Dead People Talking

Dumb Decisions Lead to Death in the Australian Outback: Burke and Wills Expedition

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:18:00 GMT

In 1860, a group of determined explorers set out to achieve one of the greatest geographical feats in Australian history: crossing the continent from south to north. What followed was a masterclass in poor planning, questionable leadership, baffling decision-making, and the stubborn refusal to learn from people who actually knew what they were doing.

Join me this week as we follow Burke and Wills through the Australian outback. Hopefully, we fair better than they did.

Sources

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/political-science/colonization-australia

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/burke-and-wills

The Dollop Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/49Db0UEm30dSw08Bo6rVN9?si=ebd3b7dfb48249ee

The Walking Wounded: The Incredible Fighting Life of Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:47:37 GMT

Todays episode does include descriptions od death and injury during war. Listener discretion advised.

Today we are talking about Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. An absolute machine of a man. I usually don't like military history, I am a people historian. And Adrian is one heck of a person and one heck of a soldier. So I thought his story should be told. Buckle up this story is crazy.

Sources

Happy Odyssey by Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart with Foreward by Winston Churchill

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-somme

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/first-world-war/western-front/poison-gas

https://www.forcesnews.com/heritage/soldiers-eye-views-somme

https://www.iwm.org.uk/podcasts/voices-of-the-first-world-war/ep-33-shell-shock

Lady Jane Digby Episode 2

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:22:07 GMT

From English castles to desert tents beneath the Syrian stars, this episode explores the remarkable final act of one of the nineteenth century’s most unconventional women, a woman who refused, again and again, to live the life society demanded of her.

Lady Jane Digby Episode 1

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:22:04 GMT

In this first episode, we trace Jane’s early life from the rolling countryside of Dorset and Norfolk to the dazzling but deeply restrictive world of Britain’s upper classes. Married off at just seventeen to the much older and politically powerful Edward Law, 2nd Baron Ellenborough, Jane quickly discovers the brutal realities of marriage, reputation, and female dependence in the early nineteenth century.

What follows is a whirlwind of affairs, scandal, gossip, and public humiliation that would make Jane one of the most infamous women in Europe. Her romances with diplomats, noblemen, and foreign aristocrats scandalize Victorian society and ultimately destroy her marriage — but they also force her into exile from the only world she has ever known.

Pilot

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:23:07 GMT

Welcome to Dead People Talking a weird history podcast about the strange and fascinating story of us a.k.a. history. History has been done dirty, you've been lied to if you think history is just names and dates on a whiteboard. History is context of everything we are and everything we have ever done. Everything you have ever done. So it's pretty cool. Join me every week as we combat the idea that history is boring and exploring the interesting, the strange, the unsettling and the fascinating.

Baby Doe Tabor: The Queen of Colorado's Silver Empire

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:20:51 GMT

In this episode, I tell you the extraordinary and heartbreaking story of Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known as Baby Doe Tabor.

From poverty to glittering wealth in Colorado’s silver boom, and back again to isolation and tragedy, her life reads like a frontier epic. Alongside her husband, Horace Tabor, she rose to become one of the most famous women of the American West.

But when the silver market collapsed, so too did everything they had built. What followed was not just financial ruin, but a decades-long descent into hardship that ended in one of the most haunting deaths in American history.