Does Facebook have a war on history? The answer is a simple no but the story is complicated. In this episode I am joined by author and reporter Peter Suciu on his article '"On Facebook, History Can Violate Community Standards." To quote the article * One thing that is often taught to students of history is that "history" didn't happen. Events happened in the past, but history is just our way of chronicling those events. There is also a saying that history is written by the winners, but that too isn't entirely accurate – if history were only written by the winners we'd never hear of the setba ..read more

In this episode we are joined by Dr. Eric Singleton who is the Curator of Ethnology at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum to talk about religion and tradition in the Ancient Mississippian World. We explore a variety of topics but first we define the geographic boundaries of the ancient Mississippians which covered large portions of the Midwest, South and South-East of what is now the USA. We go back into history into a time of Native American migration and cultural expansion and ponder whether or not these migrations played a role in the evolution of Mississippian Religion sim ..read more

In this episode I host Megan Lewis and Dr. Joshua Bowen from Digital Hammurabi on Dr. Bowens latest work "The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament" and I'd add to that by saying it is also a handbook to the ancient Near East itself in general. The Old Testament is a fierce battleground for atheists and Christian apologists, with each side accusing the other of taking challenging and troubling passages out of context. In this handbook, Joshua Bowen not only provides the background to the Old Testament and the ancient Near East, but engages with hotly contested topics like slavery, failed prop ..read more

On May 9, 1865, the American Civil War ended, or did it?  Historians acknowledge that exact starting and ending dates of wars are open to debate, and likewise, so are the causes and reasons those wars were fought.  In the case of the American Civil War, April 1861 to May 1865, the “cause” of Southern independence is a controversial and contentious subject even to this day.  The main debate centers on whether or not slavery, that “peculiar institution,” was the main cause of the war and the reason for fighting such a costly conflict.  Revisionist “historians” have tried migh ..read more

In this episode we are joined by the awesome YouTube channel host from Tipsyfish history to walk us through a complicated and controversial topic involving modern history and that is why did non slave owners support and fight for the Confederacy? It is easy to understand and see why slave owners would be concerned about the threat, real or imagined, that Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement posed to slavery.   But what about those Southerners who did not own slaves?  What about the lower class in the Confederate States? Why would they risk their livelihoods by leaving the ..read more

This is the second episode of a long series that we have titled "On the Fringe" where we host controversial guests and as the host play the "Devils Advocate" where we ask critical questions about their work, theories and etc. In this episode I host fringe archaeologist | theorist involving his claims of ancient advanced civilizations and technology. To begin I ask him to explain his views on ancient advanced technology and he goes into what he considers to be "machine" markings and drill holes and saw marks that in his view couldn't be done by a handsaw. I ask him to explain why he doesn't ..read more

This is the first episode of a long series that we have titled "On the Fringe" where we host controversial guests and as the host play the "Devils Advocate" where we ask critical questions about their work, theories and etc. In this episode we host Brien Foerster who has starred in Ancient Aliens on the History Channel and we explore the elongated skulls of Paracas Peru, the DNA of these skulls and the controversy surrounding his work and theories. For those not familiar with the subject elongated skulls are artificial cranial deformation or modification, head flattening, or head binding is ..read more

In this episode Spencer McDaniel from the Tales of Times Forgotten Blog joins us for a rebuttal of sorts aimed towards a controversial work by Catherine Nixey titled "The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World." We begin with Spencer explaining how his religious and educational background differs from Nixey’s and how this might be influencing this perspective. Spencer continues with where, on a general level, they disagree with Nixey’s framing. We explore if it’s true that early Christians did try to destroy certain kinds of writings and, if so, what kinds of writin ..read more

The Wolf King of Murcia: Ibn Mardanish and the Second Taifa Period in Eastern Al-Andalus. Before Game of Thrones was a thought in our imagination, literature and television there was man in medieval Iberia who would reshape trade, the borders of Kingdoms and would forever define the complicated relationship of Medieval Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval World. That man commonly known as El Rey Lobo or the Wolf King was officially known as Abu ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Mardanīš. Surrounded by rivals and potential allies the Wolf King set out to make medieval Murcia a force to be reck ..read more

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself.  Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that ..read more