~ cueing up the show ~
~ pulling every episode ~
HISTORY This Week — Every episode — OmList
om
list
Swipe
Tournament
Lists
Friends
All
Movies
TV
Books
Games
Music
Podcasts
People
▾
Sign in
Every episode
HISTORY This Week
30 episodes
The Wire That Connected the World
Ep 22 · Aug 17, 2026 · 33 min
August 17, 1858. New York City wakes to a hundred-gun salute. Church bells ring, flags fly from public buildings, and by nightfall, fireworks light up the sky. The city is celebrating a telegram from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. Not what it says, but how it traveled: along a 2,000-mile cable running under the Atlantic Ocean. Messages that once took two weeks by steamship now arrive in an instant. And the man behind the cable, a retired paper tycoon named Cyrus Field, is about to become…
The French Monarchy Falls in a Day
Ep 21 · Aug 10, 2026 · 34 min
August 10, 1792. At midnight, a single church bell begins to ring in Paris. Then another. And another. It's not a call to mass… it's a call to arms. For three years, King Louis XVI and his family have been living as prisoners in a palace, under virtual house arrest at the Tuileries, while France fights over one seething question: can the monarchy survive the Revolution? The radicals have issued a deadline: get rid of the king by the end of August 9th, or we'll take matters into our own hands. Th…
Arsenic, Adultery, and an American on Trial
Ep 20 · Aug 3, 2026 · 30 min
August 7, 1889. In Liverpool's St. George's Hall, an American woman named Florence Maybrick stands behind iron bars, dressed in mourning black… for the husband she's accused of murdering. The evidence against her is thin: James Maybrick was a longtime arsenic addict who bought the poison daily, and none was found in his stomach when he died. But Florence had committed another kind of crime in the eyes of Victorian society. She'd had an affair. And to many, that moral transgression was proof enou…
Fall Out (Finale)
Jul 30, 2026 · 38 min
Listen to all 20 episodes of World War II with Tom Hanks wherever you get your podcasts! The war is over, and the Allies are triumphant. The United States and the Soviet Union initially work together to establish a new world order, but over the course of the next four years these two nations will go from Allies of convenience to ideological adversaries, launching the next phase of global conflict under the shadow of nuclear war. This episode features interviews with (in order of appearance): Mic…
Washington: Hero of the Revolution, from The Rest is History
Jul 27, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
Sharing an episode of a show we really love, called The Rest is History. Hosted by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the show brings the past to life through gripping storytelling, sharp analysis and a huge sense of drama. From the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the Norman Conquest of 1066, to the sinking of the Titanic, the Second World War and the lives of history’s most powerful rulers, Tom and Dominic unpack the people, battles and world-changing eve…
Ben Franklin Gets Fired
Ep 19 · Jul 20, 2026 · 32 min
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content! July 26, 1775. In a stately mansion turned rebel headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington sits down at a dining room table and writes out his orders for the day. The brand-new commander-in-chief has a problem: his army is outfunded, outmanned, and outgunned — and if he can't communicate, he can't win. What Washington doesn't know is that on this very day, the Congress in Philadelphia is appointing a diff…
From First America: "Merciless Indian Savages"
Jul 16, 2026 · 37 min
We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How does a whole country miss a point of its own founding document? That's the question at the heart of a new podcast called First America. Hosted and reported by Rebecca Nagle, an Indigenous author and the former host of Crooked’s This Land podcast, and…
The Forgotten Father of Air Conditioning
Ep 18 · Jul 13, 2026 · 28 min
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content! July 14, 1850. At a swanky hotel in Apalachicola, Florida, the French consul is throwing a Bastille Day party, and he's promised his guests ice-cold champagne. There's just one problem: the town's ice shipment is delayed, and in 1850, you can't simply make ice. Or can you? Enter Dr. John Gorrie, a country physician who's spent years waging a private war against heat itself, convinced that cooling the air could stop the deadly fe…
The *Other* Declaration of Independence (Part II)
Ep 17 · Jul 6, 2026 · 23 min
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content! July, 1845. Dr. Smith Boughton, the man behind the mask of "Big Thunder," is sitting in a Hudson jail after a trial that ended in a hung jury. The Anti-Renters had to celebrate Independence Day with cannon fire and readings of the Declaration, but without their leader. The rebellion across Upstate New York is escalating: an undersheriff with a bully's reputation is terrorizing farm families in the Catskills, masked Calico…
Extended Interview: Ken Burns on the American Revolution (HTW+ Preview)
Jul 3, 2026 · 58 min
Today, to celebrate America's 250th birthday, we have a special announcement: we are launching HISTORY This Week+ to all of our followers! (historythisweekpodcast.com/subscribe) This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while… we’ve been listening to your feedback: you don’t love the ads, you want more history. Well, HTW+ solves both of those problems. We are offering two tiers of our premium subscription, allowing you to unlock ad-free listening and gain access to bonus content, especially ext…
