History Fix

Back on October 1st, I was honored to give a live History Fix talk here locally in Nags Head, North Carolina. This was part of a speaker series called "Green Drinks" that happens the first Thursday of the month October through March and is organized by the North Carolina Coastal Federation. This organization is all about environmental stewardship and taking care of this beautiful place we call home. Finding a topic that encompassed history, especially local history, the environment, and October was tricky but I kind of think I nailed it. Tune in while I spin some oyster yarns because this humble shellfish has left a much bigger impact on our history than many people realize. Let's fix that. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• NCgenweb “Archaeology of the Native Americans: The Carolina Algonkians”
• NCgenweb “The Tillett Site”
• ECU The Scholarship “The Archaeology of Colington Island”
• “A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia” by Thomas Hariot
• Ralph Lane’s Journal via UNC’s Documenting the American South 
• North Carolina Coastal Federation “Building Oyster Reefs”
• National Endowment for the Humanities “Oyster Wars”
• Coastal Review “Our Coast’s History: NC’s Oyster War”
• NCpedia “Oyster War”
• Michigan State University “The Great Oyster Craze: Why 19th Century Americans Loved Oysters”
• Food Worth Writing For “The History of Oysters: Its Rise as a Delicacy and a Staple Food Beloved by Many”

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I am back with the final installment of my 3 part series on Victorian London serial killer Jack the Ripper. I'll spill all the gory details of the death of the 5th and final of the "Canonical Five" victims, Mary Jane Kelly. We'll look at modern interpretations of the killer's MO and criminal FBI profile. We'll also delve into some of the theories and suspects. Who was Jack the Ripper? Was he a Polish barber? An American doctor? A cotton merchant? Or perhaps a prince, second in line for the English throne?

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Morbid “Jack the Ripper”
• Absolute Crime “Jack the Ripper’s Killing Spree As It Happened”
• Absolute Crime “Why Was Jack the Ripper Never Found?”
• Casebook.org “Jack the Ripper”
• University of Michigan “Ripper Records: An Archive of Jack the Ripper and the 1888 Whitechapel Murders”
• Wikipedia “Dear Boss Letter”
• Wikipedia “Saucy Jacky Postcard”
• Wikipedia “From Hell Letter”
• The Jack the Ripper Tour “Profiling Jack the Ripper”
• Elliot Leyton “Hunting Humans”

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I'm back again in part 2 of 3 to uncover more of the story of Jack the Ripper. In this episode, I'll continue the timeline from last week, walking you through new developments in the case. We'll look at dead end clues and false suspects, including 3 letters supposedly written by the killer. I'll also take you through the final moments of the third and fourth Ripper victims - Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes - who were killed less than an hour apart during what came to be called the "double event." 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Morbid “Jack the Ripper”
• Absolute Crime “Jack the Ripper’s Killing Spree As It Happened”
• Absolute Crime “Why Was Jack the Ripper Never Found?”
• Casebook.org “Jack the Ripper”
• University of Michigan “Ripper Records: An Archive of Jack the Ripper and the 1888 Whitechapel Murders”
• Wikipedia “Dear Boss Letter”
• Wikipedia “Saucy Jacky Postcard”
• Wikipedia “From Hell Letter”

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This episode is the start of History Fix's first ever THREE parter! I initially thought I could cram it all into two episodes but pretty quickly realized it would take at least three. So, Spooktober is going to spill over a bit into November this year but I'm not hating it. In this episode, the first of three about the infamous Victorian era London serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, I'll set the scene in which the murders took place, explaining much needed context for understanding that world. I'll also walk you through what we know about the lives and final moments of the first two Jack the Ripper victims: Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols and Annie Chapman. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Morbid “Jack the Ripper”
• Absolute Crime “Jack the Ripper’s Killing Spree As It Happened”
• Casebook.org “Jack the Ripper”
• University of Michigan “Ripper Records: An Archive of Jack the Ripper and the 1888 Whitechapel Murders”

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The Secret Is Out tells the coming-out stories of LGBTQ people —...

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Spooktober continues with a strange and mysterious tale this week. But how strange and mysterious is it really? I’m talking, of course, about the infamous Bermuda Triangle, a loosely defined area off the southeastern coast of the United States where countless ships and even airplanes have experienced strange anomalies, many even vanishing without a trace. In this episode, I’ll seek to answer the question: is the Bermuda Triangle really all that dangerous? And, if not, where did its notorious reputation come from? Let’s fix that. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• Encyclopedia Britannica “What is known and not known about the Bermuda Triangle”
• History.com “What Is the Bermuda Triangle?
• National Geographic “The mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle”
• EBSCO “Bermuda Triangle” 
• Encyclopedia Virginia “Sea Venture”
• NOAA “What is a rogue wave?”
• Boater Exam “6 Prevailing Bermuda Triangle Theories”

