Fast Past

In today's after the pod, we'll be discussing dictators, making allusions, and all our other feelings about Rafael Trujillo. If you haven't listened to our last episode, make sure to listen to that one before this one!

Today we'll be discussing the life and assassination of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. His reign is known as one of the bloodiest in all of the Americas (north, central, and south). He is so infamous that a Pulitzer Prize winning book Feast of The Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa was written about him. We highly recommend you check the book out.

Sources:

Newton, Michael. Famous Assassinations in World History : An Encyclopedia. Englewood: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014. Accessed May 28, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.

“‘I Shot the Cruellest Dictator in the Americas.’” BBC News, May 27, 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-13560512. 

Lauren H. Derby. 2009. The Dictator’s Seduction : Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo. American Encounters/Global Interactions. Durham: Duke University Press Books. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e001mww&AN=3118898&site=ehost-live.

“104-10214-10034.PDF.” Archives.gov. Accessed July 8, 2025. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10214-10034.pdf. 

“Plotters against Trujillo Doubt Any C.I.A. Involvement in Assassination of Dictator (Published 1975).” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/23/archives/plotters-against-trujillo-doubt-any-cia-involvement-in.html. 

Chapman, Robert D. 2016. “Johnny Abbes and the Hunt for the Assassins.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 29 (1): 165–69. doi:10.1080/08850607.2015.1083343.

Bishop, Marlon, and Tatiana Fernandez. “80 Years on, Dominicans and Haitians Revisit Painful Memories of Parsley Massacre.” NPR, October 7, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/10/07/555871670/80-years-on-dominicans-and-haitians-revisit-painful-memories-of-parsley-massacre. 

Welcome back to the After the Pod! Our more casual chat and review of the events that happened during our last episode. This is where we give our personal opinions mixed in with a little extra context you might have missed from the prior episode. Strap in and join us!

Hello, everyone! Today we are discussing the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the events that led up to the event and the fallout of the assassination.

Sources:

“Indira Gandhi Is Assassinated: History: Research Starters: EBSCO Research.” EBSCO. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/indira-gandhi-assassinated. 

“Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi Is Assassinated | October 31, 1984.” History.com, May 27, 2025. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/october-31/the-prime-minister-of-india-is-assassinated. 

“Operation Blue Star | Golden Temple, Amritsar, Sikhism, & Indian History | Britannica.” Britannica. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Operation-Blue-Star. 

“Partition of India | Summary, Cause, Effects, & Significance | Britannica.” Britannica. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Partition-of-India. 

“Jawaharlal Nehru.” History.com, May 28, 2025. https://www.history.com/articles/jawaharlal-nehru. 

“Indira Gandhi | Biography, Career, & Facts | Britannica.” Britannica. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Indira-Gandhi. 

“2 Killed as Indian Police Fire on Crowd Protesting an Appearance by Mrs. Gandhi (Published 1977).” The New York Times. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/31/archives/2-killed-as-indian-police-fire-on-crowd-protesting-an-appearance-by.html. 

“Rajiv Gandhi | Indian National Congress, Prime Minister, & Indian National Congress | Britannica.” Britannica. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rajiv-Gandhi.

Welcome all to the After the Pod, the casual episode where we keep it real and talk about what we discussed and learned last episode. History should be conversational and approachable, so we're doing that here. Let us know what you think! And if you haven't already, make sure to list to our Assassination of Abraham Lincoln episode so you can share your opinions!

Today we will be discussing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the events in John Wilkes Booth life that lead him to want to kill the president.

Sources for this episode are below:

“Habeas Corpus.” Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus.

Alford, Terry. Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth: The Life of John Wilkes Booth Oxford University Press, 2015.

“The Night Abraham Lincoln Was Assassinated | Smithsonian.” Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed November 3, 2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/abraham-lincoln-team-of-rivals-180954850/?page=2.

It's our inaugural episode of After the Pod where we chat about everything we learned in a previous episode. Today we're talking about the Assassination of Rasputin. If you haven't listened to that already, make sure to do so and come back and chat with us! Sources are the same as the previous video.

Rasputin: the man, the myth, the legend, the person who was the cause for the Russian Revolution. In this episode we break down his early life, his path to religion, how he got close to the Tsar, and his very long assassination.

Sources for this episode are below:

“What Really Happened during the Murder of Rasputin, Russia’s ‘Mad Monk’?” The Smithsonian. Accessed September 14, 2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-really-happened-during-murder-rasputin-russia-mad-monk-180961572/. 

“Rasputin Is Murdered | December 30, 1916.” History.com, May 28, 2025. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/december-30/rasputin-is-murdered. 

Halliday, E. M. Rasputin Reconsidered. [Place of publication not identified]: New Word City, Inc, 2017. https://research-ebsco-com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/linkprocessor/plink?id=8eb33869-8cde-34a9-963e-dfee6277ca5d. 

Plitnik, George  R. “Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin: Research Starters: EBSCO Research.” EBSCO. Accessed September 14, 2025. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/grigori-yefimovich-rasputin#bibliography. 

Smith, Douglas. Rasputin: Faith, power, and the twilight of the Romanovs. New York: Picador / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 
Moynahan, Brian. Rasputin the saint who sinned. S.l.: Random House Publishing Group, 2012.

Hello! Welcome to Fast Past, the history podcast in close to thirty minutes less! We're back! After a hiatus, we decided to start the pod up again and wanted to revisit some episodes from our past pod. Today we'll be talking about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose death was the catalyst for World War I.

Sources:

Mindich, Talia. “8 Things You Didn’t Know about Franz Ferdinand.” PBS, June 27, 2014. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/8-things-didnt-know-franz-ferdinand. 

“The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.” History.com. https://www.history.com/articles/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand. 

Nugus, Philip, and Jonathan Martin. The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. London, England: British Broadcasting Corporation BBC, 2007.

Shackelford, Michael. “The Black Hand.” The black hand. https://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/blk-hand.html. Mutschlechner, Martin. “Franz Joseph and Franz Ferdinand – a Tense Relationship.” Die Welt der Habsburger. https://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/franz-joseph-and-franz-ferdinand-tense-relationship.