After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Mother Shipton: Tudor Prophetess of England's Doom

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Did a Tudor prophetess correctly predict the English Civil War, the Crimean War, the sinking of the Titanic, World War One and the end of days? And what does she have to do with turning teddy bears into stone?Find out as Maddy and Anthony discuss Mother Shipton's life, legend and legacy.Written by Maddy PellingEdited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

1488. It's a dark and stormy night in North Yorkshire. The wind is howling and rain drives horizontally across the landscape. In a cave close to the banks of the River Nid, a young girl is taking shelter. She's 15, alone, and in labour. In no time at all, the cries of her newborn ring out in the darkness. This is the story of how Ursula Southal enters the world. Born into poverty to a single mother on the edge of a society that will judge and shun her, she will nevertheless go on to be one of the most famous and feared women of her age. Accused of witchcraft in collaboration with the devil, she will predict with terrifying accuracy many of the major events of her lifetime.

Eventually known as Mother Shipton, the Witch of Yorkshire, her name will pass into legend and haunt the English consciousness for centuries after she is dead. But what do we know about her life? And was she really able to prophesise the future? Hello and welcome to After Dark, the podcast that explores the darker side of history. Today we're serving up a pinch of myth and a dollop of the supernatural with the story of Mother Shipton, an English prophetess who correctly predicted everything from a new water system in York to the English Civil War, the Great Fire of London, and perhaps even the end times. Born in the 15th century, her myth and her prophecies provide a through line through some of the most tumultuous centuries in English

history. But did she really ever do any of this? Let's get into it. This is a really interesting one for me because this is not somebody I've heard of before. Not in terms of their actual personhood. I think I've probably passed the signs in Yorkshire saying Mother Shipton's Cave and said to myself, right, that sounds like it's interesting and I can go there. But I hadn't heard of her. that sounds like it's interesting and I can go there. But I hadn't heard of her. And it seems like she is somebody who kind of looms quite large in English folklore, but also history, but also kind of there's this legend that seems to be built up around her. So like, can you tell me like, what's the difference between the woman and the legend, if you know what I mean? Yeah. And you know what, it's actually really hard to separate the two, and it's something that we're going to discuss.

So you're absolutely right to mention Mother Shipton's Cave. Anyone who has been on holiday to Yorkshire or driven through Yorkshire to go north, or indeed driven through Yorkshire to go south. Either way, whichever way you're driving, you'll see the signs. Or west or east, you know? If you're in Yorkshire, you're going to see it. So it's on the outskirts of Knaresborough, which is a market town in North Yorkshire. I used to live relatively close to there.

And so Mother Shipton for me is a little bit of an obsession, but she is definitely well known in English folklore. in English folklore. And the way that we know her is as a prophetess and someone who supposedly has prophesied catastrophic events for centuries and centuries beyond her own life. Now, we don't really know a huge amount about her life. She is born in the 15th century in 1488 it's really hard to identify her she was illegitimate she was born to a unmarried mother and into a social class that means that she's really hard to find in the archival evidence from that time the earliest source that we have that says anything about her life and who she was as Ursula Southell because she becomes known as Mother Shipton and again we're going to get into this difference and this kind of transformation into an old wise woman right so the earliest source we have for her life is published in 1667

which is oh so we're 200 years like that's 200 years later, right? Yeah, so it's just over 100 years after she dies. She lives relatively long for the 15th century into the 16th century. But yeah, it's published at least 100 years after her death. And it's by an Irish playwright and a bookseller called Richard Head. And he records some of her prophecies. Now, her prophecies are written down before that in the 1640s. Ah, okay. Again, her prophecies are written down before that in the 1640s. Ah, okay. Again, again, after she's died.

But they are kind of separated from Ursula Sutherland the person. And this becomes this sort of defining issue of her in terms of the historiography around her. But come here, why? Why? Why the delay? Why is there such...

