World History by the Numbers
The History Fangirl Podcast
In this episode, I chat with Daniel Hoyer from Seshat about looking at history through a statistical lens. We discuss the and his new book, Figuring Out the Past: The 3,495 Vital Statistics that Explain World History. Let's Stay in Touch! You can join the conversation in our Facebook Group, , or come say hi on ! My Travel Websites - Culture & History Travel Guides in the USA, Europe, and Beyond - Balkan Travel Blog - Travel in Oklahoma & Route 66 The theme music for the podcast is "Places Unseen" by Lee Rosevere.
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Veliko Tarnovo: Bulgaria's Medieval Capital
The History Fangirl Podcast
In this episode, I chat with Eric Halsey from the Bulgarian History Podcast about the hidden gem of Veliko Tarnovo. This once-important Bulgarian city is one of the most picturesque in Europe, and yet not many outside of Bulgaria know much about it. You can find Eric's podcast Let's Stay in Touch! You can join the conversation in our Facebook Group, , or come say hi on ! More on Veliko Tarnovo: If you are planning to visit Veliko Tarnovo, here are our Veliko Tarnovo travel guides. My Travel Websites - Culture & History Travel Guides in the USA, Europe,...
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Stalking Chernobyl
The History Fangirl Podcast
Yes, it's been two years, and for that I'm very sorry! But I'm back with new episodes next week. In the meantime, enjoy this interview on Chernobyl I did a few weeks ago with Darmon Richter, the author of the new book Chernobyl, a Stalker's Guide. The theme music for the podcast is "Places Unseen" by Lee Rosevere.
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The Great Kazakh Famine
The History Fangirl Podcast
On today’s episode of the History Fangirl Podcast, we talk with renowned travel blogger Megan Starr, whom we spoke to a few months back about Kiev. But this week, we’re talking in person, in Kazakhstan, at the site of the memorial to the Great Kazakh Famine, a historical event which not many people know about in the West but looms large in the history of Kazakhstan. And, we both have recovered from the Kazakhstani flu that has been going around, so we’re ready to get rolling!
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The World Nomad Games
The History Fangirl Podcast
This week’s episode is something a little different. I am in Isyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan, covering the World Nomad Games, a festival of sports that’s sort of like the Olympics for nomadic peoples. The sports, though, are way more interesting than, say, basketball. My first interview this episode is with the co-captain of the American Kok Boru team (I’ll explain later), and the sports include horse archery, tug of war, arm wrestling and more.
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The Massacre at Srebrenica
The History Fangirl Podcast
Last year, Alex Cruikshanks came on the show to talk about Belgrade, a really detailed and wide-ranging episode. And we had such a great time, he’s back again to talk about more recent history in Yugoslavia, specifically the brutal massacre at Srebrenica. Yugoslavia, as anyone who was alive in the 1990s knows, was falling apart in the early part of the decade. The Bosnian War was raging, and in 1995, some 8,000 Bosniaks, mostly men and boys, were killed.
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The Strangely Competitive History of the CN Tower
The History Fangirl Podcast
Every city has that one landmark that seems like a tourist trap and practically begs you not to visit. For me, that was the CN Tower in Toronto. I didn’t go near it the first time I visited the city, and the second time, this past July, I planned to steer clear. But it turns out the joke was on me, as the CN Tower is an amazing building with a funny, competitive and ingenious bit of Canadian history.
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Traveling the Green Book
The History Fangirl Podcast
In the first half of the 20th century, the automobile became a symbol of freedom to American families. Middle-class families able to afford their own car were no longer restricted to train or bus timetables, and the great American road trip was born. But for black Americans, this new freedom collided with old hatred, prejudices and dangers. African Americans began using “the Green Book,” a guide to places that were friendly to them along their journey.
