Episodes

In 1959 the United States had a secret plan to explode a nuclear weapon either on or near the surface of the moon. The plan was known as Project A119 and the hope was that a nuclear explosion on the moon would kick up a cloud of dust visible from the Earth, and would act as a demonstration of American power and technology. The project was shelved (obviously) and classified for years, and the only reason we know about it now is because Carl Sagan, who was involved with A119, let slip the existenc...

Last week the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. It was an amazing victory for equality and a long time coming. There were, however, dissents. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: [T]he Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are? Roberts’ dissent is a ve...

In the 1590s Japan invaded Korea. The Imjin War lasted from 1592-1598, and it included all manner of land battles, guerilla skirmishes, sieges, spying, and everything else that you would expect to find in a full-on conflict. The entire war would take several episodes to cover properly, and this episode just focuses on the naval aspect, and one naval battle in particular. Under Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Korean navy was able to successfully rack up victories against the Japanese. Yi was an admiral ...

It’s very likely that Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. When/if she does, some talking head will likely call her “the first women to run for president.” That talking head will be wrong. Women have […]

If you were out and about in San Francisco between 1860 and 1880, you might have seen a curious figure on the streets. Joshua Abraham Norton wore a uniform reminiscent of European nobility, made proclamations, and styled himself as “Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.” Norton seems to have been embraced by the city he “ruled” over, to the point where citizens actually used the currency that he issued. His proclamations were popular reading in the city at the time, and...

This episode is a little different. About a year ago I was approached by a team of documentary film makers who were making a movie about Polybius, Portland’s mythical video game of doom. I’d previously spoken about Polybius at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and they asked if I would also like to talk about it on camera for the movie. I said yes. They set up an event at Velo Cult, a bike/bar/event space here in Portland, and I had a great time talking to people about a creepy nonexistent video g...

Imagine a medieval dungeon. You probably imagine prisoners chained to the wall, a torturer in a black mask tormenting the occupants, several machines of torture such as the rack or the Catherine wheel, and, most imposingly, the dreaded iron maiden, a casket lined with spikes that would slowly bleed a prisoner to death in a grim mockery of an embrace. In all probability, though, the iron maiden was never an actual torture device, at least not in the middle ages. There may have been machines that...

The British Empire and other colonial powers did a lot of things wrong, and they famously ignored actual human patterns when drawing borders of Africa. In 1899, the British drew a border between Egypt and Sudan that simply ran in a straight line across the 22nd parallel, ignoring how people in the area moved and identified. A few years later, in 1902, they corrected their mistake and re-drew the boundary. The result has led to a border dispute between Egypt and Sudan where Egypt claims the 1899...

Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping rebels successfully founded a new kingdom in southern China. The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace sought to overthrow the Manchurian Qing Dynasty and form a new, radically different China. Hong, the supposed younger brother of Jesus Christ, retreated to a life of luxury in an opulent palace, and the actual governance of the kingdom was carried out by his cousin Hong Rengan, who acted as essentially the Heavenly Kingdom’s prime minister. Hong sought out aide from forei...

In the 1850s a man who styled himself as the younger brother of Jesus Christ led China into a bloody rebellion. China in the early 1800s was ravaged by famine, natural disasters, and British meddling that introduced opium (and the Opium Wars) to the population. The country was ripe for rebellion against the Qing Dynasty who, being Manchurian, were often perceived as foreigners by many of China’s Han population. Into all of this chaos and discontent came a man called Hong Xiuquan who claimed to b...

The foreboding form of Alcatraz Island looms just beyond San Francisco, an obvious symbol of isolation and punishment. Alcatraz was never the biggest, or worst, or longest-lived prison in American history, but it’s definitely the most iconic. The island fortress seems to invite resistance and escape attempts, a setting like Alcatraz demands a narrative just as striking. In 1946 a handful of convicts attempted to violently escape from the island, giving that dramatic setting a dramatic narrative ...

One of the most persistent myths of the Middle Ages was that of Prester John, a mythical Christian king whose supposed domain was located beyond the eastern Muslim regions. Probably the most vivid portion of the myth is a letter received by the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1165 claiming to be from the monarch. The letter (ostensibly written from one king to another, but with an arrogant, bragging tone that glorifies Prester John’s position relative to that of Byzantium) details a kingd...

