About this podcast
History, headlines, and the experts who help make sense of both
Episodes
The newest 20 of 69 episodes
- Nellie Bly’s Race Around the World · 10 minIn the late 19th century, there were things a woman simply wasn’t supposed to do. Travel alone. Chase dangerous stories. Push back against the people in charge. Nellie Bly did…
- How World War I Finally Ended · 11 minOn the morning of November 11, 1918, the most destructive war the world had ever seen came to an end. Except it didn’t. Not exactly. There’s something about those final hours…
- What the Pope’s Surgery Can Teach the Rest of Us · 11 minPope Leo XIV’s lung cancer was found during routine screening. Days after he announced the diagnosis in St. Peter’s Square, surgeons in Rome removed one lobe of his right lung…
- Where Does the Death Penalty Stand in the US? · 27 minTennessee gave Christa Pike two lethal doses, and she survived. The Pentagon planned to livestream a firing squad execution until President Trump called it off. Criminologist…
- From the Wright Brothers to Chuck Yeager in Only 44 Years · 12 minIn the span of a single human lifetime, humanity went from wondering if flight was possible to breaking the sound barrier. This episode of Sidequests tells the story of that…
- The Reality of Modern Deployments and Military Leadership · 25 minThe USS Abraham Lincoln spent ten months at sea. It left port in peacetime and came home from a war, and port calls were ruled out because every nearby harbor was within range of…
- The Great Chicago Fire: The Cow, the Comet, and the City That Burned · 11 minEveryone knows how the Great Chicago Fire started. The problem is, that story probably isn't true. On October 8, 1871, a fire tore through Chicago and destroyed one of the…
- What the Pope’s Surgery Can Teach the Rest of Us · 11 minPope Leo XIV’s lung cancer was found during routine screening. Days after he announced the diagnosis in St. Peter’s Square, surgeons in Rome removed one lobe of his right lung…
- Fifteen Days to Leave a War · 18 minThe United States spent twenty years in Afghanistan and about fifteen days leaving. Documentary filmmaker Michael Pack joins Keith Conrad to discuss his new Wall Street Journal…
- The Man Who Single-Handedly Stopped World War III · 9 minJust after midnight on September 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning system reported that nuclear war had begun. One officer had minutes to decide whether to believe it. What he…
- That Time Gene Roddenberry Survived a Plane Crash and Saved the Day · 11 minOn June 19, 1947, a Pan American flight went down in the Syrian Desert in the middle of the night. Engines failing, fuselage on fire, fifteen people killed on impact — including…
- Antietam: The Bloodiest Day in American History · 10 minOn September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam produced nearly 23,000 casualties in a single day — the bloodiest in American military history — and ended in a military stalemate…
- The Mold That Changed Medicine Forever · 9 minIn September 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find a contaminated culture plate — a mold had grown on it, and in a ring around the mold, all the bacteria were…
- The Day the Pope Deleted Ten Days From the Calendar · 12 minOn October 4, 1582, Catholic Europe went to bed and woke up ten days later. Pope Gregory XIII had ordered the deletion of October 5-14 to correct 1,600 years of accumulated drift…
- The False Flag That Started World War II · 11 minOn August 31, 1939, German commandos dressed in Polish uniforms staged a fake attack on a radio station near the Polish border, broadcast a fabricated message in Polish, and left…
- The First Person Ever Killed by a Car · 9 minOn August 31, 1869, a 62-year-old Irish woman named Mary Ward was thrown from a steam-powered automobile and killed when the rear wheel ran over her — becoming the first recorded…
- Why Everyone Is Suddenly Freaking Out About the Bond Market · 13 minLast week, 30-year Treasury yields hit their highest level since 2007. The Treasury Department tried bond buybacks to calm things down. It worked for about a day. Then yields…
- The Crossword That Almost Gave Away D-Day · 10 minIn the spring of 1944, with D-Day just weeks away, British intelligence noticed something alarming in the Daily Telegraph crossword: the classified code words for the Normandy…
- The Great Catapult Reversal · 16 minPresident Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to abandon electromagnetic aircraft catapults and return to 1950s-era steam launch systems — despite Navy reports that the electromagnetic…
- The Night Japanese Soldiers Tried to Stop the Surrender · 15 minOn the night of August 14-15, 1945, Japanese Army officers stormed the Imperial Palace, killed a senior general, forged military orders, and searched desperately for the…
