Dracula. He’s a legend who will appear at innumerable parties on Halloween. Children will wear capes and not understand why. Adults will watch movies about vampires sucking blood and never know why they do it. As Armand said in Interview with the Vampire: “I know nothing of God, or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that will damn or save my soul. And as far as I know, after four hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.” Armand was wrong. The oldest vampire was Dracula. On tonight’s show, we will show you the first vampire. We will tell you the origins of the cape you will see on every American street. We know why the legend of blood-sucking appeared. We have the answer for the stake-through-the-heart. Allow us to introduce you to Vlad Tepes, the real Dracula. You hear his orchestral soundtracks in your mind’s ear; he still haunts your children’s nightmares. Here he is and the truth, if you can believe it, is more brutal than the art it imitates. It’s all free and it’s all on Battlecast- the world’s foremost podcast about war and it’s sociopolitical impact.

The beer this episode is Pumpkin Ale by Sam Adams: 3.5 bullets out of 5.

Dracula download: download

Illustrations

References:

Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by Radu R Florescu and Raymond T. McNally In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally A Concise History of Romania (Cambridge Concise Histories) by Keith Hitchins The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 3, Part 1: The Prehistory of the Balkans, and the Middle East by John Boardman and I. E. S. Edwards History of the Byzantine State by George Ostrogorsky A History of the Ottoman Empire by Douglas Howard