Profits Before People: Assassinations, Disasters & Child Labor

What are the worst job conditions you have ever experienced or known about? What were your biggest concerns? Join Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender, as they scratch the surface on the long struggle for workers’ rights in human history when the profit margins of the rich and powerful have hung in the balance. From Venice to pre-Soviet Russia, Europe to the United States, the guys cover a lot of space and time in this episode while discussing some of the precursors to different labor movements and our modern Labor Day.

 

Learn about the Italian glass industry monopoly so coveted that the purchase of their work could have bankrupted a country. Its success, in large part due to its workers’ isolation in a “gilded cage” on the island of Moreno, allowed some to “marry up” while others feared a private police force which could carry out assassinations of themselves and […]

It was the solar eclipse!

Hello Squeamers!

Your next regularly scheduled and eagerly anticipated podcast episode from Horrific History was almost ready for publishing when we suddenly had some very unexpected technical difficulties. Since our last episode was about Harbingers of Doom: Celestial Events and Superstitions and two of our volunteer staff went to see the event in its totality…. we’re just going to go with the superstitions of old and say the eclipse somehow fried our hard drive. We’re in the process of trying to do data recovery so we can get you your episode as quickly as possible, but our best guess at the moment is that the Chinese dragon or dog that “ate the sun” also ate our latest episode.

So send us some positive vibes, tell us your favorite technological superstitions and give us your best recommendations for inexpensive data recovery programs online (when the computers won’t even recognize the bricked external drive) and we’ll get you your next episode as soon as we can. Or, if you’re feeling really generous, you can go to our Support Us page, click the donate button, and help us raise the funds to pay professionals to fix our equipment since we don’t have a computer guru on staff!

 

Keep squeaming! We’ll be back in your podcatcher just as soon as we can!

 

Slideshow photo credit: Ömer Ünlü Old Wehicle via photopin (license)

Blog post photo credit: Horrific History Podcast

22 Aug / 2017

Help Us Grow!

Help Us Grow!

Eric with his tektite!

We have so many ideas for what we want to be able to give our listeners: weekly (free) episodes, fun bonus visual content for our social media and website (like the original photos we were able to include with this post), swag and merchandise (including, eventually, gag gifts like Tzi-Clips-I-Pro Supplements), fun bonus audio content, and even some personalized items like ringtones and opportunities to communicate directly with Eric and Curtis! Unfortunately, we just don’t have the capability to expand to those areas quite yet.

 

Horrific History Podcast is still a passion project, brought to you by […]

Harbingers of Doom: Celestial Events and Superstitions

 

Aztec Sun Stone

What kind of superstitions or myths do you think of when you look up at the stars? Every culture has them; there have been stories developed all over the world to explain star constellations or natural phenomena like solar and lunar eclipses, comets, meteors and more. When the sun provides warmth to help the crops grow and night skies are used to measure the passage of time, it’s not surprising that any unexpected or unusual phenomenon is assigned meaning when the science isn’t sophisticated enough to distinguish between causation and correlation. Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender, explore beliefs related to celestial events from across the globe.  Hindu serpent demons, China’s dragons (or dogs) and modern conspiracy theorists watching for alien spaceships, we have a lot of “bad omens” for your enjoyment.

 

Lunacy and humours, werewolves and witches, […]

It seems like the advice, “If ever you are invited to dinner with a cannibal, first ensure you are not on the menu,” would be foregone conclusion; in fact, unless you are particularly adventurous in your culinary tastes, you might be wise to also simply claim to be a vegetarian. However, social and dining etiquette isn’t exactly what we have for your squeamish fix today. Instead we want to share with you something we found in the NPR archives; we discovered a really great interview of author Carole Travis-Henikoff about her book Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind’s Oldest Taboo. You can find it linked here.

 

If you liked our Have a Friend for Lunch: Winter Cannibalism or Mementos of You: Human Trophies episodes we think you’ll love this!

 

Now, if fiction is more to your tastes, you might find Dinner With the Cannibal Sisters more to your liking.

 

Until next week, no squeam allowed!

Slideshow photo credit: Another Pint Please… Strip Steak on Weber Summit via photopin (license)

3 Aug / 2017

Patrons Get Perks!

We’re on Patreon!

At long last, Horrific History Podcast is now on Patreon! While our main squeam-filled episodes will always remain free, if we can raise enough financial support from our listeners each month we’ll have the means to develop more merchandise, expand to weekly free episodes, as well as create bonus episodes and content rewards available only to our Patreon supporters!

 

Depending upon the level of support pledged, a Patron (or Squeamer) can look forward to awesome stuff like: […]

Leaving You in Stitches, Part 2

Day laborer scams in India, exploitation of people in poverty desperate to provide for their families, surgeries and death threats, this episode has the details on human tissue theft you’ve been waiting for! Horrific History co-hosts Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender are back to continue their two-part episode on human tissue theft (if you missed Part 1, you can find it here)! A large organ trafficking ring catering to transplant tourism, the so-called Admiral of the Kansas Navy who made his fortune as a Quaker doctor who peddled virility miracle cures, organ brokers and donors who are viewed as both saints and sinners, this episode will leave you wondering what your body parts are worth and to whom.

 

Doctor Dracula” stealing kidneys; goat testicles; pseudoscience, doctor self-experimentation and […]