History Was Human

Brian R. Smith
  • 5.0 (1)
  • History

History is usually remembered through wars, revolutions, movements, dates, and famous events. But history did not experience any of those things. People did. History Was Human tells the true stories of remarkable people who lived inside the history we now read about—some famous, some forgotten, some misunderstood, and some whose extraordinary lives never received the attention they deserved. Author Brian R. Smith explores one life at a time, following the historical record beyond the familiar version of events to discover the person behind the name: what they wanted, what they endured, the choices they made, and how the world around them shaped what happened next. The stories cross cultures, continents, and centuries. Warriors and spies. Rebels and survivors. Leaders, outsiders, and ordinary people caught in extraordinary moments. Some of these lives have inspired Brian’s historical novels. Others are simply stories too compelling to leave buried in the past. Because before history became history, it was human.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    Big Tim Murphy: Power in the Back of the Yards

    Send us Fan Mail. Three months before his murder, Chicago labor power broker Timothy D. "Big Tim" Murphy received an ovation at a South Side political banquet. On June 26, 1928, machine-gun fire killed him outside his home. His murder was never solved. How did a man associated with gambling, labor racketeering, and violent rivalries remain a popular figure in his own neighborhood? In this episode of History Was Human, author Brian R. Smith explores the complicated life of Big Tim Murphy, from Chicago's gambling operations and union halls to the Illinois legislature and federal prison at Leavenworth. Discover Murphy's rivalry with Maurice "Mossy" Enright, the murder investigations surrounding Chicago's labor wars, his federal mail-robbery conspiracy conviction, and his return to a city transformed by Prohibition. His final years brought him into the violent cleaners-and-dyers racket, where competing interests fought for control. It is a story of political influence, organized crime, neighborhood loyalty, and the contradictions of a man who could be admired and feared. Murphy is also the subject of Brian R. Smith's historical novel Big Tim. Follow History Was Human for more remarkable lives behind history. Have a historical figure you'd like us to explore? Use Fan Mail to suggest a future episode. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  2. Nov 3

    Woman Chief: A Daughter of Two Enemies

    Send us Fan Mail. Taken in war as a child and raised among the Crow, the woman remembered as Woman Chief built a life few nineteenth-century observers knew how to explain. She became a skilled hunter, a warrior, a leader of raids, a keeper of horses and wealth, and a woman whose influence forced even an outsider like trader Edwin Thompson Denig to stop and take notice. But Woman Chief's history is not a clean legend. The surviving dates conflict. The sources were written largely by outsiders. Her possible identification with the Crow woman known as Pine Leaf remains disputed. And then there is the final journey. Late in the fullest surviving account of her life, Woman Chief rode toward the people she had been born among. Their first meeting was peaceful. Soon afterward, Woman Chief and the four Crow traveling with her were killed. In Episode 7 of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith follows the evidence through capture, survival, power, identity, and a final attempt to cross the boundary that war had drawn through Woman Chief's life. Woman Chief: A Daughter of Two Enemies. Because before history became history, it was human. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  3. Oct 27

    Gertrude Bell: The Woman at the Birth of Iraq

    Send us Fan Mail. Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, traveler, writer, intelligence officer, and colonial administrator who became one of the most influential British officials in Baghdad after the First World War. She knew Winston Churchill. She worked alongside T. E. Lawrence. She helped support Faisal as the first king of Iraq, advised on the country's emerging political structure, worked on frontier questions, and later helped build what became the Iraq Museum. But the familiar claim that Gertrude Bell "drew Iraq" leaves out much of the story. In this episode of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith explores Bell's remarkable and contradictory life: the privileged Victorian woman who broke barriers while opposing women's suffrage, the traveler whose regional knowledge became British intelligence, the archaeologist who helped preserve Iraq's ancient past, and the colonial official who believed Britain had the right to shape the country's political future. Gertrude Bell was neither simply hero nor villain. She was a complicated human being standing close to power at a moment when empires were collapsing and new nations were being created. This is Gertrude Bell: The Woman at the Birth of Iraq. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  4. Oct 20

    Nancy Wake: The White Mouse Who Came Back

    Send us Fan Mail. Nancy Wake became one of the Gestapo’s most wanted women in occupied France—and earned the nickname “The White Mouse” because she repeatedly slipped through their grasp. Born in New Zealand and raised in Australia, Wake was living in France when World War II changed the course of her life. She worked with the French Resistance, helped people escape Nazi-occupied territory, fled across the Pyrenees herself, trained with Britain’s Special Operations Executive, and eventually parachuted back into France to help organize and supply resistance fighters before D-Day. In Episode 5 of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith follows Nancy Wake from her early years through the dangerous work that made her one of the most decorated Allied women of the war. Her story is one of nerve, loss, survival, and a refusal to remain on the sidelines while Europe was being consumed by war. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  5. Oct 13

