Podcasts · History · Society & Culture
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
300 episodes
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!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 page 1 of 6
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1066: The Brother Who Broke England (w/ Greg Jenner)
October 28, 1065. The king’s council meets in Oxford and throws a man out of England. His name is Tostig Godwinson, and the north of England already hates him. His own brother Harold, the most powerful earl in the…
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Introducing: Platypus Economics
From world events to everyday decisions, economics explains it all. Platypus Economics makes it clear, useful, and actually fun. Available now: link.pscrb.fm/f0281/PE_HTW
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Venus, Earth’s Evil Twin
October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it…
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Audubon’s Birds Come Home to Roost
October 12, 1820. John James Audubon—a failed shopkeeper, grist miller, and steamboat investor—sets off from Cincinnati on a flatboat down the Ohio River. He is bankrupt. The bank has taken everything except his…
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The Freemasons Get Away With Murder (Probably)
October 7, 1827. A body washes up on the shore of Lake Ontario. A Rochester newspaperman named Thurlow Weed believes he knows whose it is: William Morgan, a down-on-his-luck ex-Freemason who threatened to publish the…
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Free preview: The Real Blackbeard (HTW+)
A 5-min sample of our full interview about who Blackbeard really was, and the truth behind his pirate friends. Subscribe to HTW+ at htwpod.com or in your Apple Podcasts app to unlock full behind-the-scenes episodes.…
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How Did Nixon Fumble the First TV Debate?
September 26, 1960. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon meet in a CBS studio in Chicago for the first televised debate between presidential nominees. Kennedy arrives tan, relaxed, and fully prepped. Nixon arrives with a…
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From History's Greatest Mysteries: The Ark of the Covenant
Introducing History's Greatest Mysteries–a new History Channel podcast from Rewind Studios–available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday. One of the holiest and most powerful relics from the…
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The Man Who Taught America to Fear Fat
September 24, 1955. President Eisenhower is asleep in his bed at his in-laws’ house in Denver. At around 2 AM in the morning, he’s jolted awake by chest pains. No one realizes it until the morning, but Eisenhower has…
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The Uprising: Why the Peasants Loved Their King (w/ Paul Greengrass and Dan Jones)
1381. In the English countryside, one peasant has had enough. His resistance leads tens of thousands of armed peasants to march on London. They’re furious about taxes, about wages held down by law, about a world that…
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Saladin at the Gates of Jerusalem
September 20, 1187. It’s daytime outside the walls of Jerusalem. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, ponders his next attack. His troops encircle and lay siege to the city. They vastly outnumber the Crusader knights inside,…
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Blindspot: The Road to 9/11
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we're bringing you Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 – a collaboration between the History Channel and WNYC Studios. This was adapted from the complete nine-part series, which you can find by…
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9/11: Rescue on the Water
September 11, 2001. On a clear and sunny day, Captain Richard Thornton is piloting his ferry boat back and forth between New Jersey and New York City. But when he hears an airplane flying too low to the ground, he…
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The Radium Girls Fight Back
September 12, 1922. Twenty-four-year-old Mollie Maggia has a toothache. In less than a year, this otherwise healthy young woman will be dead. Others like her will soon follow. They’d all shared what seemed to be a…
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Free preview: How Las Vegas Made America a Gambling Nation (HTW+)
A five-minute taste of our full interview on how Las Vegas became Las Vegas. Subscribe to HTW+ to hear the rest at htwpod.com or in your Apple Podcasts app.
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Did Homer Write the Odyssey? (Was He Even Real?)
August, sometime in the 500s BCE. In Athens, the Great Panathenaia is in full swing: chariot races, boat races, a hundred cattle slaughtered for the feast. And at the center of it, a competition in which performers…
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The Wire That Connected the World
August 17, 1858. New York City wakes to a hundred-gun salute. Church bells ring, flags fly from public buildings, and by nightfall, fireworks light up the sky. The city is celebrating a telegram from Queen Victoria to…
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The French Monarchy Falls in a Day
August 10, 1792. At midnight, a single church bell begins to ring in Paris. Then another. And another. It's not a call to mass… it's a call to arms. For three years, King Louis XVI and his family have been living as…
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Arsenic, Adultery, and an American on Trial
August 7, 1889. In Liverpool's St. George's Hall, an American woman named Florence Maybrick stands behind iron bars, dressed in mourning black… for the husband she's accused of murdering. The evidence against her is…
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Fall Out (Finale)
Listen to all 20 episodes of World War II with Tom Hanks wherever you get your podcasts! The war is over, and the Allies are triumphant. The United States and the Soviet Union initially work together to establish a…
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Washington: Hero of the Revolution, from The Rest is History
Sharing an episode of a show we really love, called The Rest is History. Hosted by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the show brings the past to life through gripping storytelling, sharp analysis and a huge…
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Ben Franklin Gets Fired
July 26, 1775. In a stately mansion turned rebel headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington sits down at a dining room table and writes out his orders for the day. The brand-new commander-in-chief has…
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From First America: "Merciless Indian Savages"
We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset…
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The Forgotten Father of Air Conditioning
July 14, 1850. At a swanky hotel in Apalachicola, Florida, the French consul is throwing a Bastille Day party, and he's promised his guests ice-cold champagne. There's just one problem: the town's ice shipment is…
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The *Other* Declaration of Independence (Part II)
July, 1845. Dr. Smith Boughton, the man behind the mask of "Big Thunder," is sitting in a Hudson jail after a trial that ended in a hung jury. The Anti-Renters had to celebrate Independence Day with cannon fire and…
