New Year’s Eve has never been chill.

In this episode of Barely Historical, hosts JoLynne and Amanda explore the strange, dark, and often unhinged history of New Year’s Eve superstitions from around the world. Long before glitter, champagne, and countdown clocks, people genuinely believed that what you ate, cleaned, wore, said, or touched on New Year’s Eve could determine your luck, wealth, health, or survival for the entire year.

We break down real historical traditions and cultural superstitions, including black-eyed peas, grapes at midnight, silence rituals, first-footing, forbidden cleaning, money rules, and why people feared starting the year “wrong.” Along the way, we play Fact or Folklore, separating real historical beliefs from complete nonsense, and examine why humans have always been desperate to control the future with rituals, rules, and vibes.

This episode covers:

• New Year’s Eve superstitions throughout history

• Cultural traditions from Europe, Asia, and beyond

• Ancient beliefs about luck, fate, money, and misfortune

• Why New Year’s anxiety is not a modern invention

• Weird history explained with humor, sarcasm, and opinions

If you love weird history, dark humor podcasts, cultural folklore, or learning why people used to panic over laundry and doorways, this episode is for you.

Hosts: JoLynne & Amanda

Produced by Barely Historical

Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical⁠

Contact: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Tagline: Let’s ruin history.

There are two types of people in the world:
People who accept that Anastasia Romanov died in 1918…
and people who saw the animated movie once and said absolutely not.

In this episode, Amanda and Jo finally confront the Romanov story that emotionally ruined them as children and refuses to die on TikTok. We break down what actually happened to Anastasia, why the survival myth took over the world, and how a real-life mass execution somehow turned into a musical with a talking bat.

This is not a cozy history episode.

We cover the rise and violent collapse of the Romanov dynasty, Rasputin as a deeply unwashed cult leader (not an undead wizard), the execution in the Ipatiev House, and the decades of impostors who convinced themselves and sometimes entire countries that Anastasia survived.

We also ruin your childhood by explaining exactly why the DNA evidence killed the myth forever.

Sorry in advance.

Here’s what we get into:

• Why millennial women are still feral about the 1997 Anastasia movie
• The Romanov dynasty and how 300 years of autocracy ends in a basement
• Rasputin as a cult leader, political liability, definitely not magic
• The Ipatiev House and what the Bolsheviks wrote on the walls
• Why jewels sewn into corsets made the execution worse
• The execution of Nicholas II, Alexandra, their children, and servants
• How the survival myth started and why Anastasia became the symbol
• Anna Anderson and the longest identity con in modern history
• DNA testing in the 1990s and 2000s that ruined everyone’s favorite conspiracy
• Why cartoons lie better than history

We also play:

• History or Cartoon Propaganda
• Rasputin, Influencer, or Cult Leader

Content note: This episode discusses execution, violence, genocide, and historical trauma. We are funny but the history is not.

If you like dark history with zero reverence, ruining childhood favorites, conspiracies that fall apart under DNA testing, History TikTok discourse that needs adult supervision, or podcasts that say “bayoneted in a basement” out loud, you’re in the right place.

Follow Barely Historical wherever you ruin history:
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube: @BarelyHistoricalPodcast

Support the chaos on Patreon for bonus episodes and worse decisions:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical

Leave a review if you learned something.
Leave a review if you didn’t but laughed anyway.

Let’s ruin the past.

🎄 How Christmas Was Stolen

This week on Barely Historical, Amanda and JoLynne are sharing a full Patreon-style deep dive for free as a Christmas gift.

Christmas history is messier than most people realize. Long before it became a Christian holiday, pagan winter solstice celebrations like Saturnalia and Yule shaped the traditions we still associate with Christmas today.

In this episode, we break down the pagan origins of Christmas and how Christianity absorbed existing winter traditions instead of erasing them, creating the holiday we recognize now.

• Why winter was dangerous and terrifying in the ancient world
• How Saturnalia influenced gift giving, feasting, and public chaos
• What Yule actually looked like in Norse and Germanic cultures
• Why December 25 was chosen for Christmas
• Which pagan traditions were kept, banned, or quietly rebranded
• How figures like Santa and Krampus evolved from earlier folklore
• Why modern Christmas traditions are still deeply rooted in pagan practices

This episode is not about telling anyone how to celebrate Christmas.
It is about understanding where Christmas traditions came from and why they survived.