Because again, I mean, you know me when it comes to these things and it's kind of like, it's adding layers of legend onto history. And I kind of become a little bit suspicious that it's taken almost 200 years or 100 years after she dies for any account of her prophecies or any account of her life to come out. Do we know anything as to why that might have taken so long i think one of the main reasons why why she was so compelling to people in the 17th century when people start to really write about her is that she has this extraordinarily long life and it's a life that falls in a period of british history that is incredibly eventful and I think her perception of these

events and her potential involvement in some of them is really key. So she's born, as we say, in 1488 during the reign of Henry VII. Three years earlier, that's all, Richard III is killed at the Battle of Bosworth, but she lives through the reigns of Henry VIII, through his admittedly short-lived reign of his son Edward, through Mary, and she survives three years into the queenship of Elizabeth I. Wow, that's a lot of history. So yeah, she's straddling these really turbulent moments of history as well. And I think that kind of relates to how she's perceived.

So what are the other details that Richard Head gives us in his account that might be able to root some of this in more kind of robust historical fact? Sure. So we know that, and we know this from Head, so taken with a pinch of salt, that's my caveat. We know that her mother is herself an orphan her name is agatha according to head and her last name is given as subtle but it's also given as soothe tale and sometimes it's given a soothe tell now this could be to do with the inconsistency of spelling in this period that wouldn't be unusual it's a fairly typical exactly exactly but i think this in the iteration of soothe tell we're getting a little bit of a hint here about maybe agatha's status in her community that she is potentially a soothsayer she has a connection with maybe healing or witchcraft and this is certainly something that her daughter becomes known for

so it's not a stretch to imagine that Agatha herself has some kind of connection to magical practices of some sort. Now, Ursula's father is not only not around, but Agatha refuses to name him when her daughter Ursula is born. Now, they're clearly not married. He may already be married. He may be a powerful, high-ranking person in the community they live in, around Knaresborough, around the cave where Ursula's born. We just don't know. But because of this, because Agatha refuses, and because she ends up homeless, alone, in this cave, age 15, giving birth, or so the story goes. She is completely disconnected from the rest of society. And it's certainly a compelling start. I don't know how true it is, but I do think what it gives us is a sense of, it's a really good origin story, I think,

for someone who goes on to hold this really special place in the English imagination. The other thing to mention about her that Head makes a point of noting down, and it's something that absolutely colours all of the portraiture of her in the centuries that follow her life and death, is that she is strange looking. There is something odd about her appearance. In some accounts, it's simply that she's not very appealing looking. In other accounts, it's that she has some kind of deformity, maybe a disability. It's really unclear. And again, a bit like her name, these facts, they're murky, they shapeshift, they're really hard to pin down. But in the context of her being this orphan, living and being born in a cave, it's another device that makes her feel other. It makes her

feel outside of her society. And we have Agatha and her daughter Ursula in this cave, outside of this society. What kind of brings them to the attention then? Is this something that happens early on or is it later in her life? And I'm imagining it's Ursula that comes to wider attention, even from an early stage, just to be brought into those kind of history books or legend, depending on where you're viewing it. Yeah, sure. So the cave that they live in outside the town is in and of itself an interesting location. and it's a location that's known to people nearby so there's a pool outside of it that the locals think looks like a skull again perfect on an old scully lake oh come here but that's something like is there a lake up there that looks like a skull now no yes i can't remember from memory and maybe listeners who've been there

recently can let us know what the situation is with the skull. So the last time I went there was probably as a child. And it was not the skull that really drew my attention. It was the other incredible element of the cave, which is that the water running down the sides of it and down the front of it is incredibly minerally rich. And it petrifies objects. It turns them to stone or appears to turn them to stone. Ooh, love that. I know, it's amazing.

So at least since the 18th century, possibly earlier, people have been bringing objects, items, to hang on the cave opening. And you go there today and there's like, you know, a teddy bear turned to stone. There's a handbag. Oh my God. Whatever, you know, all these different items. And presumably this was the same in Agatha and Ursula's time. And so the cave itself has a kind of notoriety and by extension, they become notorious for being the occupants of it. So in order for Ursula Sutherland to realise her full potential as Mother Shipton and become this famous propertess,

we need to remove her mother, Agatha, from the story, unfortunately. So Agatha comes to the attention of the Abbot of Beverley. As you do. As you do. He's always there. Great. Looming large. We have no idea who he is.

