Mark Chrisler
248 episodes listed below
History’s wrong turns, followed all the way down.
The Constant is a narrative history show about people who were very sure, very wrong, or both. Its recent run moves from coded alchemical texts and papal fraud decrees to Great Lakes piracy, covert German militarism, and inventions that almost rewired reality.
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The Constant is a history show built around wrongness, but not the simple kind. It is interested in the strange systems people construct when ambition, belief, money, law, and uncertainty all start feeding one another. The result is brisk storytelling with a skeptical editorial spine. It can be funny. It can also turn grave without changing lanes too theatrically. Recent episodes spend time with alchemy, not as a cartoon about turning lead into gold, but as a knot of philosophy, metallurgy, coded writing, religious suspicion, fraud law, and very old arguments about what matter is. James Price’s demonstrations sit beside Zosimos, Gnostic thought, Bacon, Geber, and Pope John XXII’s decretal against false promises. That is typical of the show’s method. It begins with the odd object in the room, then keeps widening the frame until the oddity looks less like a footnote and more like a pressure point. The Great Lakes piracy series does the same trick with beaver pelts, long canoes, Bill Johnston, timber theft, and the surprisingly aggressive meaning of the phrase timber agent. The show likes debunking, but it is not just a debunking machine. It has more fun asking why a myth was plausible, who profited from the confusion, and what the surviving evidence can actually bear. In Peace Forever, a German film studio becomes a route into covert militarism, Black Reichswehr denial, Lufthansa-linked aircraft development, Department M, De Weltbühne, and the prosecution of Karl von Osietzky and Walter Kreiser. That arc is not treated as trivia. It is a story about secrecy, state power, and the danger of proving something everyone official would rather leave unsaid. Elsewhere, Gabriel Lippmann’s scientific brilliance opens toward the dream of a world-changing machine, while Operation Tradewind anchors another episode in wartime preparation and technical detail. The show’s best habit is its refusal to pretend history was clean while it was happening. Sources are partial, names are slippery, motives are mixed, and convenient stories keep wandering into the evidence wearing fake mustaches. The narration moves quickly through all of that. It pauses to qualify, correct, and side-eye the record, but it rarely loses momentum. The Constant is for listeners who like history with jokes, caveats, strange documents, and the occasional sense that the archive itself is being difficult on purpose.
Made for: For listeners who like deeply researched history with skepticism, narrative momentum, and a dry sense of absurdity. Best for people who enjoy complexity more than clean moral packaging.
What sets it apart: The Constant does not just catalog historical mistakes; it traces how confusion becomes policy, legend, science, fraud, or danger. Its edge comes from pairing careful context with an irreverent refusal to make the past look smarter than it was.
A podcast about exactly what it says it is: examining the bad ideas, mistakes and accidents that misshaped our world.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mark Krohn traces how uncertain ideas acquire authority, pairing sharp historical narration with careful attention to evidence, interpretation, and error.
Mark Krohn builds history around the point where confidence outruns knowledge. Episodes move from covert German rearmament and the prosecution of Carl von Ossietzky to Abbott Thayer's camouflage theories, then from alchemical fraud to early experiments in memory.
A bomber hides inside Lufthansa, and Mark Krohn makes your historical certainty check its pockets.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp tour through alchemy's secrecy, uncertainty, and recurring suspicion of fraud.
The episode treats alchemy as a field of pseudonyms, codes, and argument, with gold-making always hanging between fraud and something harder to pin down. It is strongest when it lets that uncertainty shape the story.
A funny, engaging look at alchemy, wealth, and the urge to turn matter into gold.
The episode follows James Price from born James Higginbotham to a young chemist with a rare streak of privilege: Oxford, a master's degree, a doctorate, and Royal Society membership by 25.
A sharp look at how denial, propaganda, and covert rearmament fed each other.
Peace Forever traces Phoebus Film AG from its 1922 boom years and disposable romances into military and political work, where the rising scale, cost, and mock battles point toward covert rearmament.
Great Lakes piracy moves from fur pelts to timber, with profit and power driving the story.
This episode of The Constant traces Great Lakes piracy from early fur-pelt theft to a later, timber-heavy version of the same struggle, where the real contest turns on wood, control, and the men trying to claim both.
A portrait painter's grief leads to a theory of disappearing, and the detour mostly earns its keep.
It opens at the Shedd Aquarium, then settles into what The Constant does well: it starts with an odd visual question and expands it into a fuller historical portrait.
A sharp look at how memory became measurable, with just enough wit to keep the science from feeling sealed off.
