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This, Again

This, Again

By: Mallory Faust
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You may think you know these stories, but not like this. This, Again is where historical disasters, delusions, downfalls, and déjà vu collide with human psychology. From palace scandals, space shuttle explosions, nightclub fires to witch trials, host Mallory Faust takes the moments in history you thought you understood and reveals the blind spots, egos, and eerie echoes you missed. It’s darkly funny, sharp, and empathetic - and it just might change how you see the past repeating in real time.

Copyright 2025 All rights reserved. Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Untangling Historical Rumors Pt. 1 | Catherine the Great

    Untangling Historical Rumors Pt. 1 | Catherine the Great
    3 Sep 2026

    Did Catherine the Great really die having sex with a horse?

    No. But the stranger question is: where did that story come from and why did anyone believe it?

    In the first installment of a new series on Historical Rumors, we’re going back to eighteenth-century Russia to look at the woman behind one of history’s most persistent and outrageous legends.

    Catherine’s real life hardly needed embellishment. Born a minor German princess, she came to Russia as a teenager, overthrew her husband, seized the throne, ruled an empire for more than three decades, corresponded with some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, expanded Russia’s territory, and yes, had a very real and very public succession of lovers.

    Those relationships helped create a sexual reputation that Catherine’s political enemies were already weaponizing during her lifetime. But the infamous horse story is much harder to trace than you might expect. In fact, recent scholarship raises the possibility that the version so many of us have heard may be far more modern than Catherine herself.

    So where does a historical rumor like this begin? How does it change over time? And how does a woman with one of the most consequential reigns in European history become remembered for something that never happened?

    This is Untangling Historical Rumors Pt.1: Catherine the Great.

    Attribution Notes:

    • Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.
    • If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow

    Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow

    This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.

    Sources

    British Museum. An Imperial Stride! April 12, 1791. Satirical print. British Museum Collection. British Museum collection record

    British Museum. The Northern Bugga Bo. April 14, 1791. Satirical print. British Museum Collection. British Museum collection record

    Carretta, Vincent. “‘Petticoats in Power’: Catherine the Great in British Political Cartoons.” 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 1 (1994). LSU Scholarly Repository

    Catherine II, Empress of Russia. Mémoires de l’Impératrice Catherine II. Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg edition

    Catherine II, Empress of Russia. Nakaz [Instruction to the Commission for the Compilation of a New Code]. 1766–67. Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. Digitized by the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library. Presidential Library

    de Madariaga, Isabel. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.

    Menchinger, Ethan. “Contemporary Ottoman Views of Catherine the Great.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 42, no. 1 (2019): 84–100. University of Manchester research record

    Solly, Meilan. “The True History Behind ‘The Great’ and Catherine the Great.” Smithsonian Magazine, May 15, 2020. Smithsonian Magazine

    Voltaire Foundation. “Launching CatCor: Towards a Digital Edition of the Letters of Catherine the Great.” December 16, 2021. Voltaire Foundation

    Zitser, Ernest A. “The Myth of Catherine the Great and the Horse: A Critical Review of the Historiography.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 25, no. 1 (2024).
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    25 min
  • The Dark Patterns in Child Institutions | Foundling Schools, The Dozier School for Boys, and Modern Echoes