he looming large we have no idea who he is so he supposedly offers agatha help by sending her to a convent because of course that's every girl's dream of help in the 15th century i'm sure she was very grateful and unfortunately she does according to head she dies there so little ursula who has been living in the cave with her mother this whole time, goes into foster care, basically. She's taken in by a local family, and that's where things turn a little bit strange. Yes, tell me more, please. Although adopted into a local foster family, it's not long before the child Ursula begins to attract

attention. Many see her as strange, not only because of her appearance, but because of the unexplained things happening around her. As a toddler, so the story goes, she's left at home alone, but when her foster mother returns, the front door is wide open and a terrible sound, like a thousand cats crying, is coming from within. When the woman enters, Ursula is dancing atop the range, miraculously unhurt by the fire. Despite growing up something of an outcast, Ursula eventually marries local man Toby Shipton and sets herself up in business as a healer, her familiarity with the flora and fauna of the landscape proving useful. And yet she cannot shake her reputation as magical. One story tells how

those mocking her are transformed with antlers, their clothes and hats changed into chamber pots and worse. Another tells of a thief who steals Ursula's neighbour's smock and is compelled by an unknown force to present herself in the marketplace and expose her crime. and expose her crime. There are rumours of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got fortune telling, as if caves and schools were not enough,

we now have fortune telling to add to the bag of tricks. Yeah, we absolutely do. And this is where she starts to cement an early reputation as a fortune teller. So we have from the 1640s onwards, some of the prophecies that she's supposed to have said in her lifetime. Now, listeners might know her as someone who supposedly predicted the Crimean War, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War. These are a little bit more provincial. We love a provincial prediction. Yeah. So, okay. What I suggest, anthony is if you want to read us the first prophecy and then i'll tell you how it came to be okay okay okay oh what is the english in this okay water shall come over ooze bridge and a windmill shall be set upon a tower and an elm tree

shall lie at every man's door right that's gobbledygook did i say that bridge right the ooze bridge yeah so the ooze the river ooze is for anyone who knows york well and i went to university but i never obviously i've never read about the river well that's wow really i mean it was it was there but yeah no go on anyway oh god okay so it's the main river that runs through york so this is a prophecy she's meant to have said. Several years later, a water system, a water pumping system is put in place in the city of York that brings water from the River Ouse to the doors of every house nearby. And it's carried in pipes that are carved from elm. So it's a little bit specific, but you know what? It's a prophecy.

It comes true. The next one is a little bit specific but you know what it's a prophecy it comes true the next one is a little bit more dramatic i'll read this one for us so mother shipton supposedly says and these are all york related which i think shows you to me that has a ring of authenticity that they're all related to the area that she lived in you know they're not these big national prophecies yet yet but bear with us so this one reads before ooze bridge and trinity church meet what is built in the day shall fall by night till the highest stone in the church be the lowest stone of the bridge do you know i'm really bad at riddles like even like you know when there's like oh what's what's got a foot and also has an ear i'm

like i don't know i don't i don't know what it is well actually that's quite easy's got a foot and also has an ear? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what it is. Well, actually, that's quite easy. What has a foot and also has an ear. But like, none of this makes any sense. Tell me, tell me what this means. Well, first of all, what does have a foot and an ear? Like a person. Oh, okay. I guess. Did I just make up a riddle? Wow. Okay, so this one relates to a storm that happens supposedly soon after Mothershipton gives this prophecy. So a storm hits York and it damages the church and the bridge over the River Ouse. And when repairs are being carried out, some of the stone that was originally in the church tower is used to repair the bridge. So they're not very ambitious in some ways, but she begins to gain this reputation as someone who can foresee the future in a local

setting and things are about to escalate a little bit so we're into the time of Henry VIII the dissolution of the monasteries is happening and famously there's a Yorkshire rebellion against this Yorkshire has a strong Catholic foothold and people are not happy with what he's doing. And Henry VIII actually, in a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, refers to a witch of York in his letter. Now that's interesting. Yeah. I think that's something concrete there. It is. There's no way to confirm that that is Mother Shipton, Ursula Sutherland. But what I think is interesting is that it just, to me, it just to there being a figure like that and also a culture around York,