The *Other* Declaration of Independence (Part I)
Ep 16 · Jun 29, 2026 · 30 min
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content! July 4, 1839. Sixty-three years after 1776—and centuries after the medieval period—feudalism is alive and well in the United States. High on a rocky plain in upstate New York, a crowd of tenant farmers gathers in the village of Berne to read aloud a declaration of independence… but not the one you're thinking of. These families are still bound to a landlord by perpetual leases their grandfathers signed, owing bushels of wheat an…
A Mob Boss Starts A Movement
Jun 22, 2026 · 30 min
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content! June 28, 1971. It’s the second annual “Unity Day” rally at Columbus Circle in New York City, organized by the Italian American Civil Rights League. Joe Colombo is the very public face of the League, a group that actively fights discrimination and ugly stereotypes against the Italian-American community, such as their association with organized crime and the Mafia. The problem? That same Joe Colombo is a leader of the Mafia, one o…
Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise – Prologue
Jun 19, 2026 · 18 min
Malcolm Gladwell and President Barack Obama introduce us to one of the most chaotic, complicated, and fascinating times in American history, revealing why Reconstruction still defines our country today. Listen to Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise on Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts. Reconstruction begins where, for most Americans, the story of the Civil War ends: The North is victorious and slavery is abolished. But what happened next was one of the most important decades in Ameri…
Malcolm Gladwell on Reconstruction’s Unfinished Questions
Ep 15 · Jun 15, 2026 · 35 min
June 15, 1865. German-American statesman Carl Schurz is traveling to Washington to meet with President Andrew Johnson when he stops at a friend’s home in Philadelphia. That night, during a séance, a teenage medium claims to summon the spirit of Abraham Lincoln… and delivers Schurz a mysterious command from beyond the grave. Soon, Johnson sends Schurz on a fact-finding mission through the defeated South. What he discovers will help shape the course of Reconstruction and expose the violence threat…
Why the Crusades Became Cool Again
Ep 14 · Jun 8, 2026 · 27 min
June 8, 1191. The Crusaders and Muslim forces are locked in battle over the city of Acre. On one side is Saladin, the great Muslim leader who has already recaptured Jerusalem. On the other, an armada arrives carrying England’s king: Richard the Lionheart. The Crusades will become one of the defining conflicts of the Middle Ages. But for centuries, their history fades into legend… until a Scottish writer named Walter Scott brings them roaring back. His novels turn knights, tournaments, and holy w…
How Higgins and His Boats Won the War
Ep 13 · Jun 1, 2026 · 30 min
June 6, 1944. As thousands of Allied soldiers prepare to storm the beaches of Normandy, they climb down rope nets into small wooden landing craft bobbing in the dark waters of the English Channel. Within hours, these boats will carry them into the largest amphibious invasion in history. The craft are known as Higgins boats, named for their inventor, Andrew Higgins: a hard-driving New Orleans boatbuilder who built his reputation designing vessels that could speed through swamps, crash through obs…
WWII with Tom Hanks (Episode 1 – The Beginning)
May 27, 2026 · 40 min
Search "World War II with Tom Hanks" wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop every Tuesday. World War II with Tom Hanks reexamines history’s most devastating conflict for a new century. Across twenty hours, the series traces the war’s full arc–from the rise of fascism to Hiroshima–uncovering the decisions, hidden networks, and lasting consequences that continue to shape our world. Episode 1 – The Beginning In September 1939, enabled by a secret pact between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stali…
The Secretary of War Who Feared the Bomb
Ep 12 · May 25, 2026 · 34 min
May 30, 1945. In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson calls General Leslie Groves to his office and demands answers: which Japanese cities are about to become targets for the atomic bomb? What follows will pull Stimson—a deeply religious statesman who believed in restraint, but also in overwhelming force—into a profound crisis over morality, destruction, and what modern war is becoming. How did Henry Stimson grapple with the bomb? And after helping usher in the atomic age, how did he…
Bonnie and Clyde’s Final Ride
May 18, 2026 · 31 min
May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their exploits have made them famous. But today, Bonnie and Clyde’s legendary crime spree comes to an end … in a hail of bullets. Why did some come to view these Depression Era outlaws as agents of chaos the country needed? And what was the real motivation behind their crimes? Special thanks…
The Berlin Airlift and the Birth of the New World Order (Part 2)
Ep 11 · May 11, 2026 · 28 min
