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

Stalin Is Dead! | Сталин мертв!

March 2, 2026 • 36 mins
March 5, 1953. The Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, is on his deathbed, and he’s turning blue. At the end of his life, Stalin is surrounded by his closest advisors, but these comrades aren’t hoping for his quick recovery. For days, they’ve been sneaking away from their vigil, plotting. The moment Stalin’s heart stops, they leap into action. What happens when a tyrant falls? And what role did the inner circle play in brin...
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Disneyland on a Deadline

February 23, 2026 • 29 mins
March 1, 1951. Two Texas horse trainers sit down to lunch with Walt Disney. They assume he wants to use their animals in a movie. Instead, Walt leans in and tells them about something that doesn’t exist yet. Not a carnival. Not an amusement park. Something movie-like in the real world. And if he’s going to build it, he’ll need horses. At that moment, Disneyland is just an idea in Walt’s head. But within a few years, he’ll clear 16...
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How To Dig a Train Tunnel Under the Hudson River

February 16, 2026 • 36 mins
February 14, 1905. A stick of dynamite detonates under the Hudson River — and the ground above swallows a locomotive whole. It's the latest setback in an audacious plan to tunnel beneath the river and bring trains into Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad is the largest corporation in the world, but the goopy riverbed keeps fighting back. How did they finally make it across? And why are these 115-year-old tunnels still the most cri...
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Trailer: HTW Season Premiere This Monday!

February 12, 2026 • 2 mins
HISTORY This Week will return with new episodes this Monday, February 16th, with a story about the most vital train tunnels in the United States. The North River Tunnels—their formal name—connect New Jersey to Penn Station in New York City, carrying 200,000 passengers every day. These tunnels underneath the Hudson are now over 115 years old, and are in desperate need of repair. The tunnel rehabilitation effort will be the larges...
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Shut Out of the Majors, They Created Their Own

February 9, 2026 • 31 mins
Feb 13, 1920. For over thirty years, Black baseball players have been locked out of the major leagues. So on this day in Kansas City, Rube Foster, a former pitcher and now a team owner, is trying to make his own league just for Black players. He has gathered owners of other Black baseball teams, who currently play each other in one-off matchups or face independent teams in random games around the country. But Foster wants them to g...
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The Great Comic Book Scare

February 2, 2026 • 31 mins
February 4, 1955. In a New York courtroom, the Comics Czar takes the stand. He’s in charge of enforcing a new code, meant to keep comic books from corrupting America’s youth, and he’s here to prove that his work has cleaned up the industry. But that afternoon, a noted psychologist named Fredric Wertham argues that his work has not nearly gone far enough. When the hearing comes to a close, the committee is left to decide: what is th...
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The Dogs Who Saved Nome, Alaska

January 26, 2026 • 37 mins
On January 5, 2026, Jirdes Winther Baxter passed away at 101 years old — the last known survivor of the 1925 diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska. A few years ago, we told the story of the Serum Run: the desperate relay of mushers and sled dogs who carried a life-saving antitoxin across Alaska, including to an 11-month-old Baxter. Today, that run lives on through the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Enjoy this classic HTW story, and s...
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From Hitler to Hippies: The Surprising Origins of the VW Beetle | Presenting Business History

January 22, 2026 • 38 mins
How did the VW Beetle go from Hitler’s dream car to beloved hippie icon? Today, we’re sharing an episode from a new podcast, Business History. Hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith bring to life the greatest innovations, the boldest entrepreneurs and the craziest mavericks in the annals of business—and share the lessons we can learn from their successes and failures. In today’s episode: How Hitler launched the Volkswagen Beetle an...
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Houdini Defies Death

January 19, 2026 • 28 mins
January 25, 1908. Harry Houdini is the most famous magician in America. He’s known for his escapes – from handcuffs, boxes, jail cells, even a giant football. But the escape act is getting old, and ticket sales aren’t what they used to be. And on this day, an under-capacity audience at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis is about to witness Houdini’s most dangerous escape yet… from death itself. How did a Hungarian immigrant named Er...
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The Great Boston Molasses Flood

