Podcasts by High Crimes and History
Most true crime covers the past hundred years of recorded history. We cover the rest of it. From murderous knights and pirate kings to ancient Chinese forensic investigators and the Renaissance's literal fashion police, our episodic podcast dives deep into the historical characters and events that make up some of the greatest crimes the world has ever seen — and certainly not found in your textbooks. For more information visit https://www.highcrimesandhistory.com/
Further podcasts by The High Crimes Team
Podcast on the topic Gesellschaft und Kultur
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Who Watches the Watchmen? - The United States Park Police from 2020-06-16T20:15:02
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These #$%!ing Words - The History of Swearing from 2020-06-01T22:54:56
The past two months of hiatus has had Trevor and Katie swearing up a storm, so we thought this would be a good time to delve into a more lighthearted episo...
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(BONUS) The End is (Not) Nigh - What Historical Pandemics Teach Us About COVID-19 from 2020-03-18T22:15:32
The world has turned upside down in a manner of weeks. As COVID cases rise, the economy falls, and society grinds to a halt, Trevor has a surprisingly optimistic message – the end is NO...
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Human - Nazi Reserve Police Battalion 101 from 2020-03-02T05:01
How do you take 500 ordinary men and train them to kill 83,000 human beings? In 1942 Poland outside the village of Jozefow, the men of the Nazi Reserve Police Battalion 101 found out th...
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Violence is the Answer - Why the West is Fascinated by Violence from 2020-02-10T18:42
We take some time to delve into a common listener question we get – why is Western history so violent? Trevor dives into the systems of justice, honor, shame, religion, and entertainmen...
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The Line in the Sand - The Trial at the OK Corral from 2020-01-28T22:04
The gunfight of the O.K. Corral didn't end with the Earp brothers and Holliday riding into the sunset. They had been charged with murder. In a preliminary trial, the twists and turns of...
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Thirty Seconds, Thirty Shots - Gunfight at the O.K. Corral from 2020-01-13T05:01
If history is a narrative, then it stands to reason that where a story starts and ends is just as important as the events itself. The traditional narrative of the famous shootout at the...
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Fact From Fiction - Pierre Picaud from 2019-12-30T20:16:26
How do historians separate fact from fiction? Sometimes it’s almost impossible to do so. Take the case of Pierre Picaud – a Frenchman sentenced in 1807 for crimes he didn’t commit on th...
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Annihilating an Empire - The Century of Humiliation from 2019-12-17T00:37:34
Deep in the jungle in the Vietnam War, an American soldier overdoses on heroin. That overdose can be traced back to the Century of Humiliation that the Chinese faced after the start of ...
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Assaulting an Empire - The First Opium War from 2019-12-02T20:13:34
What would it look like if a modern army clashed with a medieval army on the battlefield? The First Opium War answers that question. In order continue their illegal opium trade in China...
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Addicting an Empire - The Opium Trade in China from 2019-11-18T22:34:16
The opioid crisis in the United States has reached historic levels and remains one of the worst drug epidemics in history, but it is far from the first country to be addicted. The Qing ...
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Grab Bag Anniversary Episode! from 2019-11-04T05:01
In our anniversary episode we answer listener questions, including why history is so violent, whether historians can diagnose mental illness, why Trevor can’t pronounce anything right, ...
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Cruel and Unusual - Executions in Ancient Persia from 2019-10-21T04:01
What is the worst way to die? Ancient Persia invented many of the methods of execution used throughout history. Some are still used today. Others were so horrific they were never used a...
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The "I" Word - Andrew Johnson's Impeachment from 2019-10-07T23:25:24
He was a man who clashed with House leadership in a war of words, violated acts of Congress as a show of force after previous investigations on impeachable charges were inconclusive, an...
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The Pretender - Perkin Warbeck from 2019-09-23T19:37:57
In 1491, England was in for a shock. Edward IV’s youngest son, Richard of Shrewsbury, was alive. That was a problem for three reasons. One, if Richard was alive then he was the rightful...
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Easy Money - Resurrection Gangs of Victorian England from 2019-09-09T04:01
How far would you go to make a comfortable living? Faced with a shortage of bodies for dissection, medical schools in Victorian England turned to resurrectionists. Gangs of men exhumed ...
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Fear of the Horizon - Corsair Piracy and the Mediterranean Slave Trade from 2019-08-26T04:01
Corsair slavery in the 16th and 17th centuries does not fit into the modern model of the slave trade. White European Christians were enslaved in the hundreds of thousands by North Afric...
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The Art of the Duel - Dueling in America (Reupload) from 2019-08-19T13:12:49
Men have always had a biological need to compete, and that need can turn deadly, but rarely was it socially acceptable. However, at one point in time it was not only commonplace for gen...
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A Matter of Honor - The 47 Ronin from 2019-08-12T04:01
Some legends are larger than life. The question is where to separate fact from fiction. We dive into another famous crime in history - the Ako incident in 1703, in which 47 samurai cons...
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Stranger Than Fiction - Werewolf Trials in Europe from 2019-07-29T11:00:14
Werewolves have long been a horror trope in literature, but historically many people have claimed to have committed crimes as lycanthropes. Their journey has been one of tragedy and heroism, of cha...
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The Rogue - John Hawkwood from 2019-07-15T04:01
The lovable rogue, a trope in pop culture today. Break the law, charm the audience. But most historical rogues were not good, nor were they lovable. John Hawkwood, an English mercenary in the 14th ...
