Can't Make This Up

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Today I speak with Patti McCracken about her new book Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

(Also available as an ⁠audiobook⁠ narrated by the author)

A groundbreaking reappraisal of medieval femininity, revealing why women have been written out of history and why it matters
The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.

Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women’s names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. As gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burned, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, our view of history has been manipulated.

Only now, through a careful examination of the artifacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. Femina goes beyond the official records to uncover the true impact of women, such as:

Jadwiga, the only female king in Europe Margery Kempe, who exploited her image and story to ensure her notoriety Loftus Princess, whose existence gives us clues about the beginnings of Christianity in England

In Femina, Ramirez invites us to see the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why these remarkable women were removed from our collective memories. If you would like to help Can't Make This Up (and get early access and bonus episodes), consider becoming a supporter of the podcast on ⁠Patreon⁠!

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Today I speak with Brianna Labuskes about her new book The Librarian of Burned Books.

(Also available as an ⁠audiobook⁠ narrated by Caroline Hewitt, Eleanor Caudill & Karissa Vacker)

Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she's drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts--and herself.

Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live--or die--for.

New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator's attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives--including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator's propaganda with a story of her own--at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn.

As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever.

Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime--the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as "weapons in the war of ideas"--The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word.

If you would like to help Can't Make This Up (and get early access and bonus episodes), consider becoming a supporter of the podcast on ⁠Patreon⁠!

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Today I speak with Patti McCracken about her new book The Angel Makers: Arsenic, A Midwife, and Modern History's Most Astonishing Murder Ring

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Gabra Zackman)

The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men.

The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses—village wives, mothers, and daughters—was to come to the shocking realization that this could have happened anywhere, and to anyone. At the center of it all was a sharp-minded village midwife, a “smiling Buddha” known as Auntie Suzy, who distilled arsenic from flypaper and distributed it to the women of Nagyrév. “Why are you bothering with him?” Auntie Suzy would ask, as she produced an arsenic-filled vial from her apron pocket. In the beginning, a great many used the deadly solution to finally be free of cruel and abusive spouses.

But as the number of dead bodies grew without consequence, the killers grew bolder. With each vial of poison emptied, a new reason surfaced to drain yet another. Some women disposed of sickly relatives. Some used arsenic as “inheritance powder” to secure land and houses. For more than fifteen years, the unlikely murderers aided death unfettered and tended to it as if it were simply another chore—spooning doses of arsenic into soup and wine, stirring it into coffee and brandy. By the time their crimes were discovered, hundreds were feared dead.

Anonymous notes brought the crimes to light in 1929. As a skillful prosecutor hungry for justice ran the investigation, newsmen from around the world—including the New York Times—poured in to cover the dramatic events as they unfolded.

The Angel Makers captures in expertly researched detail the entirety of this harrowing story, from the early murders to the final hanging—the story of one of the most sensational and astonishing murder rings in all of modern history.

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Today I speak with Buddy Levy about his new book Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Will Damron)

In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator. The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame.

Just six weeks after the Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again.

Twenty-two men and an Inuit woman with two small daughters now stood on a mile-square ice floe, their ship and their original leader gone. Under Bartlett’s leadership they built make-shift shelters, surviving the freezing darkness of Polar night. Captain Bartlett now made a difficult and courageous decision. He would take one of the young Inuit hunters and attempt a 1000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors. It was their only hope.

Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy's Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery.

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Today I speak with Alexander Rose about his new book, The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Plot to Build a Confederate Navy. 

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Mark Bramhall) 

In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a Confederate, the other his Union rival—were dispatched to neutral Britain, each entrusted with a vital mission. The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was to acquire a cutting-edge clandestine fleet intended to break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme. 

Opposing him was Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. He was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal. If Dudley failed, Britain would ally with the South and imperil a Northern victory. 

The battleground was the Dickensian port of Liverpool, whose dockyards built more ships each year than the rest of the world combined, whose warehouses stored more cotton than anywhere else on earth, and whose merchant princes, said one observer, were “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.” 

From master of historical espionage Alexander Rose, The Lion and the Fox is the astonishing, untold tale of two implacable foes and their twilight struggle for the highest stakes. 

Check out Alex's website: www.alexrose.com and his Substack Spionage. 

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Today I speak with Dr. Colleen Darnell about her new book with her husband, Dr. John Darnell, Egypt's Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti were Gods on Earth.

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Roshelle Simpson)

Akhenaten has been the subject of radically different, even contradictory, biographies. The king has achieved fame as the world's first individual and the first monotheist, but others have seen him as an incestuous tyrant who nearly ruined the kingdom he ruled. The gold funerary mask of his son Tutankhamun and the painted bust of his wife Nefertiti are the most recognizable artifacts from all of ancient Egypt. But who are Akhenaten and Nefertiti? And what can we actually say about rulers who lived more than three thousand years ago?

November 2022 marks the centennial of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and although "King Tut" is a household name, his nine-year rule pales in comparison to the revolutionary reign of his parents. Akhenaten and Nefertiti became gods on earth by transforming Egyptian solar worship, innovating in art and urban design, and merging religion and politics in ways never attempted before.

Combining fascinating scholarship, detective suspense, and adventurous thrills, Egypt's Golden Couple is a journey through excavations, museums, hieroglyphic texts, and stunning artifacts. From clue to clue, renowned Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell reconstruct an otherwise untold story of the magnificent reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

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Today I speak with Steve Kemper about his new book Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor. 

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Dan Woren)

In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister and conspiracies flourished. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks.

Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America’s most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil, its relationship with America was rapidly deteriorating. For the next decade, Grew attempted to warn American leaders about the risks of Japan’s raging nationalism and rising militarism, while also trying to stabilize Tokyo’s increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy. From domestic terrorism by Japanese extremists to the global rise of Hitler and the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the events that unfolded during Grew’s tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan, and for the world. His dispatches from the darkening heart of the Japanese empire would prove prescient—for his time, and for our own.

Drawing on Grew’s diary of his time in Tokyo as well as U.S. embassy correspondence, diplomatic dispatches, and firsthand Japanese accounts, Our Man in Tokyo brings to life a man who risked everything to avert another world war, the country where he staked it all—and the abyss that swallowed it.

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Today I speak with journalist Greg Melville about his new book Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries.

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Will Tulin)

A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

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Today I speak with historian and former CIA officer Nicholas Reynolds about his recent book Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence.

(Also available as an audiobook narrated by Fred Sanders)

The entire vast, modern American intelligence system—the amalgam of three-letter spy services of many stripes—can be traced back to the dire straits the world faced at the dawn of World War II. Prior to 1940, the United States had no organization to recruit spies and steal secrets or launch covert campaigns against enemies overseas and just a few codebreakers, isolated in windowless vaults. It was only through Winston Churchill’s determination to mobilize the US in the fight against Hitler that the first American spy service was born, built from scratch against the background of the Second World War.

In Need to Know, Nicholas Reynolds explores the birth, infancy, and adolescence of modern American intelligence. In this first-ever look across the entirety of the war effort, Reynolds combines little-known history and gripping spy stories to analyze the origins of American codebreakers and spies as well as their contributions to Allied victory, revealing how they laid the foundation for the Cold War—and beyond.

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Today I speak with novelist Kim Taylor Blakemore about her recent book The Deception.

A sleight of hand. A trick up the sleeve. A call for the dead. It’s all part of the game in this twisty tale by the bestselling author of After Alice Fell.

New Hampshire, 1877. Maud Price was once a celebrated child medium, a true believer in lifting the veil between the living and the dead. Now penniless, her guiding spirits gone, the so-called “Maid of Light” is desperate to regain her reputation—but doing so means putting her faith in deceiving others.

Clementine Watkins, known in spiritualist circles for her bag of tricks and utmost discretion, creates the sort of theatrics that can fill Maud’s parlor again, and with each misdirection, Maud’s fame is restored. But her guilt is a heavy burden. And the ruse has become a risk. Others are plotting to expose the fraud, and Clem can’t allow anyone—even Maud—to jeopardize the fortune the hoax has made her.

When the deception hints at a possible murder, Maud realizes how dangerous a game she’s playing. But to return to the light from which she’s strayed, she must first survive the darkness created by Clem’s smoke and mirrors.

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Today I speak with investigative journalist Katherine Stewart about her recent book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today’s Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America’s past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world, such as the "Seven Mountains Mandate" or Dominionism. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals.
The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart’s probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.

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Today I speak with historian of the American West Mark Lee Gardner about his recent book The Earth is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance in American history undeniable. Together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed George Armstrong Custer’s vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Yet their legendary victory at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and complex lives. Now, based on years of research and drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders.

Both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were born and grew to manhood on the High Plains of the American West, in an era when vast herds of buffalo covered the earth, and when their nomadic people could move freely, following the buffalo and lording their fighting prowess over rival Indian nations. But as idyllic as this life seemed to be, neither man had known a time without whites. Fur traders and government explorers were the first to penetrate Sioux lands, but they were soon followed by a flood of white intruders: Oregon-California Trail travelers, gold seekers, railroad men, settlers, town builders—and Bluecoats. The buffalo population plummeted, disease spread by the white man decimated villages, and conflicts with the interlopers increased.

