Our Fake History

One of the most celebrated stories from the Underground Railroad is that of Henry Box Brown, the man who mailed himself to freedom. In 1849 Henry Brown successfully had himself shipped out of slavery ...

In this bonus episode Sebastian takes questions about the recent series on the Viking voyages to North America. In it he reckons with the history of slavery in the Norse world, guesses at why the sout...

For centuries the western Norse colony of Vinland was known only to scholars of the Icelandic Sagas. But in the 19th century the work of a few Scandinavian historians helped revive interest in these p...

The only literary sources we have about the Viking settlements west of Greenland come from the Icelandic Sagas. The only problem is that the Sagas can be totally off-the-wall. Corpses reanimate and sp...

Between the 9th and 11th centuries Norse explorers undertook a series of remarkable journeys through the North Atlantic. Iceland and Greenland were settled by medieval farmers eager to find new uninha...

In this Bonus Episode Sebastian takes questions from listeners about the series on the original Ponzi Scheme. The host investigates the history of the expression "robbing Peter to pay Paul", locates e...

Charles Ponzi's remarkable rise and fall played out over the course of a wild eight month period. He went from being a failed importer-exporter mired in debt to Boston's most talked about self-made mi...

The name Charles Ponzi has become synonymous with financial frauds. In 1920 the formerly obscure Italian immigrant suddenly became one of the most famous men in Boston when his Securities Exchange Com...

In this Bonus Episode Sebastian takes questions about the recent series on Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show. He unpacks Bill's influence on the cowboy hero archetype, dives into the contentious his...

Buffalo Bill's Wild West first started touring outdoor arenas in 1883. What started as a western themed circus soon grew in ambition. In the quest to appeal to respectable middle-class family audience...