January 12, 2026 • 19 mins
January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How did it happen? And why does it still affect us all today? Special thanks to our guest, Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. ** This episode originally aired Jan 13, 2020. Get in touch: historythi...
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Tuskegee Top Gun

January 5, 2026 • 30 mins
Editor’s note: This episode originally aired January 9, 2023. Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. passed away in February 2025 at the age of 100. Lt. Col. James Harvey III still resides in New Jersey, now 102 years old. -- January 11, 2022. Lt. Col. James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada for the first time in 73 years. He’s there to accept a plaque celebrating the last time he was there, for the Air Force’s first-ever wea...
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King Tut’s Tomb and the Battle for Egypt’s Past

December 29, 2025 • 38 mins
January 3, 1924. Archeologists crowd into an ancient Egyptian tomb to uncover what awaits them in the unopened burial chamber. The world is waiting to find out. That’s because two years before, the discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun revealed antiquities so dazzling that a media frenzy ensued – newspapers, newsreels, and Hollywood movies vied to show audiences these wonders of ancient Egypt. Now, lead archaeologist How...
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The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: A History In Lights (from The Bowery Boys)

December 24, 2025 • 45 mins
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has a surprisingly dramatic history. Millions tune in each year to watch the tree lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around the tree’s massive branches during the holiday season, adjusting their...
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A Scrooge for the Ages

December 22, 2025 • 26 mins
December 27, 1853. On a freezing, snowy night in Birmingham, England, 2,000 people have lined up outside the town hall. They’ve braved the temperatures for a landmark performance, Charles Dickens’ first reading of A Christmas Carol. The tale will become an international sensation and beloved Christmas tradition. In this special episode of HISTORY This Week, we bring you a classic 1949 rendition of the story starring Vincent Price, ...
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Sam Adams Brews Rebellion in Boston Harbor

December 15, 2025 • 36 mins
December 16, 1773. Samuel Adams sits in a crowded meeting of American colonists at Boston’s Old South Meeting House. He’s watching small groups of men slip quietly out the door. Once outside, the men don disguises and make their way toward three ships moored in the harbor – each weighted down with chests of valuable British East India tea. The men climb aboard, tear open the chests and dump the tea in the water. Cheers fill the win...
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The Thalidomide Disaster and the Doctors Who Uncovered the Truth

December 8, 2025 • 25 mins
December 18, 1970. Decades after the end of WWII, a Nazi doctor is on trial. Today is judgment day in a long, difficult legal battle, but this case isn’t about war crimes. The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal is charged with the worst medical disaster in history: the Thalidomide scandal. The shoddily tested and hastily approved drug made its way into medicine cabinets around the world, and a decade after its release, the re...
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How a Forgotten Explorer’s Secret Mission Unlocked the Pacific

December 1, 2025 • 35 mins
December 1, 1564. Spanish vessels left a secret port in Mexico about two weeks ago. Their goal: to sail across the Pacific and back, charting a new route for international trade, and giving Spain an edge against its chief colonial rival, Portugal. But today, when a storm hits, the smallest ship is separated from the rest of the fleet. Now, that ship, the San Lucas, is on its own. The following year, when the San Lucas makes it back...
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A Meteorite Hits Ann Hodges

November 24, 2025 • 37 mins
November 30, 1954. At about 12:45 in the afternoon, a space rock comes plummeting through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama. It bounces off a stand-up radio, ricochets around the living room, and collides with the thigh of Mrs. Ann Hodges, who’s been napping on the couch. Newspapers declare: “experts agreed unanimously that Mrs. Hodges was the first person known to have been struck by a meteorite.” What happened to this spa...
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Ken Burns Reimagines the American Revolution | A Conversation with Ken Burns & Sarah Botstein

November 17, 2025 • 38 mins
November 16, 1776. George Washington rows toward Manhattan to inspect the fort that bears his name, only to meet a full-scale British assault already underway. By afternoon, Fort Washington has fallen, and General Washington is forced to abandon New York City.  The Continental Army is sick, outnumbered, and demoralized. For a moment, the Revolution seems lost. Facing his worst defeat of the war, Washington himself is questioning t...
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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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