Four friends record from a basement and dig into the rise and fall of Michigan’s Keweenaw copper boom, mixing drunken banter with local history. They trace how rich, near-surface copper drew immigrant miners and led to harsh company-controlled towns.

The episode covers the 1913 strike, labor tensions, violent clashes and the Italian Hall disaster—when a false alarm at a Christmas party caused a deadly crush that crushed the union movement and changed the region forever.