The Buck Starts Here - Presidents, Policies, Hilarious History

China Shop Productions
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  • History
  • Updated Weekly

The Buck Starts Here—where U.S. presidential history gets a spicy makeover. Join no-nonsense economist Eric Mason and history-obsessed wild card Kyle Hedman as they dig into the messy, mind-blowing, and often WTF moments that shaped America’s commanders-in-chief. This is history served hot, with side-eye, deep dives, and sharp commentary that brings the past to life. From bad decisions and bigger egos to the policies that still echo today, we’re naming names and spilling presidential tea. Hit follow for a hilarious, unruly tour through America's most powerful (and problematic) figures!

  1. Oct 13 ·  Bonus

    Everything You Know About Nathan Hale Is Wrong

    Nathan Hale is remembered for two things: getting caught as a spy and declaring, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Unfortunately, his spy mission was a disaster, and we cannot prove he ever said the famous line. Kyle and Rae dig into Hale's surprisingly progressive years at Yale, the doomed intelligence mission that was already becoming obsolete while he was carrying it out, the veteran British operator who tricked him into revealing himself, and the suspiciously familiar line from the popular play "Cato" that may have helped create his legendary final words.

  2. Oct 6 ·  Bonus

    Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride: Everything You Know Is Wrong

    Paul Revere rode through the night yelling “The British are coming!” and single-handedly saved the Revolution. Except he didn’t. Revere was one piece of a much larger warning network, “the British are coming” would have made very little sense to people who still considered themselves British, and Revere was arrested before he ever reached Concord. The man who actually finished the job? A 23-year-old doctor who happened to be riding home from his girlfriend’s house. Kyle and Rae dig into the five Midnight Riders, the lantern system, Longfellow’s enormously successful mythmaking—and why Paul Revere got all the credit.

  3. Sep 25 ·  Bonus

    Crispus Attucks & The Boston Massacre: Everything You Know Is WRONG

    The Boston Massacre wasn’t five innocent colonists quietly minding their business until British soldiers opened fire. Boston was already a tinderbox. An 11-year-old boy had been shot and killed days earlier, soldiers and ropemakers were brawling in the streets, and the confrontation on King Street began over an argument about an (allegedly) unpaid haircut. Then there’s Crispus Attucks. Was he really the first casualty of the American Revolution? Was he an innocent bystander? The contemporary testimony makes both claims considerably messier. And once the shooting stopped, the propaganda war began... with Paul Revere stealing the image that shaped how Americans remember the massacre ever since.

  4. Sep 18 ·  Bonus

    Betsy Ross: Everything you Know is WRONG

    Betsy Ross made the first American flag. George Washington visited her shop, she suggested five-pointed stars, and the rest is history. Except the evidence gets weird fast. Kyle and Rae dig into what we actually know about Ross, Congress’s hilariously vague 1777 flag instructions, Francis Hopkinson’s competing claim—and unpaid bill—for designing the flag, and the fact that the famous Betsy Ross story wasn’t publicly told until roughly a century later. So did Betsy Ross really create America’s first flag, or did a family story, a famous painting, and some excellent 19th-century marketing create the legend instead?

  5. Sep 11 ·  Bonus

    Patrick Henry: Everything You Know Is WRONG

    “Give me liberty or give me death!” Patrick Henry said it. Probably... Maybe... Okay, we actually have no idea. Welcome to Everything You Know Is Wrong, a new detour from The Buck Starts Here where Kyle and Rae take the historical facts everybody learned in school and start questioning everything. First up: Patrick Henry. The version most of us remember is pretty straightforward. Fiery Virginia patriot. Brilliant natural orator. Gives one of the most famous speeches in American history, drops “Give me liberty or give me death,” everybody loses their minds, Revolution happens. The actual story is considerably messier. Henry failed repeatedly in business before becoming a lawyer. Thomas Jefferson later portrayed him as an almost comically uneducated country lawyer who barely studied before getting his license... but Henry’s surviving fee book shows him handling roughly 1,200 lawsuits in just his first few years of practice. Then there’s the speech. Henry absolutely gave a powerful speech in Richmond in March 1775. We know it helped convince Virginia to prepare for armed conflict. What we do not have is a transcript. The famous version of the speech (including “Give me liberty or give me death”) was first published in William Wirt’s biography of Henry in 1817, forty-two years after the speech and eighteen years after Henry died. A loyalist writing just two weeks after the actual event remembered Henry calling the king a tyrant, a fool, a puppet, and a tool of the ministry. But no liberty. No death. So did Patrick Henry actually say the most famous thing Patrick Henry ever said? Listen now to find out!

