Plausibly Live

There are days when I simply don’t want to be angry about anything. Politics, taxes and all the other things we’re supposed to be outraged about will still be there tomorrow. So today, let’s talk about Charlie Sheen. One of my guilty pleasures has always been the Charlie Sheen years of Two and a Half […]

Smallpox, Variolation, and the Battle to Save the Continental Army When we think about the American Revolution, we tend to remember the battles. Lexington and Concord. Bunker Hill. Trenton. Saratoga. Yorktown. Washington crossing the Delaware. Continental soldiers freezing in winter camps while British armies marched across the colonies. But George Washington was fighting another war, […]

What happens when something sounds so absurd that we stop checking whether it’s actually true? On today’s Plausibly Live, a viral headline claims a Columbia professor won an award for a book arguing that white paint is racist. There really is a book called A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, but the headline […]

Lewis & Clark’s unlikely archaeological trail and the Revolutionary War story behind Charlotte’s Hornets History does not always survive where we expect to find it. Sometimes it is preserved in a journal or an archive. Sometimes it is buried in the dirt. And sometimes it is sitting right in front of us on a professional […]

The United States says it has a weapon in orbit, but has revealed little about what it does. Could the announcement deter an adversary, or could uncertainty make a confrontation in space more dangerous? On this episode of Plausibly Live, I look at the possibilities behind that announcement, from disrupted signals to damaged satellites, and […]

Ideological Alligators, Jellicle Cats, and the Limits of Appeasement What do a fiercely progressive lesbian bar, an angry online mob, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and my wife’s desire for a cat have in common? They all demonstrate what happens when you believe you are in control of the situation. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, the Last Ditch Bar […]

On November 16, 1776, nearly 3,000 American soldiers were lost when Fort Washington fell to British and Hessian forces. Almost 1,800 miles away, thirteen cannon shots sounded across a Caribbean harbor. Eleven guns from a Dutch fortress answered. Those eleven guns marked a turning point in the American Revolution. The Continental Navy brig Andrew Doria […]

Press Credentials, Due Process, and the Fifth Amendment Can a president revoke White House press credentials simply because he believes a news organization is dishonest or unfair? The First Amendment protects the freedom to publish, but it does not guarantee any reporter a seat in the White House briefing room. Once the government creates a […]

A newspaper headline I didn’t write introduced me to Bill Mick in 2006. What began as an awkward invitation onto his radio show became a friendship, a career in broadcasting, and, years later, the history segments we still share. Bill retired today after 25 years in radio. His last day has me thinking about the […]

On Constitution Day, Dave asks whether the Senate still works as the Framers intended. The Seventeenth Amendment gave voters the power to elect senators directly, ending a system troubled by deadlocks and corruption. It also removed state legislatures’ direct voice in Congress. What did the nation gain, and what did it give up? The question […]