specifically around North Yorkshire, of witchy happenings, witchy figures, and that that anxiety that people like that exist and that they are in some way a threat to kingly power, you know, that anxiety has risen all the way up to Henry VIII himself. I think that's very interesting. No, I think it is. And I think it's the fact that he's even, I mean, uttering no, but through letter he is, he's naming a witch in Yorkshire. Firstly, that she's most likely, naming a witch in Yorkshire. Firstly, that she's most likely, not exclusively, but most likely middling or working class. She's probably a woman, but again, not always. But the fact that

those people are registering on the King's radar is really, really significant. And to locate it in Yorkshire, where this story and this history is coming from, it certainly grounds, even if some of this, what we're talking about is legend and, you know, probably a lot of it is, but like there's something there, isn't there? That there's something tantalisingly, archivally robust about it. Yeah. And I think the people in the centuries following Ursula Sylvill's life definitely pick up on this. So in the 1640s onwards, lots of her prophecies that are printed in books and sold in pamphlets and that kind of thing and circulated are supposedly related to other members of Henry VIII's court. So there's a prediction about Anne Boleyn and there's a

prediction about Cardinal Wolsey. So there's this prophecy that's written in rhyming couplets. And I think that tells you everything you need to know about its potential authenticity. Tell us what it means, Maddy. For those of us who are not that familiar with rhyming couplets, tell us what it means. Well, it seems very unlikely that a working class, well, a woman living in rural poverty in the 15th into the 16th century i i doubt that she is producing prophecies in rhyming couplets this seems to me to be written by someone later on and someone with possibly a higher level of literacy yeah so i'll read a little bit of this prophecy it's quite interesting in terms of how mother shipton is perceived in the world that she occupies so the

prophecy says when the cow doth ride the bull then priest beware thy skull and when the lower shrubs do fall the great trees quickly follow shall the mitered peacock's lofty pride shall to his master be a guide and it goes on and on so anne boleyn is associated with the bull. Her family crest has three black bull's heads on it. And Henry, before he's king, is, I think he's the Earl of Richmond at one point, you know, in his many titles. And that crest has a cow on it.

So when the cow doth ride the bull, the reference there is a conjugal, is a sexual act. Interestingly, it's talking about anne riding henry and there's a sort of inversion there of gender politics and sort of sexual dominance right and i think the fact that this is meant to have come from mother shipton there's something kind of irreverent about her supposed tone even if these words didn't really come from her she's perceived as being a troublemaker as being being subversive, as not really respecting the hierarchies of the day. And the prophecy is essentially, it goes on to talk about basically how Henry and Anne get together

and they talk about these lower shrubs falling and then these trees being cut down. And supposedly, this is a reference to the monasteries being culled. The mited peacock that's mentioned is Cardinal Wolsey. And so there's a sense that Henry's actions in bringing in the Church of England and all of that is disastrous for Britain. And this is where we start to see this shift in the way that Mother Shipton has written about that. Now she's being attached to stories that are really looking at history with a lot of hindsight. And they're talking about like the national fate of Britain, that these big events are inevitable, and that we already know the consequences they're going to have, and that she knew them and was predicting them in her own

lifetime. So we're starting to get like that shift into not only sort of fiction but her as a sort of legendary character yeah she becomes a useful kind of literary device doesn't she i mean she she we've talked about this before but she had these big kind of national um prophecies and then she had more kind of local ones that you're talking about in york but she also had some personal ones she was i believe able to predict the date of her own death, right? She was indeed. So this is where she sort of, what we know of her obviously becomes very murky. So she supposedly dies in 1561. And again, this is based on mostly 17th century sources. But there's a sense that, I mean, I think what that does in her sort of legend, the telling of

her legend is it's nicely cyclical. It ties everything up with a nice little bow that she is a prophetess and she prophesies her own death. And that's the end of that. And I think what's happening here is she's, yeah, she's moved on into legend now. We don't know where she's buried. We have no record of her gravesite, of the date that she died. So what that kind of tells me then is that there seems to have been gear change after she dies. And, you know, we're talking about the origin of some of these documents that relate to her life. As you have said, they come from a later time. So can you tell us a little bit more about what happens after she dies a hundred years on from ursula southerl's supposed death

