HILF Podcast: History I'd Like to Fu-k

27/11/2025

The Rosetta Stone is basically history’s greatest cheat code—a giant 2,200-year-old message that cracked the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Dawn takes you from it's carving over 2,000 years ago, to it's rediscovery by Napoleon, to the controversy that surrounds it to this day.

Before it was a modern language-learning program, the Rosetta Stone was the ancient world’s ultimate decoder ring—a 2,200-year-old decree carved in stone that finally unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphics. Without it, your favorite stories and lives from ancient Egypt might’ve stayed silent forever! Join Dawn and guest, her sister-in-law Maggie, who is a former linguistics major and maker of fine martinis.

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1. An artist's () AI-assisted interpretation of 's*xy Rosetta Stone'. Nailed it, as always.

2. An enhanced image of The Rosetta Stone, highlighting the three distinct sections.

3. The British Museum - where the Rosetta Stone currently resides and where Dawn recently saw it. Should it be there? Should it stay there? What do you think?

4. Ptolemy I. This is Alexander the Great's bestie who begat the Greek line of Pharaohs. KEEP UP!

5. The Rosetta Stone before she got all busted.

6. Napoleon in Egypt (who 'technically' found the Rosetta Stone)... can you even? I mean even to them, at the time, it was wild s**t.

7. Thomas Young - A polymath who did so much dope s**t you will fu***ng gag.

8. The Mummy (1999) - This movie has it's finger on the pulse of what made this whole thing so f**kable. Evie would have been a student of these guys. You get it.

9. Behold, Jean-Francois Champollion - the French individual most responsible for the translation of the Rosetta Stone. Sickly, ambitious, brilliant... swoon.

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HILF EP94 - The Rosetta Stone with Maggie Melby is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

20/11/2025

Get to know Martha Mitchell, the fire-brand wife of the attorney general who would have blown the lid off Watergate years before the world knew what happened… if only we’d listened.

FULL EPISODE available to Patreon subscribers.

Recorded live on Aug. 7th with special guest, .

New show on the first Thursday of every month! Join us!

12/11/2025

🧭 Return with Dawn and guest, improvisor Kelly Vrooman, as they follow Catherine the Great from the dramatic coup that brought her power, through her rein as The Last Empress of Russia.

Forbidden pregnancies, secret letters, and of course... that whole thing with the horse that allegedly fu**ed her death. 🐴
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HILF EP93 - Catherine the Great, Part Two with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

31/10/2025

She was Russia’s last empress—a bad bitch so powerful that when she died of a stroke at 67, Europe collectively said, “No way that killed her” Instead, the rumor mill decided she must’ve been fu**ed to death by a horse. No s**t. Dawn is joined by the actress and improviser, Kelly Vrooman in an episode fit for an Queen.
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01 - An artistic representation of Catherine the Great as rendered by .
02 - Catherine the Great's official portrait - a great one.
03 - Peter III, the Emperor of Russia... for a hot sec.
04 - The Winter Palace, St Petersburg built 1754
05 - Peter the Great. I know, right - total smoke show.
06 - Peter the Great doing great s**t, greatly.
07 - St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow built 1482.
08 - Yekaterina Dashkova, older sister of Peter III's sidepiece.
09 - Sergio Saltykov, one of Catherine's lovers and alleged father of Paul.
10 - The Destruction of the Turkish Fleet, 1770 - one of Catherine's great victories.
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HILF EP92 - Catherine the Great with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

29/10/2025

09/10/2025

Dawn served up some Ed Gein history ahead of the Netflix series on him. had thoughts…

02/10/2025

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01 - An artistic representation of The Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short) as rendered by

02 - Elizabeth Short's portrait taken a few years before her murder.

03 - A cool-ass picture of detectives looking out over 1947 Los Angeles.

04 - Just some of the headlines that captured the attention of the country. The Dahlia murder remained on the front pages for a record 33 days.

05 - Elizabeth Short had a lot of 'dates' but she was neither a 'pr******te' nor a 'Hollywood wanna-be' as she was ofter characterized. Pictures like these were used to point the portrait of a 's*x fiend.'

06 - Among the things that kept interest in the Dahlia case, were the taunting and mysterious letters sent by the presumed killer.

07 - Elizabeth Short's mugshot from an arrest for under-age drinking. Ironically, had she not been fingerprinted during this 'youthful indiscretion' her identity may never have been known after her murder.

08 - Phoebe, Elizabeth Short's mother, who had endured her share of tragedy even before her daughter was murdered. She was done dirty by the LA Examiner who exploited her pain for a scoop.

09 - Leslie Dillion, the suspect purposed by author Piu Eatwell.

10 - George Hodel, the suspect purposed by his son, Steve.

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HILF EP90 - The Black Dahlia Murder with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

12/09/2025

Adam Smith invented Capitalism and Karl Marx invented Communism, two political and economic concepts which people have been fighting about for almost two centuries. Dawn goes to the horses mouths with to find out what the 'daddies' of the movement had to say, and why they're both right... until they're not.
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1 - The hottest version of Adam Smith and Karl Marx and imagined by the incomparable
2 - One of Adam Smith's official portraits. He looks like a founding father, don't he? He aint.
3 - The Zaddy of Communism, Karl Marx.
4 - A headline from October, 1929 announcing the stock market crash that shook the world. It was something Adam Smith said wouldn't happen, something Marx knew would.
5 - Young Stalin... I know, right?
6 - Old Stalin. What an as***le, but he's still got it.
7 - Leon Trotsky. Cutie-patootie with less-bad ideas than most. BUT he did fight off his assassin even after taking an icepick to the brain so...
8 - Gulags and labor camps, not exclusive to Communism, but among it's most obvious blemishes.
9 - Fredrich Engles, Karl Marx's financier and co-writer of Marx's Communist Manifesto.
10 - Child Laborers before labor laws - among the darkest practices of pure Capitalists.
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HILF EP88 - Karl Marx vs Adam Smith with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

22/08/2025

🤠 Billy the Kid was a teenage gunslinger, a jail-breaking outlaw, and a wild-west vigilante gunned down when he was only 21! Join Dawn and her guest, comedian Kerstin Porter, as they saddle up with one of the most infamous figures of the American West.🐴

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01 - An artistic representation of "a f**kable Billy the Kid" as rendered by

02 - The only confirmed photograph of Billy the Kid taken in 1880, one year before his death.

03 - The 1988 Film, Young Guns, starring Emilio Estevez as Billy is more accurate than one would expect. "Regulators!"

04 - Actual gunslingers posing in the city of Lincoln, New Mexico. Armed men like this, including Billy, engaged in regular theft and violence at the behest of their "bosses".

05 - Sheriff Pat Garrett, the lawman who shot Billy the Kid, and wrote a best-seller all about it.

06 - Pauletta Maxwell, the young woman who is said to have been the reason Billy didn't flee to Mexico while the gettin' was good.

07 - These here be the bad guys of our tale: The young one standing is Dolan, the older one sitting is Murphy. Both as***les.

08 - We're not the first one to think this stuff was s*xy. Buffalo Bill Cody made a living off of the mystique of the west, touring the globe with 'wild west shows' while it was still actually wild!

09 - Sweet, doomed, John Tunstall. An Englishman who stood up against a corrupt system and became the cause of Billy's vigilanteism.

10 - Annie Oakley was one of the women in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and was yet further proof that the times were s*xy as hell.

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HILF EP87 - Billy the Kid with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

13/08/2025

Get missionary with Dawn and her bestie, , as they walk the twisted path of the Church, writ large, in The United States.

⛪️What’s the difference between the Quakers and the Shakers? Ever wondered what separates Methodists, from Presbyterians, from Baptists?

Hear the history from Puritans to Joel Osteen’s Megachurch... can I get an Amen?

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01 - An artistic representation of "Hot Quaker-esque preacher" as rendered by

02 - Portrait of "Public Universal Friend" a leading Quaker who was non-binary before it was a thing.

03 - Luther and his rebellious act of nailing his treatise against the Catholic Church... Not the first guy to get in trouble for nailing, but in a new way.

04 - An Amish Family. We may have mocked them as we drove around their buggies for last hundred years, but now with AI and Tik-Tok, we're all a little jealous of their attention spans and heart health.

05 - A Methodist Circuit Rider - Is there anything s*xier than riding the rough trail to convert cowboys? No. No there isn't.

06 - Behold, the MEGA Church. A gross, capitalistic version of modern Protestantism, and also a return to Old Paganism...

07 - The Dark Day - A real-life event in New England during the Revolutionary War that sparked wide-spread conversion and belief the apocalypse was now.

08 - The Shakers, shakin'! Get to know the Quakers who found rhythm, but lost their congregation.

09 - The baby's face says a lot - the momma's face says it all. How do politics, faith and cults combine? Like this:

10 - Why did they name Quaker Oats after Quakers? It wasn't because it was made of their bones (as Dawn had hoped) but because of their well-known honesty and dependability. One of the most famous Quakers? Richard Nixon... So...

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HILF EP86 - Religion in America with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.

11/08/2025

Most of us know what a Quaker looks like because of this guy.

But do you know why they put his face on the oats to begin with? Do you know WHY they fled persecution to come to America?

Girl, you about to...
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HILF EP86 - Religion in America with is available RIGHT NOW!
🎧 Listen anywhere, find all available platforms at the linktree in bio.