Stories with a point of view
Meet the schemers, rivals, builders, and accidental heroes behind the places everyone photographs.
Self-guided audio tours
The city is the show. Just press play.
Cinematic, mostly true stories about the people, disasters, schemes, and impossible decisions hiding behind city streets.
Multiple stories in every tour 54 tours Start anytime
Made for curious people
A city is more than a list of facts.
Bad Historian connects the people, places, and questionable decisions that made a city what it is—then lets you explore the story your way.
Audio made for the street
The story unfolds stop by stop, so what you hear connects to what is directly in front of you.
A route that belongs to you
Start when you want, pause for lunch, take a detour, or finish another day. There is no group to keep up with.
Read a few stories
Mostly true. Carefully researched. Much harder to forget.
Stories from the tours
The city is stranger than it looks.
We find the ambition, disasters, feuds, scams, and strange little decisions hiding behind familiar places—then tell them like stories, not plaques.
Chicago
Engineering, ego, sewage
Chicago made its river run backward.
The city moved an entire river away from Lake Michigan to protect its drinking water—then spent years explaining the consequences to everyone downstream.
New Orleans
Four bullets, eight fingers, one square
She survived—and rebuilt Jackson Square.
Micaela Pontalba’s father-in-law shot her four times. She survived, returned to New Orleans, and built the red-brick landmarks flanking Jackson Square.
New York
A park built like a conspiracy
Central Park was never “just there.”
It was engineered, blasted, drained, landscaped, and politically fought over. Even the wilderness had a construction schedule.
Mostly true. Slightly mischievous. Built to make the city memorable.
People you’ll meet
Every great story needs a strange cast.
Every tour follows multiple lives, rivalries, schemes, and impossible decisions—not just a trail of landmarks.
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San Francisco
Emperor Norton
He declared himself Emperor of the United States—and San Francisco decided the most reasonable response was to play along.
Meet them on Barbary Coast
One app. Many cities.
Every city gets its own point of view.
From notorious neighborhoods to overlooked landmarks, each catalog is built around the stories that could only have happened there. Browse every available city and choose the route that sounds like you.
See all cities
How it works
Your afternoon, sorted.
1
Pick a city and a story
See the route, length, stops, and price before you start.
2
Put your phone away and walk
GPS-triggered audio meets you at each stop. Download ahead for offline use.
3
Choose the access that fits
Buy one tour, every tour in a city, or the complete catalog.
Choose your depth
One tour
One complete route and story
$9.99
One city
Every available tour in that city
$14.99
All access
Every available tour and city
$24.99
Buy in the app or use secure web checkout.
Pick a City
Where are you headed?
Each city has its own stories, characters, and surprises.
Not just for tourists
World-class tours for the city you call home.
Great tours are not only for vacation. Bad Historian transforms familiar streets into unforgettable stories, with the same care, humor, and cinematic sound you would expect from the best tours anywhere in the world.
See what you’ve been missingSaturday solved
A plan that is better than “want to get coffee?”
Bring a know-it-all
Give your most local friend something new to argue about.
Look up for once
Turn the block you rush through into a place worth noticing.
Popular Tours
Good places to start
Pick a city. Pick a tour. The stories do the rest.
A better way to spend an afternoon
Travel day
Turn “we have three hours” into a plan.
Pick a neighborhood, press play, and let the route reveal the city without joining a crowd or watching the clock.
Date or friend day
Have something better to discuss than dinner.
The stories give you characters, scandals, and genuinely strange choices to argue over while you walk.
Your own city
Make familiar streets surprising again.
Look past the landmark names and meet the builders, grifters, rivals, and accidents hiding underneath them.
See what the fuss is about
Download the app, compare the routes and prices, then choose the city story you want to walk.
Find a tour