The episode treats memory science like a real problem that had to be worked out slowly, not a neat idea handed down all at once. It follows Ebbinghaus through nonsense syllables, repeated tests, and a kind of stubborn patience that makes the whole thing feel more human than…
A bonus Constant episode that treats Burton's melancholy classic as a lively, digressive read.
This bonus Constant episode spends its time on Robert Burton, the seventeenth-century writer who signed The Anatomy of Melancholy as Democritus Junior and is memorialized at Christ Church under that name.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
A season-by-season history show pairing dramatized Rasputin and Salem narratives with historian interviews.
Greg Young and Tom Meyers explain how New York City's streets took shape.
Alchemy arrives with the fog machine running.
James Price begins rich.
This episode explores the life and groundbreaking inventions of Gabriel Lippmann, focusing on his Nobel Prize-winning color photography and a lesser-known 1900 invention that could have dramatically changed the world.
This episode explores Operation Tradewind, the Allied amphibious assault on Moritai Island in September 1944 during World War II, detailing military preparations and strategic objectives.
Phoebus Film AG kept expanding after a string of expensive flops, and business reporter Kurt Winkle traced the money to Walter Lohmann, a Navy logistics officer who had funneled more than $2.5 million into the studio.
This episode continues a series on Great Lakes piracy, recapping historical ages and focusing on Bill Johnston as a controversial figure who might be considered a privateer rather than a pirate.
The Constant episode “Great Lakes Pirates, Part 2: Shiver Me Timbers” traces how piracy on Lake Michigan shifted from rumors about fur to real conflicts over white pine, federal forests, and the USS Michigan.
This episode explores the history of beaver fur trade and piracy on the Great Lakes, highlighting how beaver pelts drove early European conflicts and commerce.
The host presents two remastered Christmas-themed stories about historical blunders, including a con man who tricked the Air Force into building a failed flying machine.
This episode previews bonus stories from the Secret Feed, which offers ad-free early access and monthly bonus content about historical mistakes and accidents.
This episode explores the 19th-century invention of the charteline blanket, a cheap paper bedding product, as an example of a historical bad idea.
This episode examines the Battle of New Market Heights and its role in the broader Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War.
This episode explores the mysterious abandonment of the former village of Warm Percy in North Yorkshire, using historical ruins to spark curiosity and imagination about the past.
This episode recounts the historical events leading up to a significant day in Marshfield, Missouri in 1880, focusing on the town's development and the calm before a potential storm.
A painter gives his name to a law, but the road there is crooked.
This episode features promotional segments for history and technology podcasts, followed by a host's introduction to a special 200th episode collection of surprising facts and stories.
The host explains that this is a remastered version of the most popular episode in the podcast's history, though they're unsure why it's so beloved.
This episode introduces the children's history podcast The Past and the Curious and humorously compares the host's similarities with Scrabble champion Nigel Richards.
Memory starts slipping fast.
Melancholy gets the last word.
This episode explores historical mistakes and accidents that have shaped the world, with a focus on the unintended consequences of human error.
This episode recounts the strange story of a woman who walked into a cobbler's home in 1817, setting the stage for a historical examination of errors and misconceptions.
This episode explores the history of speed records, starting with Usain Bolt's 2009 world record.
The host introduces the podcast's premise of exploring historical mistakes and shares his personal journey of starting the show.
This episode recounts the story of the French warship Victory, which suffered a devastating broadside from the HMS Winchelsea, leading to a chaotic chain of command.
This episode explores Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia and the subsequent coalition against him in 1814.
This episode explores the story of John Partridge, a 17th-century astrologer whose predicted death became a famous historical mistake.
This episode explores two historical stories about islands that exemplify how mistakes and accidents have shaped our world.
This episode explores the history of anesthesia, detailing the lack of pain relief before the 1840s and the brutal nature of early surgery.
This episode explores the history of anesthesia, framed with a creative western narrative to engage listeners.
This episode explores the flawed scientific theories of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who attempted to calculate the age of the Earth using a cooling cannonball experiment.
This episode begins with a story about the most beautiful baby in Athens, setting up a historical narrative about a figure from ancient Greece.
This episode begins the story of a 17th-century French family, setting up a historical narrative about a mistake or accident.
This episode recounts Charles Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle and the development of his theory of evolution by natural selection, framed as part of a series on historical mistakes and accidents.
This episode explores the legend of Pope Joan, a woman who allegedly disguised herself as a man and became pope, examining the historical accuracy and origins of the myth.