Valentines Day means flowers, chocolate, poems, and letters. There are people that have extremely public lives, and yet, we know very little about them. But for some people, it’s the words they left behind meant for the person they loved the most, that reveals the depth of their soul. For this episode, I’ll be reading love poems and letters from composers, lovers, and writers that chose to write their souls on a piece a paper.

Have you ever seen someone fly on a trapeze? How about someone dancing on two pieces of fabric called silks? Aerialists live on stages all over the world performing on hoops, fabrics, nets, and things you probably don’t even have names for. But, did you ever wonder how aerial arts started? Well, today we’re going to find out.

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Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3uXVuXk8s4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-hxJf1hbm8&t=69s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bsJbHasFSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbcwQcooNTQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charmion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Leitzel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._T._Barnum#:~:text=Phineas%20Taylor%20Barnum%20(July%205%2C,and%20Barnum%20%26%20Bailey%20Circus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbcwQcooNTQ&t=881s

For this episode, we’ll be going to China during the Tang dynasty. This dynasty produced some of the most powerful and memorable women in Chinese history. But we’re going to focus on one. The princess that betrayed the emperor because of love, political power, and a wrong that had to be paid for in blood. This is the story of Princess Gaoyang.

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Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Gaoyang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianji

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Yi%27ai

https://en.zhihu.com/answer/5285472120

https://historyguild.org/the-tang-dynasty/?srsltid=AfmBOoqw-f6pgrIU_bKVZAjbY2WVuf2B5GvJWoaPUYlO-g1quj7o67QP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozong_of_Tang

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gaozong-emperor-of-Tang-dynasty

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Fang_Xuanling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rd6KHMqA_s

So many jobs require licenses or certificates. We walk into people's offices and don’t think twice when we see them framed and hanging on their walls. Well, what if I told you that there was a time when licenses were issued for prostitution. Today, we’re taking a glimpse in the world of sex workers in 1800s America.

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Sources:

https://www.history.com/articles/civil-war-prostitution-nashville

https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1800-1809#:~:text=Building%2Dtrades%20wages%20%2D%201800%20through,authority%20for%20each%20pay%20increase.

https://petapixel.com/2025/07/11/fascinating-photos-reveal-the-hidden-world-of-brothels-in-the-wild-west/

https://skagwayinn.com/history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_on_Wheels

Tulsa, Oklahoma. You may not know it, but this place was once called Black Wall Street. It was a thriving black community full of hard-working women and men that were seeking out their own version of the American dream. That is at least, until the state of Oklahoma decided to burn it to the ground.

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Sources:

https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/detail/jim-crow-laws.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jim_Crow_law_examples_by_state

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/24/us/tulsa-race-massacre.html

https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/gant-reuben/

https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/tulsa-massacre-graves-excavation.html#

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/tulsa-massacre-coffins-grave.html#

https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2015.176.2?destination=edan-search/collection_search%3Fpage%3D6%26edan_q%3D%252A%253A%252A%26edan_fq%255B0%255D%3Dplace%253A%2522Tulsa%2522%26op%3DSearch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

Did you ever wonder how people became famous before the internet? Well, in some cases, it all started with a picture. Someone would walk into a shop for a photo and then suddenly, that person’s face is on a cartes-de-visite being distributed to the world. In modern times, they would be the Instagram models that you follow. Apparently, beauty has always been a career path, even without social media.

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Sources:

https://vocal.media/history/camille-monfort

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/100-years-of-fashion-photography#:~:text=In%201911%2C%20at%20the%20height,serious%20fashion%20photographs%20ever%20made%22.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/century-love-triangle/

https://broadway.library.sc.edu/content/buying-and-selling-cabinet-cards-1865-1905_page_1.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Ray

https://face2faceafrica.com/article/discover-how-frederick-douglass-became-the-most-photographed-man-of-his-time#:~:text=%E2%80%9CHe%20did%20not%20want%20to,and%20sold%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20Bernier.

In California through the 1850s to the early 1900s, Native Americans suffered countless injustices. They faced laws designed to destroy their foundation as a community and laws that even permitted them to be executed on sight. For this episode, I’ll talk about the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe. Anthropologist gave him the name Ishi.

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Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2bpBAXvJew

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEmqOCta3NU&t=6s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/yahi

Look up, what do you see? Well, in 1880 if you lived in cities like New York, all you might be able to see are telephone poles with more powerlines attached to them than you can count. Join me this week as I talk about a time before powerlines were forced to go underground.

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Sources:

Medium/The Racist History of Telephone Poles By Caira Wynn Blackwell

Published July 16th 2019

https://medium.com/@cwb307/the-racist-history-of-telephone-poles-8cd859b99d65

Business and Economic History

The Telephone on Main Street: Utility Regulation in the United States and Canada before 1900 by Robert MacDougall/Published in 2006

https://thebhc.org/sites/default/files/macdougall.pdf

Tarot cards. Maybe you find them fascinating, maybe you’ve never given them much thought. Well, have you ever considered their history? Where they came from and how they managed to spread throughout so many regions of the world. In this episode, we’re diving into the history that created the tarot cards of today.

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Sources:

Distillations Magazine

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/disorderly-persons/#:~:text=IN%201530%20HENRY%20VIII%20ISSUED,work%20in%20a%20legitimate%20occupation.

The Book of Tarot: A Spiritual Key to Understanding the Cards by Sahar Huneidi-Palmer

As Rome is conquering land left and right, she gathers her army and claims a victory against the Roman empire that the world has never forgotten. Allow me to present to you, Queen Amanirenas from the African Kingdom of Kush.

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Sources:

https://blackpast.org/global-african-history/kandake-amanirenas-10-bc/

https://www.history.com/articles/nubian-queen-amanirenas-roman-army