About this podcast
A podcast for the casual fan of history. The Wikipedia reader. The kids who grew up with a dad who watched the same 10 hours of World War II specials on The History Channel. Join Dan Regester, Rob Fox, and a weekly guest as they tastefully insert themselves into the past. The only thing we don’t show is our research.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 332 episodes
- America's Craziest Election Night · 57 minThe Blue Tsunami in the 2026 midterms has nothing on the 1854 elections that took place in St. Louis. The 1854 Election Riots in the Gateway to the West pitted Irish immigrants…
- Strangest Things To Happen At The Vatican · 1 h 4 minFrom a murderous elephant to the ghost of Julius Caesar we talk about the most bizarre and lesser known stories from the Eternal City. Subscribe to…
- The Enfield Poltergeist · 1 h 6 minIn 1977, in North London, a single British mother and her four children begin experiencing violent supernatural events. The poltergeist attacked the children, the mother, and…
- The Blackbird of Chernobyl · 1 h 11 minToday we talk about a modern cryptid story claiming that a large, dark, winged humanoid creature—similar to West Virginia's Mothman—was spotted by workers and residents near the…
- The Stabbing Ghost | The Amherst Mystery · 1 h 14 minIt's Nova Scotia, Canada. 1878. An 18-year-old girl named Esther Cox has a traumatic experience. Soon after, a poltergeist starts tormenting her. Dozens of witnesses watch over…
- Lizzie Borden Had An Axe · 1 h 26 minThe unsolved murders of Andrew Borden and his wife Abby Gray in 1892 have become a bit of American myth and legend. Andrew's daughter Lizzie was the only suspect in the vicious…
- Will America Fall Like Rome? (ft. Jeremy Ryan Slate) · 1 h 29 minHost of "The Roman Pattern" Jeremy Ryan Slate joins the show to talk about the parallels he sees between Rome's fall and America's current place in history. Subscribe to…
- Combat Of The Thirty · 53 minAfter a Duke refuses to clearly name an heir on his deathbed, a family feud breaks out in Brittany in the midst of the 100 year war. It all culminated into a tournament between…
- The Time An Immigrant Took The President's Job · 1 h 20 minKyle Bandujo, host of the "From Phenom to Farm" and "Big Screen Sports" podcasts, joins the show to discuss the illiterate Polish immigrant who President Grover Cleveland paid to…
- The Original Lindsay Clancy · 58 minConstance Fisher was a 20th century mother and paranoid schizophrenic who drowned her three children on two separate occasions. You didn't read that wrong. She repeated the same…
- David and the Goliath-Sized Pile of Foreskin · 1 h 6 minOne of the most famous stories of the Old Testament is David's slaying of the Philistine giant Goliath. But, that's not even the most impressive thing David did. After taking…
- Germany Bombed The Statue of Liberty? · 1 h 4 minJack Mandaville joins the show to talk about a forgotten terrorist attack on American soil that helped push the US into war. Subscribe to the Softcore History…
- Modern Serial Killers Have Nothing On The Middle Ages · 1 h 0 minForget Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. Forget Jack the Ripper. One serial killer in 16th-century Germany was so prolific and horrifying that he puts all our modern true crime…
- The Orphan Who Became A Globetrotting Mining Tycoon And US President · 1 h 18 minHerbert Hoover is remembered as a total bozo whose term in office is defined by the Great Depression. But, Herbie lived an insanely eventful and rewarding life before and after…
- TV’s Greatest Pervert · 1 h 4 minBob Crane was known best for his titular role on the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. But behind the scenes the man was a s*x addicted freak who filmed nearly every one of his conquests…
- The King Addicted To Gooning · 1 h 19 minChristian VII of Denmark is a relatively unknown monarch from the 1700s, save for one thing — he loved cranking it. The gooning addiction got so bad his advisors had to hide it…
- When Cross-Dressers Took Down The Spartans · 58 minIn 379 BC, exiled government officials from Thebes devised a plan to retake the city-state from their Spartan captors. It involved a seven man military crew who disguised…
- Why Bastille Day Is Stupid · 1 h 6 minMuch like the French Revolution as a whole, the event that kicked it all off, the Storming of the Bastille, was a sh*tshow that was in no way about what everyone involved claimed…
- The Peg Legged Playboy Who Helped Write The Constitution · 1 h 4 minGouverneur Morris was an American statesman, framer of the Constitution, and one of the most under appreciated Founding Fathers of the United States. He also had a peg leg, loved…
- The Massacre At Frank Lloyd Wright's Love Cottage · 1 h 3 minThe most famous architect in American history might have been agenius, but he was also a real piece of sh*t. After his wife refusedto grant him a divorce, Frank Lloyd Wright ran…
- History's Bad Dads · 1 h 8 minWe cover three of history's worst famous fathers who had very different parenting styles. Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of hours of…
- The World Cup's Most Violent Match Ever · 1 h 6 minIn 1962, World Cup host Chile was set to play Italy in their final group stage match. Both sides needed a win to advance to the knockout stage. What ensued, thanks to a pair of…
- Major League Wife Swap · 54 minIn 1973, the strangest trade broke out between two New York Yankees teammates. This is the career defining story of both Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich. Subscribe to the…
- The Man Who Inspired Saving Private Ryan's Gnarliest Moments · 1 h 17 minStaff Sergeant Ray Lambert hit Dog Green Sector of Omaha Beach with the first wave on D-Day. He was a medic. His job was to save, not kill. But that fact did not prevent him from…
