Unbuttoned History

Announcements and a ripping story.

The first episode of 2018 is packed to the gills with content! New updates about the podcast! A Friend departs! Then we talk about the Saints and how they all were manic but that doesn't take anything away from them for 2 hours. Mountains Levitate, Alphabets are invented, Animals are befriended!

In this episode, Captain Mike and Caleb tell you about two Swedes who were assassinated for very different reasons, and by that I mean one was a real mensch and the other was a real wang. We tackle King Gustav III and the General Secretary of the UN Dag Hammarskjöld.

If you love people doing utterly horrendous Scottish Accents, then this is your paradise. 

Captain Mike tries to tell us about how the great Byzantine city o Constantinople fought off Crusaders, Latins, The Rus and a khannate or two before the Turks finally defeated them. But Mike Genuine Draft and Caleb are drunk and having too much fun going on tangents about the folly of not trusting Hungarians, being too cheap in regards to cannons, and how the Catholic Crusaders are basically heroin addicts whos teal copper piping from elementary schools.

Your favorite pseudo historians get to revive their first series: Newest Nations, and talk about the brief country of Catalonia. We cover the rise of Catalonian Nationalism, their oppression under Franco, and their efforts to become independence in the 21st century.

This week your favorite pseudo=historians take a look at America's Forgotten War: The Korean War. Where we learn the importance of Geography classes, that tanks versus people is lopsided and that having a billion people means you tip the scales no matter what.

We celebrate the 100th-anniversary of the October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution. Fun story, this all actually happened in November because Russia was still using the Julian Calendar.

Capt. Mike attempts to wrap up his long running Ethiopian Epic series, but Mike Genuine Draft and Caleb play the Unbuttoned Drinking game and try to stop him at every turn. This is a sloppy and funny one, historians.

For 21 years Brazil was ruled by a brutal, and oppressive Military Dictatorship that specialized in torture and huge economic expansion for the ruling elites. Learn in this episode how there's only 12 names in 20th century Brazilian politics, how Superman defeated the KKK and why so many South American politicians are Italian.

Captain Mike finally gets to gush about how much he loves US President Theodore Roosevelt to his heart's extent. Caleb has a pretty great recurring bit about Taft getting stuck in bathtubs, and also why having your country actually matter sucks.

The Unbuttoned cast celebrates a huge milestone with some old friends of the show, Terry Torres, Julia Scherer-Hoock and Rebecca Bishop and discuss two very important questions: "Why is history important to you?" and "Why is history important to humankind?"  Frivolity ensues.

This week we learn about the one time a super left wing major city decided to make itself it's own country--and how poorly it went. We cover the Paris Commune, Zoo animal Cuisine, Ridiculous Calendars, Red Flags and all the things you shouldn't do when you try to rise up against your national government.

Game of Thrones is wrapping up their penultimate season, and the topic of Royal Incest as abounded. But what of when this happened in our world? This week we talk about the strange practice of Royalty marrying and having children with their own families. From the horrific birth defects of King Tut, to the ravages of having everyone be a Hapsburg.

A new series begins as we take a look at the horrific natural disaster that shaped San Francisco as we know it: the Massive Earthquake and subsequent fires. Here how the city and some very unlikely inhabitants were able build new, bigger and better after their whole city was wiped off the map.

It's vacation time at our satellite studio at the Bishop wharf, we have friend of the show Julia Scherer-Hoock on to talk about Witches, European and American. 

That's right, folks. After a two eyer absence, Terry is back to guest on this episode looking at the differences between written and unwritten constitutions.

In this week's episode we bring back the beloved Atrocity deathmatch series, find out how easy it is to trick Blind Mike, and how bad Original Mike's memory and reading comprehension is.

In this week's episode we learn about how the British being routinely embarrassed pushes them to invent the concentration camp.

Finally we get around to Shaka and the Zulu people in this weeks episode. Learn about the things they don't tell you about Shaka himself, how the desire for making South Africa into Canada nearly destroyed it and how sometime syou can get carried away during the fun of the roads.

Take a hit of vicarious righteousness as you learn about the deeds of some of the bravest freedom fighters who ever lived and briefly imagine that you could be a sixteenth as awesome as they were before the bleak memory of your mediocre cowardice returns. This week we're talking about the failed revolution at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

Mike and Caleb have another two-hander as Blind Mike continues to save the lobsters. This week, we discuss all the times Native or Indigenous people were right and Europeans were wrong.

Caleb and Make have a short form two-hander about their favorite slave insurrection. Learn about how volcanic activity on the other side of a continent help cue an uprising, and how it's better to be in the slave rebellion than to stay out of it.

Caleb and Mike do a two hander about the time a dictator and his shoe obsessed wife, were overthrown by the clever use of theme songs and road blocks. Also hear someone decide not to plunge their country into horrific sectarian civil war.

Whether a vestigial relic of old pagan faiths, cultural quirks or a jeer to belittle a native faith--Superstitions can be found in every region of the globe. This week we have Rebecca Bishop on to talk about some of the most famous, and to detail our own personal superstitions.

This week, we continue our Badass Bitches series with a more modern icon. We take you to Myanmar, where Suu Kyi fights everyday for democracy.

It's just Blind Mike and Caleb this week, and they decide to challenge themselves to make an episode with the MPAA rules for a PG-13 movie rating. A lot of fun is had, and then they start using trailer voice over voices at each other and things get ridiculous. Oh and some Swedish History is briefly discussed.