On June 25, 1876, in the valley of the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and the warriors who were inspired to follow them, fought the last stand of the Sioux, a fierce and proud nation that had ruled the Great Plains for decades. It was their greatest victory, but it was also the beginning of the end for their treasured and sacred way of life. And in the years to come, both Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, defiant to the end, would meet violent—and eerily similar—fates.

An essential new addition to the canon of Indigenous American history and literature of the West, The Earth Is All That Lasts is a grand saga, both triumphant and tragic, of two fascinating and heroic leaders struggling to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible odds.

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Today I speak with Arthurian scholar John Matthews about his recent book The Great Book of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. 

The world’s leading Arthurian authority reimagines one of the most beloved and influential legends—the story of King Arthur and his Knights—for a new century in this gorgeous keepsake edition, illustrated with luminous full-color paintings and drawings by internationally acclaimed Tolkien artist John Howe.

The stories of King Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot and Guinevere, Galahad, Gawain, Tristan and the rest of the Knights of the Roundtable, and the search for the Holy Grail have been beloved for centuries and are the inspiration of many modern fantasy novels, films, and shows. These legends began when an obscure Celtic hero named Arthur stepped on to the stage of history sometime in the sixth century, generating a host of oral tales that would be inscribed some 900 years later by Thomas Malory in his classic Morte D’Arthur (The Death of Arthur).

The Great Book of King Arthur brings these legends into the modern age, using accessible prose for contemporary readers for the first time. In addition to the stories in Morte D’Arthur, John Matthews includes many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages, such as the story of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight; Morien, whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any found in Malory’s work; and a retelling of the life of Round Table favorite Gawain, from his strange birth to his upbringing among the poor to his ascension to the highest position—Emperor of Rome.

In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. The epic hero is represented in such powerful stories as “The Adventures of Eagle-boy” and “The Coming of Merlin,” which is based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini and tells a completely new version of the great enchanter’s story.

The Great Book of King Arthur includes 15 full-color paintings and 25 pencil drawings.

This week's episode is sponsored by historical fiction author Octavia Randolph, author of The Circle of Ceridwen Saga. Visit www.octavia.net to download Book One of the Saga for free!

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Today I speak with David Hendy about his recent book The BBC: A Century on Air.

"The first in-depth history of the iconic radio and TV network that has shaped our past and present.

Doctor Who; tennis from Wimbledon; the Beatles and the Stones; the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales: for one hundred years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been the preeminent broadcaster in the UK and around the world, a constant source of information, comfort, and entertainment through both war and peace, feast and famine.

The BBC has broadcast to over two hundred countries and in more than forty languages. Its history is a broad cultural panorama of the twentieth century itself, often, although not always, delivered in a mellifluous Oxford accent. With special access to the BBC’s archives, historian David Hendy presents a dazzling portrait of a unique institution whose cultural influence is greater than any other media organization. 

Mixing politics, espionage, the arts, social change, and everyday life, The BBC is a vivid social history of the organization that has provided both background commentary and screen-grabbing headlines—woven so deeply into the culture and politics of the past century that almost none of us has been left untouched by it."

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Today I speak with Eric Jay Dolin about his recent book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.

**If you would like to listen to Eric's previous appearances on Can't Make This Up, listen to Black Flags, Blue Waters and A Furious Sky.

"The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character―above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos.

In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean.

The men who owned the ships, as well as their captains and crew, would divide the profits of a successful cruise―and suffer all the more if their ship was captured or sunk, with privateersmen facing hellish conditions on British prison hulks, where they were treated not as enemy combatants but as pirates. Some Americans viewed them similarly, as cynical opportunists whose only aim was loot. Yet Dolin shows that privateersmen were as patriotic as their fellow Americans, and moreover that they greatly contributed to the war’s success: diverting critical British resources to protecting their shipping, playing a key role in bringing France into the war on the side of the United States, providing much-needed supplies at home, and bolstering the new nation’s confidence that it might actually defeat the most powerful military force in the world.

Creating an entirely new pantheon of Revolutionary heroes, Dolin reclaims such forgotten privateersmen as Captain Jonathan Haraden and Offin Boardman, putting their exploits, and sacrifices, at the very center of the conflict. Abounding in tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents this nation’s first war as we have rarely seen it before."

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Today I speak with Dean Jobb about his recent book The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer.

**If you would like to listen to Dean's previous appearances on Can't Make This Up, listen to Empire of Deception and Daring, Devious & Deadly.

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. “He has nerve and he has knowledge.” In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper.

Structured around the doctor’s London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help.

Dean Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream’s life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then, most investigators could hardly imagine that serial killers existed—the term was unknown. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, Dr. Cream’s crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer: one who operated without motive or remorse, who “murdered simply for the sake of murder.” For fans of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, all things Sherlock Holmes, or the podcast My Favorite Murder, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is an unforgettable true crime story from a master of the genre"

Dean Jobb is an author, journalist, and member of the faculty of the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. His latest book, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream (Algonquin Books and HarperCollins Canada) won the inaugural CrimeCon Clue Award for True Crime Book of the Year and was longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Empire of Deception, his previous book, the true story of a 1920s Chicago swindler, won the Crime Writers of Canada nonfiction award and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, Canada’s top award for nonfiction. He writes a monthly column on true crime for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and reviews books for The Irish Times and other publications.

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Today I speak with Sarah Scoles about her new book They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. 

"An anthropological look at the UFO community, told through first-person experiences with researchers in their element as they pursue what they see as a solvable mystery—both terrestrial and cosmic. 

More than half a century since Roswell, UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17, 2017, the New York Times ran a front-page story about an approximately five-year Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted, and its sources clearly said in subsequent television interviews, that some of the ships in question couldn’t be linked to any country. The implication, of course, was that they might be linked to other solar systems. 

The UFO community—those who had been thinking about, seeing, and analyzing supposed flying saucers (or triangles or chevrons) for years—was surprisingly skeptical of the revelation. Their incredulity and doubt rippled across the internet. Many of the people most invested in UFO reality weren’t really buying it. And as Scoles did her own digging, she ventured to dark, conspiracy-filled corners of the internet, to a former paranormal research center in Utah, and to the hallways of the Pentagon. 

In They Are Already Here we meet the bigwigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people, and the unhinged kooks of this sprawling community. How do they interact with each other? How do they interact with “anomalous phenomena”? And how do they (as any group must) reflect the politics and culture of the larger world around them? 

We will travel along the Extraterrestrial Highway (next to Area 51) and visit the UFO Watchtower, where seeking lights in the sky is more of a spiritual quest than a “gotcha” one. We meet someone who, for a while, believes they may have communicated with aliens. Where do these alleged encounters stem from? What are the emotional effects on the experiencers? Funny and colorful, and told in a way that doesn’t require one to believe, Scoles brings humanity to an often derided and misunderstood community. After all, the truth is out there . . ." 

Sarah Scoles is a science writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Smithsonian, the Washington Post, Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover, New Scientist, Aeon, and Wired. A former editor at Astronomy magazine, Scoles worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the location of the first-ever SETI project. She lives in Denver, Colorado. 

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Today I speak with Michael Fabey about his new book Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of the Shipyard Workers Who Build America's Supercarriers.

"An extraordinary story of American can-do, an inside look at the building of the most dangerous aircraft carrier in the world, the John F. Kennedy.

Tip the Empire State Building onto its side and you’ll have a sense of the length of the United States Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the most powerful in the world: the USS John F. Kennedy. Weighing 100,000 tons, Kennedy features the most futuristic technology ever put to sea, making it the most agile and lethal global weapon of war.

Only one place possesses the brawn, brains and brass to transform naval warfare with such a creation – the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia and its 30,000 employees and shipyard workers. This is their story, the riggers, fitters, welders, electricians, machinists and other steelworkers who built the next-generation aircraft carrier.

Heavy Metal puts us on the waterfront and into the lives of these men and women as they battle layoffs, the elements, impossible deadlines, extraordinary pressure, workplace dangers and a pandemic to complete a ship that will be essential to protect America’s way of life.

The city of Newport News owes its very existence to the company that bears its name. The shipyard dominates the town—physically, politically, financially, socially, and culturally. Thanks to the yard, the city grew from a backwater to be the home of the premier naval contractor in the United States.

Heavy Metal captures an indelible moment in the history of a shipyard, a city, and a country."

Michael Fabey has reported on military and naval affairs for most of his career. In his work for National Geographic Traveler, the Economist Group, Defense News, Aviation Week, and Janes, he has collected more than two dozen reporting awards, including the prestigious Timothy White Award. Few journalists have had as much firsthand experience of America’s naval ships and aircraft and the officers who command them. He is the author of Crashback: The Power Clash Between the US and China in the Pacific. A Philadelphia native, he currently resides in Spotsylvania, Virginia.

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Today I speak with Lucy Ward about her new book The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus.

"A killer virus…an all-powerful Empress…an encounter cloaked in secrecy…the astonishing true story.

Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history it has killed untold millions. Back in the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept Europe, the first rumours emerged of an effective treatment: a mysterious method called inoculation.

