John Thorn ("Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game", Major League Baseball’s Official Historian) joins the show. We discuss the origins of baseball and the factors involved in shaping the game we know today.

Mark Cheathem (Associate Professor of History at Cumberland University, "Andrew Jackson, Southerner") joins the show. Andrew Jackson was an incredibly controversial and complex man. We discuss how Jackson's southern identity has largely been ignored up to the present and what that means.

Kieran Mulvaney (ESPN, HBO, "The Great White Bear") joins the show. We discuss Manny Pacquiao - Brandon Rios in Macau, recap the year in boxing, and what to expect headed into 2014.

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Andrew O'Shaughnessy ("The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire") joins the show. We discuss the Revolutionary War from the perspective of the men in charge for Great Britain.

John Ferling (Professor Emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia, “Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation”) joins the show. We discuss two of the most important Founding Fathers and their radically different opinions on government.

Edward Ball ("The Inventor and the Tycoon: The Inventor and the Tycoon: The Murderer Eadweard Muybridge, the Entrepreneur Leland Stanford, and the Birth of Moving Pictures") joins the show. We discuss the very unlikely friendship between the man who invented stop-motion photography and a robber baron.

Brett Martin ("Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution, From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad") joins the show. We discuss the recent crop of cable dramas that have dramatically changed the landscape of television.

Todd Denault ("A Season in Time: Super Mario, Killer, St. Patrick, the Great One, and the Unforgettable 1992-93 NHL Season") joins the show. We discuss an an all-time great hockey season, on the ice and off.

Adam Lazarus ("Best of Rivals: Joe Montana, Steve Young, and the Inside Story behind the NFL's Greatest Quarterback Controversy") joins the show. We discuss the incredible battle for the starting quarterback job during the San Francisco 49ers heyday.

Paul Collins (Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery) joins the show. We discuss how two rival Founding Fathers joined forces to defend a man in a murder trial at the turn of the nineteenth century.