Puppet History

Puppet History is a YouTube show by Ryan Bergara, Steven Lim, and Shane Madej in their company, Watcher. Bergara, Lim, and Madej used to work with BuzzFeed. Bergara and Madej did BuzzFeed Unsolved. The show started in January 2020.

On Puppet History, a colorful puppet historian leads a game show, a contest. Each episode is about one strange person or event from history. The two people in the contest answer questions, and the Professor gives them points.

Format

All the history on Puppet History is real.

"Welcome one and all to Puppet History. Today we take an ever-widening look into the heavy heavy book we call history while our guests ruthlessly compete for the coveted title of History Master! I am obviously your beloved host, the Professor!" - the Professor at the beginning of most episodes

The show begins with the Professor, a blue puppet, saying hello to the guests from a puppet theater stage. The Professor then tells a story about history. He stops every few minutes to ask the two guests a question, sometimes multiple choice. The guests write down their answers on small whiteboards. Then the professor says "Let's see the answer through the magic of theater!" and paper cutouts of people from history act out the answer to the question. Then the professor gives "jelly beans" to whoever had the true answer. Each jelly bean is worth one point.

The Professor encourages the guests to speak and tell jokes. Sometimes, he will give a "rotten jelly bean" to whoever makes a bad joke. The rotten jelly bean is worth negative one point. The Professor gives the special guest extra points. This way, Ryan Bergara almost always loses. ("Stealing The World’s Most Expensive Necklace" ended in a tie.)

Before the end of the show, the Professor leaves to "tally the score" and another puppet comes onto the stage and sings a song about the historical event.

The show always ends with the "coveted cup and title of History Master" almost always going to the guest who is not Ryan Bergara. The cup is a small plastic trophy with real jelly bean candy or another small prize in it.

Characters

• The Professor, a blue puppet voiced by Shane Madej
• Ryan Bergara, as himself
• Another contestant
• At least one other puppet, also voiced by Shane Madej

Episodes

In season one, Ryan Bergara and the other contestant sat in chairs in the same room as the puppet theater. In seasons two and three, the show was named as Puppet History: Online University and both contestants appeared through computers. This was because of the coronavirus pandemic. Each episode has about 1 million views.

Season	Episode	Guest	Release date
1	Life During the Black Death Pandemic	Steven Lim	January 10, 2020
	Stealing the World's Most Expensive Necklace	Kate Peterman	February 27, 2020
	Surviving the Titanic: History's Luckiest Woman	Jenny Lorenzo	April 10, 2020
	The Dancing Plague	Jermaine Fowler	May 22, 2020
2	How America's First Female Detective Saved Abe Lincoln	Kate Peterman	August 14, 2020
	The Terrifying Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius	Matt Real	August 21, 2020
	Hatshepsut: The Forgotten Pharaoh	Ryann Graham	August 28, 2020
	The Disastrous 1904 Olympic Marathon	Kristin Chirico	September 4, 2020
	Isaac Newton's Nemesis	Keith Habersberger	September 11, 2020
	The World's Greatest/Rudest Samurai	Garrick Bernard	September 18, 2020
	Policarpa: The Revolutionary Teen Spy	Curly Velasquez	September 25, 2020
	The Grisly Journey of the Donner Party	Joyce Louis-Jean	October 2, 2020
Special	The Story of St. Nicholas	Kate Peterman	December 25, 2020
3	The Beast of Gevaudan	Sarah Rubin	March 12, 2021
	The War of the Golden Stool	Kate Peterman	March 26, 2021
	Ziryab: The World's First Rock Star	Zach Kornfeld	April 2, 2021
	The Affair of the Poisons	Garrick Bernard	April 9, 2021
	Ching Shih: The Pirate Queen	Joyce Louis-Jean	April 16, 2021
	The Great Molasses Flood	Garrett Watts	April 23, 2021
4	The Great Emu War	Kate Peterman	August 28, 2021
	Mansa Musa: The Richest Man in History	Ify Nwadiwe	September 4, 2021
	America vs. Smallpox: How Vaccines Saved the Nation	Jermaine Fowler	September 11, 2021
	José Rizal: The Philippines’ Reluctant Revolutionary	Josh Weinstein	September 17, 2021
	The Bloody Revenge of Saint Olga of Kiev	Selorm Kploanyi	September 24, 2021
	The Demonic Possessions of Loudun	Sara Rubin	October 3, 2021
Special	The Puppet History Holiday Spectacular!		December 24, 2021
5	How Hippo Meat Almost Saved America	Sara Rubin	November 11, 2022
	The Defenestrations of Prague	Brian David Gilbert	November 18, 2022
	The Vietnamese Sisters Who Fought An Empire	Maya Murillo	November 25, 2022
	America's First Black Aviatrix	Ryann Graham	December 2, 2022
	The Bloody Life of England's Fastest Surgeon	Aria Inthavong	December 9, 2022
	The Dreadful Demise of the Dinosaurs	Garrett Watts Joyce Louis-Jean	December 16, 2022
6	The Unkillable Weirdo Who Invented The Saxophone	Steven Lim	July 7, 2023
	The Concubine Who Killed Her Way To The Throne	Joyce Louis-Jean	July 14, 2023
	The Fiery Sports Riot That Nearly Destroyed Constantinople	Ricky Wang	July 21, 2023
	The Scandalous Life of France's Bisexual Opera Icon	Kwesi James	July 28, 2023
	How a Pope's Nepobaby Became One of the Worst Tyrants in History	Zach Kornfeld	August 4, 2023
	The Deadly Race To The South Pole	Sara Rubin	August 11, 2023

Professor

The Professor is a small hand puppet with blue fur and a white nose. He usually wears a safari hat and jacket and carries a satchel. He wears glasses and a bow tie. Sometimes, he wears other costumes. For example, in the episode about Ching Shih, he wore a pirate hat.

The Professor sometimes talks about his life through wrong answers to the multiple-choice questions. These answers say the Professor found a magic lamp that had a magical genie inside it. He told the genie to turn a "seemingly ordinary household object" into a secret time machine. The genie did so, but was also "a total prick about it." In the flashbacks, the genie is played by Shane Madej. In other episodes, the Professor mentions visiting the past and meeting people from history. Sometimes he talks about the genie chasing him. For example, in "The Great Molasses Flood," the Professor gets stuck in the molasses and the genie almost catches him. But he reaches into his satchel for the secret time machine and gets away.

In the episode "The Affair of the Poisons," Ryan asks the Professor "Do you have a family? Or did you have any family?" The Professor asks "Did I?" and the audience hears a young child saying "Papá, I want a jellybean."

In the last episode of Season 4, we see the Professor go back in time to the Cretaceous period. A dinosaur eats him. Words on the screen tell the audience that the Professor is really dead.

Season 5 of Puppet History began in November 2022. During this season, the real Professor is reborn in the Cretaceous Period, where he meets some dinosaurs. The host of Puppet History was an impostor: an evil hologram pretended to be the Professor. The hologram let Ryan Bergara win every time. Bergara's prize was always skin lotion. In the second to last episode of Season 5, the hologram ties Bergara to a chair and tells him he wants to steal his skin. Then, he says, he can become like a human, rub the genie lamp, and wish for everyone on Earth to be turned into puppets. Bergara escapes, takes the lamp, and saves the real Professor and his friends.

Other websites

• IMDB
• Official YouTube channel