History Buffoons Podcast

A U.S. destroyer chases a German U-boat through the North Atlantic, the sonar pings start to lie, and the target seems to vanish like a ghost. The twist isn’t a secret engine or a lucky escape. It’s ocean physics. We walk through the thermocline, that sharp temperature layer that can bend sound and create an acoustic shadow, turning early World War II sonar into “useless nonsense” at exactly the wrong moment in the Battle of the Atlantic. 

From there, we zoom in on Mary Sears and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where a civilian scientist helps the Navy admit a painful truth: winning at sea requires understanding the sea. Sears joins WAVES and builds a naval oceanographic intelligence unit that hunts patterns in temperature, salinity, and density by scavenging fishing logs, weather records, academic papers, and old expedition notes. The result is predictive ocean charts commanders can use to guess where submarines hide and how deep to fight back, even when instinct says otherwise. 

We also connect that lesson to the Pacific and Tarawa, where misread tides and shallow coral reefs turn an invasion into chaos before the main fighting even starts. It’s military history told through environmental reality: tides, reefs, surf, and the cost of treating nature like background scenery. 

If you like WWII history, U-boats, sonar, women in science, and the strange ways data can save lives, subscribe for more, share the episode with a friend, and leave a rating and review so more curious listeners can find us.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sears_(oceanographer)

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “The Conscience of Oceanography”

https://www.whoi.edu/mary-sears/

Naval History and Heritage Command

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/people/namesakes/mary-sears.html

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

Deadwood starts with a simple, dangerous idea: there’s gold in the Black Hills, so people move in even when they’re not supposed to. We follow the real history of Deadwood, South Dakota from its first days as an unsanctioned mining camp on Lakota land protected by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, through the chaos of a boomtown where businesses pop up faster than any real law can keep up.

From muddy streets packed into a narrow gulch to a theater that opens before a jail, the town’s priorities tell you everything. We break down the most famous moment in Deadwood lore, the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and the “dead man’s hand,” plus the bizarre reality of an improvised trial that didn’t hold up once federal authority stepped in. Then we zoom out to the forces that actually shaped the town: Seth Bullock’s push toward order, George Hearst’s role in shifting the region from placer panning to the industrial powerhouse of the Homestake Mine near Lead, and Al Swearengen’s Gem Theater empire built on booze, gambling, and exploitation.

Deadwood doesn’t just survive violence. It survives fire, modernizes quickly, grows a diverse community including a major Chinatown, and later faces decline as mining changes and the frontier ends with the railroad in 1890. Finally, it reinvents itself again when tourism and legalized gambling help fund preservation, turning history into the town’s most valuable resource.

Subscribe for more strange, true American history, share this with your favorite Old West nerd, and leave us a rating and review so more people can find the show.

Deadwood

https://www.deadwood.com/history/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadwood,_South_Dakota

City of Deadwood

https://www.cityofdeadwood.com/

Deadwood Photos

https://westernmininghistory.com/7154/deadwood-the-ultimate-photo-collection/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

Curious George didn’t just come from a cute idea. He came from a suitcase of drawings carried through a collapsing Europe while German-born Jewish refugees tried to stay one step ahead of the war.

We tell the story of H A Rey (born Hans Augusto Reyersbach) and Margaret Rey, a sharp, blunt, brilliant partner who sees his artistic talent as something worth rescuing. Their path runs from post World War I Germany to Brazil, then into pre-war Paris, where they begin turning animal sketches into children’s book characters. A baby monkey named Fifi steals the spotlight, and the work starts to feel like a real future.

Then history interrupts. When World War II hits France, the Rays face suspicion, searches, closed routes, and the kind of slow bureaucracy that can get you killed. They flee Paris on bicycles, sleep wherever they can, and fight for paperwork in Lisbon before finally making it to the United States. Along the way, a publisher at Houghton Mifflin makes one pivotal suggestion: Fifi needs a new name, and Curious George is born.

If you love book history, WWII survival stories, publishing lore, or the hidden origins of classic children’s literature, this one lands hard. Subscribe, share the episode with a fellow history nerd, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators

https://tubitv.com/movies/100040960/monkey-business-the-adventures-of-curious-george-s-creators

Wikipedia

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

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._A._Rey

Rey Cultural Center

https://thereycenter.org/index.html

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

A $125 million Mars mission disappears because two teams can’t agree on units. That’s not a sci-fi plot, it’s the kind of avoidable disaster that makes us laugh, then cringe, then double-check our own work.

We start with NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter and the brutal math of a metric vs imperial unit conversion mistake. One set of numbers in pounds of force gets read as newtons, and a “small” difference compounds until the spacecraft approaches Mars too low and is gone in moments. From there we head to Louisiana for the Lake Peigneur disaster, where drilling in the wrong spot breaches a salt mine, the lake drains into a massive whirlpool, and the shoreline itself starts disappearing.

