bizarre true stories from the footnotes of history

April 22, 2017 2:18 PM

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the President made his dog a cabinet secretary? Or if a famous scientist tried to summon a god? What about if Virginia Woolf wore blackface and pranked the Royal Navy? There’s no need to wonder. It all happened.

Something True is the most recent podcast from the Idle Thumbs podcast network, written by Duncan Fyfe and narrated by Alex Ashby.
posted by juv3nal (7 comments total)

bonus: this appears to be an earlier collaboration between Duncan and Alex that may have been the precursor to this series.
posted by juv3nal at 2:48 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you enjoy these tales of strange history, you might want to check out another podcast, The Memory Palace hosted by Nate DiMeo.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:53 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is excellent! Thank you so much for posting it!
posted by meese at 8:41 PM on April 22, 2017

If you enjoy stories from the footnotes of history, then I warmly recommend the Futility Closet podcast. Futility Closet generally goes into a little bit more depth into one story each episode (you can compare FC's episode A Woolf in Sheikh’s Clothing to ST's Class Clowns).
posted by bjrn at 12:47 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm torn between enjoying the subject matter and finding the obviously made-up direct quotes frustrating. (If I were editing, I'd rip all the quotes out. They don't add anything, and the make it much harder to trust the rest of the material.)

But, straddling the line between fiction and documentary is something I wish radio did more often, so I can't really complain when they do it in a way that isn't perfectly aligned with my personal tastes. I'm sold on listening to the first season. Thanks for the post.
posted by eotvos at 9:05 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm torn between enjoying the subject matter and finding the obviously made-up direct quotes frustrating. (If I were editing, I'd rip all the quotes out. They don't add anything, and the make it much harder to trust the rest of the material.)

I'm going to stop listening to the podcast because of this. Sprinkling a little fiction into a history podcast means that I never know what I can trust, which means I can't trust anything. It's especially bad in this case because the embellishments for humor are precisely the things that are likely to stick with me.
posted by painquale at 5:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth they've said they're going to add notes to the transcripts that might help clarify what's embellished and what isn't, but thus far, as far as I know, they haven't yet.
posted by juv3nal at 1:27 AM on April 24, 2017