  6. Aug 7 ·  Bonus

    John Paul Jones Pt. 2: Distressor of The Enemy

    John Paul Jones has reached British waters, and the enemy is about to become extremely distressed. Unfortunately, so are his sailors, his commanding officers, the Continental Congress, several European governments, and nearly everyone required to work with him. In Part 2 of our voyage through the life of America’s Pirate, Jones takes the Revolutionary War directly to Britain. He attempts to burn an English harbor, loses control of another crew, tries to kidnap an earl, steals the family tea service instead, and writes an apology letter that somehow becomes flirtatious, self-promotional, and suitable for publication. Then he gets serious. Jones captures HMS Drake, takes command of the increasingly questionable Bonhomme Richard, and sails into one of the most famous naval battles of the American Revolution. His ship is blasted apart. His crew is surrounded by fire, smoke, flooding, and British cannon. The enemy suggests surrender. Jones responds by locking his dying ship to HMS Serapis, sending in the Marines, and taking the British vessel while his own sinks beneath him. His ship sank, so he stole theirs... That is an aggressive upgrade. We also get into the Whitehaven raid, the Selkirk tea-service heist, the improvised Serapis flag, France celebrating Jones while confiscating his prizes, Congress rewarding its most dangerous naval commander with paperwork, his service under Catherine the Great, the scandal that ended his Russian career, his lonely death in Paris, his alcohol-filled coffin, and Theodore Roosevelt’s eventual campaign to bring him home. John Paul Jones was vain, abrasive, theatrical, politically disastrous, and apparently incapable of having a normal professional relationship. But when America needed someone to distress the enemy, it found the correct man.

  7. Jul 31 ·  Bonus

    John Paul Jones Pt. I: Mutiny, Marines, and Maritime Chaos

    Before John Paul Jones became the father of the United States Navy, he was just John Paul: a thirteen-year-old Scottish sailor with ambition, a talent for navigation, and an alarming habit of finding himself in the middle of mutinies. In Part I of our John Paul Jones deep dive, Kyle and Rae follow America’s pirate from a gardener’s estate in Scotland to the decks of the fledgling Continental Navy. The résumé gets chaotic quickly. He quits the slave trade after condemning it as an “abominable trade,” takes command of a ship after yellow fever kills the only two men who know how to navigate, gets accused of beating a mutineer to death, runs another sailor through with a cutlass, flees to America, adds “Jones” to his name, and spends several years sleeping on a tavern floor. And that’s before the Revolution gives him cannons. We cover: His Scottish childhood and merchant-marine apprenticeshipThe slave trade and the voyage that changed his careerThe Mungo Maxwell mutiny and murder accusationThe second mutiny that forced him to abandon BritainWhy “John Paul” suddenly became “John Paul Jones”His friendship with poet Phillis WheatleyThe chaotic creation of the Continental NavyThe early Continental Marines raiding New ProvidenceHis command of the Providence and RangerBritish warships attempting maritime catfishingA six-week campaign that captured sixteen vesselsThe congressional ranking that rewarded all of this by placing thirteen newcomers ahead of himAnd the stolen British uniforms that later appeared at Valley ForgeJones was brave, brilliant, self-promoting, thin-skinned, difficult to command, and apparently incapable of encountering a British ship without considering whether he could steal it or set it on fire. In other words: Exactly the sort of emotionally stable professional you want launching a navy from scratch. This episode is sponsored by TJ Koivisto at Fairway Home Mortgage. Every president made choices. Some aged well. Some did not. Getting a second mortgage quote is generally one of the better ones. Email: TJ.Koivisto@FairwayMC.com Call or text: 612-417-7767 TJ Koivisto, NMLS #2836158 Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation doing business as Fairway Home Mortgage. NMLS#2289. 4750 S. Biltmore Lane, Madison, WI, 537181-866-912-4800. Restrictions and limitations may apply. All rights reserved. Equal Housing Opportunity.

  8. Jun 5 ·  Bonus

    Buck Wild: John Jay – America’s OG Deal Maker

    Every friend group has one. You've got the charismatic troublemaker. That's Ben Franklin. You've got the dramatic overachiever. That's Alexander Hamilton. You've got the guy sneaking out of French windows after midnight. That's Gouverneur Morris. And then you've got John Jay. The man standing in the corner holding a treaty, wondering why nobody is following the agreement they already signed. In this episode of The Buck Starts Here, Kyle and Rae dive into the life of America's first Chief Justice, co-author of The Federalist Papers, diplomat, governor, treaty negotiator, and professional manager of other people's nonsense. We cover: • John Jay's Huguenot roots and elite New York upbringing• The New York–New Jersey border dispute that somehow lasted for years• His role in the Continental Congress• The collapse of Continental currency• Secret committees and Revolutionary War intelligence operations• The disastrous diplomatic mission to Spain• The Treaty of Paris• Why the states kept violating the Treaty of Paris almost immediately• The Federalist Papers• America's first Supreme Court• The Election of 1800• The Doctors' Riot of 1788• And why John Jay spent most of his career trying to explain that rules only work if people actually follow them Along the way, we discover something surprising: John Jay may not have been the flashiest Founding Father. He wasn't inventing bifocals. He wasn't writing spicy pamphlets. He wasn't getting into duels. He was doing something much harder: Trying to convince Americans to stop acting like thirteen separate countries. And honestly? That may have been the tougher job. Music: Military March Drums by KimyF. from Pixabay

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The Buck Starts Here—where U.S. presidential history gets a spicy makeover. Join no-nonsense economist Eric Mason and history-obsessed wild card Kyle Hedman as they dig into the messy, mind-blowing, and often WTF moments that shaped America’s commanders-in-chief. This is history served hot, with side-eye, deep dives, and sharp commentary that brings the past to life. From bad decisions and bigger egos to the policies that still echo today, we’re naming names and spilling presidential tea. Hit follow for a hilarious, unruly tour through America's most powerful (and problematic) figures!

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