History Buffoons Podcast

A basement water alarm chirps in the night, and somehow that’s the calm before we dive into one of the most unsettling Cold War espionage stories we’ve ever covered. We start with a blunt conversation about the Lindsay...

A small Appalachian town tells a big American story: who gets to enforce the law when a corporation owns nearly everything around you. We’re Bradley and Kate, and after a quick two-year anniversary catch-up (plus some...

A 52-foot yacht sets off on a 15,000-mile voyage from England to Australia, and five minutes of bad luck turns it into one of the most infamous survival stories ever recorded. We’re Kate and Bradley, and we walk through...

“Kamikaze” is one of those words that feels locked to World War II, but the original meaning is older, stranger, and way more revealing. We follow the term back to medieval Japan, where “kamikaze” first means “divine...

“You’ve got a Buckley’s chance.” It sounds like a throwaway line until you learn it may be rooted in a real man whose survival odds were basically zero. We start with the meaning of this classic piece of Australian...

A beach day in Key West can feel like pure escape until you learn what’s under the sand. We tell the story of the African Cemetery at Higgs Beach, a burial ground tied to three illegal slave ships and nearly 300 lives...

A thousand beluga whales. A freezing strait that tightens into a handful of breathing holes. Polar bears waiting at the surface. Then, out of the Cold War backdrop, a Soviet icebreaker shows up with one job: carve an...

A woman outlifts the most famous strongman on earth, a trapeze artist turns a “proper” outfit into a midair reveal, and a Welsh powerhouse lives boldly with zero interest in anyone’s approval. That’s where we’re headed...

A Confederate ship slips out of Charleston Harbor before sunrise, glides past guarded checkpoints, and rolls right under the guns of Fort Sumter. The wild part is not the ship. It’s the captain on deck. Robert Smalls is...

A medieval power meeting goes wrong in the most horrifying way possible: the floor collapses, and dozens of nobles drop into a cesspit. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we’re walking you through the Erfurt Latrine Disaster...

Episode 100 calls for a toast, but we’re not celebrating with a feel-good story. We’re cracking open a classic beer and digging into the Bone Wars, a late-1800s feud so petty and so destructive that it makes modern...

A queen’s downfall is famous. The five men who died to make the story believable are not, and that’s the part we can’t stop thinking about. We walk through the chain reaction that follows Anne Boleyn’s slide from...

They tried to fix a snake problem with cash, and accidentally built a snake industry. We’re Kate and Bradley, and we’re telling the infamous real-world story behind the Cobra Effect, a perfect example of unintended...

A 5-foot-1 farm kid gets told he is too small for war, then he breaks into the French Army anyway. That is not a metaphor, it is Albert Roach’s real World War I origin story, and it sets the tone for one of the most...

The most famous hymn in the world has one of the most uncomfortable origin stories. “Amazing Grace” was written by John Newton, a man who spent years at sea, fought authority like it was his job, and participated...