Surviving a 70-foot plunge from a castle window, an argument over a single letter, and an act of mob violence that triggered a catastrophic 30-year continental war. It sounds like a fantasy novel, but it is very real European history, built on Prague's bizarre and terrifying tradition of resolving political disputes by throwing people out of windows.

This episode traces the defenestrations of Prague across the centuries and the wildly different consequences each one produced. We examine how the same brutal act could spark a war, enforce decades of peace, or symbolize the silent death of a nation's freedom. It matters because it shows how a single historical method takes on entirely new meaning depending on the era it lands in.

• The 1419 defenestration that let Hussite nobles seize Prague but provoked a papal crusade and the devast ...