Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 36.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we're recording this episode on August 26, 2021 in

Orleans, Louisiana. My neighbor's playing music a little loud this afternoon, so maybe

some of that will leak through into the background. This episode is Sir Francis Drake,

Around the World in a thousand and eighteen days, part two. If you haven't heard last week's

episode yet, it's probably best to listen to it before this one.

Not that I'm the prerequisites overlord or anything, just saying.

Before we get back to Drake, I want to thank you for listening.

This little hobby project is spreading organically now, and we are averaging more than

1100 downloads per episode. Joe Rogan isn't looking over his shoulder, but people who are not

friends of mine or even friends of friends of mine have become regular listeners, and that is

huge fun.

I've also gotten quite a few nice notes, which are incredibly motivating.

If you like what you hear, please tell your friends or share on Facebook or Twitter,

or write a nice review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts and that sort of thing.

It seems that there is an audience for keeping politics and moralizing out of history,

or at least trying to do.

Nobody can do it perfectly, of course, but one can try.

So indulge me in a little personal story before we get to the Strait of Magellan.

As some of you know, my father was professor of history at the University of Iowa, and then history bibliographer at Princeton's Firestone Library. He died in 1998, way too young. Just about

four years older than I am now, and I miss him every day. Dad was a medievalist,

specializing in 14th century France, but American history had been his second subject in graduate

...