Épisodes

  • The Cork Expedition - Old Mother Covington Part II)

    The Cork Expedition - Old Mother Covington Part II)
    Feb 25 2026
    Last time, we stood at Moore’s Creek Bridge and listened to Old Mother Covington speak. In three violent minutes, a Loyalist rising collapsed and Governor Josiah Martin’s promise of ten thousand men dissolved into smoke and swamp water. But that battle was only half the story. Three thousand miles away, in Cork, Ireland, the British Empire was assembling the force that was supposed to make Moore’s Creek irrelevant. Seven regiments. Artillery. Royal confidence. This was the hammer meant to fall in coordination with that uprising and split the colonies in half. On paper, it looked elegant. Cheap victory. Minimal commitment. Maximum effect. Instead, Cork became a lesson in delay, delusion, and the dangers of believing your own optimism. Recruiting faltered. Ships were scarce. Deadlines slipped from December to January to February. When the fleet finally sailed, it ran straight into the wrath of the Atlantic. Storms scattered the convoy. Transports sank. Soldiers drowned before they ever saw America. This episode is the other side of Moore’s Creek. The British side. The paper army. The missed signals. The pride that refused to turn back. Old Mother Covington did not win the war that morning. But Cork made sure Britain never had the chance.
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    18 min
  • DDH - Old Mother Covington

    DDH - Old Mother Covington
    Feb 24 2026
    We tend to remember the American Revolution as a clean fight. Patriots in homespun. Redcoats in formation. Muskets cracking across open fields. But that is not how it felt in North Carolina in 1776. Before there was Saratoga. Before there was Yorktown. Before Jefferson put ink to parchment and accused the king of stirring up “domestic insurrections among us,” there was a swamp. A narrow bridge. And neighbors marching against neighbors. Royal Governor Josiah Martin believed he could crush the rebellion from the inside. Ten thousand loyalists would rise. Seven thousand British troops would land. The Carolinas would fall. The Revolution would choke before it ever reached full flame. Instead, in the cold darkness before dawn on February 27, 1776, Highland Scots charged across a greased bridge shouting “King George and broadswords!” What followed lasted three minutes. Three minutes that shattered a royal strategy. Three minutes that hardened a colony. Three minutes that pushed North Carolina to become the first to authorize independence. This is the story of Moore’s Creek Bridge. This is the story behind the grievance. And this is why Old Mother Covington still echoes in the dark.
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    36 min
  • WTF - Miracle on Ice, But Show Your ID

    WTF - Miracle on Ice, But Show Your ID
    Feb 22 2026
    Good morning, America, and welcome to the only show reckless enough to record live during a playoff-intensity hockey game before most of the country has located its coffee. This week, we hit the microphones at dawn because somewhere in Milan, the schedule makers decided that U.S. versus Canada should be settled at an hour normally reserved for bakers and dairy cows. So yes, the game is on in the background. Yes, it’s chippy. And yes, you may hear spontaneous reactions that are either patriotic or deeply unhealthy. Possibly both. From Olympic controversy and curling drama to tainted gold medals and athletic oversharing, we begin on the ice and then glide straight into the strange modern obsession with identification. Birth certificates. Real ID. The SAVE Act. Politicians who somehow travel internationally while claiming documents are impossible to find. If that sounds improbable, buckle up. Then we detour through Seattle sports economics, millionaire taxes, the ghost of the SuperSonics, and why professional teams flee faster than common sense in an election year. It’s hockey. It’s politics. It’s technology. It’s snow-covered New York streets and two forms of ID. In other words, it’s another perfectly normal episode of What The Frock.
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    1 h
  • Delivering Democracy

    Delivering Democracy
    Feb 20 2026
    Before there was a telegraph wire humming across the plains, before railroads stitched steel across the continent, before the internet convinced us that information travels at the speed of light, there was a rider on a muddy road with a leather satchel and a republic in his saddlebag. In this episode, we are talking about the Postal Act of 1792. It sounds bureaucratic. It sounds dry. It sounds like something best left to archivists and footnotes. But here is the truth. This law built the nervous system of the United States. It answered a question that haunted the Founders after the Revolution: how do you keep a large republic from drifting apart? Washington signed it. Madison believed in it. Franklin helped lay the groundwork for it. And Congress embedded within it a bold idea that still shapes us today. Information should circulate freely. News should be affordable. Private correspondence should be protected. The government should connect its people, not spy on them. This was not about delivering parcels. It was about delivering democracy. So settle in. We are going to follow the post roads from Maine to Georgia, out to the frontier, and into the beating heart of a young nation trying to hold itself together.
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    Moins d'une minute
  • DDH - Roll the Guns!