Then we hit two wildly different warning signs that still rhyme: a modern London skyscraper, 20 Fenchurch Street (the Walkie-Talkie Building), reflecting sunlight like a magnifying glass and damaging cars, and Sweden’s Vasa warship, made top-heavy by prestige and pressure until it sinks on its maiden voyage. Across engineering, architecture, and project management, we keep asking the same question: what simple check would have stopped this?

If you like strange history, human error stories, and real-world lessons about safety culture and design oversight, you’ll have a lot to chew on here. Subscribe, share the show with a friend who loves a good fiasco, and leave us a review so more people can find History Buffoons.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

1.5 million balloons rise over downtown Cleveland, cameras roll, a Guinness World Records official watches, and a fundraising idea turns into a story people still argue about decades later. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we wanted to know what Balloonfest 1986 actually was before the internet decided it was a full-blown “disaster.”

We walk through why the United Way of Cleveland needed a big public event, how a mass balloon release promised visibility and donations, and why they brought in the oddly iconic specialist Treb Heining from Balloon Art by Treb. You’ll hear the nuts-and-bolts details that make or break large event planning: the giant netted containment structure in Public Square, the volunteer assembly line of inflating and tying balloons, the weather calls, and the decision to scale back from two million to about 1.5 million balloons while still chasing a world record.

Then we get into the part that hooked us: the mythmaking. The story you’ve heard about tragedy, lawsuits, and chaos gets repeated everywhere, but later reporting and interviews challenge the biggest claims. We talk about what was real, what likely got exaggerated, and why misinformation spreads so easily when it’s more entertaining than the truth. We also don’t skip the uncomfortable questions about environmental impact, biodegradable latex balloons, and what responsibility looks like when you stage a spectacle.

If you like strange history, media literacy, and stories that reward a closer look, hit play. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts, share the episode with a friend who loves weird facts, and leave us a rating and review so more buffoons can find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

The Preakness is only 1 3/16 miles, but its history takes way more twists than that. We’re coming off watching the Kentucky Derby, mixing up the signature Black Eyed Susan cocktail, and then digging into how the Preakness Stakes becomes a pillar of American thoroughbred racing and the most stressful checkpoint in the Triple Crown.

We walk through the origins of horse racing, then zoom in on the Preakness itself: where the name comes from, why the “first year” can be confusing, and how the race bounces around before it finally finds a stable identity at Pimlico Race Course. The early versions look nothing like today, including a period where it’s run as a handicap race with different weights assigned to horses, plus years where the race doesn’t run at all.

Then we get into what makes the Preakness the make-or-break race for a Kentucky Derby winner: the short two-week turnaround, the reality of fresh challengers entering the field, and why strategy and recovery can matter as much as speed. We also unpack the traditions that give the race its Maryland flavor, including the Black Eyed Susan blanket and the fun fact that the flowers on the winner aren’t actually in bloom in May.

And yes, we talk Secretariat. The 1973 Preakness timing controversy turns “human timers” into unlikely heroes, with video review decades later setting an official record. We close with modern news that could reshape the future: Pimlico’s reconstruction moving the 2026 Preakness to Laurel, and Churchill Downs Incorporated buying the intellectual property rights to the Preakness brand. Subscribe, share the show with a racing fan, and leave us a rating and review. What tradition or fact surprised you most?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

A man in late 1700s France can eat nonstop and still feel starving. Not “big appetite” starving, but a relentless, aggressive hunger that drives him from normal meals to rotten meat, garbage, and eventually things nobody wants to imagine swallowing. We’re Kate and Bradley, and we take you into the documented case of Tarrare, one of history’s most unsettling medical mysteries, pieced together from period reports and military hospital notes.

We follow Tarrare from rural childhood into the world of sideshows, where crowds pay to watch him devour baskets of apples in seconds and swallow inedible objects. The details get darker fast: live animals, a body that stays strangely thin, skin that hangs loose from stretching, heat that seems to radiate off him, and a smell so overpowering people can’t stand nearby. It’s grotesque, but it’s also a human story about illness, exploitation, and how little medicine could explain at the time.

Then the French Revolutionary Army turns curiosity into a plan: doctors feed him enormous meals, and the military uses him as a courier by sealing a message in a capsule that he swallows and later passes, creating a delivery method with no paper trail. That scheme ends with capture, torture, and dismissal, followed by chilling accusations back at the hospital, a missing toddler, and an ending that includes a reportedly horrific autopsy.

