Second Decade

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55: Smuttynose Island Jun 17, 2021

Nine small islands, called the Isles of Shoals, lie off the coast just over the line between New Hampshire and Maine. One of them, Smuttynose Island, has a mysterious past. Traditional stories going back to the early 19th century, amplified by poetry, folklore and modern tour-guide apocrypha, speak of a Spanish ship called the Sagunto having been wrecked on the shore of Smuttynose Island in January 1813 and fourteen (in some accounts fifteen) of its crew buried on the island by the patriarch who once ruled it. The story of the “Graves of Spanish Sailors” has made it from town records and court documents, through Victorian-era poetry, the mid-20th century tall tales of Edward Rowe Snow, all the way to Google Maps and modern tourist websites. Whether there really are Spanish sailors buried on Smuttynose Island is surprisingly difficult to determine.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger again takes on salty New England tall tales, which have surfaced before on this show, to reach a reasonable conclusion about whether there really are 14 Spaniards buried on Smuttynose Island. In addition to former “flying Santa” and coastal historian Edward Rowe Snow, who we tangled with back in Episode 9, you’ll meet the two confusingly-named proprietors of Smuttynose Island during the Second Decade, a histrionic poet who immortalized the story for the benefit of disaster tourists, a Boston abolitionist and doctor whose 1858 “X marks the spot” survey missed a crucial fact about the island’s geography, and the intrepid modern-day archaeologist who set out to science her way to solving the mystery. This is a lighter-hearted episode of Second Decade with some surprising twists.

Note: after this episode, Second Decade will be on hiatus until September 2021.

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54: The Dumplings of Death May 17, 2021

In March 1815, in London, Elizabeth Fenning served a plate of dumplings to the family that employed her as a cook. Almost all members of the household, including Eliza herself, became violently ill, apparently poisoned. Barely four months later Eliza was dead, hanged for attempted murder after a drumhead trial tainted with misogyny, class prejudice and official corruption. An angry newspaper reporter who witnessed her execution, William Hone, took up her cause and began to expose the web of lies that led to Eliza’s wrongful conviction—but Hone would soon find himself on trial for daring to speak truth to power. This was a major event in the birth of investigative journalism as we now know it, but it didn’t exist before the Second Decade. This is the story of the case that brought it into being.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger connects the disparate threads of the Eliza Fenning case and how it affected media and legal history. You’ll hear the likely real story of what happened in the troubled Turner household the day Eliza baked the dumplings, including her own words—ignored by legal authorities and historians alike—suggesting that the genesis of the whole thing was Eliza’s act of resistance against an attempted assault. You’ll meet a parade of corrupt officials and incompetent bureaucrats who tried to railroad her, from a feckless doctor who made a supposed murder weapon out of a sniff of garlic to the odious John Silvester, London’s chief criminal judge who demanded sexual favors in exchange for legal ones. And you’ll learn about the life of William Hone, briefly the most famous man in England, whose own trials in 1817 proved as much of a sensation as Elizabeth Fenning’s. There’s a lot more to this episode of Second Decade than the title suggests!

Content Warning: this episode contains a brief discussion of sexual assault.

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53: The Lithuanian Rabbi Mar 24, 2021

For centuries, the historic region of Lithuania, torn between its powerful European neighbors, was one of the great centers of Jewish culture and intellectual life. In the 1810s, the small town of Volozhin was the site of a uniquely influential yeshiva—a school of Jewish learning—founded by a charismatic rabbi beloved by the community, the brilliant Chaim of Volozhin. But as influential as Chaim’s own contributions were to Judaism, he was also part of a broader movement, spearheaded by an even more legendary rabbi, thinker and philosopher: the mighty Vilna Ga’on, the “Genius of Vilnius.” Together the two men helped plant a uniquely hardy seed of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land whose germination would come to have profound consequences, especially after the vast majority of Lithuania’s Jews who stayed behind perished in the Holocaust.

In this unusual episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger puts a rare spotlight on the religious life of Europe in the 1810s, but the story of Chaim of Volozhin eventually becomes epic pageant of adventure, settlement and resistance. In this episode not only will you meet the Genius of Vilnius and his dogged disciple, but you’ll delve into the doctrinal and intellectual disputes among 18th and 19th century rabbis, you’ll walk among the jumbled stones of Jerusalem’s ruined Hurva Synagogue, and you’ll trace the perilous journey that dozens of Jewish families made from Eastern Europe to the land of Israel—only to find, in too many cases, tragedy waiting for them. This episode of Second Decade has been nearly three years in the making.

Content Warning: this episode contains brief descriptions of atrocities during the Holocaust.

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Bonus: Trailer for Age of Confusion Podcast Mar 19, 2021

This brief trailer is to introduce you to Second Decade host Sean Munger's newest podcast, a fiction/alternate history show called Age of Confusion. The show examines an alternate timeline of American and world history from 1963 to 1985.

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52: War and Peace Feb 18, 2021

This is a crossover episode with the Green Screen podcast.

Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1869 novel War & Peace is undeniably one of the great classics of world literature. Although it covers a considerable time period, its climactic episodes involve the Napoleonic Wars and specifically the French invasion of Russia in 1812. In this, a special crossover episode with Dr. Sean Munger’s other podcast Green Screen, Sean and guest host Cody Climer delve into the 2016 BBC miniseries adaptation of War & Peace, starring Paul Dano and Lily James, focusing specifically on its finale which deals with the Battle of Borodino, the 1812 French sack of Moscow and the aftermath.

In this episode, you will revisit the French invasion of Russia in 1812 (a saga which made an appearance earlier in Second Decade, episodes 10-12) but this time we will see it specifically through the lens of modern cinema. While the 2016 miniseries is the focus, you’ll also compare and contrast this adaptation with previous versions of the novel, filmed in 1915, 1956, 1966-67 and 1972. As Green Screen is specifically about the environment, the environmental and ecological dimensions of the French-Russian war, and of Tolstoy himself, are emphasized. If this is your first exposure to Green Screen, we encourage you to check it out!

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51: Norway, Part II Jan 29, 2021

After being sold out by the great European powers, especially Great Britain, as a sop to Sweden, the people of Norway felt angry and betrayed. The Norwegian nobility had united behind Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederick, who had promised to lead them to independence—but Christian Frederick’s revolution increasingly looked like a long shot, particularly in the face of resistance by Sweden’s regent, former Napoleonic general Jean Bernadotte. Nevertheless, Christian Frederick and his allies forged ahead, hoping to forge a new vision of the Norwegian nation and its sovereignty, even if full independence couldn’t be obtained. The result was Sweden’s last war and one of the most complicated political deals of the Napoleonic era.

In this, the concluding part of a two-part series, Dr. Sean Munger continues the story of Norway’s tumultuous founding in the final months of Napoleon and how the political and constitutional ideas surrounding the independence movement came to have a legacy that lasted well into the 20th century. In this episode you’ll meet the conservative politician who thought Christian Frederick was moving too fast, his opposite number who thought it was going too slowly, a British diplomat who was taken with the idea of Norwegian independence, and you’ll encounter the complicated legacy of Jean Bernadotte—also known as Karl Johan—who is maybe the villain of the story, but maybe not. You’ll also take a brief stroll down Norway’s main drag in modern times, join dinner table conversation about Norway’s experience in World War II, and track the battles in the forts and fjords of the Scandinavian north. This is one of the more complex stories told on Second Decade.

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50: Norway, Part I Dec 19, 2020

At the beginning of the Napoleonic era, Norway was not its own country, but rather the junior partner in the unequal combination of Denmark-Norway. Just before Bonaparte was defeated and exiled (for the first time), somehow Norway ended up detached from Denmark and "unified" with Sweden, in an act of diplomatic legerdemain that left the Norwegians fuming, the Swedes boastful and just about everyone else bewildered. As it turned out, the Norwegians decided not to take their wholesale selling-out lying down, and in 1814 an independence movement blossomed which, 91 years later, would become the basis of the modern nation of Norway that we know today. The story of this process is supremely complicated but quite interesting, featuring war at sea and on land, the intrigues of kings and princes, and a fundamental sea change in how nations are built and defined.

In this episode of Second Decade, the first of a two-part series, historian Dr. Sean Munger takes you into the convoluted backdrop of Scandinavian politics in the Napoleonic era and how Norway came to be a distinct national and cultural entity. In this episode you'll learn a bit of European geography and medieval history; you'll find out what kind of craft the Danes decided to build to challenge the British Navy in a war that might otherwise have seemed hopeless; you'll meet a French field marshal who dreams of becoming Swedish royalty, a Danish crown prince who fancies the Norwegian throne, and a timber merchant and part-time diplomat who designed an independence movement from the ground up. Various other characters from the long story of the Napoleonic era make cameo appearances, including one-eyed, one-armed Lord Nelson submerged in a coffin of brandy and the little Corsican upstart himself, on his way down after the epic clowning he took in Episodes 10 through 12 of this podcast.

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Free Webinar: How Historical is Indiana Jones? 22 December 2020

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49: Theo the Pipe Smoker Oct 26, 2020

The bodies of dead human beings can tell us a lot about the past, but most human remains from the distant past tend to be rich or important people. A discovery in Basel, Switzerland in 1984 proved an exception to this rule when a number of skeletons were recovered from a forgotten graveyard for the city’s poor. One particular set of bones entranced researchers because of two strange notches found in his front teeth. An exhausting effort to identify the man known only as “Theo the Pipe Smoker” would eventually involve a worldwide search for his relatives, sophisticated DNA analysis, and possibly unearth evidence of a 200-year-old murder.

In this episode of Second Decade, historian Dr. Sean Munger will profile the Theo case, the physical evidence from his bones, the historical questions raised by his discovery, and the possible identities that he might have had. In doing so you’ll get a glimpse of life among Basel’s underclass, a world of bakeries, tanneries, factories and dead-end jobs where disease was rampant and economic survival precarious. You’ll meet the two men who are the most likely candidates for being Theo, who surprisingly died on the same weekend in 1816 but whose life stories are markedly different. We may not be able to reach a full resolution of the mystery of Theo, but the journey is illuminating.

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Free Webinar on the Vietnam War, 17 November 2020

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48: Heritage Lost Dec 22, 2019

America was growing rapidly in the 1810s, and growth meant building. Buildings of all kinds, from churches, markets and houses to banks and government offices, were sprouting up everywhere. Only a tiny fraction of the many buildings constructed between 1810 and 1820 still survive today, and the loss of the majority—through demolition, development, decay, accident, neglect, or deliberate destruction—represents a staggering loss of architectural heritage and history. Though many buildings have been lost, traces of some remain, through photographs, drawings, eyewitness accounts, memories, and, in a few lucky cases, some physical artifacts. These traces tell tantalizing and compelling stories of what the built environment of the Second Decade was like, and, by extension, glimpses of the lives of the people who lived and worked within it.