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The Best of The History Fangirl Podcast's First Year
The History Fangirl Podcast
We did it! Next week will mark a full year of publishing The History Fangirl Podcast, and this week marks the 50th episode, so it felt like the right time to do a retrospective of the first 12 months of the show. My producer picked a handful of his favorite clips (it was too hard for me to pick!) from the past year, and so this episode looks back on some of the fun and fascinating stories my amazing guests have told.
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Philadelphia's Elfreth's Alley
The History Fangirl Podcast
Philadelphia is by far one of my favorite American cities. I used to live there and run a photo-a-day website there, and it’s one of the best cities to live in if you’re a history buff. On today’s episode, we talk about the amazing Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continually lived-on residential street in the country (hard to fit that on a title belt, but still pretty cool). I had the chance to take a tour of the street with the Elfreth’s Alley Association’s Board Member Brittany Thomas.
info_outlineIf you’ve ever been to New York City, there’s a good chance you traveled through Penn Station at some point. And then you instantly regretted it. On today’s episode, my guest is Greg Young of the famous Bowery Boys podcast, and we talk about the sad history of Penn Station, and what it can mean for the rest of the country, not just New York City. And while the story of Penn Station is sad, Greg promises to wrap it up in an optimistic, or hopeful, package. Does he succeed? You’ll have to listen to this week’s episode to find out.
The early days of Penn Station
After sharing my Penn Station horror story (many New Yorkers and visitors have one or a dozen), Greg and I chatted about the early days of the transit hub, which didn’t always double as hell on Earth. These days, the station sits beneath Madison Square Garden, which opened in 1968. But that wasn’t always the case. Greg told me about the original design of the station, which opened in 1910 as the fourth-largest building in the world, with beautiful colonnades and shopping arcades and a beautiful concourse for catching a train. And what’s more, it had tons of natural light, something that the modern-day, underground Penn Station eschews like a vampire. But one fascinating bit of information Greg shared: How impressionist painter Mary Cassatt influenced Penn Station’s design.
Why New Yorkers stopped caring about Penn Station
What’s fascinating about this time is that Penn Station was sort of the crown jewel of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest rail line in the country. But just a couple years later, the Vanderbilt family, which owned the New York Central Railroad, built Grand Central Station. And the ownership of these enormously important landmarks by private companies may have paved while the way for their construction, as we see with Penn Station, it also contributed to its downfall. Greg told me about how both the automobile industry and the airline industry forced rail to take a nosedive, and dragged down the grandeur of rail stations with it. And as the stations fell into disrepair, New Yorkers used them less and less, and cared about them less and less.
Madison Square Garden and Penn Station
As you may know, in the middle of the 20th century, New York City hit financial hard times, and the railroads were no different. Penn Station, not being in the center of New York, Greg told me, really bore the brunt of the financial struggles of the city, whereas Grand Central benefited from being in the center of town. So in the 1950s, in an effort to revitalize the station and the area, the city announced it would tear down the station but keep the railroad infrastructure below it intact, and then build something above it that would benefit from the railway. That became Madison Square Garden, and Penn Station became the underground place no one wants to visit.
JPenn Station and the landmark movement
As Greg tells me, the movement to mark buildings as landmarks and preserve the city’s history was just getting started when the news that Penn Station would be torn down was released. There were no laws on the books to protect old buildings, no landmarks commission. There was a small but powerful group standing up to the city, but it wasn’t a fight they could win. In fact, Greg says Penn Station is often considered the sacrificial lamb to the cause of historic preservation, because after it was torn down, people saw what they had lost. that This was a really fun episode with a guest who helped further my love of history before I ever talked with him.
Outline of This Episode
- [4:10] Penn Station’s early days
- [8:53] Cassatt and Penn Station
- [15:00] The decline of railroads
- [21:17] Reaction to the station being torn down
- [27:45] Sacrificial lamb
- [30:50] Landmarking process
Resources Mentioned
Connect With Stephanie
Featuring the song “Places Unseen” by Lee Rosevere.
More info and photographs for this episode at:
https://historyfangirl.com/penn-station-sacrificial-lamb/