Welcome to Naked History, the podcast that peels back the polished layers of the past to reveal the weird, wild, and wonderful truths beneath. Hosted by historian Dyllan Gasaway, this show dives into the untold tales, strange coincidences, and overlooked events that shaped the world. From volcanic eruptions that sparked literary masterpieces to strange coincedences, absurd inventions, historical what-ifs, and the mystery of it all, you've found the right place.
Welcome to Naked History, the podcast that peels back the polished layers of the past to reveal the weird, wild, and wonderful truths beneath. Hosted by historian Dyllan Gasaway, this show dives into the untold tales, strange coincidences, and overlooked events that shaped the world. From volcanic eruptions that sparked literary masterpieces to strange coincedences, absurd inventions, historical what-ifs, and the mystery of it all, you've found the right place.
We clock real message-per-minute speeds (why 30 seconds changes a battlefield), show how code lists evolved with “change sheets,” and walk through the improv rules talkers used when the word list ran out. We play with the phonetic layer (your “ant–arrow–bear” matters more than you think),
Then a quick This Week in History (Nov 24–30): Macy’s first parade as immigrant street theater, two space picks that reset expectations, and the era of competing Thanksgivings. We close with a compact compare—human code vs. machine crypto—minus the math headache. Takeaways you can use: how to design comms that fail gracefully, and a tiny drill to build your own family phonetic.
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A garbled radio net. A pinned patrol. Then a burst of language the enemy can’t read, and the ridge breathes again.
In this episode of Naked History, Dyllan traces how Indigenous languages became wartime armor: from WWI trench telephones with Choctaw and Cherokee speakers to the Marine Corps’ WWII Navajo/Diné code. An elegantly simple, two-layer system (alphabet stream + word list) built for speed under fire. We break down how the code actually worked (in plain English), why seconds beat cipher wheels, and what it looked like on Bougainville, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and on D-Day with the Comanche net at Utah Beach.
Then: the long silence after victory, declassification, uneven recognition, and the present-tense work inside Native nations to teach, archive, and live these languages. No gadget worship, just people, memory, and design choices that saved lives.
Tease: Next main: Saints, Krampus & Coca-Cola: how Saint Nicholas sails from Myra to Manhattan and ad men wrap December in velvet.
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A quick myth tune-up for your table. We trace the Macy’s Parade from 1924 street pageant to broadcast spectacle (plus those wild early balloon “releases”), debunk the presidential turkey pardon origin (hello, 1989), and set cranberry sauce in its real timeline (sugar scarcity → 1796 recipe → canning age). Correction corner: who actually washed the plates in 1621? The sources don’t say.
“This Week in History” (Nov 10–16) brings snappy nods to the USMC’s founding, Armistice/Veterans Day, and Laika’s sobering milestone. Then we get into some Menu Archaeology—pumpkin & mince pie evolutions and the eternal regional side-dish wars.
Next main: “Code Talkers”: the language that won battles.
What if the “first Thanksgiving” wasn’t a beginning, but an ending? In this episode, host Dyllan pulls the camera back on the 1621 harvest encounter and the world around it: the 1616–19 epidemics that shattered New England’s coastal communities; Massasoit’s (Ousamequin’s) high-stakes diplomacy; and Tisquantum (“Squanto”) as a captive-turned-broker navigating survival and suspicion. We read the receipts—Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation, Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation—to see what 1621 actually was (wildfowl, venison, 90 Wampanoag men, very few English women) and what it wasn’t (“a Thanksgiving” in the later religious sense).
From the Pequot War’s 1637 “thanksgiving” proclamation to Sarah Josepha Hale, Harper’s/Nast, and Lincoln’s 1863 decree, we follow how a harvest party became a nation-binding ritual—then how the 20th and 21st centuries layered parades, football, canned cranberries, Friendsgiving, and counter-memory. No guilt tours here—just grown-up gratitude with context, practical ways to honor Native presence today, and a wider frame that can hold joy and truth at once.
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On our cozy post-credits commentary: the bits that didn’t fit and the sources we owed you. We dig into Hill of Ward archaeology, dumb suppers, witch bottles and concealed shoes, will-o’-the-wisp science, black-cat adoption myths, Then “This Week in History” (Oct 27 – Nov 1): from the NYC subway and Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds panic to Luther’s door moment and Houdini’s last Halloween. Lanterns lit; receipts included.
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A cinematic walk through Halloween’s real origin story and no, it didn’t start with party stores. From Samhain (SAH-win) bonfires and fair-folk diplomacy to Allhallowtide bells, soul cakes, immigrant porch rituals, jack-o’-lanterns (hi, Stingy Jack), and the Hollywood mask rack that redefined October. This is the braid that held communities together when the light got short.
Expect archaeology, folklore, church calendars, trick-or-treat’s paper trail, black-cat PR, graveside candles, and why the monsters keep changing outfits to stay relevant. We light the dark, feed the living (and symbolically the dead), and practice being neighbors one fun-size treaty at a time.
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Salem burned its sanity in 1692 — and centuries later, we’re still feeling the heat.
In this Naked History: Debrief, Dyllan digs deeper into the chaos behind the witch trials: the economic feuds, the accidental survivors, the accused animals (yes, even a dog), and the bizarre system where confessing to witchcraft actually saved your life.
Plus: exploring the echoes of Salem in McCarthy-era America, and a fresh This Week in History that proves hysteria isn’t confined to one century.
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In 1692, Salem, Massachusetts turned neighbor against neighbor, suspicion into spectacle, and bad courtroom procedure into mass executions. For three terrifying months, the town was convinced the Devil had set up shop in New England, and everyone from outspoken tavern keepers to church-going grandmothers ended up on the gallows.