    The Dark Patterns in Child Institutions | Foundling Schools, The Dozier School for Boys, and Modern Echoes
    13 Aug 2026
    For more than six hundred years, societies have created institutions designed to rescue, protect, discipline, and reform children. Foundling hospitals took in abandoned infants. Houses of refuge promised to save children from crime and poverty. Reform schools claimed they could turn troubled boys and girls into productive adults. And eventually, residential treatment centers and therapeutic programs promised something more modern: treatment. Many of these institutions represented genuine progress. Many helped children. But across centuries, remarkably similar problems kept appearing behind their walls. In this episode, we trace the history of institutionalizing children from Renaissance Florence to nineteenth-century reformatories, the notorious Dozier School for Boys, and today's residential treatment industry. Along the way, we look at buried graves, children confined without committing crimes, allegations of abuse that went ignored for decades, and modern systems where regulators can still struggle to determine who is responsible for keeping children safe. Because the most unsettling part of this history isn't simply that institutions sometimes failed. It's how often the conditions that allowed those failures to happen survived the reforms meant to fix them. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust. Sources and Further Reading: Historical Foundations and Foundling Institutions Istituto degli Innocenti. “History.” Istituto degli Innocenti. https://www.istitutodeglinnocenti.it/en/about-us/historyFoundling Museum. “History of the Foundling Hospital.” Foundling Museum. https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/our-story/history/Harris, W. V. “Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 84 (1994): 1–22. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-studies/article/childexposure-in-the-roman-empire/3410A0618E4B37F1CF1EE52B11DC89F4Levene, Alysa. Scholarship on mortality and child survival at the London Foundling Hospital. The original Deep Research relies on Levene's scholarship for the mortality discussion but does not preserve a sufficiently specific bibliographic link for me to give you a URL without reconstructing the citation independently. Houses of Refuge, Reformatories, and “Incorrigibility” Ex parte Crouse. 4 Whart. 9 (Pa. 1839).People ex rel. O’Connell v. Turner. 55 Ill. 280 (1870).Historical scholarship on houses of refuge and nineteenth-century juvenile reform. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44686761Chicago Reform School. Historical annual reports and institutional records. Library of Congress digitized collection. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/gdc/gdcebookspublic/20/21/75/86/21/2021758621/2021758621.pdf Development of Modern Child Protection The National Archives. “Children’s Homes and Orphanages.” The National Archives (UK). https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/children-care/United Kingdom. Children Act 1948, 11 & 12 Geo. 6 c. 43.United States. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-247, 88 Stat. 4. Dozier School for Boys University of South Florida. Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys Project. USF Libraries Digital Collections. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/dozier_school/1/University of South Florida Libraries. Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys Research Guide. https://guides.lib.usf.edu/dozier These are especially important for the forensic investigation, historical records, cemetery research, survivor material, and the discrepancy between the earlier official burial accounting and what archaeologists subsequently located. Synanon, Therapeutic Communities, and Behavior Modification De Leon, George, et al. Scholarship on the history and development of therapeutic communities. National Library of Medicine/PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3562581/Chatfield, Mark. Scholarship on totalistic youth programs and the historical development of the troubled-teen industry. The original Deep Research cites Chatfield's scholarship but does not preserve a sufficiently specific canonical URL for me to provide one without independently reconstructing the citation. Modern Residential Treatment and the Troubled-Teen Industry U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. Warehouses of Neglect: How Taxpayers Are Funding Systemic Abuse in Youth Residential Treatment Facilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, 2024. https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rtf_report_warehouses_of_neglect.pdfU.S. Government Accountability Office. Residential Treatment Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled ...
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    42 min
  • Elvis Presley, Jackie Robinson & Mary Tyler Moore | What Makes a Cultural Catalyst?

    Elvis Presley, Jackie Robinson & Mary Tyler Moore | What Makes a Cultural Catalyst?
    23 Jul 2026
    Today, Elvis Presley is the King of Rock and Roll. Jackie Robinson has an entire day dedicated to him across Major League Baseball. Mary Tyler Moore is remembered as one of the most influential women in television history. But before they became icons, they became arguments. In this episode, we explore what these three remarkably different people shared and why their stories followed such a similar path. Along the way, we'll examine the psychology behind cultural change, why societies often resist new ideas before eventually embracing them, and how a single visible person can accelerate that process. Because history isn't just shaped by the people who change culture. It's also shaped by the culture that decides, often reluctantly, it's ready to change. Attribution Notes: Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust. Sources and Further Reading: Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 887–917. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081898550789 Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin. “Two Men and an Independent Woman.” Television Academy, April 23, 2014. Accessed July, 2026. https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/news/features/two-men-and-independent-woman. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. “Table 2. Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population 16 Years and Over by Sex, 1970–2008 Annual Averages.” In Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, 2009 Edition. Accessed June, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlftable2.htm. Jost, John T. A Theory of System Justification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13qfw6w. Jost, John T., Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Brian A. Nosek. “A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo.” Political Psychology 25, no. 6 (2004): 881–919. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x. Kuran, Timur, and Cass R. Sunstein. “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation.” Stanford Law Review 51, no. 4 (April 1999): 683–768. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229439. Library of Congress. “Breaking the Color Line: 1940 to 1946.” In Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/jackie-robinson-baseball/articles-and-essays/baseball-the-color-line-and-jackie-robinson/1940-to-1946/. Library of Congress. “‘The Jackie Robinson Story.’” In Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/jackie-robinson-baseball/articles-and-essays/baseball-the-color-line-and-jackie-robinson/the-jackie-robinson-story. Major League Baseball. “Jackie Robinson Day.” MLB Together. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.mlb.com/mlb-together/jackie-robinson-day. Moore, Mary Tyler. Interview by Diane Werts. The Interviews: An Oral History of Television. Television Academy Foundation, October 23, 1997. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/mary-tyler-moore. Moore, Mary Tyler. “Mary Tyler Moore: The ‘Fresh Air’ Interview.” Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air. Rebroadcast by WUNC, May 26, 2023. https://www.wunc.org/2023-05-26/mary-tyler-moore-the-fresh-air-interview. National Park Service. “Guide to National Historic Landmarks by State: Tennessee.” Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/guide.htm. PBS. “Elvis Presley.” Culture Shock: Flashpoints—Music and Dance. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/music/elvis.html. Television Academy. “Foundation Archive: Mary Tyler Moore.” Emmy Magazine, May 17, 2017. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.televisionacademy.com/features/emmy-magazine/articles/foundation-archive-mary-tyler-moore. Zajonc, Robert B. “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9, no. 2, pt. 2 (1968): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848.
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    36 min
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