A Popular History of Unpopular Things

Latest Episodes:

The Radium Girls Jun 11, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she gives the history of the Radium Girls - young women who worked in factories painting watches and dials with paint containing RADIUM. The girls were encouraged to use their lips to keep the brushes pointy, and as a result, they were consuming alpha radiation particles from the radioactive radium. The result? Disintegrating bones, rotting necrotic tissue, and painful death.
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Sources referenced:
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
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The Jack the Ripper Murders May 28, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she explores the history of late 19th century's East End of London, where Jack the Ripper made his infamous, and gruesome, killings of five women before disappearing into the darkness in the fall of 1888.
Though he was never found, his murders give us a chance to explore the lives of women, the poor, and the working classes in the gritty, industrial life of England's biggest city.
This episode is the second of a two-episode look into two late 19th-century murderers - Holmes and Jack the Ripper - and how they became integral parts of our histories as infamous killers.
Sources referenced:
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

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The HH Holmes Murder Castle May 14, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she explores the real history behind HH Holmes - born Herman Webster Mudgett - and how he became known as America's first serial killer. Was he the man we know him as today? Or is his story of a murder house and the deaths of tourists in Chicago just a legend?
This episode is part of a two-episode look into two late 19th century murdered - Holmes and Jack the Ripper - and how they became integral parts of our histories as infamous killers.
Sources referenced:
H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil by Adam Selzer
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Support the show

Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

Follow me on Instagram for episode updates! @beardhistory

If you want to support the show, donate to the cause at Buy Me a Coffee

The Auckland Island Shipwrecks Apr 30, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she tells the story of two shipwrecks that took place on Auckland Island in 1864, at the same time, though neither knew the other was there. One wreck tells the tale of a group that banded together in the face of adversity and used their creativity and strength to survive. The other wreck is more like an adult version of Lord of the Flies; the situation quickly devolved into chaos, with most survivors dying of starvation. Let's find out how and why two shipwrecks, on opposite sides of the same island, had such vastly different outcomes.
Sources referenced:
Island of the Lost by Joan Druett
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

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The Romans in Gaul Apr 16, 2023

Show notes

In a special joint podcast, Kelli from APHOUT joins Anna and Paul from the Engineering History Podcast to talk about the history and engineering behind the Battle of Alesia, a decisive battle between Julius Caesar and his Roman forces against Vercingetorix and the Gauls in 52 BCE. Together we explore the intersection of history and engineering in Ancient Rome!
Follow The Engineering History Podcast wherever you listen, or click on the link below:
The Engineering History Podcast
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

Follow me on Instagram for episode updates! @beardhistory

If you want to support the show, donate to the cause at Buy Me a Coffee

The Catacombs of Paris Apr 02, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she explains how and why the French built their famous Catacombs, an Ossuary filled with the bones of possibly 6 million, anonymous people. Skulls and femur bones line the walls of this grotesquely beautiful, and immensely famous, Parisian attraction. But where did the bodies come from? And why were they put into the tunnels under Paris? Find out in the latest episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things!
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Credited Sound Effects
"Splash, Jumping, G.wav" by InspectorJ

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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

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The Jonestown Massacre Mar 19, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she explores the worst mass-murder suicide in history. Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult, brought more than 900 of his followers to a remote agricultural compound in the Guyanese jungle. As he started to lose control of his followers, and with the government investigating allegations of abuse, he directed (and in some cases forced) them to drink a cyanide-laced punch. In one day, 918 people were killed.
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Sources referenced:

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
Jonestown: Paradise Lost (documentary)

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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

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The New England Vampire Panic Mar 05, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she explores the exhumation and re-killing of Mercy Brown, a girl suspected of being a vampire feeding off of her living relatives in a small town in Rhode Island, 1892.
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
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Sources:

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England Vampires by Michael Bell
The Great New England Vampire Panic by Abigail Tucket for the Smithsonian

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Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

Follow me on Instagram for episode updates! @beardhistory

If you want to support the show, donate to the cause at Buy Me a Coffee

The Dancing Plague Feb 19, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she looks back at the dancing plague of 1518, when residents of Strasbourg all started to dance for days and weeks on end - and some of them danced to their deaths.
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
Want to start your own podcast?
Click this link to get set up with Buzzsprout and you'll get a $20 credit to sign up!

Support the show

Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

Follow me on Instagram for episode updates! @beardhistory

If you want to support the show, donate to the cause at Buy Me a Coffee

The Corpse Medicine Feb 05, 2023

Show notes

Join Kelli as she teaches you about a very common but forgotten medical practice in Europe during the Medieval and Early Modern Periods - consuming the skin, bones, and blood of corpses as medicine.
The history of cannibalism just got even more unpopular.
Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric
Want to start your own podcast?
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Sources referenced in the podcast:
Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians by Richard Sugg

Support the show

Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric | Yello Kake

Follow me on Instagram for episode updates! @beardhistory

If you want to support the show, donate to the cause at Buy Me a Coffee

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