The Weird History Podcast

Latest Episodes:

shawplatypus — **99 Live Your Life Like You’re Examining a Platypus** Sep 29, 2016
Show notes

The platypus appears to be some kind of melding or mashup between a duck and a beaver. It is not, though the first Western scientist to examine a specimen thought that it was exactly that: A taxidermy hoax made of existing animal parts.

Plus: An important announcement about the future of this podcast.

98 Blood and Types Sep 22, 2016

Show notes

Belief that one’s blood type affects personality is common in Japan. Dating sites, celebrity profiles, and vital statistics for fictional characters often include blood type, and belief that it affects personal attitude or character is somewhat akin to belief in astrology in the United States. The beliefs have their roots in pseudoscience from before World War Two. In the 1970s a series of Japanese self-help books claimed that understanding blood type was the key to understanding personality, and a phenomenon was born.

It’s easy for an outsider to mock beliefs in pseudoscience like this, but humans do have a persistent desire to put themselves into boxes and groups, and to assign themselves certain group characteristics. This can take the form of astrological sign or blood type, but it also shows up in online quizzes, debates about which Ninja Turtle you are, or deciding which house you’d be sorted into if you went to Hogwarts.

97 American Exiles Sep 15, 2016

Show notes

Immigration from Mexico to the US is not new. Workers have been deciding to immigrate to the US, legally or not, for over a century. However, legal channels for immigration have often not been forthcoming. In the early twentieth century the Mexican government attempted to stop migration northward so that local agribusiness interest could freely exploit Mexican labor. The US did institute a guest worker program known as the Bracero Program, but it proved to be insufficient. The demand from Mexico for job, and the demand from American agribusiness for cheap labor, proved to be more than the legal channels would allow.

Later in the 1950s American border officials enforced a sweeping, large-scale crackdown known as (and this was the program’s official name) Operation Wetback. That program dealt with large groups of migrants all at once and ultimately deported over a million people from the United States. However, errors and human rights abuses were unavoidable, and the “solution” to the problem of illegal immigration proved to be worse than the perceived problem that it sought to fix.

I’m Not Dead Sep 08, 2016

Show notes

It was bound to happen eventually. There’s no new episode this week.