Historically High

Prof Chris here. I'm gonna shoot everyone straight, I got carried away with this one, I couldn't see it while it was happening, and I had the blinders on, sooo what you get now is 3 hours and 45 plus minutes of comprehensive and probably mostly entertaining discussion on the history of the Wizarding World introduced in the Harry Potter books/movie. I've got my nerd on full display here but Prof Adam enabled it so he&...

Henry Hudson. We don't know too much about his life prior to becoming a captain for the Muscovy Company of England. In his life he would tale 4 voyages looking to reach the east coast of Asia. 3 of those 4 voyages would start out going east only to run into ice. 2 of those voyages would discover some very cool things in the western world that would take his name (Hudson River, Hudson River Valley, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay). I...

No there are no typos in the title, that's how "Labours" is spelled in this instance and the Greek pronunciation is HERA-CLES, cause the dude was named after Hera, who was actually not his mother, far from it. Daddy Zeus did was Zeus gon' do and sexed up a mortal woman disguised as her husband, she got pregnant, Hera got pissed and Heracles was born into the Greek World with a target already on his back. Now we ...

The history of the Yakuza is one clouded in a little mystery. You have the story the Yakuza promotes, that they were the collection of peoples who banded together to defend the helpless from the terrors of the Shogun and his Samurai. Then there's the more likely version, they were a group of merchants, hustlers, thieves, and racketeers who adopted a code of honor and started to branch out into more lucrative ventures, both leg...

I mean come on, it's Julius Caesar, you've waited long enough so I'm keeping this short. The man has a salad dressing, a hotel/casino, and an orange smoothie franchise named in his honor..... BUT in addition to that he was captured by pirates, was co-president of Rome for a year, added all of Gallic France and Spain to the Roman Empire, led the first Roman Army across the Rhine River in Germany, led the first Roman A...

After the console death of SEGA, there would be a new contender stepping into the console game. Microsoft decided Sony was getting a little too comfy in the whole home entertainment market. They already had the personal computer cornered for the most part and due to integrated computer components in video game consoles, a transition into that market seems like a sure thing. Also when you have a seemingly endless supply of money you...

Each theater of war during World War 2 offered something unique and dangerous, Europe it was the winters, the Pacific had tropical diseases, but North Africa, it was a whole different ballgame. A desert stretching more than 2,000 miles from Morocco to Egypt with a lotta wide open spaces between. When Hitler invaded France on May 10, 1940, Mussolini waited with bated breath for the right moment to announce he was taking his talents ...

For 48 years, from 1924 to 1972, J. Edgar Hoover served, as first the head of the Bureau of Investigation and then the head of its successor, the FBI. For almost 50 years one man was in control of the nations domestic intelligence gathering and surveillance apparatus. 50 years is a long time to get up to some real shady shit and get up to it J. Edgar did. The nation's "top cop" used his department to gather dirt on e...

This week Professor Adam is bringing out a true crime hall of fame story. The death of Brian Wells/the Pizza Bomber/the Collar Bomber, is one of the most puzzling crimes ever committed. It has everything a true crime story could ever want. A serial killer, a bank robbery, a scavenger hunt, a creepy love story, a conspiracy, and a healthy dose of mental illness. Brian Wells delivered a pizza to a TV tower building on Peach Street in...

The year was 1985, Freddy Mercury was bringing down the house at Wembley, Rocky Balboa won the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago, and the Nintendo Entertainment System was release in the United States. It took the country by storm on the overall clad back of an Italian plumber named Mario. Nintendo ruled the home video game market until 1989 when a new player joined the game. The Sega Genesis' step onto the scene wasn't a ...

During the 4 1/2 months it was fought, the Battle of the Somme took the crown as the deadliest battle of World War 1. This battle had it all, trench warfare, so many artillery pieces it created mountains of spent casings, fighter aircraft, and the introduction of the tank to the world as a weapon. The battle was the meeting of old world tactics and new world technology, never a good thing. The first day of the battle was the stuff ...

The history of Basketball begins in the unassuming town of Springfield, Massachusetts. Canadian born James Naismith is trying to keep his group of students at the YMCA busy during a cold New England winter. It took 2 peach baskets, a soccer ball, and a few simple rules to create the game of basketball... sort of. The first thing Naismith created was chaos. Eventually, out of the chaos came basketball. The popularity of the game spr...

The United States was brought into WW2 with the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7 1941. The U.S. was shook, fear of an invasion of the west coast was at an all time high with nothing standing between us and Japan. The moral of the nation wasn't good and in the weeks after Pearl Harbor more Japanese victories did nothing to reassure the country we could win this war. The U.S. needed a win, it needed to be someth...

Leonardo Da Vinci started his artistic journey at the age of 14, beginning as a studio boy to Andrea del Verrocchio. Verrocchio taught Leo the ropes in sculpting, painting, casting, leather work, amongst other things, until Da Vinci stepped in to paint a couple angels in a mostly complete "The Last Baptism". Verrocchio looked at his work, looked at Da Vinci's and legend has it he set down his brush for good at that p...

The Black Plague or Black Death as its also known really put it to Europe, Asia and Africa from 1346 through 1353. In just 7 years it killed off up to 60% of Europe's population. 20-50 million dead due to a little bacteria called Yersinia Pestis, the cause of the Plague. It wasn't just effective in the way it hitched a ride on fleas, which then hitched on rats, which hitched a ride on everything else. But in the way that ...

What good would a history podcast be without some sports history? Babe Ruth feels like he should be on the Mount Rushmore of sports history. Born in the Pigtown part of Baltimore, he defied the odds to become the most well-known baseball player of all time. He dazzled fans on the field, on the silver screen, and on every sports page in the country. His trade from the Red Sox also cursed the organization for the next 86 years. As a ...

Who doesn't love a good Heist? Now throw in the most valuable diamond in the world at the time, the Millennium Star. Still not convinced? Well let's put this thing right in the middle of London at the Millennium Dome's De Beers exhibit. In November of the year 2000, a crew of career criminals attempted one of the ballsiest, most brazen robberies in history. And they would've probably gotten away with it too if i...

As far as American Icons go it probably doesn't get much bigger and recognizable than Henry Ford and Ford Motors. Not the inventor of the automobile, that credit goes to Carl Benz (go back and listen to that episode) but Henry developed what would become the modern automotive industry as we know it. Assembly lines were a thing, just not with cars until Henry decided to use them to mass produce the Model T. His first mass produ...

History sometimes has a habit of framing cultures as either heroes or villains, depending on the source. When it comes to Greek sources Herodotus "The Father of History", is kinda the go to when it comes to the period of antiquity. Every story needs a bad guy or a great evil to overcome, and when it comes to Herodotus his history was many times more fiction than fact. For the Greeks it was the vast and powerful Persian Em...