HISTORY This Week

HISTORY This Week

This week, something big happened. You might have never heard of it, but this moment changed the course of history. A HISTORY Channel original podcast, HISTORY This Week gives you insight into the people—both famous and unknown—whose decisions reshaped the world we live in today. Through interviews with experts and eyewitnesses, each episode will give you a new perspective on how history is written. Stay up-to-date at historythisweekpodcast.com and to get in touch, email us at historythisweek@history.com. HISTORY This Week is a production of Back Pocket Studios in partnership with the History Channel.

Episodes

The Grinnell 14 Take On the Bomb (feat. Peter Coyote)

November 10, 2025 • 27 mins
November 16, 1961. Fourteen college students from Iowa have driven nearly a thousand miles to the White House. They’re fasting, protesting, and calling for an end to nuclear bomb testing. These students, later known as the Grinnell 14, will help ignite the student peace movement of the 1960s. Actor Peter Coyote (then Peter Cohon) was one of them. He joins us to remember how it felt to grow up under the shadow of the bomb, why they...
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The Forgotten Life & Tragic Death of President James Garfield | A Conversation with ‘Death by Lightning’ Creator Mike Makowsky

November 3, 2025 • 36 mins
November 3, 1880. Congressman James Garfield wakes up on his quiet farm in Ohio to learn that he’s been elected President of the United States. He never campaigned to be on the ticket. He never wanted the presidency. But the nation, weary of corruption and hungry for reform, has chosen him to lead. But four months after taking office, Garfield will be shot by a man who believes he’s owed a government position. And the president’s ...
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The Haunting Case of H.H. Holmes

October 27, 2025 • 33 mins
October 28, 1895. It’s the first day of a murder trial in Philadelphia, and H.H. Holmes has been left to represent himself. His lawyers say they haven’t had time to prepare for his case, although they may just want to avoid defending the man some newspapers are already saying is “sure to grace a gallows.” Holmes has been accused of murdering his business associate, but rumors swirl that he may have killed dozens, even hundreds more...
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Land of the Free? The Real Story Behind the Star-Spangled Banner

October 23, 2025 • 31 mins
October 19, 1814. An eager audience files into the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, about to see a debut performance, described as a “much-admired new song.” The composer of this song, Francis Scott Key, had written the lyrics during a recent battle in Baltimore, trapped on a British ship as he watched the rockets red glare from afar. Key wasn’t a professional songwriter – a prominent lawyer in Washington D.C., he specialized ...
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They Saw What the United Nations Couldn’t

October 20, 2025 • 32 mins
October 24, 1945. The Charter of the United Nations is signed, promising to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Back when the charter was drafted a few months earlier in San Francisco, delegates from around the world gathered to build a new era of peace and human rights.  Among them is Mary McLeod Bethune, the only Black woman in the U.S. delegation, and she already sees the contradictions beneath the moment: c...
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How LEGO Rebuilt the Toy Itself

October 13, 2025 • 31 mins
October, 1955. In living rooms across Denmark, children tear open the box of a brand-new toy: the LEGO System in Play. Inside are plastic bricks, a printed playmat of roads, little houses and trees — everything in perfect scale. As they build, something new is taking shape.  It looks simple, but it’s a radical idea — every piece connects, no matter when or where it’s made. It’s more than a toy — it’s a system. That quiet innovatio...
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Stalin’s War on Genetics

October 6, 2025 • 40 mins
October 11, 1955. Nearly three hundred of the Soviet Union’s top scientists sign a secret letter demanding the removal of one man: Trofim Lysenko. For decades, Lysenko had Joseph Stalin’s ear, ruling Soviet biology with an iron fist—banning genetics, rewriting textbooks, and sending dissenting scientists to prison or worse.  How did a peasant-turned-agronomist convince Stalin that wheat could turn into rye, and that ideology matte...
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The Bone Wars

September 29, 2025 • 35 mins
October 4, 1915. President Woodrow Wilson designates Dinosaur National Monument as a national historic site. That’s a big deal, right? There must’ve been a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony, maybe even a parade. But no. In 1915, nobody really cares about dinosaurs. But that is all about to change. And when it does, it is largely because of two paleontologists. Two guys who started off as best friends … until their growing obsession wit...
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When Nintendo (and Mario) Rescued Video Games

September 22, 2025 • 30 mins
September 27, 1986. You’re a kid in the mid-80s. You get home from school, flip on the TV, and see something strange: a commercial where a giant egg hatches behind a family’s console, revealing a toy robot. His name is R.O.B. — the Robotic Operating Buddy — but he's just an accessory. The real product: Nintendo.  Today, the Nintendo Entertainment System is launching nationwide. Just a few years earlier, the U.S. video game market ...
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The First Lady Who Tamed the Bull Moose