and the words she was meant to have spoken still hold power in london a huge fire has swept through the city. Starting first in Pudding Lane before spreading from wooden building to wooden building, it has reduced the capital to a smoking wreckage. Among those to survey the remains is diarist Samuel Pepys, who in October 1666 writes in his diary that Prince Rupert, the nephew of King Charles I, is overheard saying that Shipton's prophecy has at last come true. But did Old Mother Shipton of Yorkshire really predict the Great Fire of London a century after her own demise and were the English really still taking her seriously? I mean I'm gonna answer no to the first part of your question. The second

part of your question is probably a little bit more but I mean she is credited with predicting the civil war as well, right? These bigger kind of national events again. So she ticked everything off, the Great Fire, there's a lot in there that she's predicted, apparently. Yeah, absolutely. So she crops up again and again in popular ballads, in political satire, in pamphlets, in books of poetry from the 17th century onwards. And more and more, she starts to be attached to these kind of great disasters. So yeah, she's associated with predicting something of the Civil War. Of course, she didn't. She's attached to the Great Fire of London. Daniel

Defoe mentions her in 1722 in his work, A Journal of the Plague Year, which is written in the beginning of the 18th century, but it's an account written as a first-hand account set in London in 1665. And it's set during the outbreak of plague in the city. And he mentions Mothershipton as having predicted that event as well. And of course, it's written decades after defoe's own experience in that time and it's very much kind of you know fictionalized to a certain extent she's cropping up again and again and she's being written into these histories with hindsight in a way that i think is really interesting and she becomes a sort of a specter in british history i guess in english history she

becomes someone who she's not really blamed for these catastrophes but she's sort of a spectre in British history, I guess, in English history. She becomes someone who, she's not really blamed for these catastrophes, but she's sort of present near them, in proximity to them. There's kind of a bit of, not quite, but there's a bit of Britannia about her as well. Like this kind of national figure who's overseeing all these things. And it's again, it's interesting that a woman is put in that position. And I mean mean she's having this kind of posthumous celebrity thrown at her right she absolutely does and it's interesting that you compare her to britannia because i think in some ways she's the opposite of that right she is an inelegant old woman she's depicted as being how we would maybe identify today as being quite witch-like. You know, she has a sort of hooked nose covered in boils and, you know, hunchback

and all these kind of, these specific markers that, you know, are sort of legible to us today as being folkloric and kind of cruel, really. She also kind of represents, you know, she comes from, sorry, it was a massive roll of thunder yes i bet you she predicted that roll of thunder she did if i'd finished her book of predictions i would have known this was coming so you're telling me it's not riveting reading i mean it just it gets more and more ridiculous i think what i find fascinating about her in the centuries afterwards is that she she crops up in the 17th century, as we say.

The interest in her does not die out. It only gets more and more in the 18th and 19th century. And you think about the 18th century as a time of enlightenment, a time of scientific rationale, of taxonomies and order and exploring and working out the world. And where does she fit in that? She's sort of the antidote to that. And she's deliciously othered in that world. And we see portraits of her in this period being printed, circulated. They're really popular portraits and depictions of the cottage she lives in, the cave she's lived in. I actually have a print, an 18th century print, I think it's from the 1720s, 1730s, of the cave with all the petrified objects outside. So she becomes almost like a stock figure, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I have a tea towel with her face.

