It's Not History

In this episode, I follow a pencil-scrawled telegram from a burning harbor in Havana straight into the offices of two warring newspaper tycoons and the clubroom of a future president who'd been dreaming of exactly this fight since college.

It's a story that involves yellow journalism, a Confederate uncle, a diary entry with a single black X on the page, and a Dakota cattle ranch that turned an exiled East Coast aristocrat into an unrepentant evangelist for American empire.

In this episode, I sail in a small boat to a remote string of islands and the largest brick fortress in the Americas, one which began sinking into the sand the moment it was finished. 

It's a story that involves Cuban revolutionaries, Spanish silver mines and how a pile of wet coal in the wrong place can sink a battleship and an empire.

And how the truth about what actually happened took almost a century to float to the surface.

In this series we discover how a bizarre, beautiful, steampunk hybrid called USS Olympia, a ship I first came to know as a kid, destroyed one empire, birthed another. Then had breakfast.

It’s a story that involves a (literal) mountain of silver, how Hoagies came to be and why coal, battleships and revolutions are a terrible combination.

And how America first tried on becoming an empire. And decided it didn’t fit.

In this episode, recorded before a live audience in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we look at Conestoga Town through a different lens: the challenge of historic preservation without physical artifacts. Looking for inspiration, we discover 27 miles of fabric and cans of red spray paint. What happens next is up to you.

In this, the final episode of this series, my family discovers a new war and a new fortress in the fields of Negiuchi. The B-29 Super Fortress. Much is lost. But some things are found. And saved.

For 150 years during the Sengoku Jidai, thousands of men, both distinguished and noble men, had a go at making all of Japan theirs. Three men made it happen. One was labeled a fool, another was born a peasant, and the last established a dynasty. An omnipotent dynasty powerful enough to rule all of Japan for over two hundred years. But was toppled by six Black Ships.

In this episode, the poster child of the Sengoku-jidai rebrands himself and marches north - picking up three provinces, 80,000 guys, millions of barrels of rice, and a few dozen castles. One of these castles is my castle. Negiuch-jo. Meet the new Hojo clan.

In this episode, we look at how my 500-year-old survived both a 16th-century civil war and 20th-century bulldozers. And how one of the clues to its survival is in another field. One in Pennsylvania, named Gettysburg.

Why is there a 500 year old Samurai Castle in my yard?

Negiuchi Castle stood at a turning point in the struggle for unity in medieval Japan. Once the tip of the spear of one the most powerful clan in the Sengoku-jidai - The Age of Warring States. Today it's nearly forgotten, hidden in a forest ..and our backyard. In this episode we explore deep history and lethal landscapes in a suburb of Tokyo.

We conclude this series and season with the answer to the question 'What happened to the people the rivers are name after'—the second part of our interview with Michael Mantooth of the Conestoga Susquehannock tribe.