- How The Green Mountain Boys Broke Benedict Arnold · 1 h 3 minThe capture of Fort Ticonderoga early in the American Revolution was a crucial, if militarily uneventful, victory early in America's fight for independence. The capture cut…
- The Time We Almost Nuked The Moon · 48 minAfter the launch of Sputnik, the U.S. needed a response to show they had not fallen behind the Soviets during the Cold War. The Air Force put together a top-secret, very real…
- UFO Files: The Hatfields and McGoblins · 1 h 6 minThe recent release of the UFO Files left out arguably the most exciting human vs. extraterrestrial encounter in American history: when a group of backwoods Kentucky rednecks…
- The Horny Emperor Who Loved To Cosplay · 53 minZhu Houzhao took over the Ming Dynasty at just 14. He was more interested in women, drinking, and pretending to be a soldier than actually running China. He left his royal court…
- This is What Happens When A Woman Takes Power · 57 minThe Assyrian queen Semiramis is one of the most notorious rulers in ancient history. Not just because she was a woman ruling a violent, male-dominated society. And not because…
- The American That Made Hating The Pope Cool · 1 h 1 minLewis Charles Levin was a 19th century Jewish American politician, newspaper editor, and conspiracy theorist who believed that Irish immigrants were soldiers of the Catholic…
- The Horniest Soldiers In American History · 1 h 10 minAs American soldiers liberated France, they had one thing on their mind: Boning. It turns out that the GIs who were landing in Normandy and fighting in the hedgerows were at…
- How The Navy Got Its... Reputation · 1 h 0 minIn 1919, rumors were swirling that a naval base in Newport, Rhode Island, was rife with immoral (gay) behavior. In response, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt…
- The Worst Person To Ever Live Bracket · 2 h 6 minWe put together a 68 person March Madness bracket of some of the most evil and despicable humans to ever grace this planet and decide who is the worst of all time.Subscribe to…
- New Orleans' Murderous Hooker · 1 h 13 minWhen you think about prostitutes and serial killers, you generally assume the former is being killed by the latter. But in the case of Bridget Fury, the former IS the latter…
- The Starting 9 For Hell’s Baseball Team · 1 h 25 minWith the MLB season about to start we pick our starting nine for Hell’s baseball team — the most talented and least moral person at every position in MLB history, dead players…
- This Is Sparta! · 1 h 12 minKing Xerxes launched a second invasion of Greece in 480 BC to avenge his father's failures a decade before. The massive Persian army of over 100,000 men was met by Leonidas and…
- The Pacific Theater Was A Nightmare · 1 h 21 minMaybe we don't talk about the Pacific Theater in World War 2 as much as we should because we don't want to acknowledge how gross it actually was. The Battle of Peleliu is…
- The King Of Louisiana · 1 h 16 minHuey Long was one of the most radical and powerful politicians in American history. Between his time as both the governor of Louisiana and senator he completely steamrolled his…
- The Japanese Ate A Lot of People In WW2 · 1 h 14 minThe Japanese committed a lot of war crimes in World War II but cannibalism wasn’t one of them, though only because cannibalism wasn’t technically a war crime because no one…
- The Devil Worshipping American Intelligence Officer · 59 minMichael A. Aquino Jr. was an American military officer, specialist in psychological warfare, Nazi admirer and Satanist priest who started his own religion. This is the story of…
- The Greatest Aerial Combat Win Ever · 59 minCaptain Royce Williams will receive the Medal of Honor soon, for a secret he kept for 50 years — that during the Korean War, badly outnumbered and outgunned, he took on and…
- America's Shady History With Saudi Arabia · 1 h 12 minThe minute President Roosevelt stepped foot on the USS Quincy to meet with Ibn Saud on the Bitter Lake, he changed the course of America's future in the Middle East. We dive…
- The Meanest Mormon in History · 1 h 3 minPorter Rockwell was many things. A man with three wives and twenty-one children, a lawman, and one of the OG Mormons. But above all he was the early Mormon church’s muscle. Their…
- The Man Who Wrongly Thought He Could Fly · 51 minFranz Reichelt was an Austrian born tailor who became obsessed with the idea of creating a wearable parachute for pilots and aviators. This passion was only fueled by the many…
- Left Handers Are The Most Oppressed People In Human History · 1 h 2 minRob, a southpaw survivor of human society’s systemic left-handedness oppression, breaks down all the horrible ways basically every civilization throughout human history has…
- The Last Viking · 1 h 6 minHarald "Hardrada" Sigurdsson was a Viking mercenary in the Byzantine Varangian Guard and eventual King of Norway who threw his hat in the ring to conquer England in 1066. He…
- The Spy Who Shagged BP · 1 h 6 minMoe Berg was a defense-first journeyman catcher for the Dodgers, White Sox, Indians, and Red Sox who faced the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. He also had multiple Ivy…
- The Eggnog Riot · 1 h 3 minJefferson Davis was a malcontent long before the American Civil War. The Eggnog Riot or Grog Mutiny was an 1826 drunken Christmas rebellion by dozens of cadets at the U.S…
- The Worst Company Christmas Party in History · 1 h 10 minForget puking secretaries and handsy office creeps, BY FAR the worst company Christmas party in American history happened on Christmas Eve in Michigan in 1913 when a group of…
- Flying Drunk At Pearl Harbor · 1 h 2 minU.S. Army Air Corps pilots Kenneth Taylor and George Welch had a few days off in tropical paradise and decided to let loose at an officer Christmas party. They parlay that into…
