Professor Buzzkill History Podcast

Our first "Movie Myths Monday" episode! We look at the famous, and heart-warming musical, The Sound of Music, and discuss the historical accuracies and inaccuracies. What Captain Von Trapp a member of the Nazi Party? How did the family escape? And what's the real story behind the much-misunderstood song, "Eidelweiss"? Listen and sing along!

Advanced Placement student researchers from Caddo Parish Magnet High School in Shreveport, Louisiana explain their research into the career of J. Marion Sims. His medical experiments on enslaved women during the 19th century are still controversial. In addition, they discuss Sims's legacy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Important listening! Episode #372.

Your favorite Professor, Philip Nash, tells us about Albert Battel, a German Army lieutenant and lawyer recognized for his resistance during World War II to the Nazi plans for the 1942 liquidation of a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Battel was posthumously recognized by the State of Israel as “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1981. Listen to his remarkable story! Episode #371.

Historian Heath Hardage Lee tells us the remarkable story of Sybil Stockdale, Jane Denton, Louise Mulligan, and other wives of American Navy and Air Force pilots who pressured the LBJ and Nixon administrations to get their POW husbands freed during the Vietnam War. Listen to this story of highly sophisticated, persistent, and dedicated political activism!

Our Quote or No Quote episodes are roaring back with the most important person we've ever interviewed -- Arleen Lorrance, the teacher and social innovator who created the "be the change you want to see happen" idea. As "be the change you want to see in the world," this idea is usually attributed to Gandhi, but Buzzkill Institute historians and quote history experts have proved over and over again that it started with Arleen Lorrance in 1970!

The "proximity fuse" was a technological marvel of its time. Produced under enormous time pressure and urgency to save lives, it is often called one of the three most important technological advances that helped win World War II. Award-winning author Jamie Holmes talks to us about it and his new book, 12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventory, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon.

Did Hitler disarm the German citizenry as a way to make it easy to control them? Were Jews and other minorities targeted for gun confiscation so that they could be exterminated? Professor Philip Nash explains this _very_ complicated issue, and busts many myths about Hitler and "gun control."

It's hard to be a bigger POS than Ante Pavelic, the fascist ultranationalist and dictator who was one of the worst war criminals in Europe during the 1930s and 1940. The Nazi SS even tried to rein in his excesses! Professor Nash explains all! BTW, it's a brutal episode, so don't let the Buzzlings listen.

Dr. Julia Rose Kraut explains the history of American laws used to bar or expel foreigners based on their beliefs and associations.  Immigration history is more complicated than most of us think. Listen and learn!

Professor Ann Tucker explains that white American southerners closely analyzed European nationalist movements 1830-1860. This led them to conceive of a separate southern nation, and helped them try to defend and legitimize the Confederacy. This great episode presents a new angle on Confederate nationalism, and refutes the myth that southern enslavers were intellectually isolated and ignorant of the trends of the time.