In this unique, stand-alone episode of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger will profile 9 specific buildings, constructed between 1808 and 1820 and which no longer exist, that represent a piece of the architectural heritage of the decade. You’ll visit Federal-style mansions in Rhode Island, an Ohio courthouse built to try to lure politicians to a frontier boomtown, a market and exhibition hall at the center of Boston, more than one Southern plantation built by slave labor, a farmhouse that remained frozen in time for nearly two centuries, and several others. The stories of these buildings, the people who built them and why they were lost represent only a small portion of the enormous wealth of historical and architectural heritage of America that is now gone forever.

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47: Year Without Summer, Part III Nov 17, 2019

The mysterious weather and climate anomalies of the Year Without Summer did not end with the coming of fall or the end of the calendar year 1816. The Tambora effect—the chilling of the world’s climate by volcanic dust from the 1815 mega-eruption—lingered long after that. The failure of summer crops in many parts of America, Europe and the world meant a lean and hungry winter for millions of people. And for many of them, the brutally cold winter of 1816-17 was much colder and more harrowing than any they had ever lived through before, or would again.

In this episode, the final in this minseries, you’ll shiver along with missionaries and Indians on the frontier; you’ll learn about some of the bizarre theories that people advanced for what was causing the events, such as an “electrical fluid” around the Earth supposedly linked to earthquakes; and you’ll meet a very eccentric Scotsman whose obsession with weather, sparked by the 1816 anomalies, utterly consumed his life for the next half century. This episode contains threads that connect to various other SD installments, including Episode 6 (Jefferson in Winter), 7 (Volcano), 24 (New England’s Cold Friday), and 25 (The Man in the Buffalo Fur Suit).

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46: Year Without Summer, Part II Oct 13, 2019

For many people around the world, 1816 was the oddest summer they ever lived through. Snow from the previous winter was still left in places well into the deep summer; rains and floods lashed central Europe; New England was cold and parched; and nearly everybody worried about what the anomalies were going to do to that season’s crops and foodstuffs. The effects of the strange weather ran deeper, however. It caused some people to be depressed and melancholy; others sought answers in prayers and religion; some, particularly in Europe, literally thought the end of the world was nigh. But everyone filtered the events through their own uniquely human experiences, reflecting a diverse range of reactions and world-views that our scientific understanding of the phenomenon can’t really communicate.

In this episode, the second in the series, you’ll experience a shocking midnight hallucination with Percy Bysshe Shelley; you’ll rub shoulders with recently-exhumed corpses in a New England cemetery; you’ll learn how making end-of-the-world predictions became a police matter in Italy; and you’ll ride along with a simple Massachusetts farmer as he tries to reap his stunted crops in a growing season where nothing was as it should have been. This episode contains threads that connect to various other SD installments, including Episode 14 (Down & Out at Harvard), 21 (Frankenstein), and 8 (Christmas 1814).

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Brexit Webinar, October 22, 2019 (mentioned at the end of the episode)

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45: Year Without Summer, Part I Sep 23, 2019

The “Year Without Summer,” 1816, is one of those things that many people have heard of, but very few know anything substantive about. It was the largest environmental event of the Second Decade. Two volcanic eruptions, one from an unknown mountain in 1809 and the second the disastrous blast of Mt. Tambora in April 1815, filled the atmosphere with toxic particulates and triggered a period of global temporary climate change. But what was it like on the ground to the people who lived through it? What does the name “Year Without Summer” really mean, and what doesn’t it mean? Who noticed it first, and how? These are some of the many questions still swirling around this much-misunderstood event in environmental history.

In this episode, perhaps the touchstone of the entire podcast, historian Sean Munger will take you to the frigid roads of New England during an unseasonable blizzard, and the decks of ships sailing the South Pacific in conditions that baffled even the most seasoned mariners as well as many other places in the strange spring and early summer of 1816. This is the central story of the Second Decade, and as such connects with numerous other SD installments, such as Episode 7 (Tambora), 13 (Lincoln), 3 (Frost Fair) and 24 (Cold Friday). This is the first of a projected three-part miniseries on the topic.

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44: The Fires of St. John's Jul 14, 2019

In the 1810s, St. John’s, Newfoundland was possibly the most remote and inaccessible corner of British America. Located on an island that was often icebound in the winter months, St. John’s was far from self-sufficient, depending on the Royal Navy for its food, building materials and governance. In February 1816, during the midst of an already dangerous winter made lean by economic depression, fire broke out on the city’s waterfront. It was only the beginning of a cycle of destruction that would char the streets of St. John’s four more times in just a few years, igniting class, ethnic and religious tensions as well as having political repercussions. This is the story of how St. John’s dealt with—or failed to deal with—numerous challenges to its very existence.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger not only recounts the story of the fires themselves, but also examines the complicated social and political backdrop against which they occurred. You’ll meet the hapless and bronchial Royal Navy governor of Newfoundland, Francis Pickmore; you’ll learn why war meant feast and peace meant famine in St. John’s; and you’ll rub shoulders with the destitute Irish-born fishery workers who were reduced to picking through smoldering ruins for scraps of food. This is a story, not just of a series of disasters, but a community living on the edge whose ultimate survival was nothing less than miraculous.

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43: Austen-tatious Jun 09, 2019

Jane Austen is rightly considered perhaps the greatest British novelist of her day, or any age. Her novels about women, marriage and family among the English gentry, especially Pride and Prejudice, have defined how we think about British society in the late Georgian and Regency eras for all time. Like almost no other person, Austen is the living historical embodiment of the 1810s, the decade that saw the publication of all of her novels—and her untimely death. But how did she come to be? What was her story? What drove her, and why, after a lifetime of writing, did she finally achieve her long-awaited success during the Second Decade?

In this episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger takes you into the modest bedrooms and parlors of Chawton Cottage, Jane Austen’s home for the most productive period of her life, and investigates how Jane’s wonderful literary creations came to be and why they reflect the spirit of the time and the society in which she lived. You’ll get a crash course in the tangled relations of Austen’s family, you’ll learn how and why Jane kept her literary vocation a secret from all but her closest kin, and you’ll gorge on Hog’s Puddings, Vegetable Pie and Toasted Cheese at the dinner table of the Austen women. This is a fascinating look at a genius at work in a very special historical and cultural moment, one that has come to define a country and an age in popular consciousness.

Correction: in this episode I mistakenly refer to Tom Lefroy as English-born. I meant to say he was Irish-born.

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42: Tomb Raider May 13, 2019

One of the most bizarre and mysterious cultures in human history, ancient Egypt still holds considerable interest for us today. This was even more true in the 1810s, not long after battles between France and Britain in the region of the Nile brought European travelers, scholars and opportunists to the desert to hunt for ancient Egyptian artifacts. One of the most notorious of these characters was Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a former barber and circus strong man who in 1815 became the go-to guy for British agents seeking to make a killing on selling Egyptian artifacts back in Europe. Belzoni’s incredible run of luck in the tomb raiding business, especially in October 1817, resulted in the discovery of numerous undiscovered and forgotten tombs in the Valley of the Kings, bringing to light their mysteries and questions that have lingered for the past 3,000 years.

In this episode of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger will trace the rise of Europe’s interest in Egypt, why the 1810s was such a crucial part of that story, and the discoveries on (and under) the ground that still tantalize us today. You’ll meet not only the audacious character of “The Great Belzoni,” but an ambitious and superstitious Ottoman prince, a wily British agent seeking to move as much loot as possible from the land of the pharaohs to the British Museum, and an Egyptian king who left behind over 800 wooden servants to work for him in the afterlife. Dr. Munger also has a rare occasion to share a story from his own childhood, one of his very first encounters with history.

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41: Caragea's Plague Apr 27, 2019

If you’ve never heard of John Caragea and have no idea where Wallachia is, you’re certainly not alone. This look at the seamy underbelly of Eastern Europe in the 1810s may be obscure, but it’s no less fascinating than anything else covered on Second Decade. Wallachia, now part of the modern nation of Romania, was 200 years ago a minor province of the Ottoman Empire, and except as a breadbasket the Turkish sultans couldn’t be bothered to care much about it. That’s why rule of provinces like Wallachia ultimately fell to an elite class of Turkish-born Greeks, the Phanariotes, who outdid each other at sending the sultan lavish gifts to secure political offices. But in 1813 the new hospodar of Wallachia, John Caragea, immediately inherits a hot mess when people start dropping like flies from one of the most virulent outbreaks of the bubonic plague since the 14th century. Things get even worse when Caragea puts the city of Bucharest on lockdown, triggering a wave of lawlessness, violence and thievery that pushes Wallachian society to its limit.

In this unusual look at an event little-studied in the English-speaking world, Dr. Sean Munger pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the Ottoman Empire and also paints a grim picture of what it was like to live in Eastern Europe two centuries ago. In this episode you’ll find out what a nosegay is, you’ll understand the utterly disgusting biology of bubonic plague, and you’ll appreciate why residents of modern Bucharest are a little wary when construction contractors start digging holes into the sites of plague pits. When this episode is over you’ll finally know something about the history of Romania that has nothing to do with vampire lore, Vlad the Impaler or the Communist era.

Fair warning: though not profane, this episode contains descriptions of medical conditions that some listeners may find disturbing.

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40: Antarctica Apr 07, 2019

For most of human history, Antarctica was more of a concept than a reality. Geographers from ancient times and voyagers in the Age of Discovery supposed there was a continent at the bottom of the world, but no one had actually seen it, and some, like Captain Cook, declared that there was nothing useful down there at all. Then, quite suddenly, at the end of the Second Decade, the envelope of humanity’s geographic knowledge stretched just far enough to enable discovery of the icy islands that lie at Antarctica’s northern tip. Exactly who “discovered” Antarctica is not entirely clear, both because there are differing definitions of what “counts” both as discovery and as Antarctica. But we know it happened in 1819 or 1820, and one of the discoveries coincided with the single deadliest disaster ever to occur on the frozen continent.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger will paint the historical context in which the discovery of Antarctica occurred, and he’ll take you onto the ships and into the icy waters of the land at the end of the world to get to the historical truth of what happened there. You’ll meet a reluctant Spanish admiral, a horde of rapacious, blood-soaked seal hunters, you’ll toast the claiming of the continent for the dying King George III several times with rum and spirits, and you may be haunted by the grim discoveries made on one of the world’s most desolate beaches—mysterious echoes of what may have been humanity’s first doomed struggle for survival in Antarctica. This episode also connects with various threads and stories discussed throughout the entire previous run of the Second Decade podcast.

