HISTORY This Week

November 14th, 332 BCE. Alexander the Great has conquered an unprecedented amount of territory in a relatively short amount of time. At just 24 years old, he's in control of Macedonia, much of Greece, and now, a huge part of Egypt.
But Alexander doesn't want to just conquer each of these places - he wants to rule. And in a rare move for Macedonian royalty, he wants to rule in a way that honors local customs, allowing him to be seen as not just a king, but in some areas, as some kind of divine figure. So today, the ancient Egyptians will crown Alexander as a pharaoh.
This is one in a long line of victories for Alexander the Great. However, in his often-overlooked later years, his luck starts to change. As Alexander continues his quest to reach the end of the known world, and his ambition reaches mythical heights, how will his unparalleled success come to an end?
Special thanks to Rachel Kousser, professor of Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology at the City University of New York and author of Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great.
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November 4, 2009. It's Game 6 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Yankees will clinch the series tonight on the back of one player, Hideki Matsui. He's a baseball player from Japan, one of the few who made the jump across the Pacific to play in America.
In the last 15 years, many more Japanese players have made that move, including superstar Shohei Ohtani, arguably the most popular baseball player in the world today. But before Ohtani, before Matsui, there was Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese player to appear in MLB.
How did Murakami go from a village outside of Tokyo to pitching in front of tens of thousands in America? And how did an international incident cut his U.S. career short, leading to a 30-year gap before the next Japanese player would arrive in the Major Leagues?
Special thanks to Rob Fitts, author of Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer; Kerry Yo Nakagawa, founder and director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project; and Michael Clair, writer and senior manager for storytelling and special projects at Major League Baseball. You can hear him on MLB Morning Lineup, the league’s daily podcast.
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Oct 27, 1972. The planet Mars has many victims. Specifically, spacecraft. There have been so many failed missions to Mars, that scientists are rumbling about a "Mars Curse". But one mission is defying the odds.
Mariner 9, an American space probe, has been orbiting Mars for the last year. But now, it's running out of fuel and will be deactivated, having met all of its mission objectives. Mariner 9 gave us our closest look ever at the Red Planet, solving mysteries that have been debated for centuries.
Today, humanity's relationship with Mars. How did people come to believe it had expansive forests and a Martian civilization? And how did one epic mission bring us closer to understanding what's really happening on the Red Planet?
Special thanks to William Sheehan, author of Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet; and Kevin Schindler, historian of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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October 24th, 79. Pompeii is one of the crown jewels of the Roman Empire, a bustling city that serves as a coastal retreat for Rome's elite. But Pompeii also has a large, often overlooked middle-class population. They don't live in Pompeii's massive villas. Instead, they live a typical urban life – shopping at small businesses and haggling with street vendors. They even go to restaurants. And one of these restaurants—still being excavated by archeologists today—may unlock a whole new side to the story of this doomed city.
So, before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, how did everyday people live in Pompeii? And how can just one city block show us that life 2,000 years ago might not be so different from today?
Special thanks to our guest, Allison Emmerson, associate professor of Roman Archeology at Tulane University and director of the Pompeii I.14 Project.
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Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes.

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