For the Love of History - world history, women’s history, weird history

For 2,500 years, her tattoos were invisible, hidden beneath mummified skin until infrared imaging revealed what no one knew existed.

In this episode, we dive into the world of Scythian tattoos, tracing the history of the Pazyryk people, a nomadic culture from the Eurasian steppe, through one of archaeology's newest and most fascinating fields: tattoo archaeology. From the discovery of the famous "Ice Maiden" in 1993 to cutting-edge infrared research published in 2025, we explore how ancient nomads used tattoos to mark status, memory, and identity — and why every single preserved mummy from this culture was covered in ink.

We'll also fact-check the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (again), debunk the internet's favorite "aliens made these tattoos" theory, and hear directly from the researchers and a tattoo artist who tattooed himself for 13 hours in the name of science.

A huge thank you to Dr. Aaron Deter-Wolf and tattoo artist Daniel Riday for sharing their expertise for this episode. We also want to acknowledge Dr. Gino Caspari, whose 2025 research paper inspired this deep dive!

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Japan gave us The Great Wave. It also gave us 34 feet of fart scroll! 💨

When archivists at Waseda University unrolled a 34-foot Edo-period scroll, they expected samurai, landscapes, or elegant courtly scenes. What they got was 10 meters of pure, unhinged fart battle art, and it's one of the most fascinating windows into feudal Japanese culture you'll ever find.

In this episode:

The 34-foot Waseda hēgassen scroll and what's actually in it

How fart art dates back to 12th-century Japanese monks

Why the Edo period (1603–1868) became a golden age of gag art

How flatulence scrolls were used as political satire and anti-government commentary

The fart scroll of Toba and its surprisingly pointed critique of Japan's civil war

Why sometimes… a fart joke is just a fart joke

For the Love of History is a history podcast covering world history, women's history, and weird history hosted by TK. New episodes regularly!!

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What if the pill you believed would save your life was slowly killing you?

In the third century, the most powerful ruler in human history, Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, was secretly drinking mercury. His court alchemists called it the Elixir of Immortality. He called it hope. History calls it the thing that killed him.

In this episode of For the Love of History, TK takes you on a journey through humanity's oldest obsession: cheating death. From the mercury-laced elixirs of ancient China to the gold tinctures of 16th-century French courts, to the blood plasma injections and cryonic freezing of today's Silicon Valley billionaires — the methods have changed, but the madness hasn't.

In this episode, we cover:

🧪 Who was Qin Shi Huang, the man who unified China and built a tomb filled with rivers of mercury?

🧪The fangshi — the alchemist-magicians who promised emperors eternal life and delivered a beautiful, shimmering poison

🧪Why at least six Tang Dynasty emperors may have died the same way

🧪Diane de Poitiers, the French royal mistress who seemingly never aged — and the gold elixir scientists found in her remains centuries later

🧪The Philosopher's Stone, Isaac Newton's secret alchemy recipes, and how the hunt for immortality accidentally built modern chemistry

🧪Why billionaires like Bryan Johnson, Peter Thiel, and Jeff Bezos are just doing the same thing with better branding

We've been chasing this white whale for 2,000 years. And the people with the most power have always been the ones holding the vial. Some things never change.

For the Love of History is a world history, women's history, and weird history podcast hosted by TK (Tehya Nakamura). New episodes drop every week!

Subscribe, leave a review, and join the history besties community.
Support the show on Patreon for bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes content, and early access.

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Men invented high heels. Men made them a power symbol. Then men decided women should wear them instead. Classic.

In this episode of For the Love of History, we're uncovering the surprisingly bloody, surprisingly spicy history of high heels — and it starts not in a shoe store, but on a Persian battlefield.

From the cavalry soldiers of the Safavid Empire who used heels to stay mounted while firing arrows at full gallop, to the Sun King Louis XIV, who weaponized fashion to control the French nobility, to the Victorian photographers who turned heels into a symbol of femininity and desire — this is the story of how one piece of military technology completely changed its meaning over 1,000 years.

We'll cover:

👠 How Persian cavalry invented the heel as a tool of war (and empire-building)

👠Why European men adopted heels as the ultimate masculine status symbol

👠The androgynous fashion movement of the 1630s — and why men were furious about it

👠How Victorian erotica transformed heels into something else entirely

👠The engineering problem that took centuries to solve: the stiletto

👠Why heels disappeared after the French Revolution — and what brought them roaring back

Plus: why did men's fashion get so boring? And who is really to blame for uncomfortable shoes?

Whether you're a fashion history lover, a weird history fan, or just someone who has ever cursed at a pair of stilettos, this one's for you.

For the Love of History is a world history, women's history, and weird history podcast hosted by TK. New episodes every week.

Leave a rating or review if you love the show, it helps more history besties find us!

✨ Want more untold stories like this? Support the podcast and unlock bonus content over on Patreon.

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From professional fart scapegoats to the workers who literally built civilization from the ground up. Edo Japan's labor history is wild, gross, and more relevant than you'd think.

In this episode, we're diving into the worst jobs of the Edo period (1603–1868): the Buddhist nuns hired to take the blame for samurai princesses' flatulence, the night soil collectors whose poop trade kept an entire nation fed, and the leather workers whose occupation got them legally classified as non-human, a designation whose effects are still felt in Japan in 2026.

What we cover:
💙The heoi-bekuni — Japan's professional fart scapegoat nuns and why only Buddhist nuns could do the job
💛Night soil collectors — how human waste became the most valuable commodity in Edo Japan, complete with black markets, turf wars, and actual poop laws
💙The Burakumin — Japan's hidden caste, created by the Tokugawa shogunate, and why their story doesn't end with the Meiji Restoration

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