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Second Decade Update and Special Appeal Mar 24, 2019

It’s been a while—too long—since the last episode of Second Decade. In this brief bonus episode, Sean Munger talks to you, the listeners, about the future of the show (yes, it is continuing), some announcements of other podcasts he’s going to be on, and makes an appeal to help Kristaps Andrejson, the producer and host of the popular Eastern Border podcast, who needs your help to return home to Latvia. Please do help out, it will be greatly appreciated!

Kristap’s email address, for PayPal purposes, is ihatebalrog@gmail.com.

You can find the Andy Social podcast here; Sean will be a guest on the March 28 show.

The History by Hollywood podcast is here; Sean will be a guest on the April 7 show (April 6 in North America), discussing The Right Stuff.

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Off Topic: The 80s (Jake's 88 Special, Part III) Jan 27, 2019

This bonus episode, the third one released in conjunction with Sean Munger’s newly-released novel Jake’s 88 (which is set in the 80s), examines how the 1980s ended and the transition to a new decade. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, the year 1990 begins with an invasion of Panama by the United States to terminate the troublesome narco-dictator Manuel Noriega, an episode that serves as a sort of dress rehearsal for a much more consequential conflict that develops when another dictator, Saddam Hussein, invades Kuwait later in the year. In the meantime, American pop culture begins to change as the era of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna segues into a darker and seemingly less innocent time. In this episode you’ll learn how AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses helped topple a dictator, why Saddam viewed Kuwait as his personal ATM machine, how Bart Simpson and Al Bundy killed the family sitcom, and you’ll encounter guys in Ninja Turtle suits, vengeful Dignity Battalions, an overconfident Prime Minister, a movie with only four colors in it, and much more about the end of the century’s strangest decade.

Jake’s 88 is a coming-of-age romance set in the year 1988. It’s deeply steeped in the curious head space of the decade and loaded with pop culture references. It’s available here on Amazon Kindle and in paperback.

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Off Topic: The 80s (Jake's 88 Special Part II) Jan 01, 2019

This bonus episode, the second one released in conjunction with Sean Munger’s upcoming novel Jake’s 88 (which is set in the 80s), examines the political, cultural and social history of the 1980s. Sean begins with two dreadful disasters in 1988 involving airliners being blown out of the sky, one over the Persian Gulf, the other over Scotland, and how both were related to the most destructive war of the 20th century, excluding the two world wars, which almost drew in the United States. Pivoting from geopolitics to pop culture, a spot-check of the most popular movies, TV shows and recording artists of 1988 takes you into a dizzying thicket of competing cultural ideas. You’ll learn why Die Hard was not originally a Christmas movie, how television’s most beautiful ingenue was punished for daring to want to have a baby while starring on a hit show, and what cartoon rabbits, airborne cocktail shakers and misheard Beach Boys lyrics have to do with each other.

Jake’s 88 is a coming-of-age romance set in the year 1988. It’s deeply steeped in the curious head space of the decade and loaded with pop culture references. It’s available for preorder here on Amazon Kindle (and a paperback version will also be available). The book releases January 15, 2019.

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39: The Monster of Gloucester Jan 01, 2019

In the summer of 1817, residents of the coastal town of Gloucester, Massachusetts suddenly began seeing a mysterious creature swimming around in their harbor. Though reports differed as to exactly what the monster looked like, how long it was and how fast it could move, the similarities between the reports and the trustworthiness of the witnesses seemed too substantial to ignore. A scientific association quickly convened a committee to investigate the creature. But the Gloucester sea monster was much more than just a strange anomaly that wagged tongues and sold newspapers: it was part and parcel of a much larger and more serious debate about the relative merits of the New World versus the Old, a debate in which prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson had a significant political stake.

In this quirky and unusual episode of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger not only presents contemporary accounts of the Gloucester monster—compiled in a nifty pamphlet rushed into print in Boston before the news cycle moved on—but also delves into the cultural and literary tradition of sea serpents in the early modern world, and why questions about big, strange animals mattered to the identity of the new United States. In this episode you’ll meet a French noble who was outsmarted by a moose skeleton, a local justice of the peace who treated sea monster stories like a high-stakes legal case, a society of amateur scientists who were a little overeager to prove the existence of the creature, and a sea captain who went out do battle with the monster itself. Was there really a beastie out there, or was this just a fish story? You decide!

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Off Topic: The 80s (Jake's 88 Special Part I) Dec 24, 2018

This bonus episode, released in conjunction with Sean Munger’s upcoming novel Jake’s 88(which is set in the 80s), examines the political, cultural and social history of the 1980s and why, far from being simply a grab-bag of pop culture tropes, this decade stands at the very heart of modern history. Beginning with an almost incredible snap decision made in a Detroit hotel room that completely changes the next 40 years of history, this roving spotlight on various aspects of the decade also tackles how John Hughes got ‘80s teens terribly wrong, The Day After and the specter of nuclear annihilation, Bill Cosby and the complex question of race in the ‘80s, and the almost surreal spectacle of the issue-free 1988 Presidential campaign between George H.W. Bush and his aggressively underwhelming nemesis, Michael Dukakis.

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38: Napoleon's Hundred Days, Part III Dec 24, 2018

“Waterloo” is a name so historic and iconic that it’s taken on more than its literal meaning—when we speak of someone “meeting their Waterloo,” we’re talking about their final epic defeat. Napoleon Bonaparte certainly did meet that end on the farm fields of Belgium in June 1815, but the story of how his brief restoration as France’s Emperor came crashing down is more than just the story of a single battle. Historians since 1815 have been more guilty than anyone else at distorting and sanitizing the story of this event, turning a tragic occurrence with real human consequences into little more than a tabletop strategy game with a lot of maps and symbols that obscure what really happened on that field. What was Waterloo really about? What were the stakes? Why are we so reluctant to remember it as anything more than a textbook military exercise? These are the questions that underlie this episode.

In this, the final installment in a three-part series on Napoleon’s Hundred Days, Dr. Sean Munger will throw away the maps and symbols and try to get to the heart of what the Battle of Waterloo was. In this episode you’ll learn why what you may think you know about Napoleon’s defeat is wrong, or at least distorted; you’ll ponder the existential implications of getting a bayonet in the face; you’ll marvel at how such a consequential man as Napoleon ultimately had so little to offer the people he asked to die for him by the thousands; and you’ll meet a 19th century British model-maker who landed the job of a lifetime and wound up seriously screwing up an important moment in European history. This is one of the highlight moments of the entire Second Decade, and one of the main reasons this podcast exists!

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37: Napoleon's Hundred Days, Part II Nov 24, 2018

In retellings of history, Napoleon’s brief return to power in the spring of 1815 is often portrayed as an audacious surprise, the ultimate comeback from an indefatigable historical personality. Actually it wasn’t. Having returned to Paris and run off the rickety reboot of the Bourbon monarchy, Napoleon immediately found himself faced with a dizzying array of insoluble problems. Chief among them was the fact that all the other powers of Europe had suddenly banded together and declared war on him. He would obviously have to fight to remain in power, but with France’s treasury empty and her manpower already drained from previous years of Napoleon’s wars, this time Bonaparte really didn’t have a second act. That raises the question: did he really think he was going to get away with it this time?

In this, the second of a three-part series on Napoleon’s final play on the world stage, Dr. Sean Munger counts the dwindling francs left in the French treasury, chronicles the treachery of Napoleon’s disloyal ministers who were plotting against him, and takes you into the rather tepid celebrity lunches that Bonaparte threw at the Tuileries Palace to try to make it look like he was the center of attention. You’ll learn about Napoleon’s drooling problem, why it’s a bad idea to ask fed-up troops who’ve already deserted your army once before to pretty-please come back and die for you once more, and why imperial coronation robes should generally not be worn more than once. This is a picture not of an audacious and incisive leader with one more trick up his sleeve, but more of a deluded narcissist totally out of gas and without a clue what to do.

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36: Napoleon's Hundred Days, Part I Oct 28, 2018

Napoleon was the kind of guy who didn’t know when the party was over. Following his disastrous defeat in Russia in 1812 (chronicled in Episodes 10-12 of this podcast) and yet another war in Europe, Napoleon’s enemies invaded France and forced him off the throne in the spring of 1814. Bonaparte was given the paltry consolation prize of the island of Elba, which proved stifling, and he had little hope that his enemies, particularly Britain, Austria and the restored monarchy of France, would abide by their word not to bother him. Within nine months of exile Napoleon had returned to France for another bid at power—an adventure that would ultimately lead to the Battle of Waterloo. Was Napoleon just desperate, stroking his ego, or was there really a chance that his return could have worked?

In this episode, the first in season three, Dr. Sean Munger delves into the back-story of Napoleon’s audacious comeback, including the circumstances of how and why he ended up on Elba and why he thought he had to leave. We’ll explore the shifting and contradictory motives of the allies, why Napoleon suddenly found himself broke, how and why Louis XVIII, the new King of France, totally deluded himself, and the currents and turmoils within France that ultimately made the success of Napoleon’s comeback a definite long-shot. This is the first in a projected three-part series that will chronicle Napoleon’s final turn on the world stage, ultimately ending with the climactic Battle of Waterloo—one of the most dramatic moments of the Second Decade.

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Second Decade Off Topic: Astoria, A Pacific Journey Jul 22, 2018

This is a bonus episode which goes outside the parameters of the main Second Decade show.

Astoria, Oregon was founded in 1811 as an outpost for fur trapping and trading on the Northwest coast, and was intended to be a crucial part of a global empire of commerce envisioned by German-born New York City millionaire John Jacob Astor. It didn’t quite work out that way, but the long history of Astoria has involved a number of fascinating people, encounters and accidents that have shaped this small Oregon city throughout the two centuries of its existence. There’s no way the entire history of Astoria can be crammed into a single podcast episode, but a few colorful anecdotes from its past will give you a sense of what this place is like and how it came to be what it is.