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Free HTW+ preview: Ken Burns on the American Revolution (Extended Interview)
Today, to celebrate America's 250th birthday, we have a special announcement: we are launching HISTORY This Week+ to all of our followers! (historythisweekpodcast.com/subscribe) This is something we’ve wanted to do…
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The *Other* Declaration of Independence (Part I)
July 4, 1839. Sixty-three years after 1776—and centuries after the medieval period—feudalism is alive and well in the United States. High on a rocky plain in upstate New York, a crowd of tenant farmers gathers in the…
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A Mob Boss Starts A Movement
June 28, 1971. It’s the second annual “Unity Day” rally at Columbus Circle in New York City, organized by the Italian American Civil Rights League. Joe Colombo is the very public face of the League, a group that…
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Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise – Prologue
Malcolm Gladwell and President Barack Obama introduce us to one of the most chaotic, complicated, and fascinating times in American history, revealing why Reconstruction still defines our country today. Listen to…
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Malcolm Gladwell on Reconstruction’s Unfinished Questions
June 15, 1865. German-American statesman Carl Schurz is traveling to Washington to meet with President Andrew Johnson when he stops at a friend’s home in Philadelphia. That night, during a séance, a teenage medium…
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Why the Crusades Became Cool Again
June 8, 1191. The Crusaders and Muslim forces are locked in battle over the city of Acre. On one side is Saladin, the great Muslim leader who has already recaptured Jerusalem. On the other, an armada arrives carrying…
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How Higgins and His Boats Won the War
June 6, 1944. As thousands of Allied soldiers prepare to storm the beaches of Normandy, they climb down rope nets into small wooden landing craft bobbing in the dark waters of the English Channel. Within hours, these…
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WWII with Tom Hanks (Episode 1 – The Beginning)
Search "World War II with Tom Hanks" wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop every Tuesday. World War II with Tom Hanks reexamines history’s most devastating conflict for a new century. Across twenty hours,…
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The Secretary of War Who Feared the Bomb
May 30, 1945. In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson calls General Leslie Groves to his office and demands answers: which Japanese cities are about to become targets for the atomic bomb? What follows will pull…
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Bonnie and Clyde’s Final Ride
May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their…
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The Berlin Airlift and the Birth of the New World Order (Part 2)
May 12, 1949. After eleven months under Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin flood into the streets to celebrate. The lights are back on. The autobahn is open. The siege is over. But just months earlier, West…
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Introducing: Family Lore
Family Lore is a weekly narrative podcast that celebrates and investigates ancestral mystique. Each episode begins with a guest sharing a fascinating family legend, followed by a historical deep-dive to uncover the…
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Surviving the Mad Propagandist of Nazi Berlin (Part 1)
May 9th, 1942. In the Lustgarten, a sprawling park in the center of Berlin, a strange new attraction opens to the public. It’s a maze of tents, glowing under red lightbulbs. Inside: a staged vision of the Soviet Union.…
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Parting the Desert Between Two Seas
April 25, 1859. About 150 people have gathered on the shores of Lake Manzala in Egypt. And one of them, a mustachioed, retired French diplomat, steps forward. He raises his pickaxe and strikes a ceremonial blow. The…
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One Eco-Arson After Another: The Earth Liberation Front
April 20th, 2004. A quiet suburban development outside Seattle. Brand-new homes. Fresh lawns not yet grown in. Then, in the middle of the night—sirens. Flames ripping through two houses. Investigators quickly find…
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Jefferson’s Trade War Shuts Down America
April 18, 1806. In his study, President Thomas Jefferson signs a law that doesn’t look like an act of war. It bans imports. Leather. Silk. Glass. Playing cards. A strange list. A quiet move. But Jefferson is trying to…
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A Good, Not Great Lake (from Points North)
This episode comes from Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. You can listen to Points North wherever you get your podcasts. Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller…
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Oil Fields, Bags of Cash, a Presidency Exposed
April 7, 1922. A cabinet secretary signs a secret deal and locks it in his desk. The land in question holds one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the country. Officially, it belongs to the U.S. Navy.…
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William Parker’s War on Slave Catchers
April 3, 1851. A man who escaped slavery is grabbed off the streets of Boston and thrown into a carriage. He fights back, shouting to the crowd, but it doesn’t matter. Under a new federal law, even the North isn’t…
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The First Robot
March 29th, 1923. A new play opens in Berlin, and quietly changes the future. Onstage are workers who never tire, never complain, and never stop. They’re faster, stronger, and more efficient than humans in every way.…
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HTW Live: Busting the Myths of Irish Immigration — Recorded at the Tenement Museum
March 18, 1879. A crowd gathers around an indoor track in Brooklyn, NY, as an Irish immigrant named Bartholomew O’Donnell attempts a strange feat: walking 80 miles in 26 hours. Newspapers claim he’s eighty years old.…
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From Radio Diaries: Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier
Why did Orson Welles take on a murder mystery? Listen for yourself. This week, we're sharing a special preview of Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier from the podcast Radio Diaries. In this series, we learn how Welles…
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Axis Sally’s Nazi Radio
March 10, 1949. Defendant Mildred Gillars arrives at a courthouse to hear her verdict. To trial-watchers, she’s known as Axis Sally—the American woman who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin during World War II. In…
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Stalin Is Dead! | Сталин мертв!
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…
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Disneyland on a Deadline
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…
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