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
July 28, 2025 • 40 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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July 21, 2025 • 52 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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July 14, 2025 • 42 mins
July 17, 1674. During renovations at the Tower of London, construction workers digging beneath a stone staircase make a chilling discovery—two child-sized skeletons buried ten feet underground. And King Charles II believes he knows who they are.
The remains reignite one of the most enduring mysteries in British history: the fate of the Princes in the Tower. For over 500 years, historians have debated what happened to King Edward V...
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July 10, 2025 • 54 mins
When we first aired "Operation Mincemeat" back in 2020, it was a daring WWII thriller that felt almost too wild to be true. Now, it’s not just history — it’s a hit Broadway musical. This week, we're revisiting our original episode about the ingenious Allied ruse that helped turn the tide of the war. And we’re adding a twist: an interview with Natasha Hodgson, co-creator and star of Operation Mincemeat, the musical. She joins us to ...
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July 7, 2025 • 39 mins
July 7, 1938. Superman has the villain in his grasp. They soar through the air, then slam into the ground. This villain wants to start a war. Our hero won’t let that happen.
At this point, Superman only has two comic book appearances. And yet, his legend is already beginning to grow. Kids read about heroics at the community pool, sitting on their stoops, late at night under their covers. Soon enough, Superman becomes America’s her...
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June 30, 2025 • 37 mins
July 7, 2007. In a dramatic ceremony featuring pop stars, fireworks, and smoke cannons, the Colosseum is named one of the seven new wonders of the world. It’s an appropriately over-the-top blowout for an arena which, centuries before, was home to its own lavish events. How did spectacles once unfold on the floor of this ancient arena? And how did the Romans use games to entertain people and to control them?
Special thanks to our g...
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June 23, 2025 • 39 mins
June 28, 1928. Louis Armstrong is in the studio recording what he hopes will be another hit. His career is on the rise, but he’s not a household name yet. But he’s about to lay down a track – “West End Blues” – that won’t just change his career, but the entire genre of jazz.
But Armstrong didn’t compose “West End Blues” – it was written by his mentor, a man only remembered by people who are really into the history of jazz, a corn...
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June 16, 2025 • 38 mins
June 22, 1611. It’s been a long, cold winter. Henry Hudson and his crew have been stranded in the Canadian Arctic for months, living on the ice in wooden shacks - starving, sick, and ready to go home.
And yet, Hudson wants to carry on and search for the Northwest Passage, a theoretical trading route to the Pacific that could bring him untold fortunes. His crew has had enough.
How does this journey go so wrong? And what happens wh...
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June 12, 2025 • 30 mins
June 9, 1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy has accused the United States Army of having communists within its midst. After rising to power during a time of great fear in America, McCarthy's name has become synonymous with anti-communism – and with baseless, life-ruining accusations. But today, five simple words will take down one of the most notorious men in American political history.
What made McCarthy so powerful in the first place...
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June 9, 2025 • 44 mins
June 14, 1938. It’s 8:30 PM at Lake Worth Casino in Fort Worth, Texas. All eyes are on a huge high-dive platform, 40 feet in the air. And at the top? A woman… on a horse.
Horse diving is one of the most popular acts in America, and Sonora Carver is one of its stars. She’s been doing it for years, traveling the country to perform one of the more unbelievable stunts in sideshow history.
But a few years back, Carver suffered a deva...
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June 2, 2025 • 41 mins
June 4, 1941. Reinhard Heydrich transmits a message to all regional governors in the Third Reich: prepare for “action against occult teachings.”
Heydrich is carrying out the orders of Adolf Hitler, who is furious at his Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess. Inspired by a horoscope reading, Hess decided to fly a secret mission to Great Britain and sue for peace. But Hess crash-lands in Scotland—the plan doesn’t pan out—and his failure become...
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May 26, 2025 • 39 mins
May 30, 1855. Five thousand Native Americans come to Walla Walla to negotiate a treaty. However, it’s not exactly a fair negotiation – the territorial governor basically tells these tribes that they have no choice but to live on reservations in order to maintain peace.
This moment comes in the wake of a violent time in the Pacific Northwest, a period started by the killing of Christian missionaries—namely, Marcus and Narcissa Whit...
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May 19, 2025 • 41 mins
May 22, 1856. Charles Sumner isn’t worried about making friends in the Senate. His rhetoric is inflammatory, almost intentionally. He’s an ardent abolitionist in a time when people are still enslaved throughout the South.
In his most recent speech, Sumner attacked his colleagues directly, especially pro-slavery Senator Andrew Butler. Butler’s cousin, Preston Brooks, is also in Congress, and as a southern gentleman, he decides he h...
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May 15, 2025 • 38 mins
May 16, 1920. Tens of thousands of people surround St. Peter’s Basilica to honor Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who died nearly five hundred years before. Joan’s feats in battle—and her visions of God—have become legendary since her heyday during the Hundred Years' War. And today, the Catholic Church is making her a saint. But Joan was a real person – and while many supported her during her lifetime, many others wanted her dead...
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May 12, 2025 • 36 mins
May 15, 1940. It’s opening day. San Bernardino, California is a city on the rise, and to meet this new demand for cheap, good food, two brothers have created a restaurant: McDonald’s Famous Barbecue.
You can order a PB&J sandwich, barbecued pork, baked beans, and yes, a hamburger. It’s a work in progress, but Dick and Mac McDonald never stop innovating.
How did the McDonald brothers engineer a system that would be replicated in t...
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May 5, 2025 • 35 mins
May 5, 1862. The French have landed in Mexico. Napoleon III wants to conquer the country and assert France’s imperial dominance in the Americas. In his way? The Mexican army, held up in the city of Puebla.
The Battle of Puebla will come to define this struggle: a European monarch against a fledgling democracy, led by Benito Juárez. Mexico’s victory will be especially celebrated by Latinos in the United States, who are watching t...
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April 28, 2025 • 36 mins
April 27, 1951. The United States has been putting pressure on Denmark for a long time. Because the small European kingdom has something the Americans really, really want: Greenland.
Today, they sign a treaty that will basically let the U.S. military build whatever it wants on this frozen island. They end up constructing an air base, but then turn to a much more ambitious project, underground.
How does this hidden Arctic outpost...
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April 24, 2025 • 1 min
HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes this Monday! We're kicking things off with a look at America's longtime fascination with Greenland, and how the U.S. military used the island to expand its Cold War nuclear ambitions.
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April 21, 2025 • 42 mins
April 27, 1856. In Beijing’s Forbidden City, one of the emperor’s consorts, a woman named Cixi, has given birth to a son – the emperor’s first heir. This landmark event is met with mass celebration. But in just five years time, the emperor will be dead and Cixi will be planning a coup to take power for herself. How will she ever succeed?
Special thanks to our guests: Jung Chang, author of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who L...
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April 17, 2025 • 11 mins
Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. On What We Spend, people from across the country and across the financial spectrum are opening their wallets—and their lives—to tell you everything: what they make, what they want, and—for one week—what they spend.
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