Robert-Houdin, The Father of Modern Magi...

The Pompey Stone was discovered in the early 1820s, and was believed to be hundreds of years old. It turned out to be a hoax, but a fairly benign one. Research: Barber, John Warner and Henry Howe. “Historical collections of the state of New York : containing a general collection ... Show More

Émile Coué genuinely seems to have wanted to help people by teaching them how to plant helpful directives in their subconscious minds. Whether he was effective is something that's still debated. Research: Baldwin, J. Mark, et al. “A Disclaimer.” Science, vol. 12, no. 309, 1900, p ... Show More

This 2021 episode covers Louis Daguerre, who comes up almost any time we mention photography. Well before he figured out how to capture images through a camera obscura, he was an artist and innovator in entertainment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

In his brilliant, category-smashing book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016), Jeffrey James Byrne places Algeria at the center of many of the twentieth-century’s international dynamics: decolonization, the Cold ... Show More

<p>After speaking to <em>Gone Medieval</em> in April 2022 about the first volume of his magisterial biography of Henry III, David Carpenter promised Matt Lewis that he would pay the podcast a return visit when the second volume came out. <em>Henry III 1258-1272: Reform, Rebellion ... Show More

<p>Robert sits down with Jason Petty aka Prop to begin the epic story of Robert E. Lee, prominent furry, slave owner and Confederate General.</p> <p>(4 Part Series)</p> <p>Sources:</p> <ol> <li><a href="https://archive.org/stream/memoirsrobertel01wriggoog/memoirsrobertel01wriggoo ... Show More

When the atom bomb was dropped in 1945, how did its inventor, J Robert Oppenheimer, feel? To mark the release of Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster Oppenheimer, biographer Kai Bird joins Elinor Evans to discuss the man behind the creation of nuclear weaponry, and the difficult m ... Show More

<p>How did an 18th century working class farm labourer climb the social ladder to become the most beloved poet Scotland has produced?</p><br><p>By the time he died aged just 37, he had taken the country by storm with his romantic verse and was welcomed into the bosom of Edinburgh ... Show More

<p>The reality of the Bronze Age Near East was much messier and harder to understand than a straightforward story of city-states, empires, and kings. Different ethnolinguistic groups, lifestyles, dynasties of would-be rulers, migrating mercenaries, and ephemeral states were all e ... Show More

<p>The late Bronze Age world of the Near East was an incredibly rich and complex place, full of long-distance trade, the exchange of ideas, bickering kings, and empires rising and falling. Among those empires, one of the most powerful and enigmatic was that of the Hittites, whose ... Show More

<p>It's 1660 and General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law board a ship bound for the New World. They're on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I. His execution, the culmination of the English Civil War, sees control taken from the royalists by Oliver Cromwell and his ... Show More