This week I'm uncovering a lost city that was left out of my lost cities two parter (episodes 131 and 132). Nineveh, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire, is mentioned in the Bible no less than 19 times. But, for millennia we weren't sure if it was a fictional setting or a real place. All of that changed in the 1840s when British explorer Austen Henry Layard discovered the ruins of a vast metropolis on the banks of the Tigris River that could only be Nineveh. Within those ruins he found a palace and within that palace a library, the Library of Ashurbanipal. The information held within Ashurbanipal's library told us everything we never knew about the Assyrian Empire, once the largest empire in the world. So, what did those clay tablets say? Join me to find out!

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Sources:

• British Museum "Sparking the imagination: the rediscovery of Assyria's great lost city"
• British Museum "Historical city travel guide: Nineveh, 7th century BC"
• British Museum "A library fit for a king"
• British Museum "Who was Ashurbanipal?"
• Got Questions "What is the significance of the city of Nineveh in the Bible?"

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Join me January 28th at 6 pm at College of the Albemarle in Manteo, North Carolina for the first ever History Fix live show!

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In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day this Monday, January 19th, I'm delving into the story behind this remarkable man. How does a Black man born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929, a man whose grandparents were sharecroppers in a post slavery American South, a man subjected to Jim Crow laws that intentionally sought to hold him down, rise to such great heights as to become the only single American with his own dedicated national holiday? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• NPR "I Have a Dream Speech"
• History.com "Martin Luther King Jr. "
• NAACP "Martin Luther King Jr."
• History.com "Jim Crow Laws"
• The King Center "About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
• Forbes "How Martin Luther King Jr. Improvised 'I Have a Dream'"
• Wikipedia "Martin Luther King Jr."

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In this episode I finally explore a topic I've wondered about for a long time: circumcision. How did an ancient punishment for prisoners turned religious ritual become a medical procedure carried out by over 80% of Americans? What triggered doctors to start recommending circumcision for all newborn boys starting in the late 1800s and why doesn't the rest of the world do it too? What about the ethical implications of performing a body altering procedure on someone without their consent? Is there really a good reason to do it? Or does a 5.4 billion dollar a year industry come into play? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• UNAIDS "Male Circumcision: context, criteria, and culture"
• Journal of Pediatric Surgery "The evolutionary saga of circumcision from a religious perspective"
• Advanced Urological Care "Circumcision Revisited: An Historical Perspective"
• National Library of Medicine "Male genital representation in paleolithic art: erection and circumcision before history"
• Research Gate "High Cost of Circumcision"
• Wikipedia "Circumcision"
• Wikipedia "Prevalence of Circumcision"
• Johns Hopkins Medicine "Johns Hopkins Study: Newborn Male Circumcision Rates In US Dropped Between 2012 and 2022"

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