It’s time for a fun case of ancient Roman slander as we talk about the corrupt politician Gaius Verres. What was he accused of? Are the charges real, or were they embellished to help the career of an upjumped lawyer named Cicero? And what’s up with everyone always making analogies between Rome and America?
This week, we take a look at the peasant uprisings in Aizu domain in 1868 to continue our exploration of…
While the Meiji Restoration was going on, where was everybody else? We’ll start trying to answer that question today with…
This week, Isaac and Demetria discuss the gruesome series of child murders that took place in Kobe in 1997, and the circumstances surrounding the eventual capture and trial of the killer — a 14-year-old high school boy.
It’s a shame you can’t embed gifs in the episode descriptions, because otherwise this would just be the Ron Paul…
This week, we cover an obscure bit of samurai history: the Keian Incident, a planned coup against the Tokugawa Shoguns…
This week, Isaac and Demetria unpack the career of the firebrand revolutionary playwright Olympe de Gouges. Along the way, we tackle such important questions as: what was the French Revolution about? What even is feminism? And why is Isaac’s French accent so bad?
This week, we profile one of the great Western interpreters of Japan: Lafcadio Hearn. How did some Anglo-Greek kid end…
This week, we round out our look at the celebrated women of Heian Japan with two very different careers: that…
This week, we’re talking about Fred Korematsu, whose great crime was… being in the place where he was born. How did America get to the point of incarcerating its own citizens in the 1940s? And what does that story have to tell us about today?