History on Fire

"What good is power if you cannot protect the ones you love?" muses Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. I can’t think of a more appropriate question to discuss the life of 19th century Lakota hero Crazy Horse. His undeniable power as a warrior, in fact, didn’t spare him from having tragedy visit him time and time again. Taking place against the backdrop of the Lakota-U.S. conflict in the second half of the 1800s, his life was the quintessential tale where epic, heartbreak, bravery, and horror mix freely. His people were one of the last Native American tribes to stand in the face of American expansion. And Crazy Horse was always in the thick of the action, throughout over twenty years of intermittent warfare. In the first of this four-part series, we’ll cover the first couple of decades of Crazy Horse’s story, the first dramatic clash between Lakota warriors and the U.S. Army, vision quests, thunder-dreaming, earning the ‘Crazy Horse’ name, Sand Creek Massacre, and calling for revenge.

This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of http://www.amazon.com/Dakota-Warrior-Story-James-R-Weddell/dp/1495963853

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On July 11, 1804, the vice-president of the United States (Aaron Burr) and the first Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton) decided to settle their grievances by drawing their pistols and trying to shoot each other dead. This is the story of the events leading Burr and Hamilton to stop exchanging words and begin exchanging lead. Also, in this episode: the good old days when killing people in a duel was no obstacle to gaining high political office (just ask Andrew Jackson), Abraham Lincoln and his freakish long reach, when the Senate floor was washed in blood, Hamilton’s mom was “whoring with everyone”, Burr’s obsession for women, “Great souls have little use for small morals”, Thomas Jefferson and Vito Corleaone’s advice, Plan B: take over Mexico, when the President wanted to hang his former vice-president, a perfect plan to get Americans more interested in politics.

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In this second and last part of this two-part series, we find out why it is a very bad idea to get on the wrong side of Parysatis, one of the most ruthless queens of the ancient world. We will also run into betrayal, prophetic dreams, epic battles, Xenophon’s rise to leadership, heartbreaking moments, tribal guerrillas in the mountains, poisoned honey, athletic competitions, sweet revenge, and the planting of the seeds for Alexander the Great’s campaigns.

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Legendary historian Will Durant has described the subject of this episode as “One of the great adventures in human history”. In the first part of this two-part series, we meet the main characters of our tale, when a band of over 10,000 Greek mercenaries agree to serve under the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger in a fratricidal civil war against Cyrus’ brother, King Artaxerxes II. This episode will also include a brief history of the Persian empire, tattooed, head-hunting + marijuana-consuming + sweat lodge-partaking tribal peoples, plagues, a cameo by Socrates, Machiavellian political games, the great battle of Cunaxa, and a eunuch worthy of Game of Thrones.

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This episode focuses on one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the late 20th century: the oldest, fully preserved human body ever found. The man emerged from the ice in the Alps over 5,000 years ago after his death. The more archaeologists discovered about him, the more haunting the mystery of his fate became. This is a tale of murder, Neolithic battles, the possibly European origins of acupuncture, the best mountain climber who ever lived, Brad Pitt’s tattoo, and one of the oldest cold cases ever. This is what history looks like when you have no written sources.

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One of the most legendary characters in history comes to visit us in this episode: Spartacus was an auxiliary soldier in the Roman army, a deserter, an outlaw, a gladiator, and the leader of one of the greatest slave rebellions in history. Under his leadership, over 70,000 people defeated the Roman legions multiple times. This episode features mass crucifixions, Dionysian orgies, a master course in guerrilla warfare, walls built with corpses, the most brutal punishment in military history, pirates, and overambitious Romans losing their heads.

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In the space of a few decades, three major slave wars threatened the Roman Republic. In this episode, we see how the greed of land speculators, tax collectors and slave owners unleashed an orgy of bloodshed as tens of thousands of escaped slaves went to battle against Rome’s armies. Part I of this story covers the first two of the servile wars, and features political intrigues, fire-breathing Syrian prophets, cannibalism, love struck aristocrats arming their slaves, and heroic mass suicides.

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In this quick intro, we explore the guiding philosophy of the podcast, Dan Carlin’s influence, and future plans.

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