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Second Decade

Sean Munger

This is a historical show examining the momentous events and interesting people of the second decade of the 19th century, the 1810s. From Jefferson to Napoleon, from Iceland to Antarctica, historian Sean Munger will give you a tour of the decade's most fascinating highlights.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 48 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • S4 · E7
    Jun 17, 2021 · 47 min

    55: Smuttynose Island

    Whether the remains of the crew of a Spanish ship wrecked in 1813 were buried on a small island off the coast of Maine presents a puzzling 200-year-old mystery.

  • S4 · E6
    May 17, 2021 · 1 hr 5 min

    54: The Dumplings of Death

    In 1815 London, the case of a domestic servant wrongfully accused of poisoning her employer’s family leads to the invention of modern investigative journalism.

  • S4 · E5
    Mar 24, 2021 · 1 hr 3 min

    53: The Lithuanian Rabbi

    In a small town in Lithuania, a beloved and brilliant rabbi establishes a legendary yeshiva that sparks a wave of immigration to the Holy Land in the 1810s.

  • S4 · E4
    Feb 18, 2021 · 1 hr 3 min

    52: War and Peace

    In this crossover episode with the Green Screen podcast, Dr. Munger and co-host Cody Climer examine the history behind the 2016 BBC miniseries depicting the Napoleonic era.

  • S4 · E3
    Jan 29, 2021 · 59 min

    51: Norway, Part II

    In 1814, a group of Norwegian nobles and a Danish crown prince challenge the powers of Europe to establish Norway as its own country, with mixed but long-lasting results.

  • S4 · E2
    Dec 19, 2020 · 53 min

    50: Norway, Part I

    Toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the modern nation of Norway is born amidst royal intrigue and crooked great-power deals in the crucible of Scandinavian politics.

  • S4 · E1
    Oct 26, 2020 · 49 min

    49: Theo the Pipe Smoker

    An attempt to identify a skeleton found in a 200-year-old cemetery paints a fascinating picture of life among the poor in Basel, Switzerland in the 1810s.

  • S3 · E13
    Dec 22, 2019 · 48 min

    48: Heritage Lost

    The individual stories of nine buildings, constructed between 1810 and 1820 and since demolished or destroyed, paint a unique picture of the period’s built environment.

  • S3 · E12
    Nov 17, 2019 · 51 min

    47: Year Without Summer, Part III

    The long tail of the strange summer of 1816 stretches into the following year, where crop failures, famine and a bitterly cold winter affects most of the world.

  • S3 · E11
    Oct 13, 2019 · 55 min

    46: Year Without Summer, Part II

    The strange weather of summer 1816 has all manner of repercussions, from ghoulish hallucinations to religious conversions to a massive forest fire in New England.

  • S3 · E10
    Sep 23, 2019 · 53 min

    45: Year Without Summer, Part I

    In 1816, a temporary disruption in the Earth’s climate system, caused by volcanoes, triggers a series of bizarre weather anomalies from the South Pacific to Massachusetts.

  • S3 · E9
    Jul 14, 2019 · 46 min

    44: The Fires of St. John's

    The raw and often lawless frontier town of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada suffers five devastating fires in a row between 1816 and 1819.

  • S3 · E8
    Jun 9, 2019 · 49 min

    43: Austen-tatious

    Jane Austen begins the 1810s as a frustrated and unpublished writer, but then rises to become one of the towering giants of English literature.

  • S3 · E7
    May 13, 2019 · 54 min

    42: Tomb Raider

    In 1817, a former circus performer goes hunting for ancient Egyptian artifacts and finds four stunning tombs in the Valley of the Kings over a 10-day period.

  • S3 · E6
    Apr 27, 2019 · 48 min

    41: Caragea's Plague

    In 1813, the arrival of a corrupt Ottoman prince in the province of Wallachia coincides with the outbreak of a ghastly epidemic that leaves thousands dead.

  • S3 · E5
    Apr 7, 2019 · 49 min

    40: Antarctica

    After centuries of speculation, near misses and tantalizing glimpses, mariners from four different countries suddenly scramble to discover Antarctica at the end of the 1810s.

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes