Think we wrapped up George Washington in one episode? Cute. Absolutely not. We’re back with the bonus content you didn’t know you needed—and frankly, neither did we until Eric said, “Wait, I’m not done ranting.”

This episode is the presidential blooper reel meets historical hot goss. We’re talking Washington’s hot older brother Lawrence (who basically kickstarted George’s hero arc), a tropical getaway gone wrong (hello, smallpox!), and the real tea on those so-called wooden teeth. Spoiler: they were bougie ivory, not splintery lumber.

Plus, find out why our founding daddy was very pro-vaccine, how the whole "cherry tree" thing was a full-on fanfic, and why Field Marshal Marshall never became a thing (yes, that’s a real sentence).

Come for the myth-busting. Stay for the sass. Leave knowing George Washington was somehow more iconic than we were taught in grade school. Who knew?

You thought we were done with John Adams? Think again, history rookie. We’ve got one more cannonball into the colonial chaos, and this one’s juicier than Franklin in a bathtub with a Parisian chess partner.

In this wrap-up to our accidentally five-part (!) miniseries on the OG cranky patriot, Kyle and Eric dig into all the spicy sidebars and head-scratching historical hot takes that didn’t make the first cut—like whether Adams’ sweet tooth doomed his dental future, and why Franklin’s breezy (and breezy naked) diplomacy had John clutching his waistcoat in horror.

We're debunking dramatized documentaries, sipping tea on the Adams-Franklin bromance fallout, and marveling at John’s casual recognition of Haiti's independence while everyone else was losing their powdered wigs over it. Oh, and did you know Abigail crossed the freakin’ Atlantic during the war? Power couple energy. 💥

What You’ll Hear:

Was John Adams really at the Boston Massacre? Spoiler: No, but HBO thinks so.

Why Franklin slept naked with the windows open (you’re welcome for the visual).

The Haitian Revolution shout-out that made Adams enemies real fast.

The political shade of the 1800 election… plus, Adams’ delightfully confusing mistress clapback.

Pull up a chair at Peacefield, pet the cows, and get ready to hear about the most misunderstood Founding Father like never before.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your history served hot and messy.

📬 Want a FREE journal? Just send an email to buckstartsherepodcast@gmail.com with the subject line "journal" and we’ll hook you up.

📲 More sass, more history, more WTF moments:
🌐 buckstartsherepodcast.com
🎥 YouTube: Buck Starts Here Podcast

Grab your powdered wigs and brace yourself for a full-speed gallop through the myth of Jefferson the “common man”—because this episode is less “Founding Father” and more “Founding Flop (feat. someone who actually deserves to be on a stamp).” Kyle and Eric are here to drag Thomas Jefferson for his aristocratic farm-core nonsense, his baby-soft hands, and his whole "I'm a man of the people" schtick—played on a very out-of-tune violin. Spoiler alert: he wasn't fooling anybody.

But the real star of the show? BENJAMIN. FREAKING. BANNEKER. That’s right—clock-making, star-mapping, tide-charting, letter-writing genius Benjamin Banneker, who casually read Jefferson for filth and predicted solar eclipses for funsies. This man made a clock out of wood that kept perfect time for 50 years and still found time to sneak abolitionist essays into almanacs like an intellectual ninja.

It’s part history, part roast, and full-on sass. You’ll laugh, you’ll rage, and you’ll wonder why the hell he’s not carved into a mountain somewhere.

👉 Want a free journal? Email us at buckstartsherepodcast@gmail.com with the subject line “Journal.”

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🎧 Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts.

Alright history nerds, buckle your breeches—because this episode is blowing the powdered wig right off the sanitized story you thought you knew.

We’re diving deep into the life of Paul Jennings—James Madison’s enslaved footman who didn’t just wait on the president, he witnessed wars, wrote a bestselling memoir before it was cool, and helped bankroll the boldest escape attempt of enslaved people in U.S. history: The Pearl Incident.

That portrait-saving story? Yeah, that wasn’t Dolley. Paul did that. Dolley delegated. (First Ladies—they’re just like us.)

