HISTORY This Week

September 27, 1986. You’re a kid in the mid-80s. You get home from school, flip on the TV, and see something strange: a commercial where a giant egg hatches behind a family’s console, revealing a toy robot. His name is R.O.B. — the Robotic Operating Buddy — but he's just an accessory. The real product: Nintendo. 

Today, the Nintendo Entertainment System is launching nationwide. Just a few years earlier, the U.S. video game market had collapsed under the weight of bad games and too many consoles. But Nintendo had a plan — to sell Americans on something that didn’t look like a video game at all. 

With a plastic robot, a disguised gray box, and a plumber named Mario, how did Nintendo manage to sneak video games back into living rooms—and rescue a dying industry?

Special thanks to Jeremy Parish, media curator at Limited Run Games, producer of NES Works, and co-host of the Retronauts podcast.

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September 14, 1901. Midnight in the Adirondacks. A pounding knock at the door jolts Theodore and Edith Roosevelt awake. William McKinley is dead. Hours later, Theodore will be sworn in as the youngest president in U.S. history. But Edith barely flinches—her diary that day notes her children’s sniffles before her husband’s rise to power.

Who was this woman who grew up alongside Theodore, helped shape his presidency, reinvented the role of First Lady, and yet tried to erase her own story from the record?

 Special thanks to Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life; and Edward O’Keefe, author of The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President. O'Keefe is also the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, set to open next 4th of July.

Artwork: Studio portrait of Edith and Theodore Roosevelt seated together, by Walter Scott Shinn, 1916.



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With every episode, Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett take you on a historical deep dive into the life of a woman society dismissed by calling her mad, sad, or just plain bad: Lindsay Lohan, Judy Garland, Winona Ryder, Mariah Carey, Lil Kim and many more. Join them for a rich, hilarious, and heartbreaking look into exactly what it means when we call a woman “crazy.”

The C-Word was originally published behind a paywall from 2019 - 2022. This is the first time it’s being released to all major podcast platforms.

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September 10, 1986. It’s just before 8am when Cliff Stoll’s pager jolts him awake. A computer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab has flagged a problem: a tiny 75-cent accounting error. But when Stoll rushes to his office, he realizes this isn’t about missing spare change. Someone has slipped into the lab’s network, tunneling thousands of miles away into U.S. military computers. 

Cliff isn’t a spycatcher. He’s an astronomer. And yet, from this moment on, he’ll spend months chasing a hacker who may be working for the KGB.

How did spare change uncover a spy ring? And why did this case mark the end of innocence on the Internet?

Special thanks to Cliff Stoll, astronomer, teacher, and author of The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage; and J.J. Widener, cybersecurity expert currently serving as Director of Cybersecurity Architecture at Kimberly-Clark.

Artwork: Cliff Stoll promo image



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Sept 5, 1698. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia returns home from a year-long European tour. When noblemen, religious figures, and friends gather to welcome him home, Peter pulls out a straight razor, holds it to their throats, and…forcibly shaves their beards. This event will go down in history as a first step toward Russian geopolitical power. Before Peter’s reign, Russia was an isolated nation that was largely ignored by the rest of the world. 

How did Peter the Great almost single-handedly drag Russia onto the world stage? And how did his great beard-shaving endeavor lead to the Russia we know today?

Special thanks to our guest, Lynne Hartnett, Ph.D., Professor of History, Villanova University, and author of Understanding Russia: A Cultural History.

Artwork: Russian political cartoon depicting Peter the Great as a barber, ca. 18th century 

** This episode originally aired August 31, 2020.



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