But a key problem remained: convincing people to accept the preventative remedy, the forerunner of vaccination. Arguments raged over risks and benefits, and public resistance ran high. As smallpox ravaged her empire and threatened her court, Catherine the Great took the momentous decision to summon the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale to St Petersburg to carry out a secret mission that would transform both their lives. Lucy Ward expertly unveils the extraordinary story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership and the fight to promote science over superstition."

Lucy Ward is a writer and former journalist for the Guardian and Independent. As a Westminster Lobby correspondent, she campaigned for greater women’s representation. From 2010–12, she lived with her family in Moscow, renewing her interest in Russian history. After growing up in Manchester, she studied Early and Middle English at Balliol College, Oxford. She now lives in Essex.

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Today I speak with Paul Craddock about his new book Spare Parts: The Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant Surgery.

"Paul Craddock's Spare Parts offers an original look at the history of medicine itself through the rich, compelling, and delightfully macabre story of transplant surgery from ancient times to the present day.

How did an architect help pioneer blood transfusion in the 1660's?
Why did eighteenth-century dentists buy the live teeth of poor children?
And what role did a sausage skin and an enamel bath play in making kidney transplants a reality?

We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world. But transplant surgery is as ancient as the pyramids, with a history more surprising than we might expect. Paul Craddock takes us on a journey - from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants - uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal, and machine, and continues to do so today.

Witty, entertaining, and illuminating, Spare Parts shows us that the history - and future - of transplant surgery is tied up with questions about not only who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become."

Paul Craddock is Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences at UCL Medical School in London. His PhD explored how transplants have for centuries invited reflection on human identity, a subject on which he has also lectured internationally. Spare Parts is his first book. Visit his website at https://paulcraddock.com/ 

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Today I speak with bestselling author Boyd Morrison and medieval historian Beth Morrison, PhD., about their new historical fiction novel The Lawless Land. 

"Live by the sword. Die for the truth. England, 1351. The Pestilence has ravaged the land. Villages lie abandoned but for crows and corpses. Highways are patrolled by marauders and murderers. In these dark and dangerous times, the wise keep to themselves. But Gerard Fox cannot afford to be wise. The young knight has been robbed of his ancestral home, his family name tarnished. To regain his lands and reputation, he sets forth to petition the one man who can restore them. Fate places Fox on the wrong road at the wrong time as he hurtles towards a chance encounter. It will entangle him with an enigmatic woman, a relic of incalculable value, and a dark family secret. It will lead him far from home and set him on a collision course with one of the most ambitious and dangerous men in Europe – a man on the cusp of seizing Christendom's highest office. And now, Fox is the only one standing in his way..." 

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Today I speak with James Carl Nelson about his book, The York Patrol: The Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War I's Most Famous Soldier.

"October 8, 1918 was a banner day for heroes of the American Expeditionary Force. Thirteen men performed heroic deeds that would earn them Medals of Honor. Of this group, one man emerged as the single greatest American hero of the Great War: Alvin Cullum York. A poor young farmer from Tennessee, Sergeant York was said to have single-handedly killed two dozen Germans and captured another 132 of the enemy plus thirty-five machine guns before noon on that fateful Day of Valor.

York would become an American legend, celebrated in magazines, books, and a blockbuster biopic starring Gary Cooper. The film, Sergeant York, told of a hell-raiser from backwoods Tennessee who had a come-to-Jesus moment, then wrestled with his newfound Christian convictions to become one of the greatest heroes the U.S. Army had ever known. It was a great story—but not the whole story.

In this absorbing history, James Carl Nelson unspools, for the first time, the complete story of Alvin York and the events that occurred in the Argonne Forest on that day. Nelson gives voice, in particular, to the sixteen “others” who fought beside York. Hailing from big cities and small towns across the U.S. as well as several foreign countries, these soldiers included a patrician Connecticut farmer whose lineage could be traced back to the American Revolution, a poor runaway from Massachusetts who joined the Army under a false name, and a Polish immigrant who enlisted in hopes of expediting his citizenship. The York Patrol shines a long overdue spotlight on these men and York, and pays homage to their bravery and sacrifice."

Check out James Carl Nelson's first appearance on CMTU in June 2019 where we discussed his book The Polar Bear Expedition!

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"The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden. But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. The Transcendentalists and their neighbors lived through a transformative epoch of American life. A place of two thousand–plus souls in the antebellum era, Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society founded by Puritans and defended by Minutemen was dramatically unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy and tightly integrated into the wider world. These changes challenged a world of inherited institutions and involuntary associations with a new premium on autonomy and choice. They exposed people to cosmopolitan currents of thought and endowed them with unparalleled opportunities. They fostered uncertainties, raised new hopes, stirred dreams of perfection, and created an audience for new ideas of individual freedom and democratic equality deeply resonant today. The Transcendentalists and Their World is both an intimate journey into the life of a community and a searching cultural study of major American writers as they plumbed the depths of the universe for spiritual truths and surveyed the rapidly changing contours of their own neighborhoods. It shows us familiar figures in American literature alongside their neighbors at every level of the social order, and it reveals how this common life in Concord entered powerfully into their works. No American community of the nineteenth century has been recovered so richly and with so acute an awareness of its place in the larger American story.

Robert A. Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Minutemen and Their World (1976), which won the Bancroft Prize, and of Books and Libraries in Thoreau’s Concord (1988); with Mary Kelley, he is the coeditor of An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840 (2010). A former assistant editor of Newsweek, he has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times, and his essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The New England Quarterly, Raritan, and The Yale Review. His most recent book is The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021)."

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Today I speak with Rosemary J. Brown about her new book Following Nellie Bly: Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World.

"Intrepid journalist Nellie Bly raced through a ‘man’s world’ — alone and literally with just the clothes on her back — to beat the fictional record set by Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days. She won the race on 25 January 1890, covering 21,740 miles by ocean liner and train in 72 days, and became a global celebrity. Although best known for her record-breaking journey, even more importantly Nellie Bly pioneered investigative journalism and paved the way for women in the newsroom. Her undercover reporting, advocacy for women's rights, crusades for vulnerable children, campaigns against oppression and steadfast conviction that 'nothing is impossible' makes the world that she circled a better place.

Adventurer, journalist and author, Rosemary J Brown, set off 125 years later to retrace Nellie Bly’s footsteps in an expedition registered with the Royal Geographical Society. Through her recreation of that epic global journey, she brings to life Nellie Bly’s remarkable achievements and shines a light on one of the world's greatest female adventurers and a forgotten heroine of history."

Rosemary J Brown is a journalist for newspapers and magazines in the UK, USA and France. An avid traveller, she is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Churchill Fellow. In her quest to put female adventurers 'back on the map' she speaks at the Globetrotters Club, Women of the World festivals and schools, and helped to organise The Heritage of Women in Exploration conference at the Royal Geographical Society.

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Today, I speak with Laurence Bergreen about his book In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire.

"Before he was secretly dispatched by Queen Elizabeth to circumnavigate the globe, or was called upon to save England from the Spanish Armada, Francis Drake was perhaps the most wanted—and successful—pirate ever to sail. Nicknamed “El Draque” by the Spaniards who placed a bounty on his head, the notorious red-haired, hot-tempered Drake pillaged galleons laden with New World gold and silver, stealing a vast fortune for his queen—and himself. For Elizabeth, Drake made the impossible real, serving as a crucial and brilliantly adaptable instrument of her ambitions to transform England from a third-rate island kingdom into a global imperial power.

In 1580, sailing on Elizabeth’s covert orders, Drake became the first captain to circumnavigate the earth successfully. (Ferdinand Magellan had died in his attempt.) Part exploring expedition, part raiding mission, Drake’s audacious around-the-world journey in the Golden Hind reached Patagonia, the Pacific Coast of present-day California and Oregon, the Spice Islands, Java, and Africa. Almost a decade later, Elizabeth called upon Drake again. As the devil-may-care vice admiral of the English fleet, Drake dramatically defeated the once-invincible Spanish Armada, spurring the British Empire’s ascent and permanently wounding its greatest rival. 

The relationship between Drake and Elizabeth is the missing link in our understanding of the rise of the British Empire, and its importance has not been fully described or appreciated. Framed around Drake’s key voyages as a window into this crucial moment in British history, In Search of a Kingdom is a rousing adventure narrative entwining epic historical themes with intimate passions."

Laurence Bergreen is the bestselling author of Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. His other books include Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492–1504; Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu; and Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth. A graduate of Harvard, Bergreen lives in Manhattan. 

For more information about Laurence, visit www.laurencebergreen.com

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My guest today is Julia Cooke who joins me to discuss her new book Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan-Am.

"Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire. Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life. Cooke brings to light the story of Pan Am stewardesses’ role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage."

Julia Cooke's essays have been published in A Public Space, Salon, The Threepenny Review, Smithsonian, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is a contributing editor. She holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. Come Fly the World is her second book.

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Today, I speak with Michael Gerhardt about his book Lincoln's Mentors.

In national polling among presidential historians (as well as among the general public), Abraham Lincoln consistently ranks in the top two greatest presidents in American history. As his leadership preserved the Union during its most pressing hour, this praise is well deserved. But how did Lincoln become such a good leader? Was he simply born that way or was it something he learned?

