Fool's Gold

Mon, Oct 06, 2014
The real facts behind America's biggest economic boom and biggest bust will shock you. On this episode of America: Facts vs. Fiction, discover a treasure of nuggets about the California gold rush and the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
7.2 /10
Last Man Standing
The true stories of the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand are very different from the way we remember them. Find out how Davy Crockett really died - and why General Custer might have been court-martialed if he hadn't attacked the Indians that outnumbered him.
7.5 /10
Lost at Sea

Mon, Oct 13, 2014
Myths cloud the real facts of history on the high seas. Find out what pirates really did with their treasure instead of burying it - and discover the truth behind the seemingly baffling disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.
7.7 /10
Booze and Bullets
Our memories of the roaring twenties and lawless thirties are more myth than truth. Learn the shocking realities about prohibition and that rogue's gallery of gangsters including John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde.
7.6 /10
Patton and Grant
The truth about America's greatest generals is obscured by myth. Learn that George Patton's nickname "Blood and Guts" doesn't mean what you might think and that Ulysses S. Grant's reputation as a drunk and a butcher is undeserved.
6.7 /10
Red, White and True?
Myths and misconceptions surround our most revered patriotic symbols. Learn how the Statue of Liberty was originally intended to stand in Egypt, how the American Flag wasn't designed by Betsy Ross, and that Mount Rushmore is actually uncompleted.
7 /10
Wartime Rosies

Mon, Nov 17, 2014
The truth about women during World War II goes way beyond Rosie the Riveter. In this episode, our stories range from the woman who broke Japan's secret code to the Hollywood sex goddess who invented a remote-controlled torpedo.
6.6 /10
Masters of Illusion
Much of what we know about America's showmen is myth, not truth. Discover how Harry Houdini didn't die escaping from his famous torture cell - and how P.T. Barnum doubled his profits by manufacturing doubt about the authenticity of his own exhibits.
7.2 /10
Seeing Isn't Believing
On this episode, we look further into some of the most iconic photos and footage from the Civil War, Great Depression, and World War 2. By looking beyond the celluloid and the flash bulbs we find a story as interesting as the moments themselves.
7.3 /10
What Happens in Vegas...
Myths obscure the truth about Las Vegas. In this episode of America: Facts vs. Fiction, learn that gambling wasn't the first enterprise to pour billions into Nevada's economy - and that Hoover Dam's concrete hasn't finished hardening.
7.5 /10
Conquering the Sky
The stories of pioneering aviators are often not the truth but flights of fancy. In this episode of America: Facts vs. Fiction, we expose the myths about the Wright brothers' invention of the airplane and America's favorite missing person, Amelia Earhart.
7.1 /10
Engineering the Impossible
The truth about great feats of engineering can be clouded by myth. Discover that the Panama Canal doesn't run east and west, but north and south. And that the Transcontinental Railroad wasn't completed at Utah's Promontory Point.
7.2 /10

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Fire of the Final Days

Fire of the Final Days

The Earth's language is spiritual and tenuous, a series of whispers and feelings. It is however also remarkably and shockingly incompatible with the languages of exploitation and commercialism. Many of us have completely forgotten that there ever was another language, another possibility. Historically, nature, mountains, rivers, trees, the sun, the moon have always been honored in ancient cultures. It's only when we start moving away from our connection to nature and ourselves, that we begin not showing care polluting and destroying the environment. We need to revive these attitudes that foster our connection with nature. As we continue to accelerate through the rapid-fire of a paradigm immersed in technology and a culture defined by the values of the simulacrum, have we come to expect tense, anxious and confrontational existence as the cornerstone of our humanity? It may be that the answer to this disconnect with the natural world lies in the lives and attitudes of the few remaining land-based cultures on this planet. I am convinced that these Indigenous cultures are a valuable and vulnerable resource we shouldn't ignore any longer. Desperately few remaining, many of them have been compromised by our lifestyle to various extents. Yet these old customs and beliefs have piercing details about our place in the practical calculus of existence. They contain durable messages from ancestors who turned to their senses and not the cold reductionist and dualism of 19th century Cartesian logic of, for answers to existential puzzles.

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