{"podcast":{"title":"Disturbing History","slug":"disturbing-history-7341005","podcast_index_feed_id":7341005,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6628223/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/disturbing-history--6628223","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/f42011dc1c8c8130e84fb37f20a9046e.jpg","author":"Paranormal World Productions LLC","episode_count":106,"summary":"Disturbing History is a dark history podcast uncovering the strange, sinister, and little-known stories the past tried to bury. Each week, we explore unsolved mysteries, secret societies, forgotten crimes, eerie folklore, lost civilizations, historical conspiracies, and disturbing events that never made it into your high school textbook .Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, Disturbing History dives deep into: Unsolved historical mysteries Secret societies and hidden power structures Dark folklore and urban legends Lost colonies and vanished civilizations True crime cases buried by time Historical conspiracies and cover-ups Paranormal events rooted in real history Through immersive storytelling and investigative research, we uncover the shadowy corners of the past — the uncomfortable truths, forgotten tragedies, and disturbing secrets that shaped our world.If you’re fascinated by dark history, obsessed with unexplained events, or drawn to stories that blur the line between fact and legend, this podcast is for you. Because the past isn’t always dead. Sometimes it’s just been buried. Follow Disturbing History and turn on automatic downloads for weekly dee…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-05T14:19:19.361689+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005"},"episode":{"title":"The American Gold Rush","slug":"the-american-gold-rush","published_at":"2026-04-25T20:00:02+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-american-gold-rush","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-american-gold-rush--71639732","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71639732/dhgoldfinal.mp3","summary":"Most of us learned a version of the Gold Rush that was cheerful, portable, and mostly wrong. In this episode we set that version aside and go looking for what actually happened — the history that didn't make it onto the plaques.On 1/24/1848, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill on the American River. California was still technically Mexican territory at the time; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which formally transferred the region to the United States, wasn't signed until 2/2/1848 — nine days later. What followed was one of the most consequential and destructive episodes in American history, compressed into less than a decade.This episode covers the near-total collapse of California's Native population, from an estimated 150,000 people at the time of the discovery to fewer than 50,000 by 1870. We examine the California legislature's Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, passed in 1850, which functioned as a slavery statute for thirteen years. We look at Governor Peter Burnett's 1851 declaration that a \"war of extermination\" between the races was inevitable, and at the state-funded militia campaigns that historian Benjamin Madley has documented in his research on the California genocide.We also cover the Foreign Miners' Tax of 1850, the violent expulsion of Chilean and Mexican miners from the southern diggings, and the legal framework that stripped Chinese miners of any recourse in California courts — including the California Supreme Court's 1854 ruling in People v. Hall, which held that Chinese witnesses could not testify against white men. The environmental destruction of hydraulic mining, which began around 1853 and wasn't stopped until the Sawyer Decision of 1884, transformed entire river systems and buried farmland under debris. The Malakoff Dig…","meta_description":"Most of us learned a version of the Gold Rush that was cheerful, portable, and mostly wrong. In this episode we set that version aside and go looking for…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4033,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/the-american-gold-rush/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-american-gold-rush.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}