In this Off Topic episode, recorded partially on location in Astoria and neighboring areas, Dr. Munger will give a brief history of the town as a whole, focusing on its establishment in the Second Decade, and then you’ll journey through three stories of Astoria’s past. You’ll learn about the famous winter camp of Lewis and Clark, and why it was a particularly itchy place; you’ll travel with a famous Astorian named Ranald MacDonald, who deliberately marooned himself in Japan in 1848; and you’ll learn the history of the Oregon coast’s most famous shipwreck, which has been sitting there on the beach just south of the town since 1906. This is just a peek at the long tapestry of Astoria’s history.

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Second Decade Off Topic: The Oak Island Folly Jul 11, 2018

This is a bonus episode which goes outside the parameters of the main Second Decade show.

Sometime in the middle of the 19th century, somebody got it in their head that there was a cache of fabulous treasure buried on a remote island in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia called Oak Island. Said to have begun with an impromptu expedition to the island in 1795 by some local kids, the legend of the famed “Money Pit” has grown over the centuries to amass a mythology of self-referential books, occult and New Age theories and a gonzo reality show on the History Channel. But is there any historical substance behind the legend? What do we really know about what happened on Oak Island in the middle 1800s, and how do we avoid being carried away by 150 years of hucksters’ hype?

In this informal episode, historian Sean Munger, who was originally entranced by the Oak Island legend more than 25 years ago, drills into the facts, the historical record and the logical analysis of the story. In this episode, you’ll learn why the so-called “box drains” on the island are fishier (and saltier) than they seem; why flood tunnels are a mirage; who fabricated the over-the-top clue of a stone supposedly found in the pit with a tantalizing inscription; and you’ll understand why the revelation that there was nothing at the bottom of the famed “Borehole 10X” couldn’t have been less surprising. While there’s definitely no treasure on Oak Island, the historical and logical journey of how we get to that conclusion is still a lot of fun.

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35: Bolivar, Part III Jun 30, 2018

At the end of the Second Decade, after many tumultuous years of war and revolution, Spain’s colonial empire in the New World began to collapse at a rapid rate. It was due in no small part to Simón Bolívar and his daring military conquests, which were crowned by an audacious and harrowing trek through swamps and mountains which led to the pivotal Battle of Boyaca in 1819. But how did Bolivar, who had suffered at least as many failures and setbacks as he had clear successes, come to this point? His prowess as a commander—questioned by some—was not the whole story. As a political leader fighting for democracy and self-determination, he could never quite conquer his dictatorial tendencies. The result was a successful revolution against Spanish rule, but also an imperfect one.

In the conclusion of the three-part series on Simón Bolivar—and the season finale of Second Decade—Dr. Sean Munger takes you into the forbidding jungles and frozen mountains of South America, onto the battlefields of the wars for independence, and, as much as anyone can, into the head of one of the world’s most famous revolutionaries. In this episode you’ll learn how Bolivar wrote New Granada’s constitution in a small boat, how he used a threat of giving up his power to obtain even more, and why mud, rain, horses and mosquitoes played such an important role in the decisive battle that made modern South America. As an epilogue, you’ll learn about Bolivar’s life post-Second Decade, and why his legacy remains controversial today.

After this episode, Second Decade will be on hiatus for the summer (with the possible exception of one or more “Off Topic” episodes). See you in the fall!

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34: Bolivar, Part II Jun 03, 2018

The process of detaching Latin America from three centuries of colonial Spanish rule was hardly a linear one. Simón Bolívar, the most important but hardly the only revolutionary in Venezuela and New Granada (Colombia), came in and out of exile several times, was often defeated (sometimes by his own mistakes), and continually forced to try to “reboot” the revolution after another failed start. In the meantime, warfare and violence continued unremittingly within the contested areas, usually fueled by racial and class resentment. Despite all the challenges and reverses, Bolívar managed to advance his cause in a “three steps forward, two steps back” kind of way, and his mistakes tell us as much about him as his successes.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger continues the story of the Latin American revolution begun in the previous episode, and carries the story of Bolívar from his first exile in 1812 to his rocky consolidation of leadership of the revolutionary movement in late 1817. Here you’ll meet more of Bolívar’s colorful lovers, you’ll eat meat cured in horse sweat with the “Legions of Hell,” and you’ll dodge bullets from firing squads as the Venezuelan revolutionaries invariably fall out among one another. Was Bolívar a hero, deserving the accolades heaped upon him (at least on a few occasions) by his people, or was he a villain who overreached his power and betrayed the principles he supposedly espoused? You be the judge.

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31: Bolivar, Part I May 06, 2018

Simón Bolívar is one of the giants of Latin American history, with statutes, portraits and monuments to him everywhere from Panama to Tierra del Fuego, and even an entire country—Bolivia—bears his name. But how much do you really know about him? Where did he come from, what was Spanish America like at the time he arose, and how did he begin his incredible journey to liberate three-quarters of a hemisphere from one of the world’s oldest colonial powers? Although Bolívar clearly was the right man at the right time, the Spanish empire in the Americas was moribund and brittle by the beginning of the 19th century, with political, economic, social and racial tensions running deep. Into this complicated world came Bolívar, a man of wealth and privilege who claimed to speak for the forgotten man. He was also a passionate man, scarred forever by the premature death of his wife, and prone to flamboyant excess in both his personal and professional life.

In this episode, the first of a three-part series on Bolívar’s life and career, Dr. Sean Munger finally delves into one of the most important stories of the decade of the 1810s. You’ll learn about the history of the Bolívar family and how they made their money in New Spain; you’ll meet arrogant revolutionaries in exile, a passionate woman who made Bolívar a man at age 15, indecisive Venezuelan autocrats, and vengeful Spanish military captains intent on punishing treason against their king. This episode begins a colorful pageant of history that will ultimately take us the length and breadth of Latin America as Bolívar, sometimes right, sometimes wrong but always sure of himself, takes on an entire empire and rises to the height of power.

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32: Dawn of the Zulu Apr 15, 2018

Pressured by environmental change and the coming of European colonizers along the coasts, southern Africa in the 1810s was a complicated and dangerous place. Numerous small interrelated clans were competing for dwindling resources in increasingly marginal lands. Out of this turmoil rose the almost incredible personality of Shaka, an illegitimate child raised by a single mother who found his calling in the military and rose to the unlikely pinnacle of power in the Zulu clan. Shaka, who became chieftain of the Zulus in 1816, used familial relationships, trickery, deception and war—mainly war—to absorb the rival clans and forge a unified nation that would, later in the 19th century, prove a formidable adversary to the mighty British Empire. How did Shaka do it? What were the obstacles he faced? Why is he so pivotal in African history? Find out in this unusual and illuminating episode.

In this installment of Second Decade, Dr. Sean Munger will take you deep into the African savanna, to a land riven with complicated politics, feuding families, doomed love affairs and scorched-earth military tactics. You’ll find out what an ixwa is, how Zulu teenagers found a way to fool around despite the rigid sexual mores of their society, how the principal wealth of the Zulu nation chewed a cud and walked on four legs, and why it was dangerous to sneeze in Shaka’s presence. This episode will introduce you to one of the most brilliant, flamboyant and controversial personalities of the entire decade of the 1810s—Africa’s answer to Napoleon.

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31: The Great Iceland Road Trip Mar 26, 2018

Iceland was, in 1809, a very different place than we think of it today. It was still a picturesque, craggy island belching steam and lava from its many geysers and volcanic vents, but far from being a progressive society of generally wealthy people who speak an incomprehensible language and like to eat fermented shark meat, 200 years ago Iceland was one of the poorest and most inhospitable countries in Europe. At the beginning of the Second Decade, William Jackson Hooker, a young English botanist questing for adventure, made a voyage to Iceland to do the imperial gentleman-naturalist thing that passed for “science” at the time. As it turned out, his trip across Iceland brought him face-to-face with the weirdest customs and smelliest people on the island at that time, and ended in a blaze of glory, literally—with the ship that was supposed to take him home burning to the waterline. Now that’s a party!

In this episode, based primarily on Hooker’s travelogue, you’ll gorge yourself at an utterly insane dinner party hosted by Iceland’s former governor; you’ll savor the taste of Icelandic butter, which is to say, 15 years old and rancid; you’ll guzzle gallons of claret, rum and sour whey (which doubles as a liniment for lame horses); you’ll catch salmon with your bare hands; and you’ll rub shoulders with Iceland’s great unwashed, including particularly odorous women. And all this in a picturesque landscape of volcanic peaks, sharp lava rocks and natural springs hot enough to boil eggs. Welcome to the alien world that lurks between the pages of Hooker’s unique and interesting book.

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Second Decade Off Topic: The White House, Part II Mar 05, 2018

What was the White House really like in the early part of the 19th century? Always under construction, reconstruction, redecoration or renovation, the President’s house was like a child that could never sit still, or like a living organism changing constantly over time. In addition to logistical and domestic details like how the chandeliers worked and when the first toilet flushed within the walls of the Executive Mansion, the story of the White House in these years goes hand-in-hand with political and personal events of the first families that lived there.

This special bonus episode continues the story of the White House begun in Episode 30 of the main podcast. In this “Off Topic” riff, you’ll encounter the first Presidential mummy, surging mobs of Andrew Jackson supporters ripping pieces out of the drapes, a Presidential hairstyle 140 years ahead of its time, a 1400 pound wheel of stinky cheese, an epidemic of diarrhea with a grim body count, and a succession of feckless, hard-drinking, hard-luck chief executives who grow increasingly more intoxicated as the Civil War nears. The White House of the antebellum period not only proves to be a dangerous place with its toxic water and diseased mosquitoes, but also a sad and melancholy one, with personal and family tragedy stalking the halls of power.

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30: The White House, Part I Mar 05, 2018

Originally built in the 1790s largely with slave labor, from the very beginning the White House was an eerie mirror of American society, including its original sin of slavery. But the house as it was originally constructed stood for only a few years. During the War of 1812, a British strike team sailed up the Potomac and burned the U.S. Capitol and the White House to the ground. This might have been the end of the house’s illustrious history, but it wasn’t. Reconstructed from the ashes under the supervision of two Presidents, Madison and Monroe, the executive mansion again stood proudly at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, which in the 1810s was a muddy pathway full of ruts and stumps. What was it really like to live in the White House in this era? This episode, first of two parts, will show you.

In this installment of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger will take you into the hallways and bedrooms of the President’s house, in war and peace, both before and after its destruction by the British. You’ll join James and Dolley Madison on one of their Wednesday night soirees; you’ll learn why the famous story of how Dolley saved the portrait of George Washington from the British isn’t exactly as you may have heard it; and you’ll shiver along with workmen toiling in the drafty unfinished rooms of the mansion in the winter of 1816-17, hoping to rebuild the place as a symbol of American resilience. This is a story you don’t often hear about America’s most famous address, but it lies at the heart of the history that resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Part II of this miniseries on the White House continues in a Second Decade Off Topic episode.