Normally, this level of deep dive lives on our Patreon. We are releasing it on the main feed as a holiday thank you.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical

Bonus episodes, darker history, visuals, and behind-the-scenes chaos.

https://barelyhistorical.com

Happy Saturnalia.
Happy Yule.
Let’s ruin the past.

Amanda & JoLynne

In this episode, we cover:💀 Support the show on Patreon🌐 Learn more about the show

Welcome back to Barely Historical, the comedy history podcast where we ruin the past one year at a time. This episode drops us into 336 CE Rome and the chaos of the late Roman Empire, when Christianity is less “faith” and more “power play.”

We unpack the Arian controversy and the priest Arius, whose theology split the early church and sparked a years long political and religious meltdown. Emperor Constantine tries to force a reconciliation, bishops start praying for their enemies to die (normal behavior, apparently), and then 336 delivers one of history’s most infamous public deaths that may or may not have been poison.

Also in this year: Constantine preps a massive holy war against Persia that never even happens, commissions a literal mobile church tent for the battlefield, and we hit the first recorded celebration of Christmas on December 25 (yes, layered right on top of existing pagan festivals). Then we wrap with a “day in the life” in 336, comparing a wealthy Christian woman in Rome to a pagan farmer who has no clue any of this is happening.

If you love Roman history, Constantine, early Christianity drama, weird deaths, and two women reacting to it with sarcasm and facts, this one’s for you.

Follow, rate, and review Barely Historical and share this episode with your friend who thinks about the Roman Empire every day.

Hosts: JoLynne & Amanda

Produced by Barely Historical

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical

Contact: ⁠[email protected]⁠

Tagline: Let’s ruin history.

Victorian Christmas cards were not cozy snowmen and Hallmark hearts. They were dead robins, frogs with firearms, demonic turnips, Krampus kidnappings, and families roasting in hell… all wishing you a “Merry Christmas.”

In this Patreon only episode of Barely Historical, Jolynne and Amanda dive into the bizarre history of Victorian Christmas cards, from Sir Henry Cole and the Penny Post to the golden age of chromolithography chaos in the 1870s–1890s. We break down why Victorians thought violent, morbid, and horny holiday art was hilarious, how it tied to class anxiety and death obsession, and what finally killed off the creepy cards after World War I.

If you like weird history, dark holiday traditions, Victorian era absurdity, Krampus lore, and vintage ephemera, this one’s your festive fever dream. Share it with someone who thinks modern Christmas cards are boring… and remind them it could be frogs with guns and dead postman robins.

Follow us wherever you ruin history.

Instagram: @barelyhistoricalpodcast

TikTok: @barelyhistoricalpodcast

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical

Contact: ⁠[email protected]⁠

Credits Hosts: JoLynne and Amanda

Produced by Barely Historical

Theme music: Licensed track

The year is 1883. Volcanoes are exploding, bridges are causing stampedes, and a stagecoach robber is leaving poetry like a Victorian theater kid on the loose. JoLynne and Amanda ruin one of the most chaotic years of the Gilded Age the only way we know how. With research, sarcasm, and at least one questionable opinion about what counts as progress.

This episode has it all.
• Krakatoa turning the sky into a global murder mystery
• A bridge that caused panic without collapsing once
• Time zones that finally told America what time it was
• A finishing school girl who wouldn’t survive one Tuesday today
• A railroad worker who deserved more than this country ever gave him
• Black Bart’s crime scene poetry (yes, really)

And if this wasn’t enough historical unhinged energy for you, our Patreon episode this week goes full holiday madness.

Yes. The Victorians invented the Christmas season as we know it. Yes. Their cards were insane. Frogs stabbing each other. Dead birds. Children in danger. Santa behaving like he needed supervision. It is festive, it is dark, and it proves that holiday chaos has always been in style.

Join our Patreon to hear the full episode and support the show:
patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical

You get:
• Weekly bonus episodes
• Early access to main feed episodes
• Uncut tangents and crimes against transitions
• A community of people who ruin history responsibly

00:00 Cold Open
03:40 Welcome to 1883
25:00 Presidents, corruption, and the Garfield medical nightmare
33:00 Brooklyn Bridge stampede
35:00 Krakatoa goes full villain
45:00 A Day in the Life
1:08:00 Crime, but make it poetry
1:35:00 The Gilded Age was just capitalism in a corset
1:46:00 “How’d I Go”
1:50:00 Wrap

Hosts: JoLynne & Amanda
Produced by Barely Historical
Contact: [email protected]
Tagline: Let’s ruin history.