No, I don't. But it does sound like she would have merch now. I have a feeling she missed her time because if she was on TikTok now selling predictions, she would have a range of merch and she could be profiting from this herself but you know she missed out on that by I don't know 400 years 500 years I'm not a mathematician I can't count but there is also something in what she brings to there's an acceptance she's bringing to people go in later generations where she's go where they're saying well this was all predicted you kind of have to accept this. This is all fate. These things are unfolding. Yes, they're big. Yes, we've had the glorious revolution. We've had the Great Fire of London. We've had the restoration. Again, we're talking about this tumultuous time where there's this constant turnover. And I suppose in a way what the legend that grows up

around Shipton is saying is you just have to accept it because it's written in the stars it's meant to be and don't fight against this yeah i think this idea that things are are predestined makes them easier to take in some ways and there's something almost comforting about her presence right that That she represents a sort of something deeply English that offers some stability, that she's always there. She crops up, yes, as a spectre, but as someone a little bit reassuring and familiar in all these awful moments. And she's associated with catastrophes right into the 20th century. And one of my famous kind of faux prophecies of hers that starts to circulate in the 19th century and it's written by this guy called Hindley I think who admits later on he's written an entire book of her prophecies that he sells as like you know the discovered authentic versions of her work

and then obviously it turns out he's written them all in his own desk and one of these says the world shall come to an end in 1881. And I mean, great, how convenient, just in time for Hindley's book to sell out pre-apocalypse. And of course, the world doesn't come to an end in 1881. But even in 1981, people were still talking about her prophecy and saying maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was 1981. maybe the world is going to end now. Thankfully, it didn't. So there's always people willing, I think, to buy into the story of her. Yeah, I think today she's a very interesting character and she's someone who, in some ways,

gives us a through line through history. You can plot her course through all these events, I think. That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. I think she's absolutely fascinating. And for anyone who hasn't been to her cave in Knaresborough, which is still a tourist site today and has been, as I say, since at least the 18th century,

it is a special place. And it's somewhere I visited as a child and it's always sort of stayed in my mind. There is something, there's an atmosphere there I think which is is really compelling do you think and I'm gonna let you have the kind of final word on this just before we we leave mothershipton behind but do you think she actually ever lived there do you think a a woman like her or a girl like her given that point in her life do you think it was ever a home for somebody i mean i hope not you know in some ways when we think about trying to get close to who the real ursula

suttle was i think the reality is probably quite tragic and if there was no one who existed called ursula suttle there will be a thousand young women like her who are living on the edges of society and i think in that way she becomes a sort of mysterious every woman. She's transformed into a figurehead. And in reality, we can't access the real human behind that, if indeed there was one or many. I agree with all of that. And I also think it's then equally fascinating to, if we were able to, and I have a feeling probably the answer is that we can't or else it would have been done. But this mention, this brief mention of a witch from York that Henry VIII puts in his

letter, that's so tantalising that that particular witch, that one individual has made enough of an impact across the country at that time to be mentioned by the king. And who knows, maybe it is Ursula. Maybe that is the tie-in of that. But yeah, I'm going to leave it up to you, Maddy, to leave us with the kind of final impression of Ursula. So yeah, see us out with some final words on Mother Shipton. It's incredibly difficult to pin down the facts of Ursula Southell's or Mother Shipton's life.

With almost no archival evidence to prove her existence, and with the details of her prophecies confined mainly to popular pamphlets or books written for profit, it's hard to find a real woman at the centre of all this. And yet, from the stories we have of her, someone rebellious, resistant, and even dangerous emerges. A heroine for some in the 16th century, and a devil for others. In many ways, she represents the anxieties of the age, cropping up to point a gnarled finger at political ne'er-do-wells or to expose small-town secrets. As a legend, her rise from ugly, illegitimate child to whistleblower against the king is certainly compelling,

and it's one that would continue to fascinate long after Ursula herself, whoever she was, had died. So there you go wherever you are today if you're listening on the tube or if you've listened to this in your car on the way home you can take mother shipton with you today on your little journey she can uh travel throughout different time periods so why not bring her with you through your day today tell somebody about mother shipton today and see see what they make of her prophecies and her merch is available at anthonydelaney.com tea towels are on a special deal no um thank you so much for joining us we have a bit of a request for you so this is something that we maddie and i and the producers freddie and charlotte have been talking about we want to hear from you we want to know about any family histories that you think

might interest us that lie on the darker side, any local histories that might need some historical investigation. If you have any of those dark or unsolved histories in your family or in your local area, send us an email at afterdarkathistoryhit.com. That's afterdarkathistoryhit.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. We will see you next time. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. And as a special gift, now don't say we never give you anything,

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