History lessons poured neat, with a joke for last call.
Hishtory is Allen Tatman's podcast, run like a history lecture from a bar stool: the host may taste an Irish whiskey before turning to the Embargo of 1807, the river crossing behind Dublin's Irish name, or Beowulf's fight with Grendel. Expect specific detail, strong language and, often, a crude bar joke on the way out.
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Hishtory is Allen Tatman's history podcast, and the slurred spelling of its name is honest advertising. The host has a name for listeners: history heads. In more than one episode a drink comes before the history, a 12-year Yellow Spot single pot still Irish whiskey one night and a Boiler Brewing Company raspberry tart another, the second a gift from friends in Omaha that had been sitting for a couple of months. The beer is tasted, described and approved on mic. Then the lecture starts, and it carries real names and figures. The Embargo of 1807 is laid out as an economic wound: shipping industries devastated, markets wrecked, prices up, and a cost that modern economic historians put at no less than 5 percent of GDP. Its biggest failure, in the host's telling, is that it never stopped the British navy from pressing American sailors into service. Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's Treasury Secretary, appears as the man who opposed it from the start. Dublin's name gets the same care. The Irish name means the town of the hurdles, after the pilings and small bridges that carried the trade route between Leinster and Meath over the Liffey, at a spot archaeologists place on Usher's Island. There is a flat warning, too, never to trust Google Translate with Irish. 'Mad About Mead!' sets Norse raiders and traders beside Beowulf's weaponless fight with Grendel in Hrothgar's hall. A two-part installment moves from Victorian London and the long American wait for enforced water standards to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which the host insists took more than a century rather than one great swoop, whatever survey textbooks suggest. Ireland is the center of gravity. The host describes fifteen years of group tours there, and a St. Patrick's Day episode follows Irish immigrants who came to America to dig canals, build railroads and fight, before closing on what those ancestors gave up for their grandchildren. One cold open is a tribute to Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries. None of it is delivered in a straight line. Mid-lecture, the host may wonder aloud about a gallbladder removed years earlier or recall tying rebar at a wastewater treatment plant in Hannibal, then pick the thread back up. Several episodes close on a bar joke, one billed as Drunk Uncle Al's Joke of the Week, and they tend to run crude. What comes through is a classroom instinct for clear explanation and a barroom instinct for holding attention; one aside on the Irish language even ends with the host declaring class dismissed.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants history from a storyteller with a drink in hand rather than a polished narrator, has a soft spot for Ireland, and is not put off by strong language or crude jokes.
What sets it apart: It pairs specific history, such as Albert Gallatin's opposition to the 1807 embargo or the river crossing behind Dublin's Irish name, with on-mic drinking, personal tangents and crude closing jokes. The Irish material comes from a host who describes fifteen years of running group tours to Ireland.
Podcast by Allen Tatman
A tart beer leads into Jefferson's failed embargo, and Allen Tatman lets you pull up a stool.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose, affectionate Ireland tour that turns place names, raiders, and pub humor into history.
Affection for Ireland gives the episode its shape, as the host moves from the roots of his group tours and memories of Jerry Ryan on RTE Channel 2 Radio into Irish language, Dublin river crossings, and a violent monastic encounter with longship-borne raiders.
Jefferson's embargo becomes a costly lesson in how economic pressure can miss its target and wound the country applying it.
Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807 comes through as a policy that punished American commerce while failing to move Britain. The episode tracks the fallout across shipping industries, broken markets, higher prices, unemployment, and a downturn that modern economic historians put at…
A St. Patrick's Day history of Irish work, military service, sacrifice, and memory across generations.
St. Patrick's Day is framed less as a pub holiday than as a story of migration, work, service, and sacrifice. The episode follows Irish arrivals into 19th-century America, connecting railroads, canals, construction, and hard labor with a wider history of Irish service through…
Norse raiders, Beowulf's monsters, and a stalled-train joke share one rowdy history ride.
"Mad About Mead!" starts with Norse raiders and trade routes stretching through Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, and North America, then settles into the Mead Hall world of Beowulf.
A loose Rome history episode with digressions, blunt humor, and a Cranberries farewell.
This single-episode review frames Rome's collapse as a slow unraveling rather than a neat schoolbook ending. The host moves through the empire's retreat from Britain, losses in Spain, Gaul, and North Africa, Attila's sudden death, tribute paid to barbarian tribes, and Romulus…
History, marriage, jokes, and baffling human choices.
Allan Tattan opens with the dispute over Ireland's oldest pub, contrasting Sean's Bar in Athlone with the Brazen Head in Dublin and its still-painted "1198" claim.
The episode connects the Chesapeake-Leopard attack of June 22, 1807, to Thomas Jefferson's decision to answer British impressment with an embargo instead of war.
From 1820 to 1860, 1,956,000 Irish came to America, and 75% arrived after the potato famine.
Olga's revenge turns on Rhododendron ponticum honey and 5,000 dead Drevlians.
Alexander Cummings patented the S-bend in 1775, and Joseph Brahma made the flush toilet work.
Alan Tatman opens Hishtory season two with London's 1858 Great Stink, when the Thames, fed by waste from 2.6 million people, drove Parliament from its riverside rooms.
Alan Tapman’s Hishtory episode links Santa Claus to beer, from Saint Nicholas of Myra to modern holiday advertising.
Alan Tatman traces Christmas drinking from Roman Saturnalia and Norse Yule to four holiday drinks: hot toddy, mulled wine, wassail, and eggnog.
A history podcast hosted by Allen Tatman exploring historical narratives.
The host sings and discusses an Irish drinking song, 'Finnegan's Wake,' while drinking whiskey and beer.
A narrative describing a traveler's experience at a medieval inn, including soldiers singing a familiar song.
The host discusses the start of baseball season, focusing on the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry and a historical opening day game.