    DDH - Roll the Guns!
    Feb 17 2026
    We love to talk about the giants of the American Revolution. Washington in command. Jefferson at his desk. Adams on his feet. But revolutions are not won by speeches alone. They are won by men who move iron in the dark. This week on Dave Does History, we step back into the winter of 1775 and meet a 25 year old Boston bookseller who understood something most armies still struggle to grasp. Strategy means nothing without logistics. Henry Knox had no formal military education. He left school at nine. He taught himself Greek, Latin, and the science of artillery by candlelight in his bookstore. When George Washington needed cannons to break the British grip on Boston, Knox offered a solution that sounded almost insane. Drag sixty tons of artillery three hundred miles through snow, mountains, and frozen rivers. What followed was one of the most daring logistical feats in American history, a “noble train of artillery” that changed the course of the war without firing a single decisive shot. In this episode, we explore how Knox’s grit, engineering mind, and relentless execution helped force the British out of Boston and prove that the Revolution was more than rhetoric.
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    36 min
  • WTF - Fingering the Stone

    WTF - Fingering the Stone
    Feb 15 2026
    This week on What The Frock?, the world proves once again that it cannot be left unattended for five minutes. Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod lace up their skates and wade into a week that includes American cricket triumph, Olympic scandal, auto-tuned halftime theatrics, AI paranoia, and a voter ID debate that somehow manages to be both deadly serious and deeply ridiculous. The United States T20 team pulls off wins that have us technically sitting near the top of a brutal group, which in sports terms means we are thrilled and cautiously bracing for reality at the same time. Meanwhile, the Winter Olympics serve up enough controversy to make even curling dramatic. A French judge’s scoring raises eyebrows. Canadian curlers are caught touching stones they absolutely should not be touching. Ice dancing becomes less about artistry and more about arithmetic. It is sport, politics, and human nature sliding across the same sheet of ice. From there, the conversation turns to the Superb Owl halftime show, engineered music, and the uncomfortable question of what is actually real anymore in an age of AI everything. Add in a headline-dominating kidnapping case and a spirited debate over identification laws, and you have one beautifully bizarre episode. Pour the coffee. This one gets weird fast.
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    57 min
  • Books Are The Key

    Books Are The Key
    Feb 14 2026
    A random encounter while reading a book has Dave contemplating the reason why books remain so important...
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    16 min
  • DDH - Common Sense Was In The Air

    DDH - Common Sense Was In The Air
    Feb 10 2026
    Independence did not begin with a vote. It did not begin with Jefferson’s pen scratching across parchment. It began earlier, colder, louder, and far less polite. In the winter of 1776, Americans were not celebrating. They were arguing. In taverns where the ale was thin. In churches where the sermons bled into politics. In parlors where fear sat quietly beside the fire. Blood had already been spilled. Boston was occupied. Trade was strangled. And yet most Americans still clung to the King, not out of loyalty, but out of habit. Monarchy was flawed, but it was familiar. Then Common Sense arrived. Not as a book to be studied in silence, but as noise. Read aloud. Debated. Challenged. Answered. It did not give Americans facts they did not know. It gave them permission to ask questions they had avoided. Dangerous questions. Impolite ones. Questions that refused to stay inside the relationship. What follows is not the story of sudden revolution. It is the story of exhaustion. Of anxiety hardening into accusation. Of fear slowly learning the language of law. The Declaration of Independence did not create independence. It recorded it. This is the story of how winter arguments became summer law.
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    35 min