Shows / History Unplugged Podcast
History Unplugged Podcast
For history lovers who listen to podcasts, History Unplugged is the most comprehensive show of its kind. It's the only show that dedicates episodes to both interviewing experts and answering questions from its audience. First, it features a call-in show where you can ask our resident historian (Scott Rank, PhD) absolutely anything (What was it like to be a Turkish sultan with four wives and twelve concubines? If you were sent back in time, how would you kill Hitler?). Second, it features…
Episodes
History Unplugged PodcastDepression-Era Planners Thought They’d End Poverty with Public Housing. Instead, They Created the Projects
In the 1930s, New Deal-era technocrats devised a solution to homelessness and poverty itself. They believed that providing free or low-cost urban housing…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Alabaman Jacksonians Who Rejected the Confederacy and Marched with Sherman to the Sea
As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known…
History Unplugged PodcastFrederick Douglass’s Private Writings on Abraham Lincoln, His Strong Critiques and Stronger Praise
Frederick Douglass made the strongest arguments for abolition in antebellum America because he made the case that abolition was not a mutation of the Founding…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Industrial Revolution Was Supposed to Lead to Unlimited Free Time But Only Gave Us Smartphones and Endless Dopamine
Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the…
History Unplugged PodcastJames Cook Mapped the Globe Before Dying At the Hands of Hawaiians Who Once Worshipped Him
Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan are known for discoveries, but it was Captain James Cook who made global travel truly possible. Cook was an…
History Unplugged PodcastAmerican Anarchists: The Original Domestic Extremists
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private…
History Unplugged Podcast100 Years Before Ford v. Ferrari, a Horse Breeder Revolutionized Thoroughbred Racing Through a Similar Obsession With Progress
Horse racing was the most popular sport in early America, drawing massive crowds and fueling a cultural obsession with horses’ speed and pedigree. In the…
History Unplugged PodcastWestern Rome Fell Due to Germanic Immigration, Mass