My guest today is Michael Gerhardt is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. One of the nation's most respected authorities on the Constitution, Michael has been called upon to testify before both chambers of Congress to offer his expertise on constitutional issues, including the impeachment proceedings for Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as during the nomination hearings for several Supreme Court Justices. He is the author of the brand new book "Lincoln's Mentors: The Education of a Leader" in which he argues that it was Lincoln's dispassionate ability to learn from other people in his life that built him into the great president history remembers today. In this episode, Michael and I walk through five prominent figures from Abraham Lincoln's life, ranging from political figures to personal friends, whom Lincoln seemed to learn a great deal from and allowed to influence his leadership style.

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You have likely heard the story before: "Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire." While the Great Fire was a real disaster that occurred in October, 1871, we remember it much like a quaint American folk tale. To add a little clarity to this famous event, I am joined by Carl Smith, Emeritus Professor of History, English, and American Studies at Northwestern University, to talk about his recent book, "Chicago's Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City." During our time together, Carl and I discuss what made Chicago one of America's largest cities in the 19th century, the status of fire safety in urban areas at the time, the tragic events that unfolded over a three day period in 1871, and how Chicago's resolve led to the city being resurrected.

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Today I speak with A'Lelia Bundles about her book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker

In 1867, Sarah Breedlove was the first in her family to be born into freedom after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation had abolished slavery four years earlier. It is doubtful that any of her family could have guessed the remarkable course her life would take. Sarah came of age working as a domestic servant and a washerwoman. But she had far grander dreams and was determined her young daughter would receive a formal education. So she became an entrepreneur and developed her own haircare product. Ultimately, she became Madam C.J. Walker, owner of a successful company that employed thousands of women, a philanthropist, a social activist, and the first woman to become a millionaire.   

Today, I am joined by Madam C.J. Walker's biographer and great-great-granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles to discuss her book, "On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker." Before becoming a historian, A'Lelia had a 30-year career in journalism as an Emmy Award-winning producer for ABC News and NBC News. "On her Own Ground" has received numerous awards since its publication in 2001 and was adapted into the 4-part fictionalized miniseries by Netflix in 2020 titled "Self-Made" starring Octavia Spencer. Today, A'Lelia and I discuss what made her great-great-grandmother such a successful businesswoman, how she engaged with her contemporaries in the emerging civil rights movement like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells, and how her legacy is remembered today.

For more information about A'Lelia Bundles' research visit: www.aleliabundles.com and www.madamcjwalker.com

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There is something about the Old West that calls to the American heart. There is something about life on the wild frontier that is still compelling a century and a half later.  Maybe its all the Louis L'Amour novels and Clint Eastwood movies that romanticize the cowboy era in popular culture. 

One legendary town that has become synonymous with the Old West is Tombstone. My guest today is bestselling author Tom Clavin who joins me talk about his book "Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell." Today Tom and I unpack the story of a frontier boomtown that is so much more than its famous shootout at the O.K. Corral. We discuss the first settlement of Arizona Territory, the lives of the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday, what frontier law looked like, and how Tombstone was caught up in the transition from the chaotic Old West to the more orderly New West.

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After what has definitely become an election for the history books, ideas like the peaceful transfer of power, the Constitution, democracy, voting rights, representation, and the separation of powers are on everyone's minds. These are the fundamentals that form our government and they were placed there by our nation's Founders. Well, where did the Founders get these ideas? What books were they reading? What were they thinking about? What were they discussing amongst themselves as they decided to forge a new country?

My guest today has immersed himself in the intellectual world of the late 18th century in order to think long and hard about these questions. Thomas E. Ricks was a journalist for twenty years during which time his reporting won two Pulitzer Prizes. Tom joins me to discuss his new, timely book, "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Roman and How That Shaped Our Country." Tom and I discuss how George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were well versed in the political and philosophical ideas of the Ancient Greece and Rome and built those concepts into the framework of the American government.  

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Take a look at the nearest lightbulb. Odds are that light will keep on shining until you flip the switch. Electricity is something we take totally for granted today, but as soon as that power goes out, everything about our modern society grinds to a screeching halt. Some listeners may even remember the infamous 2003 Blackout that left most of New England without electricity for six hours on a 90-degree day in August.

Have you ever thought about where your electricity came from? Sure, it comes from the "grid," but where did the grid come from? Today, my guest and I discuss how the nation became electrified. John Riggs studied history at Swarthmore College before beginning a 30 year career working on energy policy in Washington, D.C. His brand new book "High Tension: FDR's Battle to Power America" is an engrossing tale about how President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it his mission to reform an electrical system that benefited less than half the country and was dominated by a few incredibly powerful monopolies. John and I discuss the first wave of electrification in the late 19th century, FDR's efforts to pass legislation to regulate power holding companies, and the Roosevelt administration's New Deal electricity programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Administration. 

For more information on John's research, visit his website - www.hightensionfdrbook.com

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One of the easternmost provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia is a pleasant and scenic place to visit today. But it has a colorful and sometimes checkered history. From bank robbers who used P.T. Barnum's circus as a diversion to voters who went to the polls brandishing clubs and pistols to the world's largest manmade explosion until the testing of the atomic bomb, Nova Scotia's history is filled with unbelievable yet true tales. 

In this episode, I am joined by a returning friend of the podcast, Dean Jobb. Dean is a professor of journalism and a member of the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction Program at the University of King's College in Halifax. He has an enduring interest in true crime and has written several books on the subject. Dean joins me again to discuss his latest book, "Daring, Devious & Deadly: True Tales of Crime and Justice from Nova Scotia's Past," which is a collection of 15 remarkable true crime stories.

Want to listen to Dean Jobb's first appearance on the podcast? Check out "Empire of Deception with Dean Jobb" from February 2019.

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At the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, former marine John "Chick" Donohue decided to take on the most extraordinary mission. Chick and other members of his New York neighborhood had watched months of antiwar protests sweep the country and decided to do something about it. Someone at the local bar said, "Our boys over there deserve a beer to let them know we care about them." Chick agreed and within a week he was on a ship bound for Vietnam.

Chick, now a 79 year-old veteran, joins me to discuss his new book "The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War" about his epic journey through war torn Vietnam to track down the guys from his neighborhood and hand them a beer. Not only was Chick's mission nearly an impossible one from the outset, getting out of the country as the Vietcong launched the infamous Tet Offense would prove to be even harder. This is history you really can't make up! 

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What makes a genius? Perhaps someone who can memorize endless facts or sees the world in an entirely original way. Who are some people you would consider to be a genius? Perhaps Leonardo DaVinci, Mary Shelley, or Albert Einstein. Are geniuses born or are they made?

These are all questions my guest today has given considerable thought to. Craig Wright is Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University, and during his professorship he developed a course called Exploring the Nature of Genius that has become quite popular among Yale's undergraduates. He has distilled his research for that course into his new book, "The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness." In this episode, Craig and I discuss exactly what a genius even is, explore some common misconceptions of genius, and talk about some notable geniuses throughout history.  

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With the end of summer comes the arrival of hurricane season for the southern United States and East Coast. Today, we await their arrival through radar and satellite imagery, watch their ferocity on television, and expect the government to assist with their clean up. All of these things are relatively new in the long history of hurricanes.

Today, I am joined by historian Eric Jay Dolin to discuss the history behind hurricanes and our ever-changing efforts to understand them. Eric is the bestselling author of numerous books and a returning guest on the podcast, and in this episode he is going to talk to us about his newest book "A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred Year History of America's Hurricanes." He and I will discuss some of the earliest encounters with hurricanes in the New World, the early scientists who studied them, and some of the most notable hurricanes to strike the United States.

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James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. is one of the most infamous organized crime leaders in modern American history. As leader of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, Bulger would eventually earn a place at #1 on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Bulger went on the run in 1994 and became a ghost for the law enforcement agencies tasked with finding him.

Today, I am joined by bestselling authors Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge to talk about their new book, Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture and Killing of America's Most Wanted Crime Boss. Casey and Dave both have backgrounds in journalism and have developed a dynamic partnership writing about topics related to the Boston area. In today's true crime episode, the three of us discuss Whitey Bulger's criminal career, his 16 years spent as a fugitive, and the breaks in the case that ultimately led to Bulger's arrest in 2011.

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Today on Alternate Histories, I am joined by Elise Hooper. "A New Englander by birth (and at heart), Elise lives with her husband and two young daughters in Seattle, where she teaches history and literature. The Other Alcott was her first novel." Elise and I discuss her new novel, Fast Girls. 

"In the 1928 Olympics, Chicago’s Betty Robinson competes as a member of the first-ever women’s delegation in track and field. Destined for further glory, she returns home feted as America’s Golden Girl until a nearly-fatal airplane crash threatens to end everything.

Outside of Boston, Louise Stokes, one of the few black girls in her town, sees competing as an opportunity to overcome the limitations placed on her. Eager to prove that she has what it takes to be a champion, she risks everything to join the Olympic team.

From Missouri, Helen Stephens, awkward, tomboyish, and poor, is considered an outcast by her schoolmates, but she dreams of escaping the hardships of her farm life through athletic success. Her aspirations appear impossible until a chance encounter changes her life.

These three athletes will join with others to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. As tensions bring the United States and Europe closer and closer to the brink of war, Betty, Louise, and Helen must fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world amidst the pomp and pageantry of the Nazi-sponsored 1936 Olympics in Berlin." 

