You would have learned about it in school, but do you know why? Or even remember what it was about? Today we'll look at the Magna Carta. What it is, how it was formed, and why should we care about it, even 800 years later. 

Subscriber-only episode

Our first subscriber only episode of February is about Olive Oatman. Olive was traveling with her family west when they encountered the Yavapai tribe. Her family was killed and she and her sister Mary Anne were taken. 5 years later Olive was living with the Mohave people, and she was traded for to return to white settler society. Her vibrant blue tattoos made her an overnight celebrity.

In 1809, Serbian forces were desperately outnumbered by Turkish forces. It was the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. In the southern city of Niš, the Serbians decided to stand against the Ottoman forces. They would be massacred in this fight. Today you can visit this site, and it's marked by a morbid reminder of their defeat. A tower built out of their skulls. 

Today we are going to be talking about the Western Schism, or the Schism of 1378. It was a split in the Catholic church from the years 1378 to 1417 in which there were two different popes, in two different countries  and then during mediation to return to one pope, a third one was  elected. It would end with the papacy returning to Rome, and only one pope. But this story remains proof that the saying two heads are better than one, only works if you are not talking about heads of religion. 

In our last two episodes we have covered a lot of history behind the lobotomy. We have talked about the advent of psycho surgery, the surgeons who pioneered the practice, the advent of the leucotomy, and the surgeon and neurologist that turned it into the lobotomy. Today will be our final instalment, and we are going to cover Walter Freeman, how he split from his neurosurgeon partner James Watts, and then how he single handedly performed thousands of transorbital lobotomies, also known as ice pick lobotomies, on patients as young as four years old.

Subscriber-only episode

On February 1 1959, nine Soviet hikers, mostly students, were in the Ural mountains. They went to sleep peacefully that night, their tent had been safely pitched, and their hiking trip was going well. That would be the last night of their trip. Almost a month later, their bodies were found in the snow, all dead. The circumstances were mysterious, and for the last 60 years conspiracies have run wild trying to figure out what exactly happened. Theories have ranged from government execution, and weird science experiments, to aliens and cannibal attacks. But we do think that we finally have an answer, and the movie Frozen is the reason behind it. 

Last week we covered the history of psychosurgery, or brain surgery to improve mental health symptoms. We talked about Gottlieb Burckhardt in the 1880’s and then Egaz Moniz in the 1930’s. Today we are going to talk about the man Moniz inspired most, and the one who would take the lobotomy to dangerous new levels. Walter Freeman. We will also cover Rosemary Kennedy, and the inspiration for the infamous icepick lobotomy. 

In the first episode covering the lobotomy, we will cover the beginning of psychosurgery- that is surgery that is used to try to help or cure mental illness. We will start with Gottlieb Burckhardt in the 1880's, who started using psychosurgery. Then we will go to Egas Moniz, who created the leucotomy in the 1930's - the precursor to the infamous lobotomy.