We made it to our one-year anniversary! To celebrate 26 episodes of Stonedhenge, we decided to bust out the dab rig and get ridiculously high while talking about the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.

Teddy Roosevelt's life reads like a season of television written by an overexcited golden retriever with a history degree. Travis walks us through TR's unhinged biography.

We cover:

The Strenuous Life: How a sickly, asthmatic child decided to defeat weakness through boxing, lifting weights, and pure personality volume.

The Cowboy Expansion Pack: How Teddy lost his mother and his wife on the exact same day in 1884, and decided to process his grief by moving to the Dakota Badlands to become a rugged rancher.

The Haunted Reform Goblin: Teddy's time as the New York Police Commissioner, where he spent his nights prowling the foggy streets to catch lazy cops.

The USS Maine: Tom derails the Spanish-American War timeline to explain his theory that the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor was an absolute cover-up.

In the studio: Tom tells a terrifying story about taking a massive dab off a three-foot fly strip at a flow festival, and Travis recalls his nightmare job and having to do dabs while working customer service during COVID

Everything you learned from that Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai isn't entirely accurate.

In this episode, we are tracking the real history of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 and the incredibly chaotic fall of Japan's warrior class. We cover:

• The Panic Move: How Commodore Matthew Perry arriving with gunboats forced Japan to modernize at insane speeds.

• Emotional Arson: How the new Meiji government abolished domains and replaced samurai stipends with bonds. This was essentially "emotional arson with a filing cabinet".

• The Sword Ban: How the government passed the Haitorei Edict, making the samurai's public costume, resume, and personality completely illegal.

• The Meat Grinder: The Battle of Tabaruzaka, where Saigo Takamori’s samurai workshop went up against the Meiji government's industrial factory.

  
  

In the studio: Travis struggles with his Japanese pronunciations, and Tom perfectly sums up the rebellion by comparing a samurai fighting a modern military to tackling a mountain with a screwdriver.

Listen to Stonedhenge—History for people who hated history class. 💨🎙️

In this episode, we track the final, paranoid years of Alexander the Third of Macedon. We cover:

• The Drunken Boss: How Alexander adopted Persian court styles and ended up killing the man who previously saved his life, Cletus the Black, with a spear during a drunken argument.

• War Elephants: Alexander's push into the Indian subcontinent, where he fought King Porus and had to figure out how to defeat terrifying war elephants at the Battle of Hydaspes.

• Naming Rights: Alexander's habit of naming basically everything Alexandria, until he decided to name an entire city after his favorite horse, Bukafalais.

• Ultimate Employee Burnout: How Alexander's undefeated army finally reached their limit at the Bees River and absolutely refused to march any further east.

• The Spiteful Walk Home: How a pouting Alexander led his men on a disastrous return march through the Gedrosian desert, where many died from thirst and heat exhaustion.

In the studio: Travis compares disagreeing with Alexander to a mandatory safety training video for a monarchy, and Tom realizes that Alexander is basically just a drunk Uncle coming to Thanksgiving Dinner

Listen to Stonedhenge—History for people who hated history class. 💨🎙️

Alexander the Great built the massive Macedonian Empire by age 30 and died by 32. But as we find out today, being a "Great" figure in ancient history mostly just meant having an incredibly impressive blast radius.

In this episode, we track the chaotic and violent military campaigns of Alexander the Third of Macedon. We cover:

• Macedonian Military Logistics: How his dad, Philip II, built a war machine with extra-long spears, only to get shanked at a royal wedding.

• Conquering the Persian Empire: How a 20-year-old Alexander took the throne, burned the city of Thebes, and chased Kings off the battlefield before kidnapping their family.

• The Gordian Knot & Cleitus the Black: Alexander’s unhinged habit of solving ancient puzzles by force, and the ultimate betrayal of the man who saved his life.

In the studio: Tom compares conquering ancient Asia to a stubborn farmer defending his property with a double-barrel shotgun, and Travis explains the dangers of handing a military empire to a gifted child.

Listen to Stonedhenge—History for people who hated history class. 💨🎙️

If you know King Richard the Lionheart, you probably know him as the "good" king from the Robin Hood movies who was off fighting the Crusades while his evil brother John took over. But the real history of Richard is way more complicated and absolutely wild.

In this episode, we are digging into the real King Richard the Lionheart—a man who reigned as King of England for 10 years, but spent only about six months actually in England. We cover:

• The Medieval Family Feud: How Richard spent his early years constantly rebelling against his own father, Henry II, and teaming up with geopolitical enemies just to ruin his dad's day.

• The Facebook Marketplace King: How Richard immediately started selling off English offices, rights, and privileges to fund his Crusades, essentially treating the country like a giant wallet.

• The Accidental Road Trip Conquest: How he casually conquered the island of Cyprus on his way to the Crusades just because some of his ships got stuck in a storm.

• The Dark Side of the Lionheart: We look at the brutal reality of the Crusades, from the massacre of Jewish communities in York to Richard’s ruthless execution of 2,700 Muslim prisoners after the siege of Acre.

In the studio: Tom reveals what he would name his own medieval castle, and Travis explains why Richard’s wife is famously known as the only Queen of England who may never have actually set foot in the country.

When we last left Hernán Cortés, he had taken an emperor hostage and everything had blown up in his face. In this episode, we are tracking the brutal and chaotic end of the Aztec Empire. We cover:

• The Sad Night: How the Spanish made a daring escape out of the city in the middle of the night , and how men literally drowned to death because they refused to drop the gold they had stolen.