Learn more about Elise Hooper and her work at https://www.elisehooper.com

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Radium is an element that appears in 88th spot on the periodic table. It is radioactive with a half-life of 1600 years and the radiation in produces as it decays produces a low level light through a process known as radioluminescence. Today, radium is considered the most hazardous of the radioelements and is handled only in controlled and contained environments.

My guest today is Kate Moore. Kate is a book editor, actress, theater director, and bestselling author. She joins me on the podcast today from her home in the U.K. to discuss her book, Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. In Radium Girls, Kate dives into America's early fascination with radium and profiles the tragic lives of several 1920s women whose job painting with luminescent radium paint led to horrific medical problems and an uphill legal battle to seek justice from the factories that knowingly exposed them to hazardous materials.

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Today on Alternate Histories, I am joined by UK writer and novelist Annabel Abbs. "Annabel has a degree in English Literature from the University of East Anglia and a Masters in Marketing from the University of Kingston After fifteen years running a consultancy, she took a career break to bring up her four children, before returning to her first love, literature. Her debut novel, The Joyce Girl, won the 2015 Impress Prize for New Writing and the 2015 Spotlight First Novel Award, and was longlisted for the 2015 Caledonia Novel Award and the 2015 Bath Novel Award." She joins my from her home in London via Zoom to discuss The Joyce Girl: A Novel of Jazz Age Paris. 

"The review in the Paris Times in November 1928 is rapturous in its praise of Lucia Joyce’s skill and artistry as a dancer. The family has made their home in Paris—where the latest ideas in art, music, and literature converge. Acolytes regularly visit the Joyce apartment to pay homage to Ireland’s exiled literary genius. Among them is a tall, thin young man named Samuel Beckett—a fellow Irish expat who idolizes Joyce and with whom Lucia becomes romantically involved. 

Lucia is both gifted and motivated, training tirelessly with some of the finest teachers in the world. Though her father delights in his daughter’s talent, she clashes with her mother, Nora. And as her relationship with Beckett sours, Lucia’s dreams unravel, as does her hope of a life beyond her father’s shadow. 

With Lucia’s behavior growing increasingly erratic, James Joyce sends her to pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Here, at last, she will tell her own story—a fascinating, heartbreaking account of thwarted ambition, passionate creativity, and the power of love to both inspire and destroy. 

The Joyce Girl creates a compelling and moving account of the real-life Joyce Girl, of unrealized dreams and rejection, and of the destructive love of a father."

Learn more about Annabel Abbs at www.annabelabbs.com 

This podcast is part of Straight Up Strange Productions. Check out www.straightupstrange.com for more shows like this one.

Are we alone in the universe?

Since humans first gazed up into the cosmos, we have tried to answer to this question, sometimes using theology and sometimes philosophy. In our literature, particularly in the science fiction genre, we have speculated what contact with otherworldly beings could look like. In recent centuries, we have used science and our ever-increasing advances in technology to look out into the heavens and search for tell-tale signs that someone else is out there.

Studying the stars for alien life has a long and interesting history, most notably with the founding of SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) nearly sixty years ago. My guest today is Keith Cooper, author of The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, who joins me to discuss the history surrounding academic efforts of "seeking out new life and new civilizations." Keith has a background in astronomy and astrophysics and has served as the Editor of Astronomy Now since 2006. His articles on cosmology, planetary science, astrobiology, and related disciplines have appeared in Sky & Telescope, Physics World, and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. In our conversation, Keith and I discuss early searches for ET intelligence and the origins of the SETI program, what SETI has done to listen for signals from other worlds, and the controversy surrounding the idea of whether or not we should respond if we do indeed intercept an alien signal. Keith and I then dive into our own evolutionary history to speculate on how life might have evolved elsewhere, and we explore examples from Earth's history of first contact between cultures to see what lessons we might be able to apply to first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. 

Check out the massive selection of sci-fi comics, books, toys, and games available at Things from Another World!

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The Creature from the Black Lagoon was always my favorite classic monster movie growing up. The "creature" is certainly one of the most original and iconic monsters to ever grace the silver screen. But did you know that it was designed by a woman? Millicent Patrick was a makeup artist, animator, special effect designer, and an actress, but unfortunately her contributions to the horror film genre have largely been forgotten. My guest today is Mallory O'Meara and she has written the first biography of Millicent's life and career in Hollywood, The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Millicent Patrick. Mallory is an award-winning author, co-host of the literary podcast Reading Glasses, and she works in the horror movie industry as a screenwriter and producer. Today, Mallory and I discuss Millicent's unique childhood, how she entered Hollywood, and how the film industry failed to recognize her achievements.   

If you've never experienced this classic film or want to revisit it, you can rent or buy The Creature from the Black Lagoon from Amazon Prime Video.

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As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, the topic of infectious diseases has taken centerstage in our public consciousness. While COVID-19 may be viral in nature, many of the most dangerous diseases are caused by bacteria. Medicine has traditionally treated these infections with antibiotics, but increasingly our antibiotics are becoming less and less effective. My guest today is Dr. Muhammad H. Zaman who joins me to discuss his new book Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens. Dr. Zaman is a professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University and his research has led him to become a Fellow with the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering. He has shared his expertise with newspapers across globe with columns appearing in over thirty countries. Dr. Zaman joins me via Zoom from his home in Massachusetts to discuss the evolutionary history of bacteria and the microscopic war that has occurred between them for millions of years, the first human efforts to understand these organisms and influence that battle, and how those efforts have led the world of medicine into an age of highly resistant "superbugs."

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We are well familiar with the massive deployment of troops on the beaches on Normandy on June 6, 1944. But we are less familiar with the two years worth of groundwork laid behind enemy lines to ensure the D-Day invasion would be a success. My guest today is Sarah Rose, author of D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II, and she joins me to discuss brave women who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France to work undercover as arms smugglers, army recruiters, and saboteurs. Sarah is a news and travel journalist whose columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post. She joins me from Hawaii via Skype to discuss her second bestselling history book, D-Day Girls. 

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When you think of spies, what comes to mind? Daniel Craig dressed in a tuxedo ordering a martini shaken, not stirred? Or perhaps Tom Cruise dangling from a wire in a pressure sensitive room? Today we are talking about the slightly less dramatic, but just as incredible history of real world espionage. 

My guest today is BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera. Gordon studied modern history at Oxford and U.S. foreign policy at Harvard before becoming a reporter, a 20+ year career in which he has covered foreign affairs and security issues. He joins us today from the U.K. via Skype to discuss his latest book, Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin's Spies, which is an in-depth look at Russia's "Illegals Program" that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and has evolved into Russia's high-tech foreign intelligence apparatus today.

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I am joined today on Alternate Histories by Gretchen Berg. "Gretchen was was born on the East Coast, raised in the Midwest, and spent a number of years in the Pacific Northwest. She has taught English in South Korea and in Northern Iraq and has traveled to all the other continents." She joins me on the podcast from Chicago via Skype to discuss her debut historical fiction novel, The Operator.

"Nobody knows the people of Wooster, Ohio, better than switchboard operator Vivian Dalton, and she’d be the first to tell you that. She calls it intuition. Her teenage daughter, Charlotte, calls it eavesdropping.

Vivian and the other women who work at Bell on East Liberty Street connect lines and lives. They aren’t supposed to listen in on conversations, but they do, and they all have opinions on what they hear—especially Vivian. She knows that Mrs. Butler’s ungrateful daughter, Maxine, still hasn’t thanked her mother for the quilt she made, and that Ginny Frazier turned down yet another invitation to go to the A&W with Clyde Walsh.

Then, one cold December night, Vivian listens in on a call between that snob Betty Miller and someone whose voice she can’t quite place and hears something shocking. Betty Miller’s mystery friend has news that, if true, will shatter Vivian’s tidy life in Wooster, humiliating her and making her the laughingstock of the town.

Vivian may be mortified, but she isn’t going to take this lying down. She’s going to get to the bottom of that rumor—get into it, get under it, poke around in the corners. Find every last bit. Vivian wants the truth, no matter how painful it may be.

But as Vivian is about to be reminded, in a small town like Wooster, one secret usually leads to another. . . ."

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In 1943, World War II was in its third year and the tide was finally slowly beginning to turn against the Axis Powers. That spring, the Royal Air Force embarked on one of the boldest, most ambitious bombing campaigns in aviation history in an effort to deal a crippling blow to the Nazi war industry in the heart of Germany.

Today, renown historian Sir Max Hastings joins me to discuss his latest book, Operation Chastise: The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack of World War II, on the plan to use specially designed bombs to break open several hydroelectric dams and flood the Ruhr Valley. Sir Hastings has had a long career in journalism as a foreign correspondent for the BBC and as an editor and editor-in-chief for the Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. In his career as a historian, he has authored over twenty books on warfare and military history and has received numerous international awards. Sir Hastings was kind enough to join me from the U.K. via Skype to discuss the logistics of implementing such a audacious plan as Operation Chastise, the engineering that went into creating the so-called Upkeep Device capable of breaching a massive structure like a dam, and the brave pilots who flew at dangerously low altitudes to complete this famous mission.   

