A paranoid historical storytelling podcast focused on this history of the Americas, telling the stories of what happened as the conspiracy of those who lived through it.
Everything has come to this. Cortes and allies attack Tenochtitlan, and the Mexica fight back until all that is left are their broken spears...
9 Mar 2026
1.15 - Gonzalo de Sandoval and the Campaign of Terror
The gloves come off in the Spanish strategy as the captains mutiny against Cortes and force his hand in permitting all out warfare to the death. Gonzalo de Sandoval, the boy wonder, leverages this as an opportunity to carve his mark on the scalp of history.
2 Mar 2026
1.14 - Cuauhtemoc, Smallpox and the Birth of a Nation
Desperate times come from desperate measures, and in the wreckage of the Aztec capital a new generation of leader will arise to restore Mexica glory... and in the process becomes a founding myth for a nation he'll never know.
23 Feb 2026
1.13 - Pedro de Alvarado and La Noche Triste
With the Spanish colonial counterattack defeated, total victory felt inevitable to Cortes. That is, until word reached him that all was not quiet on the western front...
16 Feb 2026
1.12 - Panfilo de Narvaez and the Velazquista Revenge
Cortes begins to face his blowback in the form of the Velazquista counter-response. Led by Panfilo de Narvaez, Spaniards will see themselves at war with other Spaniards in a struggle to see who will determine the future of "New Spain."
9 Feb 2026
1.11 - Bernal Diaz, Tenochtitlan and the Conspiracy of History
The Spanish arrive in Tenochtitlan... and immediately begin to try and cover their tracks. One soldier, Bernal Diaz, takes in the glory of the Aztec capital even as he wrestles privately with the weight of Spanish crimes in achieving their ultimate goal.
2 Feb 2026
1.10 - Xicotencatl and the Tlaxcallan Bargain
Cortes' gang begin their march to Tenochtitlan by attempting to court the Tlaxcallan Confederacy... bittermost enemies of the Aztec Empire. Leading this confederacy is Xicotencatl, a man who sees inside the heart of the Spaniards and finds not their salvation, but the same bottomless appetite for conquest he despises in the Aztecs. Still, as they say, the enemy of my enemy...
26 Jan 2026
1.9 - Montejo, Portocarrero and the Happy Fiction of Legal Treason
The Spanish conquest of Mexico becomes a two-front war as two representatives of the Cortesista mission are sent back to Spain in order to repeat the myth of the conquest until it becomes its legal justification.
19 Jan 2026
1.8 - Malintzin, the Silent Interpreter
The Spanish-Aztec War would not have been possible were it not for the voice of one woman acting as the bridge between Spanish and indigenous speakers. But the act of translation is not a neutral one, and through it Malintzin found herself able to create a new reality in place of the old, and in doing so gave herself up to the evolution of historical memory...
12 Jan 2026
1.7 - Moctezuma, Shadow Emperor of the Aztecs
The history of Moctezuma in the Spanish-Aztec War is the history of competing visions of the event's history in total. Coward? Zealot? Strategist? The choice is yours...
5 Jan 2026
1.6 - Hernan Cortes: Pirate of the Yucatan
Cortes begins his journey into history fleeing from the burning bridge he left behind in the Spanish Caribbean, staking everything he had on a megalomaniac vision of conquest that nearly tore his expedition apart before it even started. But as rumors of a great empire start to reach his men, the most famous Spanish colonizer turns to fabricating the written record to rewrite blind luck into historical destiny.
29 Dec 2025
1.5 - Ixtlilxochitl and the Fire Under the Lake
On the eve of the Spanish arrival, the Triple Alliance which has held together the Aztec Empire is coming apart. Decades of interference in Texcoco's sovereignty by Tenochtitlan's tlatoque has left Texcocan prince Ixtlilxochitl looking to avenge his homeland's dishonor, even if it means tearing the empire apart.
22 Dec 2025
1.4 - Diego Velazquez and the Spanish Caribbean
Just as the Aztec Empire was reaching its zenith, another was forming just across the sea... the Spanish. Far from the monolithic state of historical memory, it was instead of patchwork collection of feuds and feudalistic impulses led by men like Diego Velazquez, the governor of the Cuban territory, who would stop at nothing to remake the New World in the image of the Old... and fashion himself a new kind of tyrant.
15 Dec 2025
1.3 - Tlacaelel and the Making of an Empire
This week, Tlacaelel, nephew, brother and uncle to five different tlatoque of Tenochtitlan, created the ethos and the mechanisms of the Aztec imperial war machine in history's shadow... and put this machine of an empire on a collision course with itself.
8 Dec 2025
1.2 - Itzcoatl and War of the Triple Alliance
In this episode, the Mexica exit myth and enter history and find an unlikely leader to help them found the empire that would carry them into history.
1 Dec 2025
1.1 - Huitzilopochtli and the People of the Fifth Sun
In the first episode of our season on the Spanish-Aztec War, we meet the god of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, and understand the price to pay for the patronage of a heavenly lord.
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