This 40 minute plunge into paranoia, Puritanism, and pancake-flat justice covers every twist of the witch hunt. From the strange fits of a minister’s niece, to judges who thought “spectral evidence” was good enough, to the poor souls who stood defiant at the noose, we’ll follow the entire saga in detail. Expect fiery sermons, courtroom drama, vengeful neighbors, and a sheriff who probably still haunts Salem to this day.
It’s tragic, it’s absurd, it’s the Salem Witch Trials, the original American horror story. Follow along, laugh nervously, and remember: the scariest monsters in history usually wore robes, not horns.
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Violet Jessop survived three ship disasters, but on the Britannic she came terrifyingly close to becoming history thanks to its spinning propellers. In this Debrief, we dive into that narrow escape, the unbelievable story of Arthur John Priest, the “unsinkable stoker”, and Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave, who survived three torpedoed ships in a single day.
Plus, a “This Week in History” rundown for Sept. 29–Oct. 4, and a tease for our upcoming Salem Witch Trials episode to kick off spooky season.
She was a stewardess, a nurse, and, unintentionally, one of the luckiest (or unluckiest) sailors in history. Violet Jessop survived the collision of the Olympic, the sinking of the Titanic, and the explosion of the Britannic, three disasters that should have ended her life but didn’t.
Because sometimes history’s greatest survivors aren’t captains or millionaires, they’re the people pouring tea, changing linens, and quietly doing their jobs while the world goes down around them.
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Boston’s Great Molasses Flood of 1919 has lived in history as both tragedy and punchline—but how much of what you’ve heard is true? In this Naked History: Debrief, we sort the fact from fiction: Was it really an anarchist bomb? Was the wave forty feet high? And could people really have just jogged away? Along the way, you’ll hear about cadets wading into syrup to save lives, a cleanup that took 87,000 worker hours, and the bizarre choice to paint a leaking tank brown to hide the drips.
It’s the sticky aftermath of the main episode—quirky details, myth-busting, and a few groans for good measure.
In 1919, Boston’s North End was hit by a 25-foot wave of molasses when a massive storage tank burst, flooding the city in sticky chaos. Join host Dyllan Gasaway on Naked History as we uncover the tragedy, the lawsuits, and the strange legacy of one of America’s weirdest disasters.
Step back behind the curtain for our Year Without a Summer Debrief episode!
How did the eruption of Mt. Tambora usher in a new kind of art? How did it contribute to the Tour de France? How does it have a connection to darker part of history?
All these questions and more answered along with a trip through time for This Week in History on this weeks episode!
This is the story of The Year Without a Summer.
A time when the sun didn’t rise right, the crops didn’t grow, and the world’s weather went completely off-script. A time of frost in June, snow in July, famines, riots, cholera—and also… the birth of horror literature, the invention of the bicycle, and one very depressed Lord Byron.
So put on your best Victorian overcoat, pack a famine-friendly snack, and let’s dive into 1816—when the skies went dark, the cold didn’t stop, and humanity got a reminder that nature doesn’t always check in first.
In this Naked History: Debrief, we descend even deeper into the eerie, surprising, and downright bizarre world of the Paris Catacombs. Host Dyllan Gasaway unearths the stories we couldn’t fit in the main episode. Like the underground mushroom farms, covert WWII operations, and the ever-present threat of Paris literally collapsing into itself.
We’ll explore how the Catacombs became a battlefield, a fungus garden, a Resistance hideout, a Nazi command post, and yes—even a movie theater. From legendary cataphiles to ghostly carvings, this is the underworld of Paris like you’ve never heard it before.
Creepy, curious, and occasionally covered in manure—this is your official bonus guide to the Empire of the Dead.
Beneath the streets of Paris lies a hidden world of bones, darkness, and urban legend. In this chilling episode of Naked History, host Dyllan Gasaway descends into the Paris Catacombs—an eerie labyrinth that holds the remains of over six million people. But this isn’t just a graveyard… it’s a story of Enlightenment engineering, overcrowded cemeteries, underground revolutions, and secret parties beneath a city of light.
From collapsing cemeteries and rebellious quarrymen to lost explorers and underground cinemas, we trace how the Catacombs transformed from a public health solution into a philosophical monument, tourist site, and rogue urban subculture.
Join us for a bone-deep journey through death, memory, art, and the strange beauty that lives six stories underground.
They came. They squawked. They conquered.
In this Naked History: Debrief, host Dyllan Gasaway digs into the ridiculous (and ridiculously true) aftermath of Australia’s infamous Emu War. You’ll hear the stories that didn’t make it into the main episode, from the missing military footage, to the requisition for 1,000 emu feathers, to the almost-but-not-quite camel cavalry.
What do you get when you cross rural farmland, a very resilient bird, and the Australian military? Only one of the most absurd "wars" ever fought. This is the story of Australia's fight against the emu menace, and all the bureaucracy, hijinks, and mishaps that happened along the way. Spoiler: the flightless birds gave the aussies a run for their money.
In this week’s Naked History: Debrief, we’re raising a glass to The Greatest Beer Run Ever — but also unpacking the wild behind-the-scenes details from Chickie Donohue’s real-life booze cruise into a war zone that didn’t make it into the movie.
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At a time when the Vietnam War was at its height, one man, John "Chickie" Donohue, snuck back into the war zone to find his 3 closest friends and buy them a beer. Crazy or caring, Chickie gave his friends more than beer, he gave them hope. Hope that helped each one safely return home when the war was over.
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