September 15, 2025 • 41 mins
September 14, 1901. Midnight in the Adirondacks. A pounding knock at the door jolts Theodore and Edith Roosevelt awake. William McKinley is dead. Hours later, Theodore will be sworn in as the youngest president in U.S. history. But Edith barely flinches—her diary that day notes her children’s sniffles before her husband’s rise to power. Who was this woman who grew up alongside Theodore, helped shape his presidency, reinvented the ...
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Presenting: The C-Word

September 11, 2025 • 2 mins
With every episode, Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett take you on a historical deep dive into the life of a woman society dismissed by calling her mad, sad, or just plain bad: Lindsay Lohan, Judy Garland, Winona Ryder, Mariah Carey, Lil Kim and many more. Join them for a rich, hilarious, and heartbreaking look into exactly what it means when we call a woman “crazy.” The C-Word was originally published behind a paywall from 2019 - 202...
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An Astronomer Hunts a KGB Hacker

September 8, 2025 • 31 mins
September 10, 1986. It’s just before 8am when Cliff Stoll’s pager jolts him awake. A computer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab has flagged a problem: a tiny 75-cent accounting error. But when Stoll rushes to his office, he realizes this isn’t about missing spare change. Someone has slipped into the lab’s network, tunneling thousands of miles away into U.S. military computers.  Cliff isn’t a spycatcher. He’s an astronomer. And yet, from th...
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Shaving Russia

September 1, 2025 • 28 mins
Sept 5, 1698. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia returns home from a year-long European tour. When noblemen, religious figures, and friends gather to welcome him home, Peter pulls out a straight razor, holds it to their throats, and…forcibly shaves their beards. This event will go down in history as a first step toward Russian geopolitical power. Before Peter’s reign, Russia was an isolated nation that was largely ignored by the rest o...
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José Cuervo Rebuilds a Tequila Empire

August 25, 2025 • 37 mins
August 28, 1920. In the town of Tequila, fireworks burst overhead as people celebrate Mexico’s independence. Then… gunshots. Malachías Cuervo, heir to the famous tequila dynasty, has just reignited a bitter feud with his family’s rivals, the Sauzas. For decades, his brother José Cuervo fought to rebuild the family business through drought, revolution, and political upheaval—turning a struggling operation into an empire. His tactfu...
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The True Winnie-the-Pooh

August 21, 2025 • 29 mins
August 24, 1914. A train pulls up to the lumber town of White River, Ontario, carrying a regiment of Canadian troops on board. On the tracks where they disembark is a small black bear cub. An army veterinarian decides to buy the bear and name her Winnipeg—Winnie for short—after the town where he's been living.  When the soldiers are deployed to the European front, Winnie is left at the London Zoo, where a child named Christopher R...
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Egypt’s Last Hieroglyph and the Fiery Archbishop of Alexandria

August 18, 2025 • 33 mins
August 24, 394. On the walls of a fading Egyptian temple, a priest carves what will become the last known hieroglyph in history. At the same moment, in Alexandria, a fiery archbishop named Theophilus is rising to power. He mocks the ancient Egyptian gods, desecrates their temples, and sets out to stamp out “paganism” for good.  But Theophilus is fighting more than ancient religion—he clashes with monks, rivals, even fellow bishops...
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The Shark Attacks That Made Us Fear the Water

August 11, 2025 • 32 mins
August 15, 1915. American diplomat J. T. Du Bois publishes a letter in The New York Times. It’s not about diplomacy or foreign affairs. This letter is about sharks. It’s Du Bois’ attempt to prove to the American public that “Man-Eating Sharks” - as he calls them - are real.  Because in 1916? Most people think they’re a myth. Experts say that sharks aren’t dangerous. That they’re “rabbit” tame and too weak-jawed to pose any real th...
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When Nazis Killed Nazis in the Middle of America

August 4, 2025 • 41 mins
August 7, 1943. Off the coast of Venezuela, a Nazi U-boat is under siege. For nine days, it’s hunted by Allied aircraft across the Caribbean, until its engines fail and its commander gives the order: abandon ship. Forty-three German sailors plunge into shark-infested waters, and are pulled out by their enemy - the United States. The Germans think the worst is behind them. Instead, they’re headed for a POW camp in the American hear...
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Barbie for President!

July 28, 2025 • 36 mins
July 29th, 1992. The Baltimore Sun runs a feature about a surprise candidate in the upcoming presidential race: Barbie. The 11.5-inch icon of girlhood and glamor is running for office – and flying off the shelves. But how did a plaything become important enough to make national news?  To answer that question, we take you on a journey through doll history, from French porcelain beauties to cherubs that stood for women’s suffrage. A...
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Anarchists, Lovers, and the Birth of the FBI

July 21, 2025 • 48 mins
July 23rd, 1892. Henry Clay Frick is one of America’s leading industrialists. To Alexander Berkman, he’s one of America’s leading villains. Berkman is an anarchist, along with his partner, Emma Goldman. They believe the current order of things needs to change, and one way to make change is through violence. Frick is meeting with his associates in his Pittsburgh office when Berkman bursts into the room and draws his gun. The men lo...
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