Wittenberg to Westphalia Benjamin Jacobs

If you love detail in an historical podcast, then this is the podcast for you. His walking tours are great, and then in some detail he cites many individuals in the prime of life who suddenly die, all of natural causes, I swear it’s true. The chaos of the early Middle Ages makes for great stories as Charlemagne, who arguably was greater than Napoleon, who made the critical mistake of invading Russia, as a Swedish King before and as Hitler fatally did in 1941. Anyway, Charlemagne’s successors had really cool nicknames, although many died young, all of natural causes you see.
A great podcast on a very misunderstood time.

This podcast combines every mistake you can make in history podcasting and calls it a show. The host is absurdly judgmental. Apparently, in his mind, people dead for hundreds of years are somehow offended at an English word we use today to describe peoples and situations. Yep, and he going to tell you about all these “slurs” every episode. He doesn’t just use straw man assertions, he is the straw man, sans brain and all.

Too bad he doesn’t even know his subject at all. Or maybe he does, and just hides it very well. 10 episodes in and we are no where near anything useful or remotely interesting. He starts with a walking tour of Europe (the very definition of which he manages to both get wrong and to unnecessarily politicize) which is mind-numbing awful. Describing where rivers flow and such. It adds nothing to the subject. Any geography that actually contributes to the narrative can be briefly discussed at the time it matters.

The worst though is the serious errors in fact. His cheesy dad jokes that play like a “back in caveman times” explanation of major topics is both disrespectful and shows his simplistic ignorance. I have listened to probably over 50 different history podcasts by this point, and I can say without a doubt this is one of the worst. I’ve only had to delete 2 shows because of being so unlistenable, and this is one of them. Just for fun, I decided to listen to a very recent episode to see if eventually it got better. After years of podcasting, he still hasn’t figured out how to talk into a microphone. It’s just as low quality as at the beginning. Feed deleted. There are too many good shows to listen to instead of wasting time with this garbage.

I just caught up on all episodes and I LOVE it. Ben shares some very in-depth history is a fun relatable way. I honestly don’t know what to do with myself now that I’m caught up.