Softcore History

By Softcore History

What's Softcore History about?

A podcast for the casual fan of history. The Wikipedia reader. The kids who grew up with a dad who watched the same 10 hours of World War II specials on The History Channel. Join Dan Regester, Rob Fox, and Jake Goldman as they tastefully insert themselves into the past. The only thing we don’t show is our research.

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Softcore History episodes:

04.29.2024
Drowning In Alcohol
In celebration of reaching 1,000 reviews on Apple Podcasts, and perhaps in a bit of method podcast hosting, Dan Regester attempts to tell the story of The London Beer Flood of 1814 while flooding his own body with a mixture...
04.22.2024
Never Meet Your (Communist) Heroes
Malcolm Caldwell was a professor at the University of London who loved two things: Communism, and publicly cheerleading Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia. The latter, he insisted, was a beacon of hope for humanity and definitely not killing people by...
04.15.2024
The Man Who Made Baby Boomers Insufferable
Thomas Midgley Jr. revolutionized the U.S. auto industry in the early 1900s. But, he may have also been responsible for a violent mid-century American crime wave and lowered IQs across the world. Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of...
04.08.2024
The Worst Man To Ever Live
Hong Xiuquan was the leader of the Taiping Rebellion that killed over 30 million people, the self-proclaimed celestial brother of Jesus Christ, and an inspirational figure to future chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong. He (initally) had the...
04.01.2024
Modern History's First Great Sex Cult
The Agapemonites were a Victorian religious cult that checked all the boxes. A leader who thought he was God and also immortal and needed multiple wives? Check, check, and check. A way to separate idiots from their money and possessions?...
03.25.2024
The Most Haunted Beach In America
In 1565 both the French and Spanish were competing to establish a colonial presence on Florida's east coast. That competition came to a quick and violent head (you'll see what we did there) and now the site of their confrontation...
03.18.2024
Turning Criminals Into A Hit Squad? What Could Go Wrong!
Unit 684 was a secret group created by the South Korean Air Force in 1968 tasked with assasinating North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. After three brutal years training on a remote island and suffering multiple executions at the hands...
03.11.2024
A Brief History of Butt Medicine
From ancient drug enemas to World War 1 era, steampunk-esque prostate vibrators, the history of doctors trying to treat what ails a man through his butt is as long as it is weird and gross and, quite often, extremely unfortunate....
03.04.2024
The Fall Of Rome Is Why You Have A "Landlord"
Hate landlords? You can thank Rome for them. (Just kidding, you'd be paying someone to live on their property either way you bastards, but you just might not call them "landlord.") Either way, the fall of the Western Roman Empire...
02.26.2024
The Donner Party's Descent Into Cannibalism
The Donner-Reed Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated west to California in a wagon train and slowly tumbled into madness after months of mishaps, moronic moves, and murder. After a "shortcut" added weeks to their journey, the...
02.19.2024
The Mother of Mexicans
Though Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés is credited with conquering the Aztec Empire the conquest might actually be thanks to his native female interpreter and first baby mama, La Malinche. The Indian noblewoman, who was sold into slavery as a child...
02.12.2024
How Humans Became Wheat Puppets
Did human beings domesticate wheat? Or did wheat domesticate humans? We dive into the long history of humanity's relationship with the plant and how we ultimately went from eating wild wheat to baking bread and conquering the planet.Subscribe to the...
02.05.2024
The Nepo Baby Who Possibly Stole An Election
John Quincy Adams was the 6th president of the United States who won his election in controversial fashion over Andrew Jackson in 1824. He spent his youth gallivating around Europe on his daddy's dime, helped author the Monroe Doctirine as...
01.29.2024
Making Animals Answer For Their Crimes
Justice is blind. So blind, apparently, that it doesn't mind if pigs, rats, statues, and other non-human entities are brought to trial. This is the history of the trials of animals and inanimate objects held over the centuries. The charges...
01.22.2024
The History of Pirate Mardi Gras
Tampa Bay’s Gasparilla Pirate Festival is a huge city holiday and boasts the third-largest annual parade in the United States. It’s also a drunken, pirate-themed, rage fest based on a lie. Learn about its history as a holiday, Jake and...
01.15.2024
Harry Houdini's War With The Afterlife
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, actor, and aviator who beefed with spirit mediums and psychics throughout the early 20th century. He went from poor immigrant slumming it with his family in Wisconsin to an international superstar traveling...
01.08.2024
This Pope Hated The Second Amendment
At the Second Council of the Lateran in 1139, Pope Innocent II banned Christians from using ranged weapons against other Christians under threat of excommunication. Was this to disarm the peasantry whose primary combat weapon was bows and arrows? Or...
01.03.2024
The Demon Bear Who Terrorized Japan
During a snow storm in December of 1915, an incredibly intelligent Enzo brown bear launched a series of attacks on dozens of residents in a small Japanese town. The Sankebetsu incident is regarded as the worst animal attack in Japanese...
12.26.2023
Who Is The Better Father?
Jake and Dan compete in a historical parenting advice quiz to determine who would be the better father. Enjoy this FREE Softcore History Patreon preview and Merry Christmas to all our Softies out there.Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for...
12.18.2023
Christmas Is For Settling Scores
Takanakuy is an annual Christmas tradition where residents of Santo Tomás, Peru call out neighbors they believe have wronged them throughout the year to physical combat. With no court houses in this community tucked away high up in the Andes...
12.11.2023
The Worst Botched Executions In History
Being executed for your crimes is never fun but throughout history, some executions have been much, MUCH worse than others. Specifically, the executions that did NOT go as planned. From beheadings that needed way too many swings of the ax...
12.04.2023
Kissinger Kept You Safe (And Put Everyone Else In Danger)
Henry Kissinger was a pragmatic statesman above all else. Unfortunately, he was also German and, as such, his pragmatism took a lot of dark, destructive turns. His Cold War policy eschewed ideology (and any morsel of morality that might have...
11.27.2023
Diary Of A 16th Century Executioner
Franz Schmidt was a seasoned civil servant killer who hung, decapitated, drowned, burned alive, and crippled criminals' spirits and bodies on the breaking wheel as the head hangman in Nuremberg for 45 years during the Renaissance. He kept a diary...
11.20.2023
Did Osama bin Laden Have A Point? (No.)
Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People” recently went viral on TikTok because random Gen Z’ers thought the terrorist architect of 9/11 made some… pretty good points? The actual contents of the letter, however, range from insane to...
11.13.2023
