x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

History Buffoons Podcast

Bradley and Kate

Two buffoons who want to learn about history!Our names are Bradley and Kate. We both love to learn about history but also don"t want to take it too seriously. Join us as we dive in to random stories, people, events and so much more throughout history. Each episode we will talk about a new topic with a light hearted approach to learn and have some fun.Find us at: historybuffoonspodcast.comReach out to us at: historybuffoonspodcast@gmail.com

history

All Episodes

58:30

Son of a Wealthy Aristocat: James Smithson

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2026/01/13

A British scientist born in France, dead in Italy, and never once a visitor to America quietly set the stage for the world’s largest museum complex. James Smithson’s curious will, his wayward heir, and a windfall that shocked Washington launched a decade of political wrangling that asked a timeless question: how should a nation invest in knowledge? We trace the twists—from Andrew Jackson’s doubts to John Quincy Adams’ starry-eyed advocacy—that forged a uniquely American compromise: a place th...

en-us

52:08

Irena's List: Irena Sendler

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2026/01/06

A forged ID, a nurse’s armband, and a will that never broke. We share the astonishing real story of Irena Sendler, the Polish social worker who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and buried their true names in glass jars beneath an apple tree. From her father’s dying lesson—“jump in to save the drowning”—to her cool defiance at university benches, Irena learned early that compassion is a verb. When the ghetto sealed and starvation spread, she turned bureaucracy into a shi...

en-us

17:45

The Origin of Weird: 1904 Olympic Marathon

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2026/01/01

What happens when a world-stage marathon is staged like a dare? We head back to the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis and trace a course lined with heat, dust, and a shocking lack of common sense. With temperatures near 90 degrees, one lonely water stop, and cars belching dust into runners’ faces, the race becomes a case study in how bad science and thin rules can turn sport into survival. We break down the pivotal moments that made this marathon infamous: Fred Lorz riding in a car for miles, then ...

en-us

63:37

Buffoons Reminisce

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/30

What do a goat mayor, a corpse on trial, and a coconut SOS have in common? They all made our year of storytelling outrageous, insightful, and way more fun than history class ever was. We mark the end of the year by quizzing each other on the wildest tales we told, reliving the moments that made us gasp, laugh, and occasionally yell “nope rope” at a snake on a beer can. We jump from the Mona Lisa heist and how absence made it iconic to the roots of May Day in the Haymarket era. We revisit the...

en-us

81:03

In This Our Life: Hattie McDaniel

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/23

A nightclub mic no one expected to be open. A maid’s uniform worn to an audition. An ovation that shook the room while the system kept her at the far wall. Hattie McDaniel’s life reads like a ledger of impossible choices—yet it’s also a map of how to push a closed world a few inches wider. We walk through Hattie’s early years in a musical family, the vaudeville grind, and the Great Depression moment in Milwaukee that landed her a two-year gig and a path to Hollywood. Once the “talkies” took ...

en-us

29:17

The Origin of Weird: Timothy Dexter

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/18

A fortune built on bed warmers, coal, stray cats, and whale bones shouldn’t exist, yet Timothy Dexter kept cashing in. We jump into the outrageous life of a leather apprentice turned millionaire who wagered on “worthless” Continental currency, shipped the wrong goods to the right places, and somehow surfaced on the winning side of almost every trade. The more he won, the bigger his persona grew—statues of himself, a gilded mansion, and a jaw-dropping stunt funeral that pushed his quest for st...

en-us

61:31

Quaker Beard Man: James VI and I

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/16

A baby crowned in a cradle. A teenage king kidnapped by his own nobles. A husband sailing into lethal storms to bring home his bride—and returning convinced that enemies could conjure weather. Our latest deep dive follows James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, as fear, faith, and politics collide to shape a reign that still echoes today. We start with the messy family tree that made James heir to both Scotland and the Tudor bloodline, then drop into the chaos of regents, assassinati...

en-us

73:15

1-800-TYPHOID: The Oregon Trail Part Two

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/09

Hope can fit inside a covered wagon, but so can heartbreak. We trace the Sager family’s 1844 push toward Oregon—from a baby born on the prairie and a nine-year-old’s leg crushed under a wagon wheel to typhoid, orphanhood, and a desperate bid for safety at the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla. What looks like a quiet waystation becomes the center of an epidemic, a cultural collision, and the event that reshaped the Pacific Northwest: the Whitman Massacre. We walk through the mission’s daily lif...

en-us

39:39

The Origin of Weird: The Anti Pope Schism

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/04

Power doesn’t just shape history—it picks the chair. We dive into the Western Schism, when Europe faced not one but multiple popes, and legitimacy became a battlefield of theology, politics, and personality. From Rome to Avignon to a seaside fortress in Spain, this is the story of how faith and ambition tangled for decades, and how a divided church fought its way back to one voice. We start with why rival popes appeared at all: the papacy sitting atop medieval geopolitics, the Avignon move t...

en-us

95:45

Chimney Cricket: Oregon Trail Part One

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/12/02

A 2,000-mile promise of “free land” sounds irresistible—until you’re walking beside a creaking wagon at two miles per hour, guarding flour from river water and praying cholera spares your camp. We’re pulling the curtain back on the real Oregon Trail: why ordinary families sold everything for 640 acres, how they trained stubborn oxen, and what a good day looked like when success meant dry firewood, a safe ford, and hardtack that didn’t break a tooth. We map the true route from Independence an...