• The Microscopic Conquistador: Why the deadliest weapon the Spanish brought was actually smallpox. The disease swept through the city, killing half of Tenochtitlan's inhabitants , including their new emperor.

• The Mountain Navy: How Cortés decided to have brigatines, which were small warships, built in pieces inland. He then carried them over land to Lake Texcoco, assembled them , and used them to pincher the locals on the causeways.

• The Ultimate Resume Editor: How Cortés wrote five lengthy letters to Charles V, the King of Spain, to spin his unauthorized actions. He framed his mass violence as "necessary pacification" and tried to convince the king that his insubordination was actually just an expansion of the king's domain.

In the studio: Tom cannot figure out why soldiers wouldn't just drop the gold to avoid drowning , and Travis reveals the universe briefly tried to stop Cortés from exploring by giving him syphilis in Hispaniola.

When Hernán Cortés sailed for the New World, he wasn’t just exploring...he was actively ignoring his boss and bringing "emotionally unstable men with swords" to a continent that had never seen them.

In this episode, we are tracking the absolutely chaotic, blood-soaked story of Spanish colonialism and the conquest of the Aztec Empire. We cover:

• Sinking the Ships: Why the famous "burn the ships" motivational speech is actually a lie, and how Cortés actually just "slightly wet the ships to death" to trap his own men into fighting.

• The Translator: The complicated true story of La Malinche (Melitza), the enslaved teenage girl who served as Cortés's interpreter, and why labeling her a "traitor" to her people is historically lazy.

• The 500-Man Myth: Why the idea that Cortés conquered the Aztecs with just 500 guys is essentially a movie trailer, completely ignoring the tens of thousands of indigenous Tlaxcalan allies who actually carried the war.

• The Hostage Crisis: How Cortés walked into the incredible island city of Tenochtitlan, was welcomed by the Emperor Moctezuma, and immediately pulled a "home invasion with legal stationery" by taking the Emperor hostage.

In the studio: Tom gets immediately derailed trying to figure out if conquistadors fought bulls, and Travis explains how Cortés managed to defeat the arrest squad sent by his own HR department—and then immediately hired them.

Listen to Stonedhenge—History for people who hated history class. 💨🎙️

Long before anyone was making movies about staring at goats, the US government panicked over a rumor and spent 20 years and millions of dollars trying to win a "psychic arms race" against the Soviet Union.

In this episode, we are tracking the absolutely unhinged history of Project Stargate and the CIA's remote viewing program. We cover:

• The Psychic Submarine: How a remote viewer accurately sketched the largest Soviet submarine in human history (the Typhoon-class) completely blind, and earned a secret Legion of Merit medal for it.

• The African Jungle Crash: The time a remote viewer found a missing Soviet TU-22 bomber with top-secret codes just by pointing at a random grid square on a map of Africa—a story completely confirmed by President Jimmy Carter.

• Platform 9 3/4: Why Major General Albert Stubblebine, the man commanding 16,000 US Army Intelligence soldiers, repeatedly gave himself bloody noses by sprinting face-first into his office wall trying to phase through the drywall.

• The 1984 Mars Mission: The 100% real, declassified CIA transcript where government officials paid a man to astral project to Mars in 1,000,000 BC to interview a dying race of tall aliens in tight clothing.

In the studio: Tom pulls up the actual declassified government documents to prove he isn't making this up , and Travis completely loses his mind trying to figure out why ancient Martian aliens speak English.

Long before the US was a global superpower, they were just a 30-year-old country that decided to pick a fight with the strongest navy in the world. Why? Because the British were essentially pulling a massive kidnapping spree and stealing American sailors right off their boats.

In this episode, we are tracking the absolute chaos of the War of 1812. We cover:

• Revolutionary War 2: Why the US thought it would be a great idea to steal America's "top hat" (Canada) , and how General William Hull surrendered Detroit without even putting up a fight.

  
  

• Old Ironsides & Privateers: How the USS Constitution was literally deflecting British cannonballs , and why the US government just gave civilians permission to take their own boats and start stealing British ships.

  
  

• The Accidental Anthem: The wild story of Francis Scott Key watching Fort McHenry get bombarded for 25 hours straight and inadvertently writing the American National Anthem.

  
  

• The Swamp Wars: Why Andrew Jackson and his troops fought the massive Battle of New Orleans a full two weeks after the peace treaty had already been signed.

  
  

In the studio: Tom gets his mind completely blown by the true origins of the National Anthem, and realizes the USS Constitution is the exact ship their buddy has tattooed on the back of his leg.

Long before competitive eating was a televised sport, getting kicked out of your parents' house for eating a quarter of a cow in a single day was just the start of the wildest medical mystery in French history.

In this episode, we are tracking the absolutely revolting life of Tarrare, the 18th-century human garbage disposal. We cover:

• The Traveling Sideshow: Why eating live puppies, swallowing entire baskets of apples, and chugging literal trash was considered peak entertainment before the internet.

  
  

• Weaponized Indigestion: The moment the French military looked at a guy who smelled terrible and ate stray animals, and decided he was the perfect covert spy to smuggle classified documents in his stomach.

  
  

• The Hospital Horror Story: The real reason you don't let a guy with a bottomless pit for a stomach hang around an 18th-century medical ward (spoiler: it ends with him trying to eat cadavers and being the primary suspect in a missing toddler case).

In the studio: Travis aggressively points and condescends while , and Tom physically tests if he can fit his own fist sideways in his mouth.

Grab a bucket. You're going to need it for this one.