Second Decade

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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Episodes

5: Cast Away

This is the story of Charles Barnard, a real-life Robinson Crusoe who spent nearly two years marooned in one of the most forbidding and desolate landscapes on Earth: the Falkland Islands, far south in the Atlantic, near Antarctica. It happened in 1813 as a result of war between the United States and Great Britain, and after a dizzying series of double-crosses, table-turns and stabs-in-the-back that wouldn’t be out of place on the modern TV show Lost . Barnard is forced to find shelter, food, fue...

Nov 28, 2016•43 min•Season 1Ep. 5

4: Hawaii

Hawaii, known to Westerners in the Second Decade as “the Sandwich Islands,” was a rich and vibrant place, and the 1810s were arguably the most exciting time in its history. In 1810 Kamehameha, a nobleman from the Big Island, completed his 30-year struggle to unify Hawaii under his own rule, initiating an era of somewhat fragile peace. But there were fractures beneath the surface of Hawaiian society which led to a cultural and religious upheaval in 1819—at the exact same time that a group of ambi...

Nov 21, 2016•46 min•Season 1Ep. 4

3: The Last Frost Fair

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...both were true in the winter of 1813-14, one of the most brutal winters in the history of Britain and Ireland. Thanks to global cooling, a murderous series of cold snaps, freezing fog and snowstorms reduced London and other cities to an urban wasteland like something out of The Walking Dead ...except a lot colder. Yet at the same time, as the people of London were at wit’s end, the freezing of the Thames created the opportunity for a magical ...

Nov 14, 2016•42 min•Season 1Ep. 3

2: Barbados Vault and Dead Tea Woman

This episode presents two mysterious tales from the Second Decade, both from Caribbean islands. An oft-told account of coffins moving about by themselves in a sealed burial vault in Barbados between 1812 and 1820 has left many people reaching for paranormal explanations like telekinesis or voodoo. But did it really happen? And who was the unidentified woman who washed up in a coffin full of tea on Nevis in 1809? Sean Munger presents these mysteries in historical context, with a glimpse at the se...

Nov 07, 2016•40 min•Season 1Ep. 2

1: The Election of 1816

This episode, the inaugural episode of the Second Decade podcast, details the bizarre (by modern standards) political situation Americans faced in 1816. The Democratic-Republican Party, hoping to score its fifth Presidential election win in a row, ran yet another Virginian, James Monroe. It looked to be a cakewalk, considering that the opposition party, the Federalists, was in full meltdown mode after they insisted on showing the country just how much they hated the War of 1812 with a disastrous...

Oct 30, 2016•40 min•Season 1Ep. 1

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