The Stanford Prison Experiment produced groundbreaking results. The main result was proving the need to create Institutional Review Boards for human experiments. Dr. Philip Zimbardo wanted to test the effect of power and powerlessness in a prison setting. He used a bunch of college age boys to play the part of guards and prisoners. Usually a Doctor oversees their experiment. Not only did Zimbardo oversee his experiment, he made himself the Superintendent of his prison. The Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to last 2 weeks. It last 6 days. Zimbardo claimed he proved what he set out to prove. But did he? Was his thumb on the scale? Listen in to find out as we get Historically High on the Stanford Prison Experiment. 

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We're heading back to WW2 for the most pivotal battle of the European Theater. Some of you are already scoffing at that statement but let me lay it out like this. After Germany steamrolled mainland Europe, Great Britain was all that was left. Russia and Germany weren't at war yet. The United States was still over two years away from being at war. It was the British holding the line against total Nazi domination of Europe. If Britain fell that means no where to launch an invasion, no D-Day, no liberation of France. Between July 10 and October 30 of 1939, roughly 3000 pilots, most British and Scottish, but many others from all over including countries already occupied by the Nazis, held the skies above Britain and the English Channel preventing an invasion. For almost 4 months, fighter pilots, crews keeping them airborne, radar technicians, and the WAAF dispatchers, fought a fight for the rest of the world. In the words of Winston Churchill "Never was owed by so many, to so few" This is their story, This is the Battle of Britain. 

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It's Part 2....so if you haven't already go back and listen to part 1 first. Think you can just raw dog it without having any of Ireland's backstory, think again. We pick back up at a major event in Irish history, The Blight, or as most of us know it The Great Irish Potato Famine. Ireland is hurting and the people in charge, currently the English, aren't doing a whole lot to help. This combined with a whole list of issues with English rule (discussed in part 1) most of the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle have had enough. What follows is the story of Ireland's fight for independence, the individuals who rose as leaders of the movement, and the 'Troubles' experienced while battling for freedom. 

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Ireland. A country with a history almost as rich as the country is beautiful. A country that despite its proximity to mainland Europe seemed to avoid little things like invasion by the Roman Empire. Tracing its first people's back 10,000 years ago,  they began building stone monuments and elaborate burial tombs around 6500, and around 2500 years ago the Celts began to arrive. The Celtic tribes divided the island into different kingdoms spreading their culture and language. Fast forward to the 5th century and you get St. Patrick and the Catholics came in doing what they do and later came the Vikings. They liked what Ireland had going for it and established quite a few settlements deciding to make the Emerald Isle home, lending their culture to its history as well. There's so much more to The Land of Saints and Scholars, you'll just have to listen to find out, Welcome to Ireland....Part 1. 

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Apollo 13 was slated to be NASA's third manned spaceflight to land on the moon. Apollo 11 won us the space race and Apollo 12 proved it wasn't just a fluke that we put a man on the lunar surface. Apollo 13 was going to up the ante by putting men on a different part of the moon to explore. Now all of these missions took place within a period of 12 months so by Apollo 13 the public had lost interest. NASA had made it too easy to reach the moon according to the public. Well two days later the nation and world were glued to their TV's after an explosion in space crippled Apollo 13's command ship Odyssey leaving the astronauts short on oxygen and with power systems failing 200,000+ miles from Earth. Normally an explosion in space is a death sentence and it would've been for James Lovell, John Swigert, and Fred Haise, but the geniuses of NASA mission and flight control had other plans. Through some of the craziest feats of sciences, mathematics, physics, and engineering the rescued these three men from the jaws of cold death. Find out how they did it on this week's episode. 

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Prof Chris here. I'm gonna shoot everyone straight, I got carried away with this one, I couldn't see it while it was happening, and I had the blinders on, sooo what you get now is 3 hours and 45 plus minutes of comprehensive and probably mostly entertaining discussion on the history of the Wizarding World introduced in the Harry Potter books/movie. I've got my nerd on full display here but Prof Adam enabled it so he's just as culpable as me. But serious this one was a shit ton of fun for me. If you've listened previously to any of my Fictional History lessons you know I'm nothing if I'm not thorough, or I try to be, so to all my nerds out there and to those just dipping their toes in for a few hours, I hope you enjoy.

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Henry Hudson. We don't know too much about his life prior to becoming a captain for the Muscovy Company of England. In his life he would tale 4 voyages looking to reach the east coast of Asia. 3 of those 4 voyages would start out going east only to run into ice. 2 of those voyages would discover some very cool things in the western world that would take his name (Hudson River, Hudson River Valley, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay). Interestingly enough, all of his even numbered voyages had some degree of mutiny. The first mutiny-lite forced him to find a new country to sail for. His 4th and final voyage would return to England without him aboard. We don't know exactly what happened. What we know for sure is there is no way of knowing how or where Henry Hudson took his final breath. That mystery still lives on today. Join us as we get Historically High on Henry Hudson. 

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No there are no typos in the title, that's how "Labours" is spelled in this instance and the Greek pronunciation is HERA-CLES, cause the dude was named after Hera, who was actually not his mother, far from it. Daddy Zeus did was Zeus gon' do and sexed up a mortal woman disguised as her husband, she got pregnant, Hera got pissed and Heracles was born into the Greek World with a target already on his back. Now we should preface this with a disclaimer, this ain't Walt's Hercules, I mean that movie is a banger but the real story of Heracles would be a hard NC-17 rating. The 12 Labours are pretty much the story of Heracles' life, all his myths and stories come from what happened while he was crossing things off his task list. But why was he doing these mythological honey-do's instead of chillin' on Olympus? Well that all comes back to Hera and the instant she destroyed his life and set a path before him to possible redemption. Alright enough talk let's get into it.... 

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The history of the Yakuza is one clouded in a little mystery. You have the story the Yakuza promotes, that they were the collection of peoples who banded together to defend the helpless from the terrors of the Shogun and his Samurai. Then there's the more likely version, they were a group of merchants, hustlers, thieves, and racketeers who adopted a code of honor and started to branch out into more lucrative ventures, both legal and illegal.  They adopted a family structure with all power held by the Oyabun, the boss, and everyone else at varying levels depending on how long they've been in the life. The Yakuza have had their hands much deeper into business and politics than the Italian Mob and even stole their style to boot. The rituals, the tattoos, the missing fingers, we'll cover it all and then some. 

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I mean come on, it's Julius Caesar, you've waited long enough so I'm keeping this short. The man has a salad dressing, a hotel/casino, and an orange smoothie franchise named in his honor..... BUT in addition to that he was captured by pirates, was co-president of Rome for a year, added all of Gallic France and Spain to the Roman Empire, led the first Roman Army across the Rhine River in Germany, led the first Roman Army across the English Channel to Britain, started a Roman civil war, went to Africa and got it in with Cleopatra, and I'm rabbling, go now, start the episode. FOR THE GLORY OF ROME.

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