton instinctively drives his ship down towards Lower Manhattan. He will soon be joined by countless other marine craft: ferries, fishing boats, tugboats, and more.

With the roads, bridges, and trains that connect the island of Manhattan to the rest of the world shut down, this collection of civilian, commercial, and military boats manages to carry more than 500,000 survivors to safety. How did this impromptu evacuation, which was larger than Dunkirk during WWII, come together? And how does one ferry boat captain reflect on the shared sense of duty he felt on that fateful day?

**This episode originally aired September 6, 2021.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

September 12, 1922. Twenty-four-year-old Mollie Maggia has a toothache. In less than a year, this otherwise healthy young woman will be dead. Others like her will soon follow. They’d all shared what seemed to be a dream job: applying glow-in-the-dark paint to clock faces. The paint glowed because it was saturated with radium, the wonder element of its day. And now that radium has burrowed inside the bones and lungs of the women. How did a supposed wonder element and cure-all come to be seen for what it was – a deadly poison? And how did a group of courageous young women, racing the clock of their own mortality, expose this truth?

Special thanks to Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. Also, a huge thank you to Art Fryer, nephew of Grace Fryer, one of the “Radium Girls.”

**This episode originally aired September 12, 2022.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

A five-minute taste of our full interview on how Las Vegas became Las Vegas. Subscribe to HTW+ to hear the rest at https://htwpod.com or in your Apple Podcasts app.

August, sometime in the 500s BCE. In Athens, the Great Panathenaia is in full swing: chariot races, boat races, a hundred cattle slaughtered for the feast. And at the center of it, a competition in which performers recite the work of one poet, and one poet only: Homer. But nobody recites the Odyssey alone. It takes some eighteen hours. So the performers hand it off in relay, each one picking up exactly where the last man stopped.

That relay may be the closest thing we have to the truth about Homer. Almost no scholar today believes a single blind bard composed the Iliad and the Odyssey. So who made them? And what happens to a masterpiece when you accept that it never had an author?

Special thanks to our guests: Mary Ebbott, professor of classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts; and Casey Dué, professor of classical studies at the University of Houston. They are the editors of the Homer Multitext Project, which you can find at http://homermultitext.org.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

August 17, 1858. New York City wakes to a hundred-gun salute. Church bells ring, flags fly from public buildings, and by nightfall, fireworks light up the sky. The city is celebrating a telegram from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. Not what it says, but how it traveled: along a 2,000-mile cable running under the Atlantic Ocean. Messages that once took two weeks by steamship now arrive in an instant. And the man behind the cable, a retired paper tycoon named Cyrus Field, is about to become the most famous person in America. But Field has a secret. His cable is already failing.

Why did a bored millionaire attempt the moonshot of the Victorian era? And how did one fragile wire lay the foundation for our connected world?

Special thanks to our guest, James M. Tabor, author of Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World at the Dawn of the Information Age.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.

August 10, 1792. At midnight, a single church bell begins to ring in Paris. Then another. And another. It's not a call to mass… it's a call to arms. For three years, King Louis XVI and his family have been living as prisoners in a palace, under virtual house arrest at the Tuileries, while France fights over one seething question: can the monarchy survive the Revolution? The radicals have issued a deadline: get rid of the king by the end of August 9th, or we'll take matters into our own hands. The deadline has just passed.

Today, midnight for the monarchy. How did France, whose kings were once anointed with holy oil and believed to cure disease by touch, come to loathe Louis XVI so much? And how does centuries of royal rule come crashing down in a single day?

Special thanks to our guests: David Andress, professor of modern history at the University of Portsmouth and author of The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution; and Marisa Linton, professor of history turned prize-winning novelist. She's the author of Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution, and her latest novel, Domain of Darkness, will be published this December.

To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at http://historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com.

Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at http://htwpod.com.