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Nine Shots - The Caman Band Massacre, 1st Mass Shooting in America from 2019-07-01T04:01
How does history help us identify mass shootings and solve the epidemic? On August 14th, 1903 in Winfield, KS, Gilbert Twigg shot nine shots: eight indiscriminately into a concert crowd, and once t...
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BONUS: Revisiting "The Evilest Man in the World" - Gilles de Rais from 2019-06-24T04:01
In our very first bonus episode we look back at Gilles de Rais and his trial records to ask an important question: was Gilles de Rais innocent? We examine possible theories of Gilles’ psychopathy, ...
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The Entertainment of Murder - London, Murder, and the Making of Scotland Yard from 2019-06-03T04:01
Victorian London – a grim-dark, pre-noir city of violence and murder. Except it wasn’t. London was safer than most first-world countries today, yet newspapers and broadsides sensationalized every m...
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Un-American - Amish and Mennonite COs in WWI from 2019-05-20T04:01
To refuse to fight for one's country is often seen as cowardly, treasonous, and un-American. But what happens when a whole religious community practicing nonresistance is forced into the draft? As ...
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The Breaking Point - WWI French Army Mutinies from 2019-05-06T22:54:22
Every person's will has a breaking point. But what happens when it's not one man, but a whole army? In 1917 the French army had reached the limit of their morale. Ordered into the trenches, entire ...
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The Doppelganger - Martin Guerre from 2019-04-22T22:17:06
How well do you think you could recognize a person in a society with only your memory to recall someone’s identity? In sixteenth century France, peasant Martin Guerre returned after almost a decade...
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Crimes Against Humanity- Thomas Thistlewood from 2019-04-08T04:01
If a crime against humanity today was not a crime back in history, how do we approach those events? Case in point: Thomas Thistlewood, 1700s Jamacian slave owner, engaged in torture, murder, and se...
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"A Race of Headsmen" - The Sanson Family, Executioners of Paris from 2019-03-25T05:31:29
What if you were born into the profession of executing people? For the Sanson family of Paris, this was their occupation for 200 years. As headsmen they executed some of the most famous people of F...
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Death Has Signed a Contract Part II - The Montana Vigilantes from 2019-03-14T04:01
The Montana Vigilantes have all the evidence they need to convict Henry Plummer and his deputies. But what happens when the vigilantes become the very villains they set out to stop? The result is t...
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Death Has Signed a Contract Part I - The Montana Vigilantes from 2019-03-11T04:01
What happens when the law that's supposed to protect you turns criminal? That was the question that the miners of Alder Gulch, Montana faced in the 1860s. When they suspected that the sheriff and h...
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Forensics for Dummies - Medieval China's Homicide Detectives from 2019-02-25T05:05
What if a real-life Sherlock Holmes wrote a how-to book for determining how someone died? A similar situation gave history its first forensics book, written for bookworms thrown into field forensic...
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These Walls Can Talk - Tower of London from 2019-02-11T05:01
Three voices echo within its halls. Three narratives -- a murder, a robbery, and and an escape -- woven together not by time, but by place. For this is the Tower of London, where many have been sen...
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The Fashion Police from 2019-01-28T05:05
Welcome to Renaissance Florence, where in order to be anybody citizens had to “dress for success.” Spending on fashion was out of control, teetering on an economic crisis. Fearing financial ruin an...
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The Devil's Greatest Swindle from 2019-01-14T05:01
H.H. Holmes: “The Devil in the White City.” “America’s First Serial Killer.” Convicted of nine killings and admitting to twenty-seven, he operated a murder castle at the Chicago World’s Fair and lu...
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Blood Libel from 2018-12-31T04:59
Welcome to the Spanish Inquisition -- the attempt to expel all non-Christians from Spain by force. When a group of Jews is accused of having murdered a Christian boy in a secret blood ritual, it gi...
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The Evilest Man in the World from 2018-12-17T03:00
How does a billionaire knight turn from Savior of France to serial killer? That is a story that requires walking through the life of the man some historians have dubbed “The Evilest Man in the Worl...
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The Pirate King from 2018-12-02T22:10
Most pirates died as they lived. One, however, got away with the largest armed robbery in history. Britain named him Public Enemy Number One. Pirates named him the Pirate King.
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Hitmen and Horoscopes - Part 2 from 2018-11-18T23:23:12
The Affair of the Poisons has reached the King’s court, and chaos ensues. But the hardest part about a conspiracy is figuring out what’s truth and what’s fiction. The best conspiracies – like this ...
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Hitmen and Horoscopes - Part 1 from 2018-11-04T19:02:57
Everyone loves a good conspiracy -- especially when it has a little truth to it. In 1670s Paris a group of career poisoners are discovered to have sold poison to thousands of citizens – including t...
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The Double Exception from 2018-11-04T19:01:31
At the turn of the century the American frontier considered the woman criminal a double exception in society. Uncommon and uncouth, many were placed in penitentiary systems created by men, controll...
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The Rice Chest from 2018-11-04T18:59:21
How has mental illness affected history? In the case of the Crown Prince Sado, it's tragic. In 1762, the prince was sealed in a rice chest by his own father for eight days and left to die for his c...
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Welcome to High Crimes and History from 2018-10-21T20:00
Most true crime investigates the past hundred years. We investigate the rest of it. Welcome to High Crimes and History. Premieres November 5th.
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