I mark the milestone of surpassing 100 patrons with a thank-you and a clip of my patron-only lecture, "Doorways in Time: The Great Archaeological Finds -- 2: The Nag Hammadi Library," which deals with the discovery a massive trove of Egyptian documents blowing the lid off of the secretive Gnostic movement of mystical Christianity in the early church. Please support this podcast and hear the entire lecture on the Nag Hammadi discovery -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Released to the public after one year for patrons only: Archaeology, geography, linguistics, textual analysis -- all of these fields of knowledge must be brought to bear on a centuries-old question: Was there a "real" King Arthur? Answer: It's complicated. We discuss the likelihood that some "historical" personage underlies the layers of legend. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested further reading: Higham, "King Arthur: The Making of the Legend."

1066 -- the year of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest -- is the most famous date in English history. Few understand, though, that far more happened in this cataclysmic and pivotal year than just the Norman defeat of an English army on a field in East Sussex. The culmination of centuries of shifting struggle over control of England, the events of 1066 show how even epochal changes in a society can hinge on minor accidents of timing, weather, health, and personal whim. Image: Modern re-enactors representing Harold Godwinson's army at Hastings. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Were the Dutch proto-capitalists? Were they Americans before America? What was the Dutch East India Company, and how did it work? I talk to Deborah Hamer -- historian, research associate at the Omohundro Institute, and associate editor of the New York history blog Gotham -- to discuss her work on marriage and gender in the early Dutch colony in Batavia (as they called the conquered city of Jakarta), how it illuminates the Netherlands' obsessive efforts to create a stratified, orderly, and moral Protestant society in Southeast Asia, and what it reveals about the wider European colonial mindset in both Asia and America. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Who the heck are the "Anglo-Saxons," and why are Americans getting all lathered up about "Anglo-Saxon institutions"? Find out where the Anglo-Saxon myth came from and how over the past three hundred years it's been used to justify Parliamentary supremacy, the Rhodes Scholarship, the American entry into World War I, immigration restrictions, and college admission quotas. You never knew you were suffering under the Norman yoke, but now you do. Please support this podcast and hear all lectures, including the previous Myth of the Month on the "Founding Fathers" -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Image: Statue of King Alfred, Winchester Previous lectures about the original Anglo-Saxons: -on Dark Age Britain: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/crossing-the-water-britain-in-the-dark-age -on Anglo-Saxon England and the Vikings: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/anglo-saxon-england-and-the-vikings-757-1066 -on the Sutton Hoo treasure: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/doorways-in-time-the-great-archaeological-finds-1-the-sutton-hoo-treasure Suggested further reading: -Dino Buenviaje, "The Yanks are Coming Over There," https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cc4h9md; -Paul Kramer, "Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons," http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2002_03/article.html

Travellers, Tinkers, Gypsies, Kale, Scottish Travellers, Gypsy Travellers, Romani Gypsies, Romanichal, Pavee, Showmen, Van People, Boat People, Bargers – All of these multivarious peoples, with different ancestries, religions, and traditions, their different languages, dialects, and “cants,” share in common a longstanding itinerant lifestyle and the distinct identity that stems from it. Roving all around the British Isles and sometimes settling down, the various tribes of Travellers have provided metal goods, horses, music, and entertainment to British and Irish markets for centuries, but have become the flashpoint of political fury and even of violence in the twenty-first century. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Suggested Further Reading: Katherine Quarmby, "No Place to Call Home"; Becky Taylor, "Britain's Gypsy Travellers: A People on the Outside," https://www.historytoday.com/archive/britains-gypsy-travellers-people-outside "Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers," https://www.nature.com/articles/srep42187 "Apocrypha to Canon: Inventing Irish Traveller History," https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/apocrypha-to-canon-inventing-irish-traveller-history-2/

Who are the Roma -- also colloquially called "Gypsies"? Where did they come from, and how did they end up all over Europe? How have they endured through persecution, expulsions, and political upheaval, without a state or country of their own? We trace the path of this remarkable and resilient people from their mysterious origins in India to their arrival in Constantinople and medieval Europe and through the wave of persecution and ethnic cleansing in the 1600s. Please sign on as a patron at any level to hear part 2 -- tracing the journeys of the Roma through the revolutions and national awakenings of the 19th century, the Holocaust, and modern politics -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/51774522 Update: A contemporary historian, Kristina Richardson, has recently researched the lives and customs of the longstanding Romani group in medieval-era Egypt, commonly called the Ghuraba. It seems likely that at least one major Roma group that migrated into Europe, particularly western Europe, derived from the Ghuraba. One can see Richardson discussing her work in various places, including here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERSduCs3Afg Image: Gypsies telling fortunes, in Cosmographie Universelle, Munster, 1552. Suggested further reading: Angus Fraser, "The Gypsies"; Isabel Fonseca, "Bury Me Standing." Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

Why was the excavation depicted in "The Dig" the most important archaeological discovery ever made in Britain, or arguably in all of Europe? How did some artifacts found in a mound near an English widow's garden in Suffolk on the eve of World War II revolutionize our understanding of the Dark Age? Why would they come to serve as symbols of the ancient roots of the English nation, and how did Sutton Hoo vindicate the new science of archaeology? The story that Netflix did not tell you. Image: the Sutton Hoo purse lid. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632

How did Freemasonry expand in the 1700s from a small, secretive fraternity in Lowland Scotland to a massive global network, with lodges from the Caribbean to Russia to India? Who became Freemasons in the 1700s, and what sort of opposition and persecution did they face? What was their relationship to radical groups like the Illuminati? We examine to the growth, expansion, and divides in Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, all of which laid the groundwork for the Craft to influence the course of the age of revolutions. Please support this podcast and hear the recent lecture on the Founding Fathers! -- www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632 Previous lecture on the core myths and rituals of Freemasonry: https://soundcloud.com/historiansplaining/the-freemasonry-its-origins-its-myths-and-its-rituals Image: Depiction of procession of the Grand Lodge of England, London, 1742 Suggested Further Reading: David Stevenson, "Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century"; Margaret Jacob, "Living the Enlightenment"; Jessica Harland-Jacobs, "Builders of Empire"; Ric Berman, "The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry"; Steven Bullock, "Revolutionary Brotherhood"; Jasper Ridley, "The Freemasons"; Andre Kervella, "L'Effet Morin: Prestige d'un Homme, Genese d'un Systeme."

Since the Covid-19 pandemic has killed over half a million Americans, is it historically sound to say that the disaster is "bigger" than World War II? What do such comparisons mean, and are they illuminating? Such questions are truly a new dilemma, since from ancient and biblical times through the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, people have usually understood war and pestilence as going hand in hand. Here, I present a recording of my recent interview with a journalist about putting pandemic and war into historical perspective, followed by an excerpt from my recent patron-only lecture on "Myth of the Month 16: The Founding Fathers." Image: "Death on a Pale Horse," by Gustave Dore, 1865. Music: Fandango, by Soler or Scarlatti, early 1700s, arranged for Midi file by El Gran Mago Paco Quito. Please become a supporter to hear all Myths of the Month: www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632