This week we take a look at the major foundational Philosophies and Religious thought of the long living Middle Kingdom. We take on Confucianism, Legalism and Taoism. How they are similar, how they build upon each other and how they greatly differ. 

This week we finally take a look at the Cuban Revolution. Mafiosi, American Elites, Spanish aristocrats, Communists, and Arawaks have all fought over the immense and beautiful island of Cuba. Let's find out how the first Adult Playground for Americans became one of the sole remaining communist nations in the world, also they have great coffee and sandwiches.

This week we whisk you away to a tropical island paradise and discuss: god incest, socially encouraged bisexuality, and the argument that you only need 12 letters. This week we talk about Hawaii from it's discovery all the way until it is annexed by the United States.

This week we take on Ancient Carthage, a great Mediterranean Civilization known more for their feuds with the much more famous Greeks and Romans. But as one fan put it: Carthage is a cooler, blacker Rome.

Caleb gets drunk and high and has a great time telling you about everyone's favorite stupid holiday.

This week Caleb and Blind Mike get together for the first intended uncut episode. They discuss Madagascar's Queen Ranavalona I or as butthurt Europeans called her, "The Mad Queen of Madagascar"

This episode was recorded March 17th, also known as St. Patrick's day, a holiday celebrated exponentially more in the US than Ireland. And here in America's most Irish region we thought it'd be perfect to honor that holiday by covering the Lebanese Civil War. Shout out to @monsone87 for requesting this topic! 

This week fan favorite Rebecca Bishop comes back to give an amazing entry level intro into the history of Feminism, it's Waves, terms and figures. To get you to stay and pay attention the three of us Pseudo-Historians act like jackasses and yell things. Enjoy.

Money has ruled everything around us for several thousand years now. But where did it come from? And who invented it? Was it always the same way that we think of it now? This episode answers all of this and also why the people the most devoted to it may not even really understand what it is.

In this episode, we celebrate Mike A's newest Milestone, reveal Jeff Dunham was a Socialist Presidential candidate, Why the Boat and Wagon people will always be there when the trains are protesting, and that Socialists make better Presidential candidates when they're currently in prison.

Mike A has a singular fascination with the history of modern day Ethiopia. First he brought us Emperor Haile Selassie, a man made a god by Jamaicans. Then he brought us Beta Israel, the forgotten first Jewish Kingdom outside Israel. Last year he gave us Commie v. Commie when the Ethiopian DERG fought the Somali Supreme Revolutionary Council for communist supremacy of the Horn of Africa. Today he gives you his 4th of 5 parts: the Battle of Adwa, where Ethiopians brutally embarrassed a late to the imperialism game Italy.

We're minus one Mike but plus one Rebecca as we talk about real life legend John C. Frémont as he explore's, conquers, finds gold, discovers Grant, runs on a more left wing platform than Bernie Sanders and refuses to go to Arizona. All this and mor ein Frémont's incredible life.

There has been a number of fan requests to do South American Fascists, in this episode we talk about dictators from Chile, Brazil and Argentina and also why the term Fascist is so hard to pin down.

Traveling all around this week as several people go on or come back from their Grand Tours. Rebecca joins us this week as we discuss Caleb and Rebecca's Honeymoon, women who hover to pee, where the phrase Man Alive comes from and when we have time the Life and Complaints of John Milton. Also in this episode: all three of us finding out John Hurt died on air.

Back in late 2015 we did an episode called Traitors. We loved this episode so much that we thought: let's do a sequel! This time around we take on Slovakia's Jozef Tiso, Mughal India's Mir Jafar, and the US' Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. We present you with some pretty terrible excuses for human beings.

Three-time guest and super best friend of the show Gabe Graetz comes on, and the tangents are a-plenty. We pitch a book series called Cyber Wars, learn what having having sex 'The French Way' means, find out how gross Henry the VIII was and eventually talk about his wives. We got together with Gabe so this episode is like 9 hours long, enjoy!

The diplomatic ramifications of acknowledging Taiwan has been in the news recently. And we had fans call us in asking, "Hey, what's the deal with Taiwan, and why are the Chinese so angry about it?" Well Caleb and Mike Hachey bring you another two-hander, and tell you precisely why!

It's the first episode of 2017 and it starts with a real bang. In this two-hander Caleb and Mike discuss one of the most enigmatic and controversial Statesmen of 20th Century America. To many he was a Savior of the lower classes to others, the closest an American got to being a totalitarian dictator. This week we talk about the King of Louisiana, Huey Long.

It's the last episode of 2016, are we talking about Christmas, Chanukah or New Years eve? Nope, we're talking about an insane racist battle in New Orleans. Merry Merry!

You've heard it talked about in the news for 52 years, Communist guerillas fighting the Colombian government in interior jungles. What do any of us really know what The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army is really about? Where did they come from? What do they want? Why have they been fighting for so long that almost all the other Communists are gone?

What if I told you there could have dozens of different States than we see on the map? This week a rather congested Caleb is rocking solo in the Rox Labs Studios and goes over states that's proposals, partitions and secessions were rejected. 

This week we bring you the tale of how the IMF and Communist Megalomaniacs worked together to decimate a country. Also covered: Russian Anti-Semitism, Modern Day Druids, Why Blind Mike decided to be a Civil Engineer and a fan who is an enigma.

The 2016 US Presidential Election has happened. Caleb and Blind Mike made a pact to not talk about it. But Mike has different plans. What starts as next week's episode devolves into an hour plus conversation about everything that has happened, and what might be coming down the line.