King Zog I: The Chain-smoking Ruler of Albania
Zog I of Albania was that country's youngest prime minister, and eventually its king. He chainsmoked a mind-boggling amount of cigarettes ev...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & Podcasts
Comedy
Losers, Pretenders & Scoundrels
Unlicensed historians Andrew Heaton and Andrew Young sort out characters from the Earth's history into categories of failures, fakes, and rascals. Funny but technically informative.
Episodes
20 of 33 episodes
The Craziest Governor of Oklahoma: Alfalfa Bill Murray
Alfalfa Bill Murray declared martial law over thirty times, and wrote an autobiography so embarassing that his family would steal it out of...
Gregor MacGregor: Liar King of the Mosquito Coast - Part 2
Gregor MacGregor was a Scotsman who joined revolutionary causes in South America, slowly morphed into a coward, THEN evolved into a fantabul...
Gregor MacGregor: Liar King of the Mosquito Coast - Part 1
Gregor MacGregor was a Scotsman who joined revolutionary causes in South America, slowly morphed into a coward, THEN evolved into a fantabul...
The Congressman Who Shot a Guy at the White House
Daniel Edgar Sickles was an American Civil War general, and later, a U.S. congressman. While serving in Congress he gunned down a man in bro...
Triple Secret Agent Man: Michael Goleniewski
Michael Goleniewski was a Polish intelligence agent but ALSO spying on the Poles on behalf of the Soviets BUT ALSO reporting on all of it to...
The (Maybe?) Fake King of France: Karl Wilhelm Naurndorff
Karl Wilhelm Naurndorff made a compelling case that he was the dauphin of France, spirited away by Talleyrand or some other insider after th...
Andrew Carnegie's Fake Bastard Daughter: Cassie Chadwick
Cassie Chadwick went from a Canadian nobody to a psychic to the opulent heiress presumed to be Andrew Carnegie's natural born daughter. At t...
The Goat Testicle Transplant Doctor (Part Two)
In this second installment on the life and times of John Romulus Brinkley, quack, we follow his incredible career trajectory as he becomes a...
The Goat Testicle Transplant Doctor (Part One)
John Romulus Brinkley became wealthy, famous, and powerful as one of America's most colorful, ludicrous quacks. He made his fortune by "curi...
Captain For A Day! - Wilhelm Voigt
What could you get away with if you looked the part? What if you're trying to trick a bunch of German soldiers with a sense of blind obedien...
The Ice Palace King of the Desert - Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Niyazov was a Soviet thug turned insane dictator of Turkmenistan. And as their leader he made sure to hit all the classics. Built...
The Austrian Emperor of Mexico - Maximillian the First
Maximillian I was the "other" Hapsburg son. The one who was born second and didn't get to be Emperor of Austria. But he thought he'd found t...
Charles Ponzi: The Short Italian with a Long Con
Most of us have heard about the Ponzi Scheme. But what of the man who gave it his name? Charles Ponzi, was an Italian immigrant who never qu...
The Irish Zorro of Mexico: William Lamport
Was Zorro real? You bet he was! Except he was Irish. And didn't wear a mask. And Probably couldn't carve a "Z" with his sword. And proclaime...
Mary, Queen of Scots Killed Some Folks
In popular film Mary, Queen of Scots is lionized or victimized or both. However there's some good evidence she A) killed a lot of people and...
Bridge For Sale! - The Irish Charmer
The best con man can sell you anything. A car, a boat, a Nigerian fortune. But what about a bridge connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn? Well, G...
The Pirate Queen Who Married Her Kid
The Pirate Life was a tough life for the most hardened of men in the 1700s. But what if you were a woman on the high seas? Zheng Yi Sao was...
Christina, Lesbian King of Sweden
Christina of Sweden was hard to categorize. Never a servant to gender rules or accepted behavior of monarchs, she only ever had a passing in...
Teenage Popes Make Bad Popes
What makes a good Pope? Certainly not the wisdom of youth. John XII and Benedict IX both found themselves wearing the white hat well before...