Kyle and Eric are in full form this week: there’s righteous indignation, historical name-dropping, and the kind of chaotic good energy only this podcast can deliver. You’ll hear about Paul’s decades-long proximity to power, the shady aftermath of The Pearl, and why Millard freaking Fillmore is weirdly part of this redemption arc.

There’s also a Frederick Douglass cameo, a shady typo we will not let slide, and enough butterfly effect moments to make Ashton Kutcher cry.

So get ready—this one’s heartfelt, hilarious, and just a little bit furious. Because history deserves better than "Dolley saved the painting" and "enslaved workers were just… gone."

💌 Want to win one of our gloriously nerdy journals? Email buckstartsherepodcast@gmail.com with the subject line: Journal. You know the drill.

🎧 Subscribe. Share. Leave us a review. Or get dunked on in the footnotes of history.

Grab your parasol and your passive-aggressive fan, because in this episode of Buck Wild, we’re sailing straight into the humid, horrifying aftermath of America’s attempt to “solve” slavery by… checks notes… giving formerly enslaved people a whole new country and zero resources. Genius!

Join Kyle and Historian Supreme Eric Mason as they take you on a tragicomic ride through:

🇱🇷 The American Colonization Society, aka: “What if racism, but make it philanthropy?”
🧻 The disaster that was Sherbro Island (10/10 on Google Reviews if you’re into dysentery)
🎩 The all-white board of governors—including Francis Scott “I Wrote the Anthem, Now I Run Liberia” Key—who played geopolitical puppet master from across the Atlantic
🥴 The painfully awkward land deals, militia mayhem, and economic faceplants that followed

Let’s be clear: this story has everything—failed utopias, cringey altruism, malaria, a Monopoly board of misplaced intentions, and the haunting realization that Monroe’s name is still on a place that was never built to thrive.

This ain't your high school history class, darling. This is colonization with receipts, shade, and way more emotional damage than we signed up for.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like your historical tea scalding hot and ethically messy.

📬 Email your rage, praise, or Liberia-themed memes to buckstartsherepodcast@gmail.com
📓 Want a free journal? Of course you do. Subject line: “Journal.” That’s it.

Ever wondered what happens when science meets snake oil and the president doesn’t immediately run screamin'? Get ready—because this episode is a one-way trip through 19th-century pseudoscience, political lobbying, and feral frontier fanboys.

In this gem of The Buck Starts Here, Kyle and Eric dive headfirst into the bizarre tale of John Cleves Symmes Jr.—a man convinced the Earth was hollow, habitable, and just begging for a government-funded expedition. Was JQA really about to greenlight an Arctic voyage into the planet’s donut hole? Did Congress nearly fall for it? And what does all this have to do with science, grift, and being too online in the 1820s?

Spoiler: Adams didn’t believe in Hollow Earth, but he did believe in flexing America’s brainy biceps on the world stage. Meanwhile, Symmes’ manifesto tour drew packed houses out West and ridicule back East—because nothing says “scientific rigor” like a Russian nesting doll made of dirt.

So grab your sextant, pack a fur coat, and join us for a meandering descent into presidential madness, Manifest Destiny vibes, and the eternal question: how far would you go for science (or clout)?

Unroll your canvas and dip your brush in the tea, friends. Your charmingly chaotic hosts Kyle and Eric are back, and they’ve dragged along fan-favorite Rae Faba—our resident art history assassin—for another trip into the glittery, grimy world of early American portraiture and the messy marriage between art and truth.

We’re talking OG selfies (read: daguerreotypes), presidential portraits with side hustles, and a whole lotta propaganda disguised as patriotism. Ever wondered if George Washington really stood like a Greek god mid-blizzard while women rowed him across icy death water? Spoiler: he did not. But the Germans sure liked to pretend he did.

From crossing the Delaware to crossing the line of realism, we decode paintings that scream, “This definitely didn’t happen—but it should have!” Plus: Rae drops a WWII teaser, Eric spirals into philosophical musings, and Kyle brings trench art to a shelf-off.

