History on Fire

EPISODE 14 - Ted Roosevelt (Part 2): The Strenuous Life

“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not ... of superiority but of weakness.” 
— Theodore Roosevelt 

He was the first American to receive a brown belt in Judo. 
He won the largest perc...

EPISODE 13 - Ted Roosevelt (Part 1): The Rough Rider And His Demons

“You must still have chaos in yourself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“History as well as life itself is complicated—neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.” — Jared Diamond

He was the first American to receive a brown belt in Judo. 
He won the largest percentage of the vote ever by a third-party candidate.
He once took a bullet to the chest shot a...

Episode 12 - Caravaggio (Part 2): Folsom Prison Blues

During a visit to a church in Sicily, a priest offered Caravaggio “holy water”. Caravaggio asked the old priest what it was for. “It will cancel your venial sins, my son,” replied the priest. “Then it’s no use—Caravaggio commented—My sins are all mortal.” 

Giles Lambert about Caravaggio and his friends “They provoked the Papal police, hung around with the many Roman women of easy virtue, drank excessively and frightened the bourgeoisie.”

He was the greatest art...

Episode 11 - Caravaggio (Part 1): Light & Darkness

During a visit to a church in Sicily, a priest offered Caravaggio holy water. Caravaggio asked the old priest what it was for. “It will cancel your venial sins, my son,” replied the priest. “Then it’s no use—Caravaggio commented—My sins are all mortal.”

Gilles Lambert about Caravaggio and his friends: “They provoked the Papal police, hung around with the many Roman women of easy virtue, drank excessively and frightened the bourgeoisie.”

He was the greatest artist of his...

Episode 10 - Crazy Horse (Part 4)

“In your presence they feel small, and their baseness glimmers and glows against you with hidden vengeance.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“Let me go, my friend—you have hurt me enough.”
— Crazy Horse 

In this last chapter of the Crazy Horse series, we’ll see Crazy Horse hunting miners in the Black Hills, a Lakota leader shaking hands with one hand while holding his guts in with the other, fighting at Slim Buttes, cutting horses ope...

Episode 9 - Crazy Horse (Part 3)

“Hold on, my friends! Be strong! Remember the helpless! This is a good day to die!”
— Crazy Horse 

Everything we have seen so far in Crazy Horse’s life was a warm-up. In Episode 9, things really heat up: leadership, a legend in intertribal warfare, a bison apocalypse, Black Buffalo Woman, a bullet in the face, heartbreak sets up home in Crazy Horse’s tepee, drowning pain into an ocean of blood, taking on the Northern Pacific Railroad, round one with George Armstrong ...

Episode 8 - Crazy Horse (Part 2)

“There were many bullets, but there were more arrows—so many that it was like a cloud of grasshoppers all above and around the soldiers”
— Fire Thunder

In Episode 8, we pause the blow by blow narration of Crazy Horse’s life to focus on the larger context: the war between Lakota & Cheyenne and the United States in the mid-1860s. In this episode: things heat up with battles at Platte River Station and Red Buttes, “the yellow metal that makes the wasichus crazy”, jus...

Episode 7 - Crazy Horse (Part 1)

You Don’t Get to Be a Legend by Being Normal

"What good is power if you cannot protect the ones you love?" muses Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. I can’t think of a more appropriate question to discuss the life of 19th century Lakota hero Crazy Horse. His undeniable power as a warrior, in fact, didn’t spare him from having tragedy visit him time and time again. Taking place against the backdrop of the Lakota-U.S. conflict in the second half of the 1800s, his life was the qui...

Episode 6 - The Duel

On July 11, 1804, the vice-president of the United States (Aaron Burr) and the first Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton) decided to settle their grievances by drawing their pistols and trying to shoot each other dead. This is the story of the events leading Burr and Hamilton to stop exchanging words and begin exchanging lead. Also in this episode: the good old days when killing people in a duel was no obstacle to gaining high political office (just ask Andrew Jackson), Abraham Lincoln...

Episode 3 - The Iceman

This episode focuses on one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the late 20th century: the oldest, fully preserved human body ever found. The man emerged from the ice in the Alps over 5,000 years after his death. The more archaeologists discovered about him, the more haunting the mystery of his fate became. This is a tale of murder, Neolithic battles, the possibly European origins of acupuncture, the best mountain climber who ever lived, Brad Pitt’s tattoo, and one of the oldest cold...

Episode 2 - The Slave Wars (Part 2)

One of the most legendary characters in history comes to visit us in this episode: Spartacus was an auxiliary soldier in the Roman army, a deserter, an outlaw, a gladiator, and the leader of one of the greatest slave rebellions in history. Under his leadership, over 70,000 people defeated the Roman legions multiple times. This episode features mass crucifixions, Dionysian orgies, a master course in guerrilla warfare, walls built with corpses, the most brutal punishment in military history, pirat...

Episode 1 - The Slave Wars (Part 1)

In the space of a few decades, three major slave wars threatened the Roman Republic. In this episode, we see how the greed of land speculators, tax collectors and slave owners unleashed an orgy of bloodshed as tens of thousands of escaped slaves went to battle against Rome’s armies. Part I of this story covers the first two of the servile wars, and features political intrigues, fire-breathing Syrian prophets, cannibalism, love struck aristocrats arming their slaves, and heroic mass suicides. 2017-09-21 16:46:22 +0000 UTC View Post

Episode 20 - The (Mesoamerican) Godfather

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” — Mario Puzo

“Grant me revenge!” — Conan the Barbarian, 1982

“I am immortal” — Nezahualcoyotl

As I was researching the Spaniards’ invasion of the Mexica (aka Aztec) empire, I run into this little nugget of a story, which predates the arrival of the Spaniards. This is basically a real historical version of what would happen if we were to mix the plot of The Godfather with the plot of The Lion...