HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
  • 4.5 (4.2K)
  • History
  • Updated Weekly

Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!This week, something big happened. You might have never heard of it, but this moment changed the course of history. A HISTORY Channel original podcast, HISTORY This Week gives you insight into the people—both famous and unknown—whose decisions reshaped the world we live in today. Through interviews with experts and eyewitnesses, each episode will give you a new perspective on how history is written. Stay up-to-date at historythisweekpodcast.com and to get in touch, email us at historythisweek@history.com. HISTORY This Week is a production of Back Pocket Studios in partnership with the History Channel.

TIME TRAVELER | HTW+

New! Bonus interviews and ad-free listening

$5.99/mo or $64.99/yr after trial

  1. 2d ago

    Audubon’s Birds Come Home to Roost

    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 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 historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.

    Audubon’s Birds Come Home to Roost

  2. Oct 5

    The Freemasons Get Away With Murder (Probably)

    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 historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.

    The Freemasons Get Away With Murder (Probably)

  3. Oct 2

    Free preview: The Real Blackbeard (HTW+)

    A 5-min sample of our full interview about who Blackbeard really was, and the truth behind his pirate friends. Subscribe to HTW+ at 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.

    Free preview: The Real Blackbeard (HTW+)

  4. Oct 2 • Subscribers Only

    HTW+: The Real Blackbeard (Extended Interview)

    Blackbeard's reign of terror lasted about 18 months. In that time, he gathered some 400 pirates under his command, talked a gentleman out of his own ship, and built a reputation so fearsome that merchant crews surrendered at the sight of his flag. The historical record, though, puts him in a fight exactly twice. In 2022, we made an episode about his death off the coast of North Carolina. For that story, Sally spent over an hour with Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates (https://amzn.to/46Y3uej). Most of the conversation never aired. Here's the rest of it: where privateers end and pirates begin, why the colonies loved pirates and then turned on them, what the pirate haven of Nassau was actually like, the plantation owner who went to sea with his personal library, and how much of the Blackbeard we *think* we know was invented six years after he died. Thanks for subscribing to HTW+. Your support makes the whole show possible.

    HTW+: The Real Blackbeard (Extended Interview)

  5. Sep 28

    How Did Nixon Fumble the First TV Debate?

    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 historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.

    How Did Nixon Fumble the First TV Debate?

  6. Sep 25

    From History's Greatest Mysteries: The Ark of the Covenant

    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?

    From History's Greatest Mysteries: The Ark of the Covenant

  7. Sep 21

    The Man Who Taught America to Fear Fat

    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 historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.

    The Man Who Taught America to Fear Fat

  8. Sep 17

    The Uprising: Why the Peasants Loved Their King (w/ Paul Greengrass and Dan Jones)

    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 danjones.substack.com for more. To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at historythisweek@history.com. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.

    The Uprising: Why the Peasants Loved Their King (w/ Paul Greengrass and Dan Jones)
See All (357)

Trailers

Hosts & Guests

4.5
out of 5
4,225 Ratings

About

Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!This week, something big happened. You might have never heard of it, but this moment changed the course of history. A HISTORY Channel original podcast, HISTORY This Week gives you insight into the people—both famous and unknown—whose decisions reshaped the world we live in today. Through interviews with experts and eyewitnesses, each episode will give you a new perspective on how history is written. Stay up-to-date at historythisweekpodcast.com and to get in touch, email us at historythisweek@history.com. HISTORY This Week is a production of Back Pocket Studios in partnership with the History Channel.

Information

  • Creator
    The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    357
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    HISTORY This Week
  • Provider
    Benjamin Dickstein

You Might Also Like