🎄 Patreon Bonus: Crazy Victorian Christmas Cards

The 1950s and 60s looked cute on the outside.
Pastels. Casseroles. Aprons.
Inside the house?
Mid-century America was held together with Valium, denial, and whatever advice Dear Abby tossed into the newspaper that week.

In this sneak peek of our Patreon-only dark history episode, JoLynne and Amanda dig into the real story behind Mother’s Little Helpers.
Tranquilizers marketed to exhausted housewives.
Doctors handing out pills like parade candy.
Don Draper levels of dissociation.
And the cultural pressure that shaped women’s lives in 1950s and 1960s America.

This preview stops right before things get darker, messier, and too honest for the main feed.
To hear the full deep dive into women’s history, mid-century medicine, and the ghosts patriarchy left behind, join us on Patreon for History But Make It Worse.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/BarelyHistorical
Email: [email protected]

Let’s ruin the past.

1963 looks polished in the photos. Pastel dresses, church picnics, men in suits who definitely smell like cigarettes and bad coffee. Underneath, it is a year of civil rights marches, Cold War nerves, televised grief, and housewives being told a vacuum is the ultimate romantic gesture.

In this episode of Barely Historical, Jo and Amanda walk through 1963 like a yearbook you are not sure you actually want to sign. We cover the March on Washington, JFK’s assassination and the national gut punch that followed, the space race energy at NASA, zip codes, lava lamps, tab soda, and why teens were about to turn music into a full personality. Along the way we drag vintage magazine ads, side eye “for the woman who has everything” appliances, and peek at the pressure building behind those picture perfect suburban lives.

You will get: civil rights, Cold War tension, pop culture, politics, and a NASA engineer vs radio DJ “day in the life” that makes it painfully clear who is saving the world and who is just spinning vinyl and vibes. At the end we tease our Patreon deep dive on “Mother’s Little Helper” and why 50s and 60s housewives were not just “tired,” they were medicated.

If you like your history accurate, opinionated, and slightly disrespectful to bad design and worse men, you are in the right place.
Follow us wherever you ruin history.

Instagram: @barelyhistoricalpodcast

TikTok: @barelyhistoricalpodcast

Patreon: patreon.com/barelyhistorical

Contact: ⁠[email protected]⁠

Credits Hosts: JoLynne and Amanda

Produced by Barely Historical

Theme music: Licensed track

This episode is a special main feed drop that normally lives on our Patreon. Think of it as our little Thanksgiving gift to you.

We are taking you back to the very first Macy's Day Parade in 1924. The modern parade sparkle was not there yet. Instead, it featured real animals, stiff costumes, uneven planning, and a crowd that witnessed the earliest version of a tradition that eventually became a holiday giant.

In this episode we look at the odd choices, the behind the scenes mess, the questionable logistics, and the strangely charming energy that carried the parade from a simple idea to an annual event millions now watch.

It is festive, strange, and full of the kind of history that makes you wonder how any large public event ever survived its early years.

Enjoy the full episode and Happy Thanksgiving from Barely Historical.

Follow us wherever you ruin history.

Instagram: @barelyhistoricalpodcastTikTok: @barelyhistoricalpodcastPatreon: patreon.com/barelyhistoricalContact: ⁠[email protected]⁠

CreditsHosts: JoLynne and AmandaProduced by Barely HistoricalTheme music: Licensed track

New York in 1924 looks glamorous until you tap it with your fingernail and hear pure hollow chaos underneath. In this episode, Amanda and JoLynne drag you through the smells, the sweat, the speakeasies, the Harlem Renaissance, the class divide, the crime, the corruption, the glitter on top, and the rot beneath. This is not the postcard version of the Roaring Twenties. This is the real one.

Inside this episode
• What everyday life actually felt like in 1924 New York
• Why the entire city smelled like ambition, garbage, and bathtub gin
• Harlem’s art scene bursting into history
• Prohibition, speakeasies, crime families, corruption, and survival
• A rich lady vs worker day in the life at Macy’s
• Fact or Folklore
• Cost of Chaos
• A tease of the first Macy’s Day Parade

Follow us wherever you ruin history.

Instagram: @barelyhistoricalpodcast
TikTok: @barelyhistoricalpodcast
Patreon: patreon.com/barelyhistorical
Contact: [email protected]

Credits
Hosts: JoLynne and Amanda
Produced by Barely Historical
Theme music: Licensed track