Today’s episode is slightly different than our other entries. We have another interview episode, this time with Joseph Barker, who has a PhD in artifical intelligence, and whom I quoted in the last episode about the mechanical Turk. Instead of talking […]

Humans have pursued artificial intelligence, in one form or another, for generations. One of the most potent signifiers of intelligence has, historically, been chess. Even though the ability to play the game does not actually require as much cognition as, say, cooking or carrying on a conversation, the ability to play the game has been used as a symbol of intelligence, such as when Deep Blue shocked the world by defeating chessmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997. Probably the most famous artificial ch...

In 1904 a Greek-American playboy, Ion Perdicaris was, along with his stepson Cromwell, kidnapped in Morocco by a man who would later be called “The last of the Barbary pirates.” The incident sparked a degree of outrage in the US, and was a talking point for Theodore Roosevelt in the 1904 presidential election. But… Perdicaris himself didn’t mind being kidnapped. In fact, he had a great time being held hostage by a roving band of desert brigands. The 1904 cartoon below from the Review of Reviews...

The most complete tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the world, nicknamed “Sue,” in honor of the paleontologist who discovered her, stands over adoring crowds at Chicago’s Field Museum. However, Sue’s journey the field museum was not an easy one, though.

On Sunday, March 15th I had the privilege of introducing one of my favorite movies of all time at the historic Clinton Street Theater, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The organizers of the event asked me to talk about actual Arthurian legend prior to the screening, and I compared the tales of everyone’s favorite mythical monarch with something that I enjoy a great deal: comic books. The illustration of Camelot below is by Gustave Dore and was made to accompany Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of...

In the late 1800s countless men were exploited by a system that used debt and indentured servitude to keep them tied to the shipping industry. The process of getting sailors into debt was called “crimping,” and it was practiced throughout the US and Britain, but was particularly prominent on the American West Coast. Quite a lot of mythology, folklore, and pseudohistory has grown up around the subject, most of it with no basis in the actual historical record. Nevertheless, Shanghaiing and crimpin...

In the late 1600s Scotland, in an attempt to start an international trade empire, founded a small settlement in what is now modern Panama. The venture was frustrated at every turn by the English, who did not want their northern neighbor competing on the international scene, and the Panamanian jungle proved to be an inhospitable environment. The settlers were plagued by starvation and malaria, and eventually the Scots were ousted by the Spanish. The dramatic failure of the colony led to the end ...

You can do a lot of things with wealth. You can buy stuff, make things happen, bribe officials, give to the poor… Or, if you’re Mansa Musa of Mali (one of the richest people in the history of the world) you can give away so much gold that you single-handedly cause inflation in Cairo. The small image below is a detail from the Catalan Atlas, a 1375 Spanish map with a small detail that depicts Mansa Musa in the approximate location of Mali. Related Links: A Huffington Post article declaring Man...

Probably the most violent singular example of post-slavery racial violence in the US happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Mobs of armed whites burned buildings, killed African-Americans, and utterly destroyed what had been known as Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street.” For years the incident was not extensively talked or written about, but it is now more widely known as one of the most horrifying examples of domestic terror that the US has ever known. Related Links: The 2001 report commissioned by the ...

This week we interviewed a pirate! Kind of. Jaime Kirk is the current captain of PDX Yar, a Portland organization dedicated to all things piratical. The crew does, indeed, dress up like pirates for the purposes of revelry carousing, but they also do quite a bit with historical reenactment. PDX Yar does demonstrations of black powder weapons, presentations on how ships were actually run and managed, and the leadership have immersed themselves in pirate history for years now. Below is a engraving...

In 1979 a group of religious extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and began a siege that would last over two weeks. The bloody event shook the Muslim world, and prompted reactions in Saudi Arabia that affect that country to this day. Related Links: This issue of Al Majalla, an English language Arabian magazing, has extensive coverage of the siege. Yaroslav Trofimov, author of of The Siege of Mecca, speaking about the event to NPR. Read unclassified US State Department memos about the ...

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