Conversations: The Horse and the Rise of Empires, w/ David Chaffetz
Release Date: 09/26/2025
The Osage Reign of Terror
History Shorts
In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world, thanks to oil discovered beneath their Oklahoma reservation. Then they began dying. Osage men and women were poisoned, shot, and killed in mysterious circumstances. Behind many of the deaths was a calculated conspiracy: murder Osage people, inherit their valuable oil headrights, and steal their fortunes. Local authorities repeatedly failed to stop it. Eventually, federal investigators arrived, and the case became one of the most important early investigations of what would become the FBI. But...
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The 1927 Bath School Disaster
History Shorts
On May 18, 1927, the small farming community of Bath, Michigan, suffered the deadliest school attack in American history. Explosives secretly planted beneath the local school detonated shortly after classes began, collapsing an entire section of the building. As parents, teachers, and neighbors desperately searched the rubble for survivors, another explosion struck nearby. By the end of the day, 38 children and six adults had been killed, with dozens more injured. The attack shocked the nation, yet the Bath School disaster has largely faded from American memory. SUPPORT THE...
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Inside the National WWI Museum, w/ Christopher Warren
History Shorts
Dr. Christopher Warren, Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, joins History Shorts for a full conversation about the Great War, memory, and why World War I still matters. The National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City is America’s official museum and memorial dedicated to the First World War. Visitors enter across a glass bridge over 9,000 poppies—each representing 1,000 combatant deaths—before encountering one of the world’s most important collections of objects, documents, and personal stories from 1914 to 1918 and...
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Battle of Blair Mt. and the Origins of 'Redneck'
History Shorts
In 1921, thousands of armed coal miners marched through the mountains of West Virginia. Many wore red bandanas around their necks—one historical association behind the term “redneck.” Their destination was Blair Mountain, where company-backed forces waited. What followed became the largest armed labor uprising in American history. For days, miners and defenders exchanged gunfire across the mountains while private aircraft dropped bombs. Eventually, federal troops arrived, and the miners surrendered rather than fight U.S. soldiers. SUPPORT THE SHOW: ...
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Ishi Walks Out of the Foothills
History Shorts
In August 1911, a starving man walked out of the foothills near Oroville, California—and into a world that believed his people had disappeared. He became known as Ishi, a member of the Yahi people whose community had been devastated by disease, displacement, and violence during California’s settlement. Ishi was taken to San Francisco, where anthropologists studied his language, traditions, and knowledge while he lived at the University of California’s museum. To the public, he became a sensation—the so-called “last wild Indian.” But behind that label was a man navigating profound...
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The Crazy 1904 St. Louis Olympic Marathon
History Shorts
The 1904 Olympic marathon may have been the strangest race in history. Runners battled brutal heat, choking dust, and almost no drinking water. One competitor was chased off course by wild dogs. Another stopped along the way to eat rotten apples. Then there was Thomas Hicks, whose trainers kept him moving with doses of strychnine, egg whites, and brandy. And the apparent winner? Fred Lorz crossed the finish line first—after riding roughly eleven miles in a car. Only 14 of 32 runners finished. SUPPORT THE SHOW: ADVERTISE: LEARN MORE: SPONSORED...
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The Truth About the Mad Queen of Madagascar
History Shorts
In 1828, Queen Ranavalona I took the throne of Madagascar—and began one of the most controversial reigns in African history. Determined to preserve Malagasy independence from growing European influence, Ranavalona expelled missionaries, restricted Christianity, resisted foreign powers, and fiercely defended traditional customs. Her methods could be brutal. Forced labor, military campaigns, executions, and the infamous tangena ordeal contributed to enormous suffering and population loss. European writers branded her the “Mad Queen of Madagascar,” portraying her as a bloodthirsty tyrant....
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Dearfield: A Microcosm of Great Depression's Ghost Towns
History Shorts
In 1910, Dearfield, Colorado, was founded on the High Plains as an agricultural community where Black Americans could build something largely denied to them elsewhere: land, independence, and economic opportunity. Against difficult odds, Dearfield grew. Families farmed the surrounding land, businesses opened, and the settlement became one of the most important Black homesteading communities in the American West. Then the economy collapsed. Drought, falling crop prices, and the Great Depression devastated the town. Residents left in search of work, farms were abandoned, and a community that had...
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The Poison Squad
History Shorts
At the turn of the twentieth century, America's food supply could be terrifying. Manufacturers routinely added chemicals and preservatives to food—with little regulation and few requirements to tell consumers what they were eating. So government chemist Harvey Wiley conducted an extraordinary experiment. Beginning in 1902, a group of young men volunteered to eat meals deliberately laced with substances like borax, formaldehyde, and salicylic acid. Newspapers gave them an unforgettable nickname: the Poison Squad. The volunteers were carefully monitored as Wiley gathered evidence about what...
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Fascism Didn’t Come From Europe, w/ Joseph Kelly
History Shorts
When Americans watched fascists march down Main Street in the 1930s, they told themselves it was a European import—new, foreign, un-American. Joseph Kelly says that story is wrong. In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818–1915, Kelly traces a homegrown political tradition from the Missouri crisis through a Southern police state and Jim Crow, then out across the nation after the Spanish-American War as Anglo-Saxon nationalism: the claim that this country belongs to a master race. By 1915, he argues, the Confederacy was gone. The lie had gone national. SUPPORT THE...
info_outlineIn this episode, we explore the remarkable impact of horses on human history with historian and author David Chaffetz. His newest book, Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires, traces the role of the horse as a catalyst for warfare, trade, and political power across civilizations. From the nomadic steppe raiders who reshaped Eurasia to the rise of powerful empires, Chaffetz reveals how these animals transformed the trajectory of human societies. Join us as we discuss the symbiosis between humans and horses, the evolution of cavalry, and the economic and cultural revolutions spurred by these magnificent creatures.
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