Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

Why does the earliest known picture of King Arthur show him riding on a goat and charging towards a deadly cat-monster? How has the tale of King Arthur and his knights evolved since it first emerged from Celtic folklore? We consider the shaping of the Arthur story from the songs of mysterious Welsh and Breton bards to the high medieval romances of French courtier-poets. Sign on as a patron to hear pt. 2: “The Rise & Fall of Camelot” -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/39400154 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Nicholas J. Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend"

After one year on Patreon for patrons only, Myth of the Month #8 becomes open to the public: The notion that there is a coherent society that can be called "the West" or "Western Civilization" -- running from Greco-Roman antiquity to modern North America -- originated during the upheaval of World War I, thanks to an eccentric German history teacher named Oswald Spengler. We consider whether any common thread or trait can be said to unite "the West," and why different nations like Egypt or Poland get tossed in or out of the basket of "the West" at different times. Finally, we consider why the idea of "the West" is often linked to conspiracy theories involving Jews, Marxists, post-modernists, or Jewish-Marxist-banker-Freemason-postmodernists. (Yes, I make an oblique reference here to Jordan Peterson.) The recent debate involving Douglas Murray, "What Is Killing Western Civilization?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZqKKFn3Hk Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the next Myth of the Month, on the framing of US Constitution and the origins of the Senate & Electoral College: https://www.patreon.com/posts/29819013 cover image: Capitoline temples of Sbeitla, Tunisia, photograph by Bernard Gagnon

Romans, Brythons, Picts, Angles, Gaels, Saxons, and Jutes -- how did this kaleidoscopic welter of contending tribes crystallize into the medieval Christian kingdoms we know as England and Scotland? We consider the most tumultuous and mysterious period in British history, following the Roman withdrawal, as locals and Germanic migrants sought to assert power and maintain stability. Despite the great uncertainty, Britons mastered new knowledge, developed a poetic tradition, and passed on an enduring obsession with the sacred power of water. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the upcoming examination of the King Arthur cycle -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- www.lyceum.fm/ Cover image: 6th-century Anglo-Saxon inlaid gold disk brooch, found in gravesite in Kent. Image courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In this first installment on the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20, we consider the staggering scope and deep reach of the viral disease that swept the world three times, infecting one third of humankind and killing more people than the World War that nonetheless overshadowed it in the public mind. The second installment will consider the lingering impacts of the pandemic, its enduring mysteries, and the possible reasons it has been forgotten. Join as a member to hear Pt. 2, on the legacy & memory of the Great Flu: https://www.patreon.com/posts/36774606 Please support this podcast and hear all lectures -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Find the new Lyceum platform and app -- https://www.lyceum.fm/ Suggested further reading: Laura Spinney, "Pale Rider"; Alfred Crosby, "America's Forgotten Pandemic." image: Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1919

What is with the spate of 1980s themes on current "prestige" television? Is it Gen. X. nostalgia for their youthful days in suburban malls? Or something more? Television critic Sonia Saraiya discusses how our unresolved identity crises seem to have led us into a fascination with the last years of the Cold War, and with the secret mistakes and machinations that took place on both sides of the old Iron Curtain. please support this podcast! -- https://www.patreon.com/creator-home The pledges for this installment will be split evenly between the two collaborators. Television series discussed: "The Americans," "Stranger Things," "When They See Us," "Chernobyl," "Leaving Neverland" Correction: The famous quote that nuclear power is "a hell of a way to boil water" comes from journalist Karl Grossman's 1980 book, "Cover Up."

What did people do when the Roman empire fell apart around them? Recent scholarship, based on new archeological discoveries and techniques, argues that in the "dark" centuries between 450 and 750 AD, the people of western Europe, from conquering kings to ordinary peasants, improvised new political alliances, maintained law and order, improved the productivity of their land, and invented new crafts and art forms, building a resilient and inventive society on the foundations (often literally) of the old. Please support this podcast -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Peter Wells, "Barbarians to Angels" Cover image: Visigothic bronze belt buckle with garnet and glass inlays, belonging to a woman in Spain, mid-6th century AD; image provided by Cleveland Museum of Art.

Unlocked for all listeners after one year for patrons only: -about 10 ft. long -made in France, ca. 1540s -lost in shipwreck, ca. 1562-5 -located on bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Canaveral We examine the mysteries surrounding a French bronze cannon recently discovered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Florida, amidst the wreckage of an unidentified sixteenth-century fleet. The cannon and other artifacts are rare, priceless remnants of French Protestants’ ill-fated attempts to colonize North America before the Spanish, and their discovery sparked a heated international legal dispute. The mysterious shipwreck gives us a window into a rare moment when Europe’s vicious religious wars spilled over into the Americas. Image courtesy of Bobby Pritchett., Pres., Global Marine Exploration Inc. Introductory music: Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D, played by Wanda Landowska on harpsichord. Please sign up as a patron to hear all patron-only lectres, including the next installment in this series -- "History of the United States in 100 Objects -- 7: The Dorion Mission Seal, ca. 1680s" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/27011706

Could it be that "Shakespeare" wasn't Shakespeare? -- that someone else, perhaps a highly-educated aristocrat, actually wrote the works attributed to the actor from Stratford? Am I a crackpot for even entertaining such a ridiculous idea? We consider the evidence. This is the last installment in my series about William Shakespeare. Become a patron to hear the whole discussion: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32922586 Join as a member to hear the in-depth exploration of the "Shakespeare Authorship Controversy" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/32922586

Unlocked after one year for patrons only, a discussion of our fixation with organizing political views into an axis "left" against "right": As new political parties -- left-populists, neo-fascists, and secessionists -- rapidly rise and fall across Europe and other Western countries, and spontaneous protests blur partisan boundaries in the streets of Paris, the old left-to-right scale of political ideology is just not working. What value does this one-dimensional model of politics have, and where did it come from? In fact, it has to do with where you sit at a formal dinner party. Please sign up as a patron to hear patron-only lectures -- including the next "Myth of the Month," on the historical, political, and psychological meanings of "Game of Thrones" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/25597371 Suggested further reading: Yuval Levin, "The Great Debate"; Jonathan Haidt, "The Righteous Mind"

How could Shakespeare have possibly allowed his sonnets -- personal, sexual, and often scandalous -- to be published? I advance my own theory to account for the printing of the most shocking book of poetry in the history of literature, and discuss the possibilities as to the identities of the alluring Young Man and Dark Lady. Finally, we consider the light that the Sonnets shed upon Shakespeare's plays, particularly his obsession with gender ambiguity and androgyny. Become a patron to hear my upcoming discussion of the Shakespeare authorship controversy (the notion that somebody else wrote the works of Shakespeare) www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 CORRECTION: In thanking my patrons at the end of this episode, I mistakenly referred to "Christopher Grant" instead of "Christopher Grady." Apologies and thanks. Poems analyzed in this lecture: 17, 20, 135, 136, 138, 144 Full text of Shakespeare's sonnets, searchable: www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/allsonn.htm Join as a member to hear the in-depth exploration of the "Shakespeare Authorship Controversy" -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/32922586 Suggested further reading: Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., "Shakespeare's Sonnets"; Joseph Pequigney, "Such Is My Love"; Lynn Magnusson, "A Modern Perspective" in Folger Shakespeare Library's edition of Shakespeare's Poems; Don Paterson, "Shakespeare's Sonnets," (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/16/shakespeare-sonnets-don-paterson); Saul Frampton, "In Search of Shakespeare's Dark Lady" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/10/search-shakespeares-dark-lady-florio); Macd. P. Jackson, "The Authorship of 'A Lover's Complaint,'" The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Sep. 2008