May 12, 1949. After eleven months under Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin flood into the streets to celebrate. The lights are back on. The autobahn is open. The siege is over. But just months earlier, West Berlin seemed doomed. Surrounded deep inside Soviet-controlled territory, more than two million Berliners are suddenly cut off from food, fuel, electricity, and supplies after Joseph Stalin seals the city’s borders. Many fear the Western Allies will abandon Berlin altogether. Instead,…
Introducing: Family Lore
May 7, 2026 · 38 min
Family Lore is a weekly narrative podcast that celebrates and investigates ancestral mystique. Each episode begins with a guest sharing a fascinating family legend, followed by a historical deep-dive to uncover the truth and meaning behind the tale. Available now: link.pscrb.fm/f0281/FLFD
Surviving the Mad Propagandist of Nazi Berlin (Part 1)
Ep 10 · May 4, 2026 · 33 min
May 9th, 1942. In the Lustgarten, a sprawling park in the center of Berlin, a strange new attraction opens to the public. It’s a maze of tents, glowing under red lightbulbs. Inside: a staged vision of the Soviet Union. Filthy streets, starving children, torture chambers. A horror show. The man behind it all is Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, and the most powerful figure in Berlin. Posters, radio broadcasts, films, classrooms… his message is everywhere. The enemy is at the gates…
Parting the Desert Between Two Seas
Apr 27, 2026 · 33 min
April 25, 1859. About 150 people have gathered on the shores of Lake Manzala in Egypt. And one of them, a mustachioed, retired French diplomat, steps forward. He raises his pickaxe and strikes a ceremonial blow. The audacious goal is to cut through the desert to connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, creating a new trade route between the East and the West. Changing global trade and geopolitics forever. Today: the Suez Canal. Why did the tremendous efforts of a Frenchman end up enrichin…
One Eco-Arson After Another: The Earth Liberation Front
Ep 9 · Apr 20, 2026 · 31 min
April 20th, 2004. A quiet suburban development outside Seattle. Brand-new homes. Fresh lawns not yet grown in. Then, in the middle of the night—sirens. Flames ripping through two houses. Investigators quickly find the cause: homemade incendiary devices. And a message, left behind at another site: “urban sprawl has become a central issue in the struggle to protect the earth.” Signed, the Earth Liberation Front. The ELF is already known to authorities: a shadowy network of environmental activists…
Jefferson’s Trade War Shuts Down America
Ep 8 · Apr 13, 2026 · 26 min
April 18, 1806. In his study, President Thomas Jefferson signs a law that doesn’t look like an act of war. It bans imports. Leather. Silk. Glass. Playing cards. A strange list. A quiet move. But Jefferson is trying to confront one of the most powerful empires in the world, without firing a shot. Britain is stopping American ships at sea. Boarding them. Taking sailors by force. The country is furious. War feels close. Jefferson has another idea. How did Jefferson—an avatar of individual liberty—b…
A Good, Not Great Lake (from Points North)
Apr 9, 2026 · 23 min
This episode comes from Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. You can listen to Points North wherever you get your podcasts. Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great. Radio excerpts in this episode were originally broadcast on NPR’s “All Thi…
Oil Fields, Bags of Cash, a Presidency Exposed
Ep 7 · Apr 6, 2026 · 28 min
April 7, 1922. A cabinet secretary signs a secret deal and locks it in his desk. The land in question holds one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the country. Officially, it belongs to the U.S. Navy. Unofficially, it’s just been handed to a private oilman – no bidding, no oversight, no witnesses. For Albert Fall, it’s a win-win. For the oil industry, it’s a jackpot. But big money is hard to hide. Within days, the deal leaks. At first, no one seems to care. The economy is booming. The presi…
William Parker’s War on Slave Catchers
Ep 6 · Mar 30, 2026 · 36 min
April 3, 1851. A man who escaped slavery is grabbed off the streets of Boston and thrown into a carriage. He fights back, shouting to the crowd, but it doesn’t matter. Under a new federal law, even the North isn’t safe. The Fugitive Slave Act has turned cities like Boston into hunting grounds. Freedom seekers are being captured, and ordinary citizens are being forced to help. But across the North, resistance is growing. In Pennsylvania, a man named William Parker is building a network to fight b…
The First Robot
Ep 5 · Mar 23, 2026 · 30 min
March 29th, 1923. A new play opens in Berlin, and quietly changes the future. Onstage are workers who never tire, never complain, and never stop. They’re faster, stronger, and more efficient than humans in every way. They’re called robots. A sci-fi play born out of war and industrialization sparks a global obsession and a lasting fear. Because from the very beginning, the robot wasn’t just a technological breakthrough. It was a rebellion waiting to happen. How did a playwright invent the robot?…
HTW Live: Busting the Myths of Irish Immigration — Recorded at the Tenement Museum
Ep 4 · Mar 16, 2026 · 38 min
March 18, 1879. A crowd gathers around an indoor track in Brooklyn, NY, as an Irish immigrant named Bartholomew O’Donnell attempts a strange feat: walking 80 miles in 26 hours. Newspapers claim he’s eighty years old. Lap after lap, he circles the track: smoking a pipe, sipping hot tea, and pushing through the night. O’Donnell came to New York thirty years earlier, fleeing the Great Potato Famine. Like many Irish immigrants, he spent decades doing manual labor and trying to get ahead in a city th…
← Back to the show