    Jeff Ake: The Man Who Remembered the Old West

    Send us Fan Mail. Jeff Ake lived long enough to remember an American West that was already disappearing into legend. Born in the nineteenth century, he moved through Arkansas, California mining country, southern Arizona, Confederate Texas, ranching country, and some of the most violent corners of the frontier. His life intersected with Apache conflict, the deadly Ake Party ambush in Cooke’s Canyon, and even a Texas jail where John Wesley Hardin and John Ringo were part of the same world. In Episode 4 of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith follows Jeff Ake’s remarkable life and the memories he carried into old age. In 1934, writer James B. O’Neil sat down to record Ake’s recollections after novelist Eugene Manlove Rhodes urged him to "get him talking." The result is part history, part memory, and part legend—and a rare chance to hear how one man remembered the Old West after most of the people who had lived it were gone. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  6. Oct 6

    Rain-in-the-Face: The Warrior Behind the Custer Legend

    Send us Fan Mail. Rain-in-the-Face became one of the most famous Lakota warriors associated with the Battle of the Little Bighorn—but much of what Americans thought they knew about him came from a story that may never have happened. Years before the battle, Rain-in-the-Face was arrested by Tom Custer and imprisoned at Fort Abraham Lincoln. After his escape, stories spread that he had sworn revenge. When Tom Custer was later killed at the Little Bighorn, legend transformed Rain-in-the-Face into the warrior who hunted him down and cut out his heart. In Episode 3 of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith follows the man behind that legend: his early life as a Hunkpapa Lakota warrior, his arrest and escape, his experience at the Little Bighorn, and the conflicting accounts he gave later in life about what actually happened. Brian later wrote the historical novel Rain-in-the-Face because the distance between the legendary avenger and the complicated human being behind the story proved far more fascinating than the legend itself. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  7. Sep 29

    Bloody Knife: Custer's Scout, Gall's Enemy

    Send us Fan Mail. Bloody Knife is often remembered simply as "Custer's favorite scout." His real life was far more complicated. Born to a Hunkpapa Lakota father and an Arikara mother, Bloody Knife grew up between two peoples with a long history of conflict. He became an accomplished Army scout, developed a close working relationship with George Armstrong Custer, and ultimately rode into the Battle of the Little Bighorn—where an old enemy from his past, Gall, was fighting on the opposite side. In Episode 2 of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith follows Bloody Knife's life beyond the famous photograph and the Custer legend: his divided childhood, his reasons for becoming a scout, his experiences on the northern plains, and the complicated personal history that led him to the Little Bighorn. Bloody Knife's story fascinated Brian enough that he later wrote the historical novel Bloody Knife, because the man himself proved far more interesting than the supporting role history usually gave him. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  8. Sep 26

    Belle Boyd: The Spy Who Would Not Stay Quiet

    Send us Fan Mail. At seventeen, Belle Boyd shot a Union soldier in her family home. Soon afterward, she began listening to the soldiers assigned to watch her—and passing what she learned to the Confederacy. In the first episode of History Was Human, Brian R. Smith explores the life of one of the Civil War’s most famous female spies: her wartime intelligence work, arrests, celebrity, contradictions, and the cause she chose to serve. This is not a story about turning Belle Boyd into a hero or a villain. It is about looking past the legend and finding the complicated human being behind it. Support the show Original podcast music composed and performed by Ken Burns.Hosted by author Brian R. Smith.Learn more: authorbrianrsmith.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AuthorBrianRSmith

  • 8 Episodes

About

History is usually remembered through wars, revolutions, movements, dates, and famous events. But history did not experience any of those things. People did. History Was Human tells the true stories of remarkable people who lived inside the history we now read about—some famous, some forgotten, some misunderstood, and some whose extraordinary lives never received the attention they deserved. Author Brian R. Smith explores one life at a time, following the historical record beyond the familiar version of events to discover the person behind the name: what they wanted, what they endured, the choices they made, and how the world around them shaped what happened next. The stories cross cultures, continents, and centuries. Warriors and spies. Rebels and survivors. Leaders, outsiders, and ordinary people caught in extraordinary moments. Some of these lives have inspired Brian’s historical novels. Others are simply stories too compelling to leave buried in the past. Because before history became history, it was human.

Information

  • Creator
    Brian R. Smith
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 © 2026 History Was Human
  • Show Website
    History Was Human