After Gilbert and Sullivan, a wave of American writers made the musical truly their own and created what is now called "The American Songbook." Learn how America's racist past met with new ideas about society and set us on the path to the modern musical.

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Americans by and large are unhappy with our parties and our government. But with a few structural changes, we could bring our political system back from the brink of collapse. 

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Most polar explorers survived while nearly all hauling animals died on polar expeditions. Why did Robert F. Scott die in the antarctic and what does it have to do with eating dogs?

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In many times and places, there were more than two options when it came to gender. Eunuchs no longer exist as a class but nonbinary people are starting to assert their identity. What can we learn from nonbinary people of the past?

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Part 1 of 2. For most of history, eunuchs were an integral part of imperial administration. Who were eunuchs and what can we learn about gender in politics from them?

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We have been quarantining since before the invention of germ theory. Why do we quarantine and what can we learn from pandemics of the past?

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Over the 20th Century, superconspiracy theories have infiltrated the American political discourse, particularly on the right. This process reached its climax in the election of our first openly conspiracist president, Donald Trump. This episode explores the history of conspiracy theories in America from Henry Ford to Pat Robertson to Donald Trump.

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What is a conspiracy theory? Where do they come from? Why does my grandma keep posting them on Facebook? This is the story of how fringe theories conquered the mainstream.

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In 1953 the Canadian government relocated Inuit to the inhospitable far north. Why?

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Warning: this episode discusses sexual assault and racist depictions. In the 1870s, the comic opera made the jump into English and started the tradition that made Broadway and West End the theater capitols of the world. This episode takes a close look at the first step of that development: the work of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.

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