This is Angela Odell, and you are listening to Real Cool History for Kids, a podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical worldview perspective.

Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 173 of Real Cool History for Kids. This episode is for Eliza Lips, who wanted to hear the story about Christopher Columbus. Okay, you guys, I am going to be really honest. I have been asked several

times to create an episode like this about this man,

and I've put it off because I, honestly, I just didn't want to deal with the issues. I know

that will probably come after the release of this episode. So let's start here.

Any telling of Columbus' story has to start right now in our current world.

You see, Christopher Columbus used to be considered a straight-up hero by pretty much everyone,

someone who had accomplished amazing feats of bravery and courage,

someone who sailed across the massive Atlantic Ocean when nobody thought that was possible

and stumbled across islands in what we now call the Caribbean, thus opening the doors for

exploration of the Americas

and eventual European settling of these continents. But in the last 25 years or so, Christopher

Columbus's reputation has taken a real beating. People have argued that he's responsible for opening the door for

all kinds of bad things to happen, and they blame him for all kinds of stuff and pretty much

completely disregard all of the amazing things that he did. This popular opinion condemning him

makes it hard to tell his story without making someone mad.

So in light of that, I want to remind all of my listeners that God often works through

ordinary, imperfect people to accomplish things much bigger than they could ever imagine.

In fact, this is the true reality

of all of history, isn't it? God doing his thing the way only he can. So in this episode,

you aren't going to hear me detailing all of Columbus's faults, which like any human, there

...