Touring History 8-3-25

TOURING HISTORY - AUGUST 3RD SCRIPT

COLD OPEN

LANE: Welcome back to Touring History, where we make the past more interesting than whatever your algorithm thinks you want to watch next. I'm Lane.

DAVE: And I'm Dave, still trying to understand how people survived before GPS. Like, they just had to know where they were going before they left the house? Wild concept.

LANE: Today we're exploring August 3rd, a date that's brought us labor victories, aviation milestones, and some absolutely mind-blowing examples of how papal sex scandals can literally split Christianity in half.

DAVE: But first, birthdays - who do we have today, Lane?

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

LANE: Let's celebrate some August 3rd birthdays! We've got Martin Sheen, who somehow made being a fictional president more believable than most actual presidents we've had.

DAVE: Also born today: Tony Bennett, who proved that crooning never goes out of style and somehow made jazz cool for every generation. And Martha Stewart, who turned perfectionist homemaking into a multimedia empire.

LANE: Can't forget Rupert Brooke, born August 3rd, 1887. Poet who wrote some of the most beautiful and tragically naive poetry about World War I before dying in the war at age 27.

DAVE: His poem "The Soldier" with "there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England" hits different when you know he died on a hospital ship heading to Gallipoli.

SALACIOUS DAVE SEGMENT

DAVE: Scandal time! August 3rd, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on his first voyage. But here's the scandalous part - he was funded partly because of one of history's most notorious papal sex scandals involving Pope Alexander VI.

LANE: Wait, how does papal corruption connect to Columbus discovering America?

DAVE: Pope Alexander VI, also known as Rodrigo Borgia, was having a very public affair with Giulia Farnese, who was married to someone else. But Alexander was so obsessed with Giulia that he made her brother Alessandro a cardinal at age 25 just to keep her happy and close to Rome.

LANE: So papal nepotism driven by sexual obsession? That seems on-brand for the Borgias.

DAVE: But here's where it gets wild - Alessandro Farnese later became Pope Paul III, and to legitimize his scandalous rise to power, he needed to fund major Catholic expansion projects. That's partly why the church was so eager to support Columbus's voyages - they needed dramatic wins to distract from their sex scandals.

LANE: So Columbus's voyage was essentially papal scandal PR management?

DAVE: Alexander VI was so notorious for his affairs that he had multiple children with different mistresses while serving as Pope. His son Cesare Borgia became the inspiration for Machiavelli's "The Prince." The entire Borgia family's sexual scandals and political machinations literally shaped the Age of Exploration.

LANE: So one Pope's inability to keep it in his papal robes helped launch European colonization of the Americas?

DAVE: The Borgia sex scandals were so outrageous that they contributed to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther specifically cited papal sexual corruption as evidence that the Catholic Church needed reform. One family's scandalous affairs helped split Christianity and fund the conquest of two continents.

INNOVATION LANE SEGMENT

LANE: Innovation time! August 3rd, 1958, the USS Nautilus became the first submarine to reach the North Pole underwater, basically proving that humans could travel anywhere on Earth if they were sufficiently determined and claustrophobic.

DAVE: Traveling under the Arctic ice in a nuclear submarine sounds like the ultimate "trust the engineering" moment.

LANE: The Nautilus voyage revolutionized Arctic exploration and proved that nuclear submarines could operate in the most extreme conditions. It opened up entirely new possibilities for both scientific research and military strategy.

DAVE: Plus it probably inspired every kid to want to be a submarine captain, at least until they learned about the months underwater with recycled air part.

LANE: Also August 3rd, 1936, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics, basically using athletic excellence to make Hitler's racial theories look stupid in front of the entire world.

DAVE: That's less innovation and more "using superior performance to destroy racist propaganda." Though I guess making Nazis look foolish through excellence counts as social innovation.

AD BREAK

LANE: Let's talk about The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills,