The Walkman Effect

The bubonic plague was blamed on witches, Jews, God’s wrath, and, on 20th March 1345, in a new theory propagated by the King of France, the rare planetary alignment between Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in Aquarius. Of course, the real cause of the Black Death lay in the microscopic ...  Show more

Blaise Pascal created the first organised public transport system: the carrosses à cinq sols (“five-sou carriages”), which had its first full day of service in Paris on 19th March, 1662. Like a modern bus, the horse-drawn carriages followed fixed routes and scheduled departures, ...  Show more

This week, the boys pick back up with Heinrich Himmler just after Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, as the Nazi's most pathetic nerd stumbles through his failed-loser era. From chicken farming and occult rabbit holes to his first taste of Nazi bureaucracy, we trace how a sulki ...

This event is part of Conversations at the Kiln, a new event series at Kiln Theatre programmed by Intelligence Squared. For more events with speakers from the worlds of literature, art, poetry and politics, click here. Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain ...  Show more

The boys pick back up with the story of Heinrich Himmler, as the Nazis lock down Germany following the Reichstag Fire. Himmler helps build the Nazi police state, with Dachau becoming the prototype for the Nazi concentration camps.

For Live Shows, Merch, and M ...

An early encounter with one of the most famous people in the world initiated Jack Zipes into the world of fairy tales - and he never looked back. In this episode, Jacke talks to the fairy tale expert about his book Buried Treasures: The Power of Political Fairy Tales, which profi ...  Show more