buck wild
Look, we tried to keep it tidy—but the Revolutionary Era was messy, and so were our notes. Buck Wild is the bonus miniseries where we dust off Eric’s overachiever historian scribbles and serve up all the juicy bits that didn’t make it into the main episodes.
We’re talking Washington through John Quincy Adams—forgotten drama, myth-busting chaos, and presidential side quests we just couldn’t leave behind. It’s the final cannonball into the powdered-wig pool, and we’re making a splash.
History may be written by the victors, but the leftovers? They’re way more fun.
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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?
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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:
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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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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.
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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
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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)?
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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.