The Great Chicago Fire

We all know the story: The British stepped up with their Little Boats of Dunkirk, rescuing the free world off a sandy beach, ensuring they could continue to stay in the war. But the real story? A colossal Allied command meltdown, 40,000 French soldiers fighting to the death in an urban meat grinder at Lille, and a narrow wooden breakwater never meant to dock a dinghy—let alone 200,000 men under Stuka fire. This week, we tear into the miracle evacuation and get into the mud and madness of Operation Dynamo. Let’s dive in. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Grab a bucket, because this week we’re diving into the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Our story began when a bunch of 19th-century capitalists took at a swamp at the south end of the Great Lakes and turned it into a trade empire. Chicago became a powerhouse of timber (from the north) and agriculture (the Great Plains to the west). The Union Stock Yards and their slaughterhouse's dumped all that fermenting grease and waste right into the river where it would eventually become a problem. We’ll break down how pine-tar streets, 55 miles of raised plank sidewalks, and 17 massive wooden grain elevators packed with explosive grain dust turned Boomtown Chicago into a three-mile blowtorch, why the deadliest fire that night actually happened up in Wisconsin while Chicago hogged the telegraph lines, and how the ashes gave birth to the modern skyscraper. Most importantly, we are officially making it our personal mission to clear the names of Catherine O’Leary and her innocent cow once and for all—because when you pave your streets in literal turpentine and build seventeen towering flour-bombs along a river of boiling pig fat, blaming the Irish immigrant and her livestock is just lazy journalism. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Happy Halloween week everyone! In order to get in the spirit, we decided to bring you a truly terrifying serial killer. Dennis Rader was a student of murder. He had rules. During his crimes he transformed into BTK. Bind, Torture, Kill. That's the name he gave himself when he reached out to the media to get the attention he craved. Then, just as he appeared and began his sadistic killings, he was gone. Dennis Rader spent 31 years killing, going dormant, returning to his depraved ways, then he was gone again. BTK had been gone for 13 years. No killings, no interactions with law enforcement or the media. In 2004, he reached out once again. That desire for notoriety would be his downfall. Join us today as we get Historically High on BTK! Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Class, here's the deal...we usually don't condone cheating or shortcuts here at HHU. But we also understand trying to catch up on what the MCU has been up to the last 7 years (Yeah it's been 7 years, feeling old anyone) since Avengers: Endgame. Iron-man is Dr. Doom now? Wait I thought Jim from The Office was Mr. Fantastic in the movie with Patrick Stewart's Professor X. Yeah that did happen and a bunch of other stuff, tv series occurred, we had three Spider-men in one movie. There's a lot to unpack before you go see Doomsday. Let us unpack that for you. Welcome to Class. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why did ancient civilizations, on every inhabited continent at different points in history independently decide the world was run by a giant scaled lizard? This week we break down humanity’s ultimate shared mythological trip—from our primate brains mashing big cats, raptors, and venomous snakes into an evolutionary super-predator, to the massive cultural clash between European knights stabbing subterranean gold-hoarders and Chinese emperors deifying benevolent, rain-summoning weather lords. Along the way, we explore ancient apothecaries grinding up dinosaur "dragon bones," Chinese magistrates roasting wooden water gods in the sun to end droughts, and the war between fantasy authors and modern Hollywood over how many legs a dragon is actually allowed to have. So strap yourself onto Falcor and prepare to get Historically High on Dragons. Patreon: patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh (bonus content, trivia, and perks) Instagram: @historicallyhighpod X / Twitter: @Historicallyhi Listen & Watch: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Phoenicians conquered the ancient world, not with sword or spear, but with ink, rotting mollusks, and the finest of Lebanese Cedar. In this episode, we take a wild ride through history's ultimate glue guys, starting with a cluster of competitive city-states that never even called themselves Phoenicians. We break down the secrets behind their maritime supremacy, uncovering how their agriculturally inferior homeland led to unmatched shipwrighting and open-sea navigation. Skills allowing them to pioneer an aquatic Silk Road of sorts and sail all the way to Spain for massive hauls of silver. Along the way, we explore their rich pantheon of gods, their legendary 22-letter alphabet that revolutionized communication, and the explosive rise of their most famous daughter-city, Carthage. Finally, we track their journey through the meat grinder of history. Surviving Persian vassalage, Alexander the Great throwing a literal land-bridge at Tyre, before ultimately disappearing into the Greek and Roman machine—proving how these master traders left behind a blueprint that still shapes the modern world. