Death Is Hilarious

A lot of people already know he was a pretty big important, controversial military and a lot of people already know he has a reputation for being into some weird sex shit. What you may not know is that he may have been the original fedora wearing self-proclaimed nice guy with a massive chip on his shoulder.

Mary Shelley’s name has been waiting patiently on my episode list for over a year now. I’ve been conflicted about telling her story. One of the reasons I love producing a show about history is due to the fact that everyone is long dead. Nobody can be embarrassed or offended by any sarcasm or sass which makes it much easier to riff on my subjects without much hesitation.

But Mary was different.

George's heart surgery went great! However, when he arrived back home, he was diagnosed with severe pneumonia. He has been in the hospital for two weeks and will be having surgery on Monday to remove the infected growths that were found on his right lung.

We give you an update on George's surgery and answer your questions from the anonymous suggestion/comment box thingy on our website.

I’m especially excited to tell Theodora of Byzantium’s story because it’s refreshingly victorious. She’s best known as one of the most influential and powerful Empresses of the Eastern Roman Empire who went from hooker to high roller to Eastern Orthodox Saint.  A lot of what we know about Theodora comes from the Byzantine scholar, Procopius. In his work, he goes back and forth from absolutely gushing about her to depicting her as a power-mad horndog.

If you’re a woman who also likes women, you may recognize her as what is basically the official patron saint of lesbians.

Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright, political activist, godmother of modern feminism, and a woman who was so revolutionary, the revolution wasn’t ready for her.
Olympe de Gouges is the perfect poster child for the women’s movement and social justice. So why does it seem that so few people know who she is? And for those who do know her name, why is she remembered as a deceptive prostitute who wrote “The Declaration of the Rights of the Woman and the Female Citizen?”

The emperor is a lighter one to study because he’s from that time period where you get this blend of saints, mythology, and facts in glorious, gory, written detail. And they all weave together into a beautiful blend of supposition and tom fuckery.

This episode has everything- Nazis, a twisted Cinderella story, bratty pre-Instagram kids of the uber rich and famous, a disgraced prince, plane crashes, affairs galore, more rumors than facts, Mussolini, Winston Churchill, commies, a jewel heist….and that’s just scratching the surface.

It's our 50th episode! I'm so happy we've made it this far. Geeze....and we haven't even come (heh heh) close to covering all the dirty bits of history. This episode is George's personal favorite of the podcast's and I hope you enjoy it as much as he did. Cleopatra VII Philopator, more commonly known simply as Cleopatra, was the last, technically for realsies, ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt because her son was pharaoh for like half a second. But she was also so much more than that.