The Drug-Fueled Cults Christianity Stole From
Learn about the mystery cults that dominated the religious landscape right before Christianity took off in the Greco-Roman world. From fraternity-style initiations to hallucinatory beverages that made you see gods and think you were dead, these cults sounded... pretty fun?Subscribe...
11.06.2023
The Order Of Assassins
For 200 years a radical group of stone cold killers high on opium and hash living in an eagle's nest fortress in Persia terrorized Muslim and Crusade leaders alike. Hasan-i Sabbah, the "Old Man in the Mountain" led an often...
10.30.2023
The Real Witches Shakespeare Ripped Off
There's nothing like the thrill of the hunt, and for King James of Scotland and England, his favorite prey was witches. This is the story of the North Berwick Witch Trials in late 16th-century Scotland, which were inspired almost entirely...
10.23.2023
You Won't Believe This 10-Year-Old Girl's Body Count
Mary Bell was a child murderer, in that she was a literal 10-year-old child when she began murdering, and because her victims were children even younger than her. Learn about one of England's most horrifying murder cases as our hosts...
10.16.2023
The Villisca Axe Murders
A small Iowa town was shook to its core in the summer of 1912 after six members of a local affluent family and two of their guests were brutally murdered with an axe inside the comfort of their own home....
10.13.2023
Gaza Has Never Belonged To Anyone Who Lives There
Who does Gaza really belong to? Or Israel/Palestine in general? It's sort of hard to say since the people native to that area have basically NEVER been in charge of it. From the Bronze Age to the end of World...
10.09.2023
The Witch Who Deserved Her Trial
Throughout history, women accused of witchcraft have been wrongly executed. Mary Bateman, known as the Yorkshire Witch, was not one of those women. She absolutely earned her date with the hangman.Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of hours...
10.02.2023
How To Train Your Demon
Halloween Horror Month kicks off with a detailed look at how the ancient ruler of Israel King Solomon learned to summon demons, the time he got sent to horny jail by God, and the corporate hierarchy of hell. Subscribe to...
09.25.2023
The Violent Life And Dejected Death Of Geronimo
Geronimo was seen as both the last great defender of the Native American way of life and a stubborn, savage holdout who put Apache lives in danger in the name of revenge. His life was a rollercoast ride of peaks...
09.18.2023
How Hollywood Killed Your Dad’s Favorite Comedian
Long before the first SAG strike, Hollywood’s working conditions and lack of fair pay weren't just questionable, they were INSANE. So bad, in fact, that it helped lead to the early death of Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, who...
09.11.2023
The Emo Christians Who Thought God Was A Poser
This week, learn about the ancient belief system of Gnosticism, its insane creation myth, and the lion serpent that keeps us all entrapped in a material hell.Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of hours of extra history content...
09.05.2023
The Brutally Metal Deaths Of Catholic Saints
From having their skin flayed off with knives to arena bears and school children ripping limbs clean off their body, sainthood typically meant dying in the most horrific and torturous ways possible. You probably didn't hear about these stories in...
08.28.2023
No One Will Remember You
The Zanj Rebellion — an African slave uprising in modern Iraq from 869 AD TO 883 AD during the reign of the Abbasid Caliphate — was a massively consequential event for arguably the world’s most powerful empire at the time...
08.21.2023
Venetians Loved Touching Tips
Armed with nothing more than sharpened sticks, thousands of Venetian tradesman would battle each other on bridges for glory and the entertainment of their fellow citizens. Learn about this violent pastime that lasted hundreds of years, and how the sport...
08.14.2023
The California Water Wars
As Los Angeles expanded during the late 19th century, it began outgrowing its water supply. So, city officials decided to build a pipeline north and slurp up all the precious snow melt from the Sierra Nevadas bleeding Owens Valley dry....
08.07.2023
Too Rich To Be Gay
Despite it being socially acceptable (and encouraged) for men to sleep with other men, the sexual environment in Ancient Rome was absolutely NOT liberated or healthy, especially if you were poor, or a woman, or liked oral.Subscribe to the Softcore...
07.31.2023
The Great American Bar Tab
After signing the U.S. Constitution in 1787 the Founding Fathers hit the bars and left a tab for the ages. By our count, America's founders averaged about 20 drinks per man. Plus we break down some other notable party tabs...
07.24.2023
Rome's Greatest Enemy
Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian general during the Second Punic War against Rome and considered one of the greatest military minds of his time. He took an army of 90,000 soldiers and 40 war elephants and marched across the Pyrenees...
07.17.2023
The Unluckiest D-Day Paratroopers With Saving Private Ryan Star Max Martini
Saving Private Ryan star Max Martini joins the show to talk about his experience filming one of the greatest historical movies of all time and we tell the stories of the unluckiest paratroopers who dropped into France the night before...
07.10.2023
The Serial Killer Who Thought He Was A Cowboy
John Wesley Hardin was a 19th-century serial killer who cosplayed as an Old West outlaw. He was a degenerate gambler with an impulsive trigger finger for anyone who disrespected him, the Republic of Texas, or the sanctity of sleep. He...
07.02.2023
Two Dumb Reasons The American Revolution Happened
A number of noble ideas and beliefs inspired the American Revolution. But history is layered. And full of morons. In this episode, we focus on two such morons: a banker/gambling addict whose financial ethics (and judiciousness) almost single-handedly precipitated a...
06.26.2023
Oppenheimer Was A Real Weird Dude
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, smoked four packs a day, enjoyed drinking cocktails made with pure ethanol, was hazed mercilessly at summer camp, and grew up loving rocks. In short, he was kind of a huge...
06.19.2023
The Real Indiana Jones Was Good Will Hunting Meets Jurassic Park
Roy Chapman Andrews, the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, led a series of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in China and famously first discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs. Andrews also died almost a dozen times while fighting off bandits, a horde...
06.12.2023
The Time Love Lost
Can love really conquer all? The stunningly beautiful, 19th Century French socialite and heiress Blanche Monnier, whose mother locked her in an attic for 25 years so that she wouldn’t marry a poor man, would probably say no.Subscribe to the...
06.05.2023
The Pennsylvania Tsunami That Was Armed And On Fire
What happened when Andrew Carnegie and his robber baron friends made a few cosmetic adjustments to an important dam to upgrade the aesthetics of their fishing club? Just the Johnstown Flood, the most violent flood in American history.Subscribe to the...
05.30.2023
The Other Book of Mormon
Is Brigham Young REALLY the heir to Joseph Smith? After Smith was killed in 1844 there was not one but TWO claimants to lead the Mormon Church. The other would-be Polygamy Pope was James Strang, a lawyer and self-described "cool...