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Mid-roll Music:

Megaepic by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hamilton. Madison. Jefferson. Adams. Henry. Hancock. The Founding Fathers of the United States are many. But the two names that loom large above the rest are Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. 

Countless biographies have been written about the two "indispensable men," but my guest today has extensively studied the thirty-year relationship between them. Edward J. Larson holds a PhD in the history of science and is currently a professor of history and law at Pepperdine University. He has written several books on American scientific history as well as the American Revolution and Early Republic.

Edward's latest book Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership explores how the Pennsylvania printer and Virginia planter first met during the French and Indian War, how they became integral to the success of American Independence, and why the new nation turned to them when it came time to draft the Constitution.

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One downfall of living in the Internet age with access to all the world's knowledge is that we also live with access to all the world's advice. Whether an opinion is based on science, tradition, or personal experience, there are countless blogs and experts ready to tell us how to live. This chaos is only compounded when you have children. Those of us who are dads can certainly relate to this, but I think we can agree that moms bare the brunt of it even before their baby is born. Natural birth or epidural? Breastfeeding or formula? Cry-it-out or attachment parenting? Co-sleeping or crib? On today's show, my guest and I talk about the history behind mothering expertise and how this flood of advice has always been the case to some degree.

Bethany Johnson is a doctoral student focusing on the history of science, technology, and the environment and is part of the research faculty at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She studies how ideas in science, medical technology, and public health have been communicated historically. Bethany is co-author of the book You're Doing It Wrong! Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise along with Dr. Margaret Quinlan who studies communication within the healthcare system. In You're Doing It Wrong!, Bethany and Margaret describe the changing care mothers and their children have received since the 1800s as well as the medical and parental advice women throughout history have received from the medical profession and the media. 

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Thank you to everyone who has made Season 2 of the podcast a fantastic success! With this being our last episode of 2019, I have stepped aside and let the show's Patreon Patrons decide who I should invite on the podcast, and they made an excellent choice. 

My guest today is New York Times bestselling author and journalist Julia Flynn Siler. A graduate of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Julia has two decades worth of experience reporting the news from dozens of countries across North America and Europe. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times, and she has been a guest commentator on NPR, CBS, and the BBC.

Julia kindly joins me from the West Coast via Skype to discuss her newest book, The White Devil's Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown. In our time together, Julia and I discuss the reasons for the mass migration of Chinese immigrants to California in the 1800s, the slave trade that arose between China and San Francisco's Chinatown long after slavery was officially abolished in the United States, and the women who ran the Occidental Mission Home that rescued and housed thousands of former slave girls who had been brought into the United States for forced prostitution and domestic servitude. 

To learn more about Julia Flynn Siler, visit www.juliaflynnsiler.com.  

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Harry Houdini. Nearly a century after his death, he remains a household name that is synonymous with magic. In fact, Houdini has become a verb in our common vernacular meaning "to vanish, or escape a difficult situation quickly."

Today, I am joined by bestselling author Joe Posnanski to discuss his new book, "The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini," which looks at the remarkable career of the world's most recognizable magician and tries to untangle some of the myths surrounding Houdini's life that have even baffled some of his many biographers over the years.

Joe is an award-winning sports journalist and bestselling author whose prior biography on Joe Paterno reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In our conversation, Joe and I discuss how an immigrant named Erich Weiss transformed himself into a legend named Harry Houdini, how he pushed the envelope of danger to become the world's leading escape artist, and what continued to drive Houdini even at the height of his fame and success.

To learn more about Joe Posnanski, visit www.joeposnanski.com.

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Today on Alternate Histories, I am joined by Caroline Scott, who "is a freelance writer and historian specializing in WWI and women's history, with a PhD from Durham University. Born in the UK, Caroline currently resides in France. She has published two nonfiction books on WWI." 

"The Poppy Wives," Caroline's first novel, is set in 1921 and follows "survivors of the Great War who are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband Francis is still missing. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action, but Edie knows he is alive.

Harry, Francis’s brother, was there the day Francis went missing in Ypres. And like Edie, he’s hopeful Francis is living somewhere in France, lost and confused. Hired by grieving families in need of closure, Harry returns to the Western Front to photograph soldiers’ graves. As he travels through France gathering news for British wives and mothers, he searches for evidence his own brother is still alive.

When Edie receives a mysterious photograph that she believes was taken by Francis, she is more certain than ever he isn’t dead. Edie embarks on her own journey in the hope of finding some trace of her husband. Is he truly gone, or could he still be alive? And if he is, why hasn’t he come home?

As Harry and Edie’s paths converge, they get closer to the truth about Francis and, as they do, are soon faced with the life-changing impact of the answers they discover.

An incredibly moving account of an often-forgotten moment in history—those years after the war that were filled with the unknown—The Poppy Wife tells the story of the thousands of soldiers who were lost amid the chaos and ruins in battle-scarred France; and the even greater number of men and women hoping to find them again."

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We are discussing true crime on the podcast today. My guest for this episode is the historian and author Simon Baatz. Simon is a New York Times best-selling author and currently teaches American legal history at John Jay College, City University of New York He joins me via Skype to discuss his latest book "The Girl in the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" about the 1906 murder of a prominent New York architect at the hands of a millionaire playboy in front of hundreds in a theater at Madison Square Garden. At the center of the murder and the sensational trial that followed was a young Broadway chorus girl named Evelyn Nesbit.

NOTE TO PARENTS: This episode does deal with the grown-up theme of sexual assault and may not be suitable for listening in the presence of little ears.    

To learn more about Simon Baatz, visit www.simonbaatz.com.

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If I asked you to name some of your favorite movies from the 1990s, odds are several of those were made in 1999. That year was bombarded with films like The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, American Pie, and The Blair Witch Project that have ingrained themselves in our culture. 

My guest today is Brian Raftery, who has had a long career of writing on culture and entertainment for such publications as Wired, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. Brian is the author of the fascinating book Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen and he joins me to discuss how movies like The Matrix, Office Space, and Fight Club have become cornerstones of our popular culture twenty years later. 

For more information on Brian and his work, visit www.brianraftery.com.

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Welcome the the premiere episode of Alternate Histories! In this series, I will be interviewing novelists about their latest work and how they blend their stories with the historical record. 

My guest today is Talia Carner. She is "is formerly the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women’s economic forums. An award-winning author of five novels and numerous stories, essays, and articles, she is also a committed supporter of global human rights. Carner has spearheaded ground-breaking projects centered on female plight and women’s activism." For more information on Talia's work, visit www.taliacarner.com. 

Today, Talia joins me to discuss her most recent novel "The Third Daughter" which is "a frightening journey into the New World of the late 1800s, told by a trusting young woman lured from Russia and forced into prostitution in Buenos Aires. As she finds courage in the face of danger and hope in hours of despair, Batya struggles to free herself from bondage while bringing down the powerful pimps’ union."

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Happy Halloween!

My guest today is novelist and author J.W. Ocker whose book "A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts" documents his experience moving to "Witch City, USA" for the month of October. Salem is, of course, the site of the famous Witch Trials of 1692, and Ocker tells us about the tragedy that occurred over 300 years ago and how the city handles and embraces that legacy today. From its vibrant month-long celebration of Halloween called Haunted Happenings to its vibrant Wicca community of real life witches, Salem has become synonymous with witchcraft. Ocker is a travel writer with a passion for the strange and weird. He runs a very active blog at OddThingsIveSeen.com and he also hosts his own podcast of the same name. 

For this Halloween episode, I am also joined by a very special guest co-host, Jennifer, who hosts Haunted Happenstance, a creepy serial podcast set in a historic apartment full of unusual and spooky coincidences.

When you are done listening here, be sure to add both of their shows to your queue!

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Hello and welcome to our first ever Patrons' Pick episode!

Four times a year, as a thank you for their support, I am handing over the programming reins to patrons of the show on Patreon where they can vote on who should come on the podcast. Over the summer, supporters of the podcast selected today's guest, Gerri Chanel, and her book "Saving Mona Lisa: The Battle to Protect the Louvre and Its Treasures from the Nazis." We have another poll up for our next Patrons' Pick episode in December. The candidates to invite to the show are: Mark Simmons, author of "Ian Fleming and Operation Golden Eye: Keeping Spain Out of World War II," Julia Flynn Siler, author of "The White Devil's Daughters: The Woman Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown," and Brian Jay Jones, author of "Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination." 

Well I put out the call to the show's supporters this summer and they selected today's guest, Gerri Chanel, and her book, "Saving Mona Lisa: The Battle to Protect the Louvre and Its Treasures from the Nazis" to be featured on the show. Gerri is a prize-winning freelance journalist who spent years in Paris researching the tale of how a band of brave museum curators painstakingly evacuated the world's largest art museum ahead of the German Blitzkrieg and then kept Europe's most prized artwork, including the Mona Lisa, out of the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. Gerri joins me from New York via Skype to discuss her book, "Saving Mona Lisa."

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We are all familiar with the story of the Holocaust and the mass genocide committed by the Third Reich. What you may have never heard of, however, is the story of the Polish patriot Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to enter the Auschwitz concentration camp as a prisoner in order to observe and report on the atrocities he witnessed.

My guest today is Jack Fairweather, a journalist and former war correspondent, whose new book, The Volunteer: One Man, An Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz, shines a light on Witold Pilecki's first hand reporting that had previously been hidden in Soviet Union archives for decades. 

