#149 | Sam Kelly

Today’s podcast is all about Sam Kelly. He was born and raised in Los Angeles. He has been obsessed with history since he was very young. Sam is on the autism spectrum. When he’s interested in something, he really digs into it. He is incapable of browsing casually, instead he develops an almost physical compulsion to know everything there is to know on a subject. As a result, he spends hours every day looking stuff up, going on tangents, and uncovering every last stubborn detail. He studied history at Stanford University, but that’s putting it mildly. He gobbled up history courses like Pac-Man eats ghosts. By the time he graduated, he had lived in three foreign countries (England, Italy, and Germany) to better immerse himself in world history, and had studied under the tutelage of some of Stanford’s most esteemed history scholars.

Determined to share his love of bizarre little-known historical facts, he started a TikTok. His account is @human_history_on_durgs, where his followers listen to him tell wild (but entirely true) stories about famous people in history who used drugs – aka the stuff you won’t learn in school. He recently started cross-posting on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. To learn more about Sam: https://www.instagram.com/human_history_on_drugs