This mid-season interlude of The Buck Starts Here is raw, uncut, and 100% less polished than what usually makes it through our producer’s editing scissors. Kyle and Eric go off-script on Andrew Jackson’s disaster legacy, Martin Van Buren’s Darth Vader vibes, morality scores for presidents (yes, that’s a thing now), and even Hurricane Katrina economics. It’s messy, it’s unfiltered, and it’s the perfect reminder of why we normally cut 25% of every episode.

Buckle up, buttercup, it’s time to talk States’ Rights. You know, that magical phrase every bad-faith politician has whipped out since 1789 whenever they’re on the wrong side of history.

In this Buck Wild bonus episode, Kyle and Eric take off the presidential gloves and dive headfirst into America’s longest-running gaslight. From the 10th Amendment’s humble beginnings to John C. Calhoun’s fever-dream PowerPoint on “compact theory,” this is the messy origin story of how “freedom” got turned into “you can’t tell me what to do, Dad!”

We’re talking nullification crises, Jackson’s big federal flex, slavery excuses dressed up as liberty, and a crash course in how every “states’ rights” tantrum eventually leads to someone threatening secession. (Spoiler: they always lose.)

Eric’s yelling, Kyle’s doing emotional damage control, and somehow West Virginia comes out looking like the gifted kid who transferred schools halfway through the semester.

It’s constitutional chaos, political delusion, and historical shade at its finest.

In Part I of this two-part chaos saga, Eric and Kyle take you on a high-speed, bilingual roller coaster from Mexico’s independence to Texas being… well, Texas. Mexico is trying to run a brand-new country, American settlers are showing up with slavery like it’s an unauthorized carry-on, Santa Anna is busy reinventing the government structure every fifteen minutes, and both sides seem deeply allergic to reading their own treaties.

Then Polk enters the chat with full Manifest Destiny energy. He sends diplomats south, troops to the Rio Grande, and vibes into the universe that say “We want your land but politely.” Mexico, understandably overwhelmed and unimpressed, refuses to answer his texts. Troops shuffle into disputed territory, cavalry crosses rivers, and suddenly everyone is screaming “AMERICAN BLOOD SHED ON AMERICAN SOIL!” without confirming whose soil it actually is.

Kyle and Eric break down every messy ingredient:
🔥 Mexico’s political instability
🔥 A U.S. government aggressively manifesting destiny
🔥 Texas insisting it owned land it couldn’t point to on a map
🔥 Polk claiming innocence while playing geopolitical Jenga
🔥 The embarrassing weapons-tech gap between the two armies
🔥 The U.S. Navy politely telling Europe to sit down and stay out of it

It’s petty. It’s loud. It’s historically unhinged.
And best of all — this is only Part I.
Part II is where the cannonballs start flying.

If Part I was the slow, awkward buildup, Part II is where the war actually starts acting like a war: loudly, violently, and with absolutely no chill.

In this episode, Kyle and Eric walk through the moment the Mexican–American War flips from political tension to full-scale conflict. Zachary Taylor digs in and dares anyone to move him, flying artillery enters the chat and instantly changes how battles are fought, and the U.S. military realizes it has accidentally become terrifyingly efficient. Mexico, meanwhile, is fighting a war while its government is still arguing with itself… never ideal.

We break down the early battles, the shockingly lopsided firepower, Santa Anna’s refusal to accept that artillery is now a personality trait, and how the U.S. Navy quietly locks down coastlines like it owns the place. This is the phase of the war where things move way too fast, victories pile up, and no one in Washington has fully processed what they just unleashed.

It’s innovation, improvisation, and imperial ambition colliding in real time, with consequences that will echo for decades.
Buck Wild, indeed.

This is not a history episode. This is a reckoning.

In this Buck Wild installment of The Buck Starts Here, Kyle and Eric stop the presidential march dead in its tracks to do something arguably more dangerous: revisit their own rankings. After nearly a year of scoring presidents, things have gotten a little weird. Criteria have shifted. Long-term consequences have crept in. And somehow James K. Polk is still causing problems.

So they do what any responsible historians would do. They argue about it.