What's Softcore History about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Softcore History episodes:

Drowning In Alcohol

Never Meet Your (Communist) Heroes

The Man Who Made Baby Boomers Insufferable

The Worst Man To Ever Live

Modern History's First Great Sex Cult

The Most Haunted Beach In America

Turning Criminals Into A Hit Squad? What Could Go Wrong!

A Brief History of Butt Medicine

The Fall Of Rome Is Why You Have A "Landlord"

The Donner Party's Descent Into Cannibalism

The Mother of Mexicans

How Humans Became Wheat Puppets

The Nepo Baby Who Possibly Stole An Election

Making Animals Answer For Their Crimes

The History of Pirate Mardi Gras

Harry Houdini's War With The Afterlife

This Pope Hated The Second Amendment

The Demon Bear Who Terrorized Japan

Who Is The Better Father?

Christmas Is For Settling Scores

The Worst Botched Executions In History

Kissinger Kept You Safe (And Put Everyone Else In Danger)

Diary Of A 16th Century Executioner

Did Osama bin Laden Have A Point? (No.)

The Drug-Fueled Cults Christianity Stole From

The Order Of Assassins

The Real Witches Shakespeare Ripped Off

You Won't Believe This 10-Year-Old Girl's Body Count

The Villisca Axe Murders

Gaza Has Never Belonged To Anyone Who Lives There

The Witch Who Deserved Her Trial

How To Train Your Demon

The Violent Life And Dejected Death Of Geronimo

How Hollywood Killed Your Dad’s Favorite Comedian

The Emo Christians Who Thought God Was A Poser

The Brutally Metal Deaths Of Catholic Saints

No One Will Remember You

Venetians Loved Touching Tips

The California Water Wars

Too Rich To Be Gay

The Great American Bar Tab

Rome's Greatest Enemy

The Unluckiest D-Day Paratroopers With Saving Private Ryan Star Max Martini

The Serial Killer Who Thought He Was A Cowboy

Two Dumb Reasons The American Revolution Happened

Oppenheimer Was A Real Weird Dude

The Real Indiana Jones Was Good Will Hunting Meets Jurassic Park

The Time Love Lost

The Pennsylvania Tsunami That Was Armed And On Fire

The Other Book of Mormon