I just want to give a word to like to listen to the show with little ears around. You might want to consider putting on a different episode and come back to this one later. Since we are talking about the Holocaust today and the conversation does get a little grim at times.

Lastly, I'd like to invite you to help the show. The way we build the audience is all word of mouth. If you can spare a few seconds, please open up your Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever you're using to listen to this and give the show a positive rating. If you're feeling really ambitious you can even leave a review and share what you like about the show. I'd love to give your review a shout out on a future episode. 

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Welcome to the first ever crossover episode of the Can't Make This Up History Podcast!

My guest today is Mark Bourrie. Mark is a lawyer, journalist, and author from Canada who holds a PhD in media history. He has written over a dozen books on the history of Canada and the Great Lakes as well as contemporary issues facing the field of journalism. His latest book "Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson," profiles a 17th century adventurer from his early adulthood living among the Mohawk to his travels to England where he befriended King Charles II and survived the Great Fire of London to his being shipwrecked with Dutch pirates in the Caribbean. Radisson was a fur trader and entrepreneur as well as an admitted cannibal and a traitor to nearly every power in the New World. He was a founding member of the Hudson's Bay Company that still does business today some 350 years later and he is the namesake of the Radisson chain of hotels. It seems that if there was something worth doing in the 1600s, Radisson did it. 

Today I am joined by the hosts of Cutting Class Podcast. Jess and Joe are two high school history teachers from Tennessee who made a podcast around all the crazy things in history they would love to share with their students if they had more time. Cutting Class Podcast is a mixture of history and comedy that is always as funny as it is educational. You can check out Cutting Class Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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When you think of the cowboy, what comes to mind? The long cattle drives of a Louis L'Amour novel? The shoot out at the O.K. Corral? Denim jeans, spurs, and a Stetson? The Marlboro Man?   My guest today shatters our preconceived notions of what a cowboy was and who he could be. Julian Smith is a journalist with a background in ecology who has written for several scientific publications including: Smithsonian, National Geographic, and and Wired Magazine. He joins me today from Oregon via Skype to discuss the book he co-authored with David Wolman, Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West. Julian and I discuss the lengthy history of cattle herding in Hawaii that actually predates the famous cattle drives of the Great Plains, the dangers of cowboy life on a tropical island, how the sport of rodeo was born in America, and the three men who introduced the world to Hawaiian cowboy culture.  

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Remember the time the United States invaded Russia? No? Well you're not alone. Few people know that the two superpowers of the Cold War at one point actually did participate in so-called "hot" war. In fact, even Presidents Nixon and Reagan gave speeches in which they claimed the US and Russia had never been in a direct confrontation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

My guest today is James Carl Nelson, a former staff writer for The Miami Herald who has since written extensively on the American experience in World War I. He joins me from Minnesota via Skype to discuss his latest book, "The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919." Jim and I discuss the reasons the Allies thought it necessary to intervene in the Russian Civil War, the experience of the AEF - North Russia (or the polar bears as they became known) during their nearly year long campaign in Russia near the arctic circle, and what lessons this "strange little war" has for us living 100 years later. 

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We are fascinated with pirates. Whether it's Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney, the Assassin's Creed Black Flag video game, or Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, it seems we've always loved the Age of Piracy. But my guest today says the pirates we see in the movies don't perfectly lineup with the real pirates who sailed the high seas in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In this episode, I talk with historian Eric Jay Dolin who's most recent book, Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates, profiles many of the pirates you know and some you've likely never heard of. Eric and I discuss how integral piracy was to colonial America, what pirate life was really like, and how the real money wasn't in the Caribbean but all the way across the globe in the Indian Ocean. Eric then tells us about the explosion of piracy in the New World following the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1715 and the ways we started immortalizing pirates in pop culture even when there were pirates still sailing the Caribbean. 

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Remember when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia as a Justice on the Supreme Court in 2016 only to have that nomination complete shut down Senate Republicans? Or remember when President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Court resulting Kavanaugh's sexual history played out before the national media?

My guest today writes about the Supreme Court for a living and has quite thoughtfully asked if the nomination process has always been so brutal? Michael  Bobelian is the author of Battle for the Marble Palace: Abe Fortas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Forging of the Modern Supreme Court in which he identifies the 1968 nomination of Abe Fortas to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as the turning point when what had been a mundane procedural vote became a bitter partisan feud. 

Michael is himself a lawyer as well as a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He covers the Supreme Court and other legal subjects for Forbe.com, and has contributed to numerous publications including Reuters, the LA Times, and NPR.

Michael joined me for a fascinating Skype interview about the Fortas nomination and what that means for us today.

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Welcome! You are listening to the Can't Make This Up History Podcast. I am your host Kevin, and today we raise a glass of cold water in honor of prohibition. 

In the 86 years since its repeal, we have romanticized the era of the speakeasy and the gangster in film and literature. But what gets lost in popular culture is the prohibition movement's origins in the women's rights movement, how tricky the whole ideal was to enforce, and how enforcing the dry law put it at odds with Americans' constitutional freedoms.

I'm joined today by John Schuttler who co-wrote along with the late Hugh Ambrose, "Liberated Spirits: Two Women Who Battled Over Prohibition." John is a professional research historian who has made a 20-year career of digging through archives and librarians on behalf of authors, companies, and government bodies. In our discussion we cover two women with unique vantage points regarding prohibition. The first is Pauline Sabin, an influential East Coast socialite, who helped shape policy within the machinery of the Republican Party. The second is Mabel Walker-Willebrandt who served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States for most of the 1920s and was responsible for enforcing the 18th Amendment. 

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We're talking military history today and invoking the the Indispensable Man, His Excellency, George Washington. 

My guest today is Bob Drury. Bob is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist-turned-author who has written or co-written over a dozen books. He joins us on the podcast to talk about his most recent book, Valley Forge, that he co-wrote with Tom Clavin. Today, Bob and I separate the myths of Valley Forge from the reality, how George Washington became the one man the American Revolution could not do without, and how the hellish six months in Valley Forge tempered the Continental Army from a ragtag militia into a professional fighting force capable of ousting the largest empire in the world.

This one is a lot of fun. With this being a military topic, you will hear some mild language in this episode, so if you like to listen with the kids in the car, I just wanted to give you a heads up.

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Welcome to Episode 15 of the Can't Make This Up History Podcast.  

Today, we're talking about a group of bold, pioneering, and courageous women who took to the skies in the 1920s and 1930s to compete in air races during the golden age of aviation. These women the pushed boundaries of aerodynamics by shattering records for speed, distance, and altitude and refused to sit idle when society told them a woman's place was on the ground.

Today, bestselling author Keith O'Brien joins us to talk about his latest book, Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History. Keith is a former reporter for the Boston Globe, has written for the New York Times Magazine and is a frequent contributor to NPR. 

By shear happenstance, Keith and I recorded our interview in March during Women's History Month and I can't think of a more appropriate topic to feature on the program. In the podcast, Keith and I discuss how five notable female fliers fell in love with aviation in spite of its dangers, faced endless discrimination as they tried to compete with male pilots on an equal footing, and how they banded together to overcome not only what science and technology said was possible with their airships, as they were called, but what society said they could achieve as women.

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Today we are headed to France to talk about one of that country's most notorious serial killers, Henri Landru. 

My guest today is Richard Tomlinson. Richard first came across the Landru case in the early 1980s when he was researching a Ph.D. in modern French history in Paris. He was trawling through old newspapers in France’s national library and got hooked on the saturation press coverage of Landru’s sensational trial at Versailles in 1921. He was sure the prosecution's case was wrong and over the next decades maintained his interest in Landru during a career as a writer and journalist in Asia and Europe. 

Richard joins me from London via Skype to discuss his book Landru's Secret: The Deadly Seductions of France's Lonely Hearts Serial Killer. Richard returned to the subject of Landru in 2016 after an exhibition in Paris revealed previously hidden documents in the Paris Police Archives which suggested that his theory about the case was correct. Landru's Secret is the end of his long quest to discover what happened to the 10 women who disappeared near Paris during the First World War and to explore the possibility that Landru actually killed many more victims.

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Welcome to another episode of the Can't Make This Up History Podcast. 

We have an excellent show in store for you today about the life and innovations of Nikola Tesla. My guest today is Richard Munson. Dick is the Director of Midwest Clean Energy for the Environmental Defense Fund. He is the author of five books on the history of science and technology, government energy policy, and the electricity industry. 

Dick joins me to discuss his newest book Tesla: Inventor of the Modern. Some of the things we cover in our discussion are Nikola Tesla's early childhood in Serbia under the parentage of a distant father, Tesla's employment and eventual rivalry with the inventor Thomas Edison, and how Tesla's invention of the AC electricity system provides the basis for our modern way of life but is unfortunately too often forgotten in American history. 

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Welcome to the Can't Make This Up History Podcast. I'm your host Kevin. Thank you for joining me during this cold, cold February for episode number 12 of the podcast. 

My guest today is Dr. Bradley W. Hart. Bradley is an assistant professor at California State University, Fresno where he teaches the history of journalism and Jewish studies. He completed his PhD in history at Cambridge University under the supervision of the historian Richard J. Evans, who some listeners may know from his seminal trilogy on the Third Reich. Bradley has written on global economics and politics in the early 20th century as well as on  Nazi Germany. 

