Phryne

Did an ancient Greek party girl get off on a capital charge because she flashed the judge? Or was this story just an excuse for artists to get away with painting bare breasts? This week, we dig into trial records, archeological evidence, and ancient gossip to try to get a sense of the woman behind one of history’s spiciest trials.

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Doc Baggs

We’re heading back to the wild west to meet one of America’s smoothest criminals. Let Charles “Doc” Baggs teach you the art of stealing from the rich, giving great speeches, and staying one step ahead of the law. What do we learn when we listen to a criminal telling his side of the story? Who shaped our understanding of the moral landscape of the American west? How cool is this dude, seriously?

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Rosa Parks

You’ve heard of Rosa Parks—but do you actually know the full story? This week, we dig into the brutal history of segregation in the United States, the difficult work of activism, and the way black civil rights leaders’ stories are taught as part of a whitewashed narrative that minimizes their agency and fails to engage with their actual political views.

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The Stonewall Riots

It’s Pride month, and you know what that means: It’s time for a deep dive into the structural oppression of queer people in America, the exploitative underbelly of New York’s mob-owned gay bars, and the night those tensions boiled over in 1969. What exactly was banned by sodomy laws and other laws used to target queer New Yorkers? Why was the mafia paying the police to keep gay bars open? And why was the movement that came out of Stonewall so different than what came before?

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