A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
Episodes
58 episodes
The Jersey Devil
Join Kelli as she goes over New Jersey's most famous cryptozoological son - the Jersey Devil. Though the Jersey Devil was the devil-born son of the Leeds Family, not much is known about it; it lives in the Pine Barrens, it looks like a weird, w...
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Season 1
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Episode 58
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22:16
The Headless Horseman
Join Kelli as she goes over the mythology of the Headless Horseman. Most of us associate the headless horseman with Washington Irving's book, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But the idea of a ghostly rider looking for his head, or perhaps a decapi...
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Season 1
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Episode 57
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18:22
The Pendle Witches
Join Kelli as she goes over the Pendle Witch Trial of 1612, England's most infamous trial. 12 people from the Pendle Hill Area in Lancashire were accused of witchcraft in James I's England, a monarch who hated all-things witches and demons. Of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 56
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27:42
The Original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler
Join Kelli as she goes over the ORIGINAL Dracula- Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. Although the fictional character is only loosely based on Vlad, the two are inextricably linked forever because of Bram Stoker's Dracula. So today, we'll go over the r...
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Season 1
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Episode 55
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30:44
The Delphine LaLaurie Murder Mansion
Join Kelli as she goes over the legend of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a torturess from New Orleans who tortured, mutilated, and killed at least 20 slaves at her mansion on 1140 Royal Street. But like we saw with the Blood Countess Elizabe...
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Season 1
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Episode 54
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26:12
The Mignonette Shipwreck
Join Kelli as she goes over ANOTHER shipwreck that ended in cannibalism - that of the Mignonette, a sailing yacht that went down in the South Atlantic. But the Mignonette wasn't really seaworthy, and should never have been out that far... so wh...
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Season 1
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Episode 53
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27:47
The Spanish Inquisition
Join Kelli as she goes over the history behind the Spanish Inquisition. How and why did Spain hunt down heretics to purge the country of non-Catholics? And there will be a LOT of medieval torture devices in today's episode!...
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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31:23
The Great Plague and Great Fire of London
Join Kelli as she goes over the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666, which ended in part thanks to the Great Fire of London, 1666.These are two big events that killed off a good chunk of London's population and destroyed four-fif...
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Season 1
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Episode 51
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28:28
The Black Death
Join Kelli for her fiftieth episode where she explores her favorite topic - The Black Death!It's an all-out disease fest, where she goes over the symptoms of plague, how it spread, who it impacted, what it was li...
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Season 1
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Episode 50
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41:07
The Hindenburg Disaster
Join Kelli as she goes over the Hindenburg Disaster. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg Zeppelin exploded and caught fire as it was landing at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. 36 of the 97 people on board died - some in the i...
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Season 1
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Episode 49
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32:30
The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Join Kelli as she goes over the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, where a massive 9.0/9.1 earthquake 80 miles off the eastern coast of Japan triggers a tsunami that killed tens of thousands and caused millions in damages. But the earthquake and tsuna...
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Season 1
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Episode 48
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32:10
The Medusa Shipwreck
Join Kelli as she goes over the tragedy of the Medusa Shipwreck. When a French frigate bound for Senegal hits a sandbank and sinks, some get on the lifeboats, while a large portion are stuck on a hastily erected raft. The raft was too heavy and...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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39:59
The Victorian Houses of Death
Join Kelli as she talks about Victorian-era hospitals in London, known as the Houses of Death because of their fatality rates. These were the most unsanitary of places, and today we'll go into all the nitty-gritty details of w...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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30:42
The Tale of Liver-Eating Johnson
Join Kelli as she goes over the tale of Liver-Eating Johnson, a mountain man in the early 19th century American frontier who became legendary for how he avenged the murder and scalping of his Flathead indigenous wife. A book, called Crow Ki...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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27:38
The Order of the Pug
Join Kelli as she dives into the world of the Freemasons, Secret Societies, Religious Tension, Political Conflict, and... pugs? In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a papal bull denying any Roman Catholics from joining the Freemasons. It wa...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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25:31
The Kentucky Cannibal
Join Kelli as she tells the story of Levi Boone Helm, a frontiersman-turned-outlaw who committed murders across the West at the height of the California Gold Rush. But that's not all this serial killer did - he was also a cannibal. And he bragg...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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33:10
The Werewolf of Bedburg
Join Kelli as she goes over a trial from the peak years of Early Modern Europe's so-called werewolf panic - the trial of Peter Stumpp, the Werewolf of Bedburg. Peter confessed to all kinds of horrible, evil, depraved things. As a result, he was...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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28:04
The Centralia Underground Mine Fire
Join Kelli as she talks about the inspiration for the Silent Hill games and movies - the ghost town of Centralia! In 1962, a fire set the underground coal mines on fire, and they've been burning to this day. Experts believe that the fires will ...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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29:27
The Lizzie Borden Hatchet Murders
Join Kelli as she takes a look at a historic killer - Lizzie Borden - who was accused of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet in 1892. But despite everything pointing toward her, she was acquitted by the jury....
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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31:27
The Deadly Antarctic Expeditions
Join Kelli as she talks about THREE expeditions to Antarctica in the Heroic Age of Exploration. The first, led by Roald Amundsen, was the first to reach the geographic South Pole. At the same time, Robert Falcon Scott was leading his own
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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1:03:07
The Jamestown Colony
Join Kelli as she goes over the difficulties of the early years of the first successful English settlement in North America - Jamestown. From the bloody flux to survival cannibalism, brutal executions to starvation and madness, the foundation o...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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52:58
The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
Join Kelli as she goes over what happened to the USS Indianapolis, the ship that brought atomic bomb parts to Tinian Island so they could be assembled - and dropped - on Hiroshima. Though the ship completed her mission, making Oppenheimer...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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54:34
The Kuru Cannibal Disease
Join Kelli as she talks about a prion disease called Kuru. Prion diseases occur when misfolded proteins duplicate and clog up the brain, and cause things like Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and Kuru. Kuru was specific...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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31:50