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.
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While the History Fangirl Podcast has typically gone around the world to find the most fascinating stories, today we’re taking our eyes off the Earth and casting our gaze starward. Today’s guest is Valerie Stimac, an accomplished travel writer in her own right, who has started a unique site at spacetravelguide.com. While she isn’t quite making recommendations for the burgeoning field of travel into space, Valerie does specialize in covering travel destinations that are of interest to space geeks around the world. In this week’s episode we talk about the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, how Houston became such an important part of its mission, and what happened on the ground during the most dramatic moments in American space exploration.
We have liftoff
Valerie provides the Cliffs Notes version of NASA history in this week’s episode of the History Fangirl Podcast, starting with its founding in 1958, following President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. NASA started with a budget of about $100 million and three large facilities and two small research facilities. But in 1963, it was clear those facilities would not be able to handle all of the development that needed to happen (Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia you may remember from the movie Hidden Figures), which led to the establishment of what was eventually called Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Houston, we have a space center
When the U.S. federal government was looking for a city where they could build a mission-critical space center, it wasn’t too unlike the way corporations now search for their headquarters. They had various cities wooing them, and NASA factored in several different facets when conducting their search: it had to be near a big city, it had to be near a large university with resources for research, etc. And it had to be away from other NASA centers around D.C. and Florida. We couldn’t have all of our brain trust in one place for, well, safety reasons.
Phoning home
If you quote or paraphrase any astronaut (as I did above), you’re likely quoting mission control in Houston, or something an astronaut said to them. “Houston, the eagle has landed,” “Houston, we have a problem”; those are quotes from two different Apollo missions. As Valerie tells me in this episode, with all manned spacecraft being operated from Houston, some of the most iconic moments in space have filtered through Johnson Space Center. Of course Johnson is much more than mission control, there are numerous buildings in the complex that includes engineering and simulation and more, all of which can be called upon to help solve problems in space.
Mission control
The Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas is an amazing place that for the last 60 years has launched some of the most incredible feats of human ingenuity, and helped those feats stay on track once they’re out of our atmosphere. As Valerie tells me in this episode, you can actually visit the historic mission control center where NASA staffers on the ground kept Apollo astronauts in the heavens alive. But that’s just the beginning of what you can see there. It’s a truly rare historic site, and even if you don’t think of Houston as a historic city, the space center is a must-see.
Outline of This Episode
- [1:07] Why Valerie founded SpaceTourismGuide.com
- [5:39] Brief history of NASA
- [10:09] How Houston got a space center
- [16:03] Important historic events at Johnson
- [22:06] How Houston helped Apollo 13
- [27:16] How it became a tourist attraction
- [28:48]] What to see at the space center
Resources Mentioned
Connect With Stephanie
Featuring the song “Places Unseen” by Lee Rosevere.
More info and photographs for this episode at:
https://historyfangirl.com/space-tourism-in-houston-texas/