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29: Australia, Part II Feb 12, 2018

Though it started as a convenient dumping ground for Britain’s human refuse, the colony of Australia was not destined to remain a prison forever. Despite the grandiose plans of some of its visionaries, however—like Lachlan Macquarie, Colonial Governor—it would take a great deal of labor, money and innovation if it was ever to rise above its convict roots. Macquarie began with an ambitious program of building and urban design, in the process cheating the British government and Australia’s free settlers out of the cheap labor they felt they were entitled to. Meanwhile whalers and sealers were wreaking havoc on the continent’s south coast, and settlers were pushing up against the geographic seal that walled off Sydney from the unknown interior of Australia. How did the utter mess that was Australia in the early 19th century eventually become anything like a real country, much less a cohesive society?

In this, the second part of a series on the formative years of Australia, you’ll find out a lot of what you never knew about the strange land down under. Find out what finally happened to Lachlan Macquarie, how and why he made all the wrong enemies, and how he gave the continent its official name. You’ll discover why ignorance of basic geography was sometimes fatal to escaping convicts; you’ll appreciate why the seal skin industry was a particularly gross and disgusting business; and you’ll ride along with three intrepid explorers and their mysteriously anonymous hangers-on as they try to push the boundaries of the colony across the fabled Blue Mountains into the true Australian outback. Prepare for a historical walkabout as Second Decade takes you to one of the strangest places on the planet at the time.

Additional materials about this episode on the website, here!

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28: Australia, Part I Jan 29, 2018

In the 1810s, the British penal colony of Australia, known then as New South Wales, was barely 20 years old. Already it had sunk into a morass of drunkenness, corruption and hopelessness, even suffering a military coup by the soldiers tasked to keep the unruly convicts in line. There were deep social divisions between the “Emancipists,” freed convicts who hoped to own their own land, and “Exclusives,” white settlers who came voluntarily. This is to say nothing of the tragic effects that European settlement had on the continent’s aboriginal population. But as much of a mess as Australia was in the Second Decade, there were seeds of hope that it could become something a little less depressing. When Lachlan Macquarie, an enterprising Scotsman, took over as the colony’s governor in 1810, he began transforming Australia into something more than a human refuse dump—but it was by no means an easy road.

In this first part of a projected two-part series, Dr. Sean Munger explains where Australia came from, whose idea it was to transport British convicts to the other side of the world, and why it was such a sad, brutal and bizarre place at the beginning of the 19th century. In this episode you’ll see how a push by British politicians to get “tough on crime” boomeranged with unexpected results, you’ll learn why rum was literally more valuable than gold in Australia, and you’ll encounter strange characters including an army officer turned sheep magnate, and even Captain William Bligh (of HMS Bounty fame). Get ready for a series of strange adventures down under, in what was in the 1810s perhaps the oddest country on Earth.

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Second Decade Off Topic: Benihana Nights Dec 10, 2017

This is an Off Topic episode, involving historical topics outside the scope of the main podcast. This episode spins off Episode 27 of the main podcast (“The Belle of Nagasaki”).

Japan and the United States face each other across the largest, most contested space in the world: the Pacific Ocean. From American attempts to cash in on the China trade in the 1780s, right after the Revolution, to complicated geopolitics and open warfare in the 1940s, these two countries have loomed large in each other’s history, consciousness and popular culture. But how did this volatile relationship develop? It’s a complicated story and covers a lot of ground, more than 200 years of history with many ups, downs, triumphs and tragedies.

In this episode, presented with a little more off-the-cuff style than Second Decade proper, Dr. Sean Munger expounds on topics like Matthew Perry’s 1853 attempt to pry open Japan’s padlocks with paddle-wheel steam warships, the tragedy of the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the postwar economic boom (and bust), and how cultural threads like anime, monster movies and TV miniseries forged an indelible but rapidly-changing bond between the United States and Japan. This episode moves fast and covers a lot of ground, but there’s never a dull moment, and you may find yourself hungry for sushi when it’s over!

Link to my World War II class (referenced in this episode)

Website for this episode.

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27: The Belle of Nagasaki Dec 10, 2017

In the Second Decade, Japan was the most exotic, unknown and isolated country in the world. Since the early 17th century the Tokugawa Shoguns had deliberately closed the country to trade and cultural exchange with the rest of the globe, wanting especially to avoid the religious influences of European countries. Japan’s only outlet to Western trade was a trading post on a tiny island in Nagasaki harbor. In 1817, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Holland sent a new director-general to Nagasaki, who did a daring thing that had never been done before: he brought his family with him. This was how Titia Bergsma Blomhoff, a frail woman in ill health with a young baby clinging to her, wound up in Japan, together with her nurse, Petronella Munts. Their presence triggered a diplomatic incident and perhaps hammered a crack in Japan’s façade of isolation that was to break wide open later in the 19th century.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger explains who Titia Bergsma was, how she came to be married to Holland’s informal envoy to Japan, and he’ll narrate the strange turn of events that saw her arrive at Deshima Island, in Nagasaki harbor, in August 1817. You’ll learn how and why the Shoguns feared and loathed Westerners (especially Western women), what happened when Titia dared to challenge one of feudal Japan’s most sacred and tightly-enforced laws, and how her story would have been mostly lost to history except for the efforts of two contemporary Japanese artists as well as her long-lost descendant who revived her memory in this century, the 21st. This is the story of a collision of cultures, neither of which fully understood one another, and you’ll come to understand just how big the world was in 1817 and how alien certain parts of it were to each other.

Correction: at the beginning of this episode I refer to Titia Bergsma being 29 in 1817; actually she was 31.

Link to my World War II class (referenced in the podcast)

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26: The Queenston Hostages Nov 20, 2017

In October 1812, over 900 American troops surrendered to the British after the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Queenston Heights. Most of these P.O.W.s were exchanged immediately, but the British singled out 23 specific men among them and refused to return them, claiming they were actually British citizens. Against the vociferous protests of the American government, the British shipped the “Queenston 23” to England, intending that they would be tried for treason and, if found guilty, executed. In response, President Madison ordered 23 British P.O.W.s to be held as hostages to answer for anything that happened to the Queenston 23. As the situation escalated, ultimately hundreds of men, Americans and Britons, on both sides of the Atlantic were taken hostage, some remaining in captivity for nearly the entirety of the war. But why were these particular prisoners so important? It has to do with the different views that Britain and America had about what it meant to be a citizen—and ultimately, the meaning of the entire war itself.

In this episode, Dr. Sean Munger takes you deep into a little-known episode of the War of 1812, but one that has profound implications for understanding the war as a whole. In the course of this episode you’ll learn exactly how sore the British were over losing the American Revolution, why it was particularly dangerous to one’s liberty to speak with an Irish accent, how young war hero Winfield Scott’s attendance at a White House reception proved especially fateful, and why the last battle of the War of 1812 was fought not on the battlefield, but in a British courtroom a decade later. This is a highly unusual look at America’s second war for independence, and highlights how ultimately the early struggles between the United States and Britain were really about identity: who “counted” as a citizen, and why that question was of such vital importance.

You can visit the website for this episode, and see additional materials about it, here.

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Second Decade Off Topic: The Sunn Also Rises Nov 05, 2017

This is the first in a projected series of bonus episodes called Second Decade: Off Topic, which examine historical topics outside the scope of the main podcast. This episode spins off a matter mentioned in Episode 25 of the main podcast (“The Man in the Buffalo Fur Suit”).

Unless you’re a movie nerd, chances are the name “Sunn Classic Pictures” doesn’t mean anything to you. But in the 1970s, the Utah-based studio, owned by a company that made shaving razors, had a string of bizarre hits in the form of G-rated documentaries that seriously distorted historical events. While their first hit, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, was relatively benign, Sunn later rose to prominence schlepping stories about ancient aliens, a shadowy and completely impossible plot to replace Abraham Lincoln’s assassin with a look-alike, and faith-fired quests to find Noah’s Ark and follow in the footsteps of “Historic Jesus.” Sunn’s rise coincided with cultural and political shifts in the late 1970s, including the rise of politically-active evangelical Christians who ultimately helped bring Ronald Reagan to power.

In this informal episode, historian Sean Munger relates the history of Sunn Classic Pictures and sketches out the context of the rapidly-changing America that eagerly gobbled up its historically questionable product. In this episode you’ll learn what “four-walling” is and why it was a revolutionary way to market movies; you’ll meet the Cajun-born (and born-again) mastermind behind Sunn’s strategy; you’ll go into the trenches and churches with the likes of Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant; and you’ll understand why Jimmy Carter, himself an evangelical Christian, was deemed less virtuous for America than a divorced ex-B movie actor. This is a bizarre story of faith, politics, UFOs, adventurous astronauts, New Agers and lots and lots of money.

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25: The Man in the Buffalo Fur Suit Nov 05, 2017

You’ve probably heard of Daniel Boone and “Grizzly” Adams, the quintessential frontier mountain men who helped forge America’s frontier identity in the 19th century. But you’ve probably never heard of Estwick Evans. An eccentric New Hampshire lawyer, something compelled to Evans put on a skin-tight suit made of buffalo fur, hoist a 6-foot rifle across his shoulders and take off into the snowy wilderness of New England on a frigid day in February 1818. Evans’s epic journey covered over 4,000 miles, overland across the Great Lakes to Detroit and then down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, out into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans, and then by ship around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard back to Boston. On the journey—which he chronicled in an unusual book—Evans observed much of what America was in the Second Decade, and correctly predicted at least some of what it was to become.

Historian Sean Munger takes you along on Evans’s journey, often quoting Evans’s own words and descriptions of the landscapes he saw and the people he met along the way. On this journey you’ll get frostbitten ears in the Green Mountains of Vermont, encounter backwoods witches in upstate New York, join an Indian pow-wow, and float down the Mississippi on a river barge, while all the way experiencing Evans’s self-assured and perhaps narcissistic ruminations on war, peace, gender relations, zoology, slavery and morality. This is a priceless snapshot of what America was like just before the industrial 19th century would change it forever.