We also dig into modern explanations using today’s language: ghrelin and leptin (hunger and fullness hormones), thyroid disorders like hyperthyroidism, insulin and blood sugar regulation, and what “insatiable hunger” might mean medically. Subscribe for more strange history, share this with a friend who loves the bizarre, and please leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

Mary Todd Lincoln’s name still gets tossed around as shorthand for “unstable,” but that label collapses the real story into a punchline. We dig into what her life actually looks like when you line up the facts: a politically engaged woman raised in comfort and expectations, a complicated marriage to a self-made lawyer with a very different emotional style, and a public role that turns every choice into a target.

We walk through the major losses that shape her world, starting with the death of her mother when Mary is only six, then the death of her son Eddie, and later the devastating White House tragedy of losing Willie during the Civil War. With the country in crisis, Mary faces suspicion over her Kentucky roots, constant criticism of her spending, and a press culture eager to frame grief as “crazy.” We talk about how spiritualism and séances, common in the 1800s, become one more weapon used to mock her instead of understanding her trauma.

The story doesn’t end at Ford’s Theatre. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Mary’s mourning is forced into public view while she struggles with money, reputation, and isolation. We cover the wardrobe sale scandal, her fight for a government pension, and the heartbreaking rupture with her eldest son Robert Todd Lincoln, including the 1875 commitment that she later challenges and overturns. If you care about Civil War history, First Lady history, trauma, and how public narratives get manufactured, this one will stick with you.

Subscribe for more history with bite, share the episode with a friend who loves Lincoln-era stories, and leave us a rating and review. What do you think matters more in Mary’s legacy: her actions, or the way people reacted to her grief?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

One tiny technical glitch turned pop perfection into one of the biggest music scandals ever. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we’re digging into Millie Vanilli, the late-1980s hit machine that gave the world “Girl You Know It’s True” and “Blame It On The Rain,” then collapsed when everyone realized the voices on the records weren’t the two guys on stage.

We zoom out to the MTV era where image, choreography, and music video polish can matter more than raw talent, and we follow producer Frank Farian’s formula: pair incredible session singers with performers who look like they were designed for television. From the rocket-fast rise to the Grammy moment, we talk about how momentum, money, and industry pressure make it easy to keep playing along, even when the foundation is shaky.

Then we get into the fallout: the infamous live performance malfunction, the public confession, the rare decision to revoke a Grammy, and the lawsuits from fans who felt duped. We also wrestle with the hardest question of all, who really deserved the blame when the producers kept working and the faces took the hits, and we don’t skip the human cost, including Rob Pilatus’ downward spiral and early death. Finally, we bring it to today’s “live” music debate, backing tracks, stage spectacle, and what audiences in pop versus rock expect when they buy a ticket. Subscribe for more music history and cultural scandals, share this with a friend who loves concert debates, and leave a review telling us: where do you draw the line between performance and deception?

BBC- Fab from Milli Vanilli

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p065rpc6

The Rise and Fall of the Eighties’ Most Scandalous Pop Duo By Rob Sheffield

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/milli-vanilli-documentary-1234772525/

YouTube: Exposing Music's Greatest Scam by Asa Park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O56IWgQWGxg

Wikiedia-Milli Vanilli

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

What Happened to Milli Vanilli? Inside Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus' Lives After Being Stripped of Their 1990 Grammy By Emily Weaver

https://people.com/what-happened-to-milli-vanilli-11893522

YouTube: Milli vanilli concert FAIL (1990) byt Musics&More YouTube Channel

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

YouTube: Frank Farian with performers John Davis/Gina Mohammed/Ray Horton and Brad Howell, Farian speaking, by AP Archive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAeIOFO-78U

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched. 

A pitcher so dominant he rewrote the strikeout leaderboard, and so unpredictable he could be lured off the mound by a puppy in the stands. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we’re telling the story of George “Rube” Waddell, a Deadball Era icon whose MLB greatness and total chaos somehow coexist in the same box score.

We dig into Rube’s rise from a Pennsylvania farm kid with a cannon arm to one of baseball history’s most feared left-handed pitchers, including his jaw-dropping 349 strikeouts in 1904 and the elite earned run average that still puts him in rare company. We also track the teams that shaped his career, from early stops to Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, plus the twists that made him a legend long after his final pitch.

Then the weirdness takes over: his fire-truck obsession, the stories of leaving games to help fight fires, and the animal-filled life that included everything from bears to the not-quite-disproven jump-rope geese. There’s even a Wisconsin chapter with the early Milwaukee Brewers and Pewaukee Lake, where fishing mattered enough for Rube to vanish for days while professional baseball waited. We close with the hard edge of the tale: fights, drinking, the heroic flood sandbagging near the Mississippi River, and the illness that took him at just 37, followed by his Hall of Fame induction in 1946.

If you love baseball history, quirky sports legends, and true stories that sound made up, queue this one up now. Subscribe for more, share it with a friend who loves weird history, and leave a rating and review so more listeners can find us.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

This website contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase a product, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the running of this website and allows me to continue providing valuable content. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I believe in and have personally used or researched.