This episode breaks down how the ranking system evolved, where it drifted, and whether presidents like John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Jackson, and even George Washington himself were treated fairly. Should we be scoring presidencies only, or entire lives? Does quiet competence deserve more credit? Should slave ownership always be an automatic ding? And at what point do we admit that timing matters more than talent?

Along the way, there are detours into military leadership, unionism, political restraint, and why being really good at your job sometimes makes history forget you. There is also open regret, mild chaos, and at least one moment where Eric realizes his beard is older than the Confederacy.

This is Buck Wild in its purest form.
No script. No narrative arc. Just arguing with ourselves in real time.

This is not a biography. This is a Buck Wild lightning round.

In this episode of The Buck Starts Here, Kyle and Eric rip through 13 facts about Frederick Douglass that explain why he kept winning in a country that was actively trying to stop him. Fast, focused, no filler. Just the moments that show how Douglass used literacy, rhetoric, and sheer force of intellect to bend the national conversation around slavery and freedom.

Douglass learned to read in a system designed to keep him ignorant, then learned to write in a country terrified of what he might say. He escaped slavery, took the stage, and made pro-slavery arguments collapse under their own stupidity. His speeches hit hard. His books hit harder. And when allies disappointed him or movements lost their nerve, Douglass did not hesitate to say so out loud.

These are not fun trivia facts.
They are strategic facts.
The kind that explain why Frederick Douglass was always several moves ahead.

Read.
Wrote.
Won.

At the founding of the United States, the North and South looked like they were building the same country. Same flag. Same Constitution. Same “we’re totally fine” energy. Under the hood? Not even close.

In this episode of The Buck Starts Here, Eric drags us from the 1770s through the early 1800s and shows how two regional economies quietly went their separate ways before anyone started threatening secession. The North leans into education, skilled labor, economic diversification, and early industrialization. The South commits to land, agriculture, enslaved labor, and an extractive system that rewards control over adaptability.

We talk early American economic history, class formation, housing patterns, and why incentives matter more than vibes. The North starts building human capital. The South builds an economy where one sector dominates everything else and calls it stability. These choices don’t explode right away, which is honestly part of the problem.

Nothing breaks in this episode.
But the union is already awkward.
And everyone in the room can feel it.

Two economies.
One country.
And a growing list of future regrets.

If Part I was the slow drift, this is where the consequences kick the door in.

In Part II of this series, The Buck Starts Here moves into the 1810s and watches the North and South get stress-tested by real events they can’t ignore. War. Credit collapses. The Panic of 1819. And a near-perfect case study of Dutch Disease in the American South.

We break down how an extractive, monoculture economy built around cotton sucks up labor, capital, and attention until everything else exists only to support that one industry. Supporting industries become dependent. Talent stops developing. The ability to pivot disappears. And when cotton stumbles, the entire Southern economy faceplants with it.

Meanwhile, the North bends. Because diversification, education, and industrial growth turn out to be pretty useful when the economy hits turbulence.

By the end of this episode, the divergence isn’t theoretical.
It’s structural.
And it’s expensive.

This is the moment the awkward union stops pretending everything is fine and enters the find out phase.

buck wild

Washington part 5 - the myths, the mojo, the smallpox

John Adams Part V - Scandalous Send-off

Thomas Jefferson Part V: A Founding Father Gets Clocked

James Madison Part V: Paul Jennings' Epic Effects

James Monroe Part V: You Have Died of Colonization (The Monrovia Trial)

John Quincy Adams Part V: Journey To The Center of The Earth

Buck Wild Bonus: Rae’s Really Real Emporium of Realness

Buck Wild Bonus: Unfiltered, Unhinged, Unnecessary (But Hilarious)

States’ Rights — America's Original Gaslight

Mexican–American War Part I: Border? Never Heard of Her

Mexican–American War Part II: This Escalated Immediately

We Regret Nothing (Except Some Scores)

Frederick Douglass: Read, Wrote, Won

Two Economies, One Awkward Union | North vs South Economics

The Economy Enters the Find Out Phase | North vs South Economics

the bill of rights

john quincy adams