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24: New England's Cold Friday Oct 21, 2017

Church steeples, horse-drawn sleighs, picket fences, snow-covered fields...is this what you think of when you picture an old-time winter in New England? The cultural and historical roots of these images go back to Colonial times, but the historical reality isn’t always so idyllic. On January 19, 1810, a strange and sudden cold snap, accompanied by violent winds, plunged the region into a sudden deep freeze that nearly everyone who lived through it remembered vividly for the rest of their lives. As the wind tore apart roofs, shook down barns and snapped the masts of sailing ships like toothpicks, New Englanders braced for a punishing assault from the weather. When it was over, the memory of the “Cold Friday” gave them a new benchmark for measuring extreme weather, and the story of one particular family’s tragedy, printed in a single newspaper, somehow became one of the most often-told tales in all of New England’s 19th century folklore.

In this revealing episode, the first in the second season of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger dusts off tales of New England’s Cold Friday that never made it into the history books, but which form part of the fabric of the region’s popular past. Here you’ll watch in astonishment as early “weather watchers” document the extreme nature of the event; you’ll learn how a previous event, the “Dark Day” of 1780, set the mold for remembrance of Cold Friday; and you’ll see how the personal tragedy of the Ellsworth family of Sanbornton, New Hampshire ultimately became the 19th century equivalent of “clickbait.” You may want to turn the heater up for this one—it’s quite a chilling tale!

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23: Murder in Charleston Jul 09, 2017

You may not have heard of David Ramsay, but if you lived in Charleston, South Carolina in the second decade, you would probably know him—if you were part of the city’s rich white elite, that is. Ramsay, born in Pennsylvania, Princeton-educated, served in the South Carolina State Legislature and the Confederation Congress, was a protegé of revolutionary doctor Benjamin Rush—a signer of the Declaration of Independence—and tried to rid Charleston’s steamy streets of yellow fever by predicting the weather. His life was tragically ended by a deranged assassin, convinced Ramsay (and everybody else) was out to get him, who blew away the good doctor with a “horseman’s pistol” in broad daylight on one of Charleston’s busiest streets in full view of hordes of witnesses. This odd story from the 1810s shines a fascinating light on Ramsay’s life and personality, and also on the precarious world of Charleston in which he lived, which was built on the backs and the labor of the city’s enslaved African-American population.

Dr. Sean Munger presents the fascinating life of Dr. Ramsay, and his unusual death, in a colorful manner that illuminates various broader themes of the Second Decade era. In this episode you’ll rub shoulders with Charleston’s elite, and perhaps share their thinly-veiled discomfort at the monstrous injustice upon which it depended. This is a picture of a city—and a country—split down the middle, foreshadowing the terrible divisions that gave rise to the Civil War.

This is the last episode in Season 1 of Second Decade. The show will return in fall 2017 with brand-new episodes.

Additional materials on this episode available at the website!

Dr. Munger is offering online classes to the general public. The next one (July 23) is "A Brief History of Climate Change." You can sign up here!

(Some background music for this episode licensed CC3.0 by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).

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22: Old Ironsides May 14, 2017

The early months of the War of 1812 served up a relentless drumbeat of bad news for the United States: our untrained and ill-equipped forces, fighting a war they were unprepared for in the first place, suffered reverse after reverse on the battlefield. But on the high seas, the exploits of one remarkable ship, the USS Constitution, provided the only bright spot in the gloom and demonstrated that the new republic could, when circumstances called for it, compete militarily even with the greatest naval power on Earth. Sent to patrol the Atlantic coast, the Constitution and her captain quickly found themselves tangling with the overconfident British commander James Dacres, who went so far as to capture an American vessel and write a literal taunt into her log daring an American frigate to come out and fight him. The result was a thrilling real-life adventure involving a desperate chase, booming cannons, crackling muskets and every cliché you’ve ever seen in a nautical adventure film from the Age of Sail—except in this case it really happened.

Sean Munger takes you into the thick of naval warfare in the War of 1812 with the story of the USS Constitution, her commanders, officers and the Royal Navy captains who found themselves surprisingly shaken at staring down her 44 guns. In this episode you’ll understand exactly why the Constitution was created in the first place, you’ll learn what “kedging” is, you’ll understand how the Constitution got her nickname “Old Ironsides,” and you’ll gain a glimpse as to why the British were so surprised at the naval prowess of the upstart Americans. This episode is pure adventure—all the stuff of a Patrick O’Brian novel, with the added benefit of being true.

Additional materials and photos available at the website for this episode.

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21: Frankenstein May 08, 2017

The image and concept of Frankenstein’s monster—most notably personified by Boris Karloff in the 1931 Universal horror film—are indelible in literature, cinema and popular culture. Far more than just an 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein is a philosophical journey as well as a cultural phenomenon. But how did it come about? The idea for the novel was famously hatched at a lakeside chateau in Switzerland, the Villa Diodati, in the late spring and early summer of 1816 by Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron (who was then having an affair with Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont), and his doctor John Polidori, who went on to write The Vampyr. A nightmare summer of inclement climate-changed weather, haunting visions of dead children and monstrous women, endless cycles of personal and sexual jealousy, and the toxic personality of Lord Byron all contributed to Mary’s flash of genius. The story of Frankenstein’s origin is wrapped up in the broader story of the 1810s as a whole, and is intimately connected to the environmental disaster of that decade.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger presents the complicated and fascinating personal stories of Mary Shelley and the literary circle that gathered in Geneva that summer, as well as their tragic ends in the years following. You’ll learn why Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” why the neighbors of the Villa Diodati set up a telescope on the lawn to spy on the scandalous goings-on, and you’ll meet the horrifying midnight vision that frightened Percy Shelley so much Polidori had to give him ether. This extravaganza of Gothic terror sounds like a bad horror film (and has provided the basis for more than one), but it’s real, actual history—like you’ve never heard it before.

Visit the website for this episode for show notes, pictures of the people discussed, and a trailer for the 1931 Frankenstein film!

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20: Second Decade on Film Apr 23, 2017

Since the beginning of film as a narrative and artistic medium, historical events and eras have been popular subjects for filmmakers. The decade of the 1810s, however, has not tended to show up in movies or on TV as frequently or consistently as other eras—but there are still plenty of examples of the second decade on film. Beginning in the 1920s with French filmmaker Abel Gance, depictions of the 1810s, many involving Napoleon or adaptations of popular and classic novels, have woven their way through the history of visual media with varying results. From Miriam Hopkins’s Technicolor turn as Becky Sharp in 1935 to Paul Dano as Pierre Bezhukov in the 2016 miniseries War and Peace, the analysis of the second decade in film covers a lot of fun and interesting ground.

In this episode, a slight departure from the usual emphasis on factual events, historian Sean Munger takes you on a brief tour of the 1810s as they appear on the screen. Films and shows discussed include Ridley Scott’s The Duellists, the 2002 European-made Napoleon miniseries, the classic 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, as well as lesser-known (and less historically serious) efforts like Woody Allen’s Love and Death or the whimsical sendup Lost in Austen. If you’re a fan of the period and you’d like to see it on screen, this episode may give you some new items to add to your Netflix list!

At the website for this episode, you can view YouTube videos for trailers and/or scenes from all the films and shows discussed here.

Correction: in the episode, actress Jennifer Ehle is incorrectly identified as “Elizabeth Ehle.” My apologies to Ms. Ehle.

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19: Curious King George Apr 09, 2017

Despite being one of the longest-reigning British monarchs as well as wildly popular among his own people, King George III gets a bad rap as the “mad king who lost America.” In truth the story of George’s life is touching and sad. After dealing with not one but two world wars that occurred on his watch, as well as two world-shaking revolutions in America and France, George was ultimately felled by a mysterious illness that affected his body as well as his mind. Signs of his recurring malady appeared as early as 1765, but in 1810, the beginning of the second decade, the King was finally unable to discharge his royal duties. Supplanted by his son (the future King George IV) as regent, George’s illness ended an entire era of British history, the Georgian Era, and began another, the Regency. But this is more than a story of politics and power. It’s a story of a family, struggling to deal with the far-reaching effects of a difficult and ultimately tragic illness whose nature and origin is still debated more than 200 years later.

Historian Sean Munger shines a light on the personal and family stories of King George and the British royals during the 1810s, including eyewitness accounts of the King’s condition and his often curious behavior. In this episode you’ll be thrust into the midst of several acrimonious royal family disputes, you’ll learn to fear the King’s doctors and their straitjackets, and you’ll find out why a blue-stained chamber pot is such a contentious historical artifact. At the end of it you may even have a bit of sympathy for old George and his long-suffering family. Far from being “the mad king,” George III emerges as a historical personality who must be judged on his own terms.

For additional materials about this episode, visit the website!

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18: Let China Sleep Mar 26, 2017

Despite seeming to the West as if it was “sleeping,” China in the 1810s was in fact experiencing the crucial transition of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty from its cultural and political zenith under the Qianlong Emperor to the ruin and chaos that would ramp up in the later 19th century. Ruled at this time by Aisin Gioro Yongyan, also known as the Jiaqing Emperor, China rebuffed not one but two British diplomatic missions and continued its policy of isolation and indifference to the West. But at the same time dangerous and dramatic events were brewing, including a rebellion in 1813 that almost toppled the dynasty, and a nefarious plan by British merchants to introduce addictive drugs into Chinese society. Overshadowed by his illustrious father, Yongyan was unable to arrest the cancers that were just beginning to eat away at the foundations of his country—but the evidence indicates he was fully aware of them. China, in fact, was not “sleeping” at all.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger takes you into one of the most mysterious places on the planet in the 1810s, right into the gilded halls and Alice in Wonderland surrealism of the Forbidden City where the “Lord of 10,000 Years” and a tiny elite ruled over nearly a third of the world’s population. You’ll meet some members of the mysterious “White Lotus Society,” rub shoulders with China’s most notorious embezzler, and learn how a British diplomat’s refusal to get down on his knees may have doomed millions of Chinese to a vicious cycle of drug addiction. You may not know much about the history of China, but after hearing this episode you may well come to understand some of the powerful forces that would eventually transform the world’s most populous nation into what it has become in modern times.

Go to the website for this episode for additional materials, including pictures!

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17: The War of 1812, Part III Mar 19, 2017

The year 1814 was one of the bleakest in American history. It opened with the country embroiled in war, with most of its coast blockaded by the British Navy, the economy collapsing, the frontiers aflame with violence, and the government teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. And now that Britain’s war with Napoleon was effectively over, things were bound to get even worse for the United States. American troops scored a few victories in the field, some of them surprising, but the capture and burning of Washington, D.C. by British forces in August vividly demonstrated America’s disadvantages. Yet throughout this dark period the seeds of a more or less honorable peace had already been planted, with negotiations going on in Europe and a growing desire on both sides to simply end the conflict. Of all the participants, the Native Americans paid the steepest price in the War of 1812.

