Our Fake History

When the HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906 it completely revolutionized naval warfare. It made all previous ships obsolete and helped spur an arms race between Britain and Germany. For many the Dre...

Every theatre kid can tell you that Shakespeare's Tragedy of Macbeth is a cursed play. Some believe that even saying the name of the play in a theatre where it is not being performed can jinx a produc...

The Roman Empire is often remembered for it's grand works of architecture and formidable military. However, for most of its history Rome's economy was underpinned by the labour of millions of individu...

In this bonus episode Sebastian takes question from the listeners about the recent episodes on Henry Box Brown and Snow White. First, we hear some comments from a listener in Iceland who wanted to wei...

The Brothers Grimm once write that "Snow White" was Germany's best known folktale. When the beloved fairytale served as the inspiration for the famous 1937 Disney film the story reached new levels of ...

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...