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Last week's episode on the zombies of Haitian Vodou naturally led me to New Orleans. This week I'll fill you in on the gruesome acts of infamous female enslaver Delphine LaLaurie, who notoriously tortured and abused the people she enslaved at her French Quarter mansion in the 1830s. But this story has been quite twisted and sensationalized through the years as New Orleans tour guides scramble to sell historical ghost tour tickets. So how much of Delphine LaLaurie's story is true and how much was fabricated to meet the desires of an ever more desensitized audience... and at what cost? Let's fix that. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• “Retrospect of Western Travel” by Harriet Martineau
• “Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans” by Jeanne DeLavigne
• “Journey Into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans” by Kalila Katherina Smith
• “Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era” by Tiya Miles
• History.com “Arson uncovers torture chamber in mansion of New Orleans enslaver
• New Orleans Historical “The LaLaurie Mansion”
• Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans “What really happened at the LaLaurie House?”
• Wikipedia “Delphine LaLaurie”
• Wikipedia “Harriet Martineau”

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It’s finally Spooktober! All October long I’ll be telling spooky, mysterious true stories from history, starting with zombies. Zombies are a big deal. They are all over pop culture in movies and TV shows, even video games. People love a good zombie apocalypse story. But the pop culture zombies of today are quite different than how zombies started out. They’re almost a different beast entirely. So where did the idea of a zombie come from? How did they get so twisted? And could zombies possibly be real? Let’s fix all that. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• Harvard Magazine “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”
• The Atlantic “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies”
• History.com “History of Zombies”
• Ohio State University “The History of the Zombie in Popular Culture”
• NPR “Zoinks! Tracing the History of “Zombie” From Haiti to the CDC”
• New York Times “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever”
• (Im)possibilities “The History of Zombies”
• Encyclopedia Britannica “Vodou”
• University of Delaware “The Roots of Haitian Vodou”

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The Secret Is Out tells the coming-out stories of LGBTQ people —...

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Despite the results of my recent poll, I'm making the executive decision to cover Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532. But, trust me, you won't be disappointed. This story is insane. We have rags to riches characters, we have mighty kings, we have brothers fighting amongst themselves, partners backstabbing each other. We have lies and deceit and secret ambushes. We have murder, lots and lots of murder, and we have the rise of a new world order, for better, or for worse. In the end, we’re left with a lot of questions here. How did such a small rag tag group of Spaniards, less than 200 men, manage to take down the largest empire in the world? And what lessons can we learn from mistakes made by the Inca? Yes the Inca. You thought I was gonna say Spanish.  Let's fix that. 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• History.com “Francisco Pizarro Traps Incan Emperor Atahualpa”
• EBSCO “Pizarro Conquers the Incas in Peru”
• World History Encyclopedia “Pizarro and the Fall of the Inca Empire”
• National Geographic “Inca Civilization”
• Encyclopedia Britannica “Francisco Pizarro”

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Of course we’re going to El Dorado! Or, at least, we’re going to meet him? Because, when you take a look at the primary sources, where this myth of El Dorado, the city of gold, really came from, it becomes immediately apparent that El Dorado was never a city at all… he was a person. El Dorado, the gilded one, was first described as a wealthy leader who covered his body in gold dust and then washed it off in a sacred lake. The Spanish simply took that and ran with it. If this king had enough gold that he could wash it away, discard it, every single night, he must be extraordinarily wealthy. In fact, he must live in an entire city made of gold. But that, of course, was a stretch based entirely on cultural misunderstandings and downright greed. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop man after man - Spanish, German, English - from trying, and failing, to find this imaginary city of gold.  

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• BBC “El Dorado: The truth behind the myth”
• National Geographic “The real history behind El Dorado, the legendary city of gold”
• Wikipedia “El Dorado”

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The Secret Is Out tells the coming-out stories of LGBTQ people —...

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I have wanted to talk about Sir Walter Raleigh for so very long. He had a lot of power and influence during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and impacted the world we know today more than people realize. He's even the one who came up with the name Virginia! And yet, most don't know the first thing about Raleigh. Who was he really? And how did he go from the queen’s favorite golden boy to beheaded at Westminster in the span of just a few decades? Let's fix that. 

Episodes about the Roanoke expeditions: 

• Roanoke Parts 1 and 2
• The Found Colony of Roanoke?

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• Historic Royal Palaces “Sir Walter Raleigh”
• History.com “Walter Raleigh”
• North Carolina Museum of History “The Demise of Sir Walter Raleigh”
• BBC “Walter Raleigh”
• Sir Walter Raleigh’s letter to his wife (Matthew Lyons)

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The Secret Is Out tells the coming-out stories of LGBTQ people —...

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