Historian Sean Munger completes this three-part series on America’s most obscure war, although there are still many more stories from this conflict to tell. In this episode you’ll drop in on battles at distant frontier forts and the swamps surrounding New Orleans; you’ll learn what a Baratarian is, how West Point cadets got their funky uniforms and why Presidents don’t make very good field commanders. This is definitely stuff you did not get in history class!

Go to the website page on this episode for additional materials, including pictures!

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16: The War of 1812, Part II Mar 12, 2017

Having declared war at a time it was woefully unprepared to face the world’s most powerful country on the battlefield, the United States spent the first phase of the War of 1812—at least on land—lurching from disaster to disaster, with most efforts aimed at the theoretically achievable goal of conquering Canada. Unable at first even to feed or supply its troops competently, and with serious doubts about the objects of the war still lingering in the public mind and the halls of Congress, the administration of James Madison muddled through as best it could, buoyed slightly by a string of surprising naval victories. But in 1813, with a politically and physically weakened Madison reeling from an unexpectedly difficult re-election and a serious illness that almost killed him, two developments, one on the Native American frontier and the other in Europe, forever ended the chances of the U.S. taking Canada and would soon open a new and darker phase of the conflict.

Historian Sean Munger presents the mysterious War of 1812 from both a bird’s-eye and a ground-level view, trying to break through the imagery and mythology that’s grown up around the war to appreciate what it really meant at the time. In this episode you’ll meet a blundering general (William Hull) and an unexpectedly brilliant naval officer (Oliver Hazard Perry), you’ll learn why it was dangerous to drink a glass of water at the White House, and you’ll learn what a “Red Stick” is. Several colorful characters, from the cleverly duplicitous British General Isaac Brock to the gun-toting, Indian-hating, profusely bleeding Andrew Jackson, drift, blunder, sail or shoot our way into our story. This is the second of a three-part series on the war.

Note: in the episode I identify Oliver Hazard Perry as an admiral. He was actually a commodore.

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15: The War of 1812, Part I Mar 06, 2017

What was the War of 1812? Which countries were involved? What were the stakes? Why is it so obscure? Why does it have such a funny name? How come you were never taught much about it in school? These questions, and many more, lie at the heart of understanding the first military conflict fought by the United States since the founding of the Constitution. The causes of the war are surprisingly murky and confusing, everything from a mutual misunderstanding between the U.S. and Great Britain as to the meaning and scope of national citizenship, to a desire to cement political unity by a Congress and a Presidency drifting toward entropy. The picture involves more than just maritime issues and border tensions with British-held Canada. It also includes Native Americans, caught in the middle between two essentially hostile powers, and a broad roster of unfinished business left over from the American Revolution.

In this, the first of a series dealing with the broad issues of the War of 1812, historian Sean Munger will attempt to ground you in the issues and context surrounding this difficult period of American, British, Native American and world history. You’ll learn what “impressment” is and why speaking with a Cockney accent was dangerous on the high seas in 1811; you’ll meet the visionary Shawnee prophet, Tenskwatawa, who met his Waterloo (or Tippecanoe) in the Indiana wilderness; you’ll go into the halls of Congress and butt heads with the stubborn “War Hawks”; and you’ll cringe at the cosmic irony of the tragic miscommunication that eventually triggered the war. You’re in for a bumpy ride!

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14: Down & Out at Harvard Feb 20, 2017

Harvard, America’s first college, is thought of as a bastion of privileged patricians, a place filled with old brick buildings, ivy-covered walls and inscrutable ancient traditions. But it’s also a real college where real young people live, learn, struggle and try to find themselves. In 1813 two boys, Stephen Salisbury and Aaron White, fifteen and sixteen, respectively, left their homes in Massachusetts to become freshmen in the Harvard College class of 1817. The remarkable personal day-to-day accounts both of them left behind illustrate in vivid and sometimes amusing detail what it was really like to go to college in the 1810s. Stephen engages in endless battles with his parents over pocket money and dirty laundry; Aaron in the meantime struggles against depression, feelings of guilt and unworthiness, and his own temptations. Both somehow manage to graduate, but one senses it wasn't easy!

Historian Sean Munger takes a personal and often humorous look at college in the 1810s, and tries to break down the ivory walls that separated 19th century Harvard from the real world. In this episode you’ll figure out why curtains are so essential in an 1810s dorm room, cross swords with Stephen’s insufferable nagging mother, endure Aaron’s seasonal affective disorder, and you’ll learn what a ‘Sulkey Bagg’ is. This could be the most fun episode of Second Decade yet.

Special permission was granted by, and thanks is given to, the Massachusetts Historical Society to quote from the unpublished Aaron White Diaries, 1815-1880.

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13: Kid Lincoln Feb 13, 2017

Most of us were taught in school about Abraham Lincoln’s humble origins: the log cabin on the Kentucky frontier, his lack of formal education, and colorful tales of rail splitting and backwoods adventures. But the traditional American mythology leaves out a lot about Lincoln’s formative years. Lincoln was born at the beginning of the Second Decade into a complex and deeply contested environment, shaped by economic hardship, conflict with Native Americans, and simmering resentments over slavery and land ownership. Add to this the ravages of disease and environmental hazards, such as the dreaded “milk sickness” that almost wiped out his family, and a picture of Lincoln’s childhood emerges that you may not have thought about. Furthermore, only recent (21st century) scholarship has discovered a previously unknown aspect of Lincoln: the rare genetic disorder, called MEN2B, from which he suffered, and which may well have strongly influenced one of the most significant events in all of American history.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger pierces through the “log cabin mythology” surrounding Lincoln in an attempt to understand his origins and the challenges he faced while growing up. You’ll not only learn what life in a log cabin was really like, but you’ll also meet Lincoln’s colorful family (and step-family), discover why trembling cows are terrifying, and you’ll get a thought-provoking look at how genetics can affect history. This episode may cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about America’s 16th President.

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12: Napoleon in Russia, Part III Feb 05, 2017

Why did Napoleon, with the largest army the world had ever seen up until that time, lose his war with Russia so badly and so tragically? You may have heard that it’s because he didn’t take the threat of the cold Russian climate seriously enough, and his army froze to death on the retreat from ruined, burnt-out Moscow. This is at best a half-truth. The French Army was already disintegrating even before Napoleon occupied Moscow, and despite the “alternative facts” that Bonaparte desperately spun as to why the retreat was so disastrous, the roots of his ultimate defeat had less to do with ice and snow than it did with Napoleon’s own willful blindness. But even this debate obscures the real story of the 1812 retreat from Moscow and the almost unfathomable suffering it inflicted on the hundreds of thousands of real people—not just soldiers—who lived through it. This episode presents that story, in graphic and sometimes unsettling detail.

Historian Sean Munger tries to cut through the veil of half-truths and misconceptions surrounding the greatest military disaster of the 19th century and get to the real on-the-ground story of what happened. In this episode you’ll definitely encounter a lot of hungry and freezing soldiers, but you’ll also learn what happens when horses have the wrong kind of shoes, how to season horse meat so it tastes less disgusting, and what not to do in –10 degree weather if you want to keep your toes. You’ll also gain a curious insight into Napoleon’s own self-deception, the conflicting stories he told different people about why he lost the Russian campaign, and how he finally sold himself on a lie he evidently continued to believe until the very end of his life—after perhaps as many as a million people paid the ultimate price for his errors of judgment.

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11: Napoleon in Russia, Part II Jan 23, 2017

Despite being warned repeatedly—by his enemy, Tsar Alexander, and even by some of his own generals—Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-proclaimed Emperor of France, made one of the costliest and most lethal mistakes in the history of warfare by invading Russia in the summer of 1812. Though it’s usually the harsh Russian winter that’s credited with crushing the French Army, in reality Napoleon and his troops were in deep trouble long before that, from literally the moment they crossed the Niemen River in Poland. It almost didn’t matter that the Russian Army kept retreating and refusing, for the most part, to fight. The half-million men of the Grand Armée had to fight dusty roads, sticky marshes full of mud, freezing rain in June, blazing heat in July, mosquitoes, dysentery, starvation and dehydration without having to worry about tangling with the Russians in battle. When the inevitable clash did finally occur at a town called Borodino, it led to an even more epic disaster: a man-made firestorm that virtually wiped Moscow off the map.

Historian Sean Munger seeks to dispel the myths and misconceptions of Napoleon’s Russian boondoggle, and to get inside the heads of the people who made it happen. In this episode you’ll learn about the man who burned down Moscow (and why he did it), how Napoleon’s badly-timed cold and bladder infection affected the course of world history, and you’ll learn just how desperate a man has to be to willingly drink horse urine. You may have heard the story of the French invasion of Russia before, but you’ve probably never heard it told quite like this.

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10: Napoleon in Russia, Part I Jan 16, 2017

In the summer of 1812 Napoleon’s France invaded Russia, ruled by Tsar Alexander I, with the largest army ever assembled in pre-modern times. Leo Tolstoy famously called this conflict “an event opposed to human reason and human nature.” How and why did it happen? In the first of three parts, the complicated political backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars comes into focus through an examination of the lives and personalities of the two men most responsible for it, Napoleon and Alexander. After becoming unlikely friends at an intimate summit meeting on a river raft in the summer of 1807, a series of missteps, misunderstandings and divergent destinies eventually brought these two fascinating people into direct conflict with each other—with millions of their citizens’ lives at stake. The result was world-shaking history with far-reaching consequences.

In this series, Sean Munger cuts through the usual historians’ clutter of maps and army formations with a close look at the actual people behind this incredible event. In this episode you’ll come to appreciate Napoleon’s humble origins, learn why he divorced the woman he still loved, and how and why his mind just wasn’t as sharp in 1812 as it had been at the height of his power. You’ll also become familiar with Alexander’s insecurities, his bold but unrequited dreams and his receding hairline. Sean will also take you on a rather unpleasant march with Napoleon’s Grand Armée, already sinking into a hopeless fiasco of bloated horses, hungry soldiers and broken wagon wheels even before they ever caught sight of a single Russian soldier. This is history as it should be: the real story of real people.

