CATHERINE THE GREAT: THE GERMAN PRINCESS WHO SEIZED AN EMPIRE

Episode 1 | Human History — IndividualsIn this History episode we focus on Catherine the Great — a minor German princess who arrived in Russia at 14 with no claim to the throne and left as one of the most powerful rulers in the history of the modern world.This episode covers the coup that removed her husband, her 34-year reign expanding Russia by more than 200,000 square miles, the legal reforms, the Hermitage collection, the correspondence with Voltaire and Diderot, the suppression of the Pugachev serf rebellion, and the contradictions of an Enlightenment monarch who never freed the serfs she privately knew she should have freed.The woman who seized the Russian Empire and has been reduced to crude jokes ever since.#HistoryMystery #CatherineTheGreat #RussianEmpire #WomensHistory #HistoryPodcast---THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION: HOW ONE DOCUMENT SPLIT CHRISTIANITY FOREVEREpisode 2 | Human History — Groups & MovementsIn this History episode we focus on the Protestant Reformation — the 1517 act by a theology professor that the printing press turned into a continental revolution, splitting Christianity in two and producing religious wars that killed millions.This episode covers Luther's 95 Theses and his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms, Calvin's doctrine of predestination and its reach into American culture through the Puritans, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the Thirty Years War, and the unintended consequences — literacy, individual conscience, the Scientific Revolution — that the Reformation produced without intending to.The world the Reformation made is the world we still live in.#HistoryMystery #ProtestantReformation #MartinLuther #Christianity #HistoryPodcast