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Strap in, because this week on Historically High, we’re heading back pre-Chernobyl, to 1979 to unpack the absolute disaster that was the Three Mile Island meltdown. When a routine cooling malfunction collided with a stuck valve, a blizzard of confusing control-room alarms, and operators making fatal guesswork, roughly half of Unit 2's uranium core melted down into radioactive sludge right in the middle of Pennsylvania. While the reactor was actively cooking itself from the inside out, Metropolitan Edison’s PR team kicked into full corporate gaslighting mode, frantically downplaying radiation leaks and insisting everything was fine while local residents ran for their lives. To top it all off, when the NRC finally touched down to survey the smoking atomic wreckage, the utility company immediately tried to push through shady safety shortcuts just to get the surviving reactor back online. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In August 1969, four twenty-somethings—two trust-fund heirs and two music hustlers—tried to fund a recording studio by throwing a music festival in Woodstock, only to trigger one of the most glorious logistical trainwrecks in American history. After getting evicted from two different towns, they convinced conservative dairy farmer Max Yasgur to lease his alfalfa pasture, but only had enough time to build the stage or the gates and fences. The Stage won. When 400K kids, instead of the estimated max of 200K, descended on Bethel, turning the New York State Thruway into a 20-mile parking lot, the gates became irrelevant, the tickets became meaningless, and the promoters decided to go with the flow and declare it a free concert. Mainstream America braced for an apocalyptic riot of sex, drugs, and violence, but what actually happened shocked the nation. When the food ran out quickly, an eccentric New Mexico commune called the Hog Farm stepped up, dishing hot oats and vegetables from galvanized trash cans, policing the crowd with seltzer bottles, and talking 1,000 terrified kids down from bad brown acid with citrus and gentle street psychology. Through biblical downpours, ankle-deep cow manure, overflowing latrines, and widespread practical nudity, the drenched masses shared socks instead of starting fights—culminating in Jimi Hendrix playing a napalm-scorched national anthem to the then remaining 30K fans at 9:00 AM on a Monday, and cementing an unmitigated disaster as the defining cultural moment of a generation. Welcome to Woodstock. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is a long strange trip into the mind of John Hinckley Jr. John attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Firing five shots, Hinckley would strike the President once. He was arrested immediately following the shooting. That's when the Hinckley case takes a turn. John Hinckley Jr had quite an obsession with Taxi Driver, and Jodie Foster. In John's mind, he was a Travis Bickle type character. In his mind, he needed to do something to make Jodie realize she loved him. That thing turned out to be trying to assassinate a president. That brings us to the most interesting subject of the episode. The insanity plea. John's lawyers tried it. In the end they succeeded. But was he really insane? Decide for yourself as you join us while we all get Historically High on John Hinckley Jr, and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the conclusion of our two-part September 11 deep dive, we step straight into the chaos of the morning itself—and the global fallout that followed. We walk through the timeline as it unfolded in real time: how the planes were taken, the shock of the strikes, the collapse of the towers, the hit on the Pentagon, and the fierce resistance aboard Flight 93, where ordinary passengers mounted a revolt in the skies over Shanksville. Alongside the devastation, we highlight the staggering, improbable survival stories and the acts of raw courage from first responders and everyday civilians navigating zero visibility. Then, we unpack the immediate aftermath: how breadcrumb trails of intelligence pointed straight to bin Laden’s Afghan hideouts, kickstarting the Global War on Terror. We break down the domestic shift that followed almost overnight—from the creation of Homeland Security to the passage of the PATRIOT Act and the era of mass surveillance. Finally, we track how the national trauma was swiftly recalibrated, laying the rhetorical and geopolitical groundwork that turned America’s sights toward Baghdad. Thanks for listening and don't forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and write a review! You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh for bonus content and exclusive perks. Follow us on social media: @Historicallyhi on X/Twitter and @historicallyhighpod on Instagram. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.