Episode notes
June 8, 1191. The Crusaders and Muslim forces are locked in battle over the city of Acre. On one side is Saladin, the great Muslim leader who has already recaptured Jerusalem. On the other, an armada arrives carrying England’s king: Richard the Lionheart.The Crusades will become one of the defining conflicts of the Middle Ages. But for centuries, their history fades into legend… until a Scottish writer named Walter Scott brings them roaring back. His novels turn knights, tournaments, and holy war into blockbuster entertainment. But Scott’s message was more complicated than simple nostalgia:…
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HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios · History · English
Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!This week, something big happened. You might have never heard of it, but this moment changed the course of history. A HISTORY Channel original podcast, HISTORY This Week gives you insight into the people—both famous and unknown—whose decisions
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S7 · 3 Jul 2026 · 58 min
Free HTW+ preview: Ken Burns on the American Revolution (Extended Interview)
Today, to celebrate America's 250th birthday, we have a special announcement: we are launching HISTORY This Week+ to all of our followers! (historythisweekpodcast.com/subscribe)This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while… we’ve been listening to your feedback: you don’t love the ads, you want more history. Well, HTW+ solves both of those problems.We are offering two tiers of our premium subscription, allowing you to unlock ad-free listening and gain access to bonus content, especially extended cuts of our interviews.When producing these episodes, the majority of our interview tape is…
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S7 · E16 · 29 Jun 2026 · 30 min
The *Other* Declaration of Independence (Part I)
July 4, 1839. Sixty-three years after 1776—and centuries after the medieval period—feudalism is alive and well in the United States.High on a rocky plain in upstate New York, a crowd of tenant farmers gathers in the village of Berne to read aloud a declaration of independence… but not the one you're thinking of. These families are still bound to a landlord by perpetual leases their grandfathers signed, owing bushels of wheat and a share of every sale for as long as the land exists. Today they're done. They call their leases "voluntary slavery" and vow to "take up the ball of the Revolution…
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S7 · 22 Jun 2026 · 30 min
A Mob Boss Starts A Movement
June 28, 1971. It’s the second annual “Unity Day” rally at Columbus Circle in New York City, organized by the Italian American Civil Rights League. Joe Colombo is the very public face of the League, a group that actively fights discrimination and ugly stereotypes against the Italian-American community, such as their association with organized crime and the Mafia. The problem? That same Joe Colombo is a leader of the Mafia, one of the heads of the “Five Families” in New York. It’s an open secret; many people across the city know who he really is, and the FBI is hot on his tail, trying to…
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19 Jun 2026 · 18 min
Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise – Prologue
Malcolm Gladwell and President Barack Obama introduce us to one of the most chaotic,complicated, and fascinating times in American history, revealing why Reconstruction stilldefines our country today.Listen to Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise on Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts.Reconstruction begins where, for most Americans, the story of the Civil War ends: The North isvictorious and slavery is abolished. But what happened next was one of the most importantdecades in American history, a moment when our country grappled with its original sin andimagined — and briefly enacted…
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S7 · E15 · 15 Jun 2026 · 35 min
Malcolm Gladwell on Reconstruction’s Unfinished Questions
June 15, 1865. German-American statesman Carl Schurz is traveling to Washington to meet with President Andrew Johnson when he stops at a friend’s home in Philadelphia. That night, during a séance, a teenage medium claims to summon the spirit of Abraham Lincoln… and delivers Schurz a mysterious command from beyond the grave.Soon, Johnson sends Schurz on a fact-finding mission through the defeated South. What he discovers will help shape the course of Reconstruction and expose the violence threatening America’s fragile new democracy.Today, Sally speaks with bestselling author and podcaster…
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S7 · E13 · 1 Jun 2026 · 30 min
How Higgins and His Boats Won the War
June 6, 1944. As thousands of Allied soldiers prepare to storm the beaches of Normandy, they climb down rope nets into small wooden landing craft bobbing in the dark waters of the English Channel. Within hours, these boats will carry them into the largest amphibious invasion in history.The craft are known as Higgins boats, named for their inventor, Andrew Higgins: a hard-driving New Orleans boatbuilder who built his reputation designing vessels that could speed through swamps, crash through obstacles, and go places other boats couldn't. Higgins was stubborn, abrasive, and relentless. The…
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27 May 2026 · 40 min
WWII with Tom Hanks (Episode 1 – The Beginning)
Search "World War II with Tom Hanks" wherever you get your podcasts! New episodes drop every Tuesday. World War II with Tom Hanks reexamines history’s most devastating conflict for a new century. Across twenty hours, the series traces the war’s full arc–from the rise of fascism to Hiroshima–uncovering the decisions, hidden networks, and lasting consequences that continue to shape our world. Episode 1 – The Beginning In September 1939, enabled by a secret pact between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, Germany invades Poland with its lightning style of tank warfare, plunging Europe back into war.…
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S7 · E12 · 25 May 2026 · 34 min
The Secretary of War Who Feared the Bomb
May 30, 1945. In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson calls General Leslie Groves to his office and demands answers: which Japanese cities are about to become targets for the atomic bomb? What follows will pull Stimson—a deeply religious statesman who believed in restraint, but also in overwhelming force—into a profound crisis over morality, destruction, and what modern war is becoming. How did Henry Stimson grapple with the bomb? And after helping usher in the atomic age, how did he reckon with what he’d done? Special thanks to Evan Thomas, journalist and New York Times bestselling…
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S7 · 18 May 2026 · 31 min
Bonnie and Clyde’s Final Ride
May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their exploits have made them famous. But today, Bonnie and Clyde’s legendary crime spree comes to an end … in a hail of bullets. Why did some come to view these Depression Era outlaws as agents of chaos the country needed? And what was the real motivation behind their crimes? Special thanks to our guest, John Neal Phillips, author of Running With Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of…
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S7 · E11 · 11 May 2026 · 28 min
The Berlin Airlift and the Birth of the New World Order (Part 2)
May 12, 1949. After eleven months under Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin flood into the streets to celebrate. The lights are back on. The autobahn is open. The siege is over. But just months earlier, West Berlin seemed doomed. Surrounded deep inside Soviet-controlled territory, more than two million Berliners are suddenly cut off from food, fuel, electricity, and supplies after Joseph Stalin seals the city’s borders. Many fear the Western Allies will abandon Berlin altogether. Instead, American and British leaders gamble on something unprecedented: supplying an entire city by air.…
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