Bradley joins me from California via Skype to talk about his new book "Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States." Some of the things we cover in today's episode are groups in America that were sympathetic to the rise of nazism and fascism in Europe, the prominence of anti-semitism in mass media, and the role of the isolationist America First Committee in trying to keep the United States from entering World War II. 

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My guest today is Dean Jobb. Dean is a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the University of Kings College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has been a newspaper staff writer and freelance journalist for over 35 years. During that time, he has received numerous awards in the United States and Canada for his investigative reporting. A lover of true crime and crime fiction, Dean writes a monthly true crime column for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called "Stranger than Fiction." 

Dean joins me via Skype to talk about his seventh book Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation. Through his extensive research, Dean uncovered the tale of a largely forgotten con artist whose investment scheme put Charles Ponzi to shame. Today we cover the economic atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties that made Chicago ripe for the picking for a lawyer named Leo Koretz to implement his "big idea," how Koretz built an imaginary investment empire that made himself and his early investors fantastically wealthy, and how even the most carefully built house of cards eventually falls down. 

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My guest today is Paul Watson. Paul's career in investigative reporting and photo journalism has spanned thirty years and has taken him across the globe. As a war correspondent, Paul has written for the Toronto Star as well as the Los Angeles Times where he served as South Asian Bureau Chief. He has won numerous awards for his work including the Freedom of the Press Award from the National Press Club for his reporting during the Kosovo war, Daniel Pearl Award from the South Asian Journalist's association for his coverage in Afghanistan, and most notably a Pulitzer Prize in news photography for his work during the Somali Civil War and the 1993 UN peacekeeping mission in Mogadishu. There is even a permanent display on Paul's work in the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the history of journalism and the press, in Washington, D.C. 

Paul joins me today from western Canada via Skype to talk about his book Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition. Paul was present on board the ship that discovered the wreckage of HMS Erebus in 2014 over 150 years after the expedition was beset by arctic ice and lost to history. Today we cover what motivated Sir John Franklin and his crew, how the quest to find the lost expedition became an international fascination, and how Inuit oral history was pivotal in solving this century old mystery. 

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My guest today is Professor Fiona Sampson. Fiona is a leading British poet and writer who has authored 27 books, been published in 37 languages, and she has received numerous international awards in the US, India, Macedonia and Bosnia. In the U.K., she has been named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by the Queen for her services to literature. 

She joins me on the podcast to talk about her critically acclaimed biography, In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein which has received several significant accolades, including BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week as well Literary Non-fiction Book of the Year in the Times. In our discussion, we cover Mary Shelley's childhood in a unique intellectual household, her romance with the aristocratic poet Percy Byshhe Shelley, the origins of Mary's monumental novel Frankenstein, and how she pushed the envelope of social convention to craft a literary career during her life and reshape the face of literature with her legacy. 

One disclaimer before we get started. You will notice some issues with the audio quality at certain points in our interview. While Fiona and I didn't hear it during recording, I think there was an issue with our connection that I discovered during post production. I've spent several nights taking out what interference I could, and the recording is much improved but not where I would like it to be. For that I apologize. 

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Welcome to the Can't Make This Up. I'm your host Kevin.    A family cruising across the country crammed together in a wood-paneled station wagon has become the cliche icon of the American road trip, but it was a reality for many families in the latter half of the 20th century. Interwoven into the history of the Great American Road Trip was the economic and population boom that followed the United States' victory in World War II, a massive infrastructure investment on the part of the federal government, and an interventionist American foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s. The legacy of the road trip is a robust cultural history steeped in Americana and memories of a simpler, more family-oriented era.   I'm joined on the podcast this week by Rich Ratay. Rich grew up in Wisconsin in the 1970s and remembers well his experiences during what he calls the "Golden Age of Road Tripping." His book, Don't Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip, weaves the history behind the nation's transportation network, today's speed-driven consumer culture, and the explosion of the amusement-tourism industry with his own humorous anecdotes of traveling cross-country with his family as a kid in the 70s. Rich was the last of four kids raised in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and has worked as an award-winning advertising copywriter for twenty-five years. Today, Rich continues the tradition of road tripping with his wife and their two sons. “Don’t Make Me Pull Over!” is his debut book.  

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At the turn of the 20th century, white Americans and Europeans saw the Native American Indian as both a mysterious and exotic figure. Their perceptions were almost entirely informed by horribly inaccurate pop culture, and Edgar Laplante found it all too easy to exploit their ignorance. The "King of Con Men" came from a working class family in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and seemed to have a pathological need to lie and consume an endless tide of praise and attention. His unbelievable adventures would take him from swindling country churches by impersonating a celebrated athlete to an international celebrity doling out handfuls of cash to fawning crowds across Europe.   This week's guest on Can't Make This Up is author Paul Willetts. Paul is the author of several books, most of which center on larger-than-life personalities in the true crime genre. In his most recent book, King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Impostor, Willetts describes the incredible exploits of Edgar Laplante in wonderful detail using a fun, novelistic style. Paul joined me from the U.K. to share some of Edgar's most successful (and outlandish) cons and dive into the psychology that drove him.  

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My guest on the podcast today is author John T. Shaw. John is Director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, and his fifth and latest book is Rising Star, Setting Sun: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and the Presidential Transition that Changed America which deals with a significant change in American politics following one of the most notable elections of the 20th century.

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After World War II, the globe was divided in half between the capitalist West and the communist Soviet Union. Even though no shots were fired during the Cold War, the intelligence agencies of these two spheres were constantly vying for critical information that could give their side an edge.   In the United Kingdom, Donald Maclean graduated from the right school. He attended the right university. He came from good British stock. And he entered public service just as his country desperately needed intelligent and capable young men to help combat the rise of fascism in continental Europe. Donald Maclean was also a Soviet spy.   To talk about Maclean's life as a Soviet agent, I am joined by Roland Philipps. He is the author of A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean. Roland went into publishing on graduating from Cambridge and until recently was the publisher of the author John Murray. He has edited leading novelists, politicians, historians, travelers, and biographers. A Spy Named Orphan, his first book, arises from lifelong connections to Donald Maclean and Roland's grandfather was Roger Makins, Maclean’s boss at the British Foreign Office. He is currently working on a new book about Special Operations Executive, the Double-Cross system, Collaboration and Resistance in the Second World War.  

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"Et tu, Brute? And you, Brutus?" These are the famous last words of Julius Caesar as he was murdered and betrayed by his ally, Marcus Brutus, at least the way Shakespeare tells it. But did he actually say them?   The name of Brutus has been passed down from the ancient world as both a hero and a villain. Brutus helped lead a conspiracy to assassinate a tyrant and would-be king. His actions forever changed the course of the Roman Republic, and historians, philosophers, or playwrights have struggled to reconcile with his legacy for two millennia.   My guest on the podcast this week was Dr. Kathryn Tempest who joined me from the University of Roehampton in the United Kingdom to discuss her latest book, Brutus: The Noble Conspirator. Kathryn is Senior Lecturer in Roman History and Latin Literature.  Her research concentrates on the literature, history and political life of the late Roman republic, with particular interests in oratory and rhetoric, all aspects of Cicero, ancient letters and biography. She is the author of Cicero: Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome and Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change, which she co-edited with Christos Kremmydas.   Kathryn has a great deal to say about the challenges of writing a biography on an ancient figure with limited contemporary primary sources, what we know about Brutus's motivations, the impact of the assassination of Caesar, and how Brutus has been evaluated and re-evaluated over the ages.     *NOTE: There is a little scratchiness in the first 15 minutes or so of the episode stemming from our Skype connection during the interview. I was able to minimize some of it, but I ask that you bear with us through the episode.

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Today we are talking about poverty in the 1800s and how the U.S. treated its poor, criminal, and mentally ill populations. New York City addressed this issue in the most horrific way by ferrying large numbers of its sick and disadvantaged across the East River to Blackwell's Island, a tragically underfunded, overcrowded, and grossly mismanaged institution for the city's so-called "undesirables."    Stacy Horn is my guest today. She is the author of six nonfiction books and has done extensive research on New York's underprivileged on Blackwell's Island. Stacy came on the podcast to discuss her new book Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.   

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My guests today are David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker. They join me to discuss their new book Ohio's Black Hand Syndicate: The Birth of Organized Crime in America which described the origins of organized crime in the United States and one of the first major efforts by law enforcement to combat their activities.

David is a graduate of Miami University and The Ohio State University, and Elise earned degrees from Hofstra University and Ohio University. Together this father and daughter have co-written Inside the Ohio Penitentiary, Historic Columbus Crimes: Mama's in the Furnace, The Thing & More, and Wicked Columbus, Ohio.

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My guest today is Dr. Eric Kurlander, the author of Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. Eric is a professor of history at Stetson University and holds a Bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College as well as a Master's degree and Doctorate from Harvard University. An expert on modern Germany, he has published extensively on the Third Reich, including The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898-1933 and Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich. Eric joined me today to talk about the prevalence of supernatural beliefs and occultist practices in Central Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and how these concepts were adopted by the Nazi regime. 

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