History Buffoons Podcast

A $125 million Mars mission disappears because two teams can’t agree on units. That’s not a sci-fi plot, it’s the kind of avoidable disaster that makes us laugh, then cringe, then double-check our own work. We start with NASA...

1.5 million balloons rise over downtown Cleveland, cameras roll, a Guinness World Records official watches, and a fundraising idea turns into a story people still argue about decades later. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we want...

The Preakness is only 1 3/16 miles, but its history takes way more twists than that. We’re coming off watching the Kentucky Derby, mixing up the signature Black Eyed Susan cocktail, and then digging into how the Preakness Sta...

A man in late 1700s France can eat nonstop and still feel starving. Not “big appetite” starving, but a relentless, aggressive hunger that drives him from normal meals to rotten meat, garbage, and eventually things nobody want...

Mary Todd Lincoln’s name still gets tossed around as shorthand for “unstable,” but that label collapses the real story into a punchline. We dig into what her life actually looks like when you line up the facts: a politically ...

One tiny technical glitch turned pop perfection into one of the biggest music scandals ever. We’re Bradley and Kate, and we’re digging into Millie Vanilli, the late-1980s hit machine that gave the world “Girl You Know It’s Tr...