en-us

82:59

Hold My Fosters: Dave Kunst Walk Around The World

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/25

A wild idea in a Minnesota movie theater turns into a four-year odyssey across continents, palaces, deserts, and a war-torn frontier—only to be shattered and reshaped by a midnight ambush in the Afghan mountains. We follow Dave and his brothers from a rainy hometown send-off to a photo-op in Manhattan, a meeting with Princess Grace in Monaco, and the hard reality of Cold War borders that forced detours and difficult choices. Along the way: a mule named “Willy Make It,” letters from Hubert Hum...

en-us

27:45

The Origin of Weird: Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/20

A dragon-tailed comet blazes across the sky, a king takes it as a sign, and a wizard decides the future is worth a dangerous bargain. We dive into the charged origin of King Arthur—not at the anvil, but at Tintagel—where Uther Pendragon’s obsession, Merlin’s strategy, and a night of disguise set the legend in motion. This is a story about how power, desire, and prophecy can collide, and how the choices of one generation echo into the next. We unpack Uther’s volatile strengths and flaws, Egra...

en-us

61:20

The Tudor Wizard: Cardinal Wolsey

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/18

Power doesn’t just sit on a throne—it lives in the hands that organize, negotiate, and quietly make things happen. We dive into the life of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the butcher’s son who became England’s most formidable power broker under Henry VIII. From racing through Oxford to mastering finance at Magdalen, Wolsey shaped policy, logistics, and diplomacy with a speed and precision that dazzled a young king who preferred jousts to ledgers. We walk through Wolsey’s peak: provisioning Henry’s ...

en-us

46:51

Holy Hitman Roofie: Thuggee Cult of India

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/11

A friendly smile by the fire, a shared meal on a dusty road, and a scarf that turns into a weapon in a heartbeat. We dive into the shadowed world of the Thuggee—bands of highway killers who claimed divine orders from the goddess Kali—and the colonial machine that made their legend larger than life. From slow-burn cons inside caravans to the lethal elegance of the rumal, we unpack how method, belief, and fear intersected to create one of history’s most unsettling criminal systems. We trace th...

en-us

29:44

The Origin of Weird: L. Ron Hubbard and His...

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/06

A man drops depth charges on a rock formation, shells the wrong country for target practice, and later rebrands himself as a decorated hero and spiritual “Commodore.” We follow L. Ron Hubbard from pulp fiction pages to a chaotic Navy stint and into the creation of Scientology, tracing how a talent for storytelling became a tool for power. The archives tell one version—lack of judgment, short command, diplomatic headaches—while the legend inflates into secret missions, hidden medals, and a pri...

en-us

73:21

PerSwede Them: Black Sox Scandal

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/11/04

A powerhouse roster, a miserly owner, and a storm of quiet resentment set the stage for baseball’s most infamous fall. We trace how the 1919 Chicago White Sox—frustrated by low pay and trapped by the reserve clause—slipped from favorites to fixers, and how a swarm of gamblers, middlemen, and one calculating kingpin turned the World Series into a high-stakes con. From the hit-by-pitch signal that opened Game 1 to the chilling threats before Game 8, every twist exposes what happens when money o...

en-us

68:57

Feared and Revered: The Wendigo and Other Cryptids

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/10/28

A classic cocktail opens a door to stranger places. We start with the crisp snap of a gin and tonic and its unexpected past as a colonial malaria remedy, then step into the woods, deserts, and fog banks where four legends still breathe: the Wendigo, Chupacabra, Mothman, and Bigfoot. It’s a spirited tour that blends folklore, history, science, and a few dice-rolling survival games to test what you’d do when the dark starts whispering. First, the Wendigo: rooted in Algonquian traditions as a s...

en-us

19:48

The Origin of Weird: Will West and William West

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/10/23

Two men. Same name. Same face. Same measurements. Different fingerprints. The Leavenworth intake room went silent in 1903 when Will West’s file appeared to match a prisoner already serving time: William West. That uncanny collision didn’t just spark gossip—it cracked open the limits of “scientific policing” and ushered fingerprints into the center of criminal identification. We walk through Leavenworth’s early days as a showcase for order and data, from stone corridors to the Bertillon syste...

en-us

74:12

I Don't Do Nautical Things: Submarine R-14

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/10/21

Stuck 100-plus miles off Hawaii with dead engines and a silent radio, a 1919 submarine shouldn’t have had a chance. Ours did. We walk through the improbable rescue of USS R-14—how a small crew turned hammocks into sails, bunk bed frames into a mast, and a steel cigar into a wind-powered lifeboat. From the first gust that nudged them to one knot, to the clever moment they used spinning propellers to charge their batteries, this is grit and creativity at sea, told with a cold beer in hand. We ...

en-us

73:48

The Audacity of that Kid: William Patrick Hitler

History Buffoons Podcast ·

2025/10/14

Ever wondered what it takes to outrun a last name that shaped world history? We dive into the strange, complicated life of William Patrick Hitler—born in Liverpool, raised by an Irish mother, and briefly swept into the social whirl of 1930s Berlin before slamming into the hard edge of his uncle’s demands. He chased opportunity in the Third Reich, wrote about the Nazi rise for attention, then faced an ultimatum from Adolf: renounce British citizenship or be cut off. William chose the exit, fle...

en-us

126 results

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Biography Flash

Inception Point Ai