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9: Theodosia Jan 09, 2017

On New Year’s Eve, 1812, Theodosia Burr Alston, First Lady of South Carolina and daughter of former U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr, boarded a ship bound for New York City and was never seen alive again. More than 50 years later, in Nag’s Head, North Carolina, an old woman gave a doctor a painting, as payment for medical services, that the doctor came to believe was a portrait of Theodosia. But was it, and if so, how did it get there? These two unsolved mysteries bookend the unusual life and personality of Theodosia Burr Alston, an educated, talented woman, outspoken feminist, who was utterly devoted to her father Aaron Burr, the “gadfly” of the Early Republic, a controversial man accused of murder and treason, who ultimately lost both of the women he held most dear in his life.

In drilling down into the twin mysteries of Theodosia Burr, historian Sean Munger sets the stage with colorful examples from her life and her father’s. In this episode you’ll not only meet various members of the Burr family, but you’ll encounter coastal pirates and unscrupulous beachcombers, two unidentified women buried in different places along the Atlantic coast who may or may not have been the real Theodosia, and follow in the footsteps of New England maritime historian Edward Rowe Snow as he tries (not entirely successfully) to solve the mystery in the 1940s. You can be the judge of whether the woman in the “Nag’s Head Portrait”—she is pictured on the far right of the image collage header for Second Decade podcast—really is Theodosia Burr Alston.

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8: Christmas 1814 Dec 21, 2016

Second Decade wishes you happy holidays with this Christmas-themed episode. Of all the Christmases of the 1810s, the year 1814 stands out as especially significant. The world was celebrating its first holiday season in over two decades in the midst of general peace, except for one last pesky war that wouldn’t quite die. While the crowned heads at the Congress of Vienna—supposedly working for world peace but in reality boozing and partying like there was no tomorrow—were exposed to the highly flammable new holiday tradition known as the Christmas tree, a team of diplomats including future U.S. President John Quincy Adams were actually putting the Yuletide greeting “peace on earth” into practice. A convoluted and sometimes disheartening round of negotiations between two unequally-matched teams of statesmen yielded the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 despite consciously avoiding resolution of all the major issues that caused the war in the first place. Now that’s diplomacy!

Historian Sean Munger begins this episode with a colorful look at the Christmas traditions being practiced in 1814, from a special kind of Christmas meat made from some very uncomfortable pigs, to the horrifying pyromaniacal English drinking game known as “Snapdragon.” Then he segues into the fascinating story of the Treaty of Ghent, why it almost didn’t happen and how the chrome-domed, short-tempered John Quincy Adams earned his chops as one of America’s most gifted diplomats.

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7: Volcano Dec 12, 2016

On the island of Sumbawa, in what is now Indonesia but was previously called the East Indies, there is a collapsed, sunken shell of a volcano that was once a mighty peak taller than Mt. Fuji in Japan. On a warm spring night in 1815 this mountain, Tambora, exploded with a force so powerful that it can scarcely be measured in terms intelligible to humans. In addition to being an environmental disaster of staggering proportions that killed over 100,000 people and changed the world’s climate, the eruption of Mt. Tambora occurred at an unusual moment of transition for the people of the East Indies. The British, having brieftly wrested the spice-rich Indies from the control of French-allied Holland during the Napoleonic Wars, were struggling to leave a permanent political and strategic mark on the islands before returning them to Dutch rule. Lost in the geopolitical shuffle for colonial possessions were the people of the islands themselves, at once opaque to history but who also left behind haunting clues of their lives that were cut short by this incredible disaster.

Armed with numerous eyewitness accounts of the Tambora disaster and its aftermath, Sean Munger tries to put you on the ground at the epicenter of one of the most dramatic and powerful events in environmental history. Additionally, you’ll get a taste of old-school European colonialism in Southeast Asia, a profile of British Java’s quirky governor Thomas Stamford Raffles, and a look at the hidden history that was buried ten feet under volcanic rock and only rediscovered in the 21st century.

Subscribers to Sean’s Patreon campaign will get access to a members-only video, a companion piece to this episode, that explains why Tambora is much less well-known than the similar 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, and how the two disasters are linked.

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6: Jefferson in Winter Dec 05, 2016

When Thomas Jefferson retired from public life in 1809 after serving two terms as U.S. President, he thought his retirement years at Monticello, his Virginia plantation, would be peaceful, quiet and relaxing. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Utterly broke as a result of his out-of-control spending sprees while in the White House, Jefferson returned home to his farm just as a series of environmental disasters made it almost impossible to earn a living from his sole remaining source of income: farming. What was more, Jefferson suddenly had to support his grown daughter, her alcoholic husband and their eleven children as well as lay out the red carpet for the steady streams of visitors and well-wishers who descended on Monticello. And that’s to say nothing of Jefferson’s own unacknowledged children by his slave mistress Sally Hemings. Add to this a war, a crippling drought and a boneheaded financial move, the 1810s proved to be nothing less than the very long winter(s) of Jefferson’s discontent.

Sean Munger not only tells the story of Thomas Jefferson’s difficult retirement during the decade of the 1810s, but also provides some historical context for understanding one of the most contradictory and controversial figures of Early America. Unpacking Jefferson’s challenges at Monticello involves everything from volcanoes in Indonesia to the passionate desires that led him into one of history’s most famous and scandalous love affairs. While we cannot hope to “solve” the enigma of Thomas Jefferson, the story of how the vaunted Sage of Monticello descended into the tragedy of his twilight years might just help us understand some of the challenges and preoccupations that shaped the personality of this extraordinary man.

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5: Cast Away Nov 28, 2016

This is the story of Charles Barnard, a real-life Robinson Crusoe who spent nearly two years marooned in one of the most forbidding and desolate landscapes on Earth: the Falkland Islands, far south in the Atlantic, near Antarctica. It happened in 1813 as a result of war between the United States and Great Britain, and after a dizzying series of double-crosses, table-turns and stabs-in-the-back that wouldn’t be out of place on the modern TV show Lost. Barnard is forced to find shelter, food, fuel and clothing in a landscape so barren that the only vegetation that will grow is tussock grass, and in which humans are decidedly unwelcome. In addition, Barnard must stay one step ahead of the surly and treacherous British sailor Sam Ansel, who makes the war a very personal affair.

Sean Munger brings you this true story from the 1810s, chronicled in Barnard’s own memoirs documenting his amazing and dangerous around-the-world journey and his incredible feat of survival against seemingly impossible odds. In this episode you’ll not only meet Barnard and the villian Sam Ansel, but an untrustworthy British sea captain, a hardy African-American whaler from New Bedford who’s also stranded on the island, Barnard’s long-suffering wife and three kids who assume he’s dead, and various species of wild boars, albatrosses and penguins, all of whom wind up on Barnard’s survival rations menu at one time or another. This story, worthy of a Hollywood movie, actually happened, proving once again that truth is usually stranger than fiction.

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4: Hawaii Nov 21, 2016

Hawaii, known to Westerners in the Second Decade as “the Sandwich Islands,” was a rich and vibrant place, and the 1810s were arguably the most exciting time in its history. In 1810 Kamehameha, a nobleman from the Big Island, completed his 30-year struggle to unify Hawaii under his own rule, initiating an era of somewhat fragile peace. But there were fractures beneath the surface of Hawaiian society which led to a cultural and religious upheaval in 1819—at the exact same time that a group of ambitious New England evangelicals were, for unrelated reasons, preparing to settle in Hawaii and establish Christian missions.

Sean Munger sets the stage for the story of this cultural collision by exploring both the background and context of the American missionaries who arrived at the end of the decade, and the rapidly changing country of Hawaii in which they suddenly found themselves. In this episode you’ll not only meet Kamehameha, his arch-rival Kaumuali’i and his unlucky rum-guzzling advisor Isaac Davis, but also the bewildered royal heir Liholiho, the ambitious feminist Ka’ahumanu, a reluctant bride named Lucy Goodale, a vomiting clergyman called Hiram Bingham, and the famous Henry Obookiah, whose round-trip from Hawaii to Connecticut and back took an astonishing 186 years.

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3: The Last Frost Fair Nov 14, 2016

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...both were true in the winter of 1813-14, one of the most brutal winters in the history of Britain and Ireland. Thanks to global cooling, a murderous series of cold snaps, freezing fog and snowstorms reduced London and other cities to an urban wasteland like something out of The Walking Dead...except a lot colder. Yet at the same time, as the people of London were at wit’s end, the freezing of the Thames created the opportunity for a magical winter festival that only happened a few times a century and has never happened again since 1814: the last of the legendary “Frost Fairs.”

Historian Sean Munger explains the historical and environmental background of the festival, and how Frost Fairs have resonated in English literature since the times of Shakespeare. In this episode you’ll encounter the mysterious “Mountain X,” greedy coach drivers, desperate ferrymen, bear-baiters and prostitutes, a bewildered Prince Regent, a drunken King Charles II, “Lapland Mutton,” and you’ll find out what Harry Potter, Neil Gaiman and Virginia Woolf have to do with the second decade of the 19th century. Join us for a very chilly trip into the past!

For this episode, special thanks is due to the members of the University of Oregon “Glacier Lab” for their comments and contributions on the script.

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2: Barbados Vault and Dead Tea Woman Nov 07, 2016

This episode presents two mysterious tales from the Second Decade, both from Caribbean islands. An oft-told account of coffins moving about by themselves in a sealed burial vault in Barbados between 1812 and 1820 has left many people reaching for paranormal explanations like telekinesis or voodoo. But did it really happen? And who was the unidentified woman who washed up in a coffin full of tea on Nevis in 1809?

Sean Munger presents these mysteries in historical context, with a glimpse at the seething hell that was the British West Indies in the 1810s, before the abolition of slavery. As you'll learn from this episode, pretty islands of white sand beaches and gently swaying palm trees have a lot of dark secrets lurking under the surface.

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1: The Election of 1816 Oct 30, 2016

This episode, the inaugural episode of the Second Decade podcast, details the bizarre (by modern standards) political situation Americans faced in 1816. The Democratic-Republican Party, hoping to score its fifth Presidential election win in a row, ran yet another Virginian, James Monroe. It looked to be a cakewalk, considering that the opposition party, the Federalists, was in full meltdown mode after they insisted on showing the country just how much they hated the War of 1812 with a disastrous and ill-advised confab in Hartford. But the dull Presidential race wasn't the real political story in 1816. There was an epic disaster in the making at the Congressional level, and voters rose in revolt like no other time in American history.

In this episode you'll meet James Monroe, college drop-out and heir apparent to the Virginia dynasty; Rufus King, the last man to wear pantyhose on the floor of the U.S. Senate; and you'll learn why getting sloshed on the Fourth of July was, in 1816, every American's patriotic duty.

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