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, 20203 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, 20214 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, 2022The 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, 2023The 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 7  Pythagoras' Weird Math Cult  Aria Inthavong  February 7, 2025

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.

References

Other websites
IMDB
Official YouTube channel

Category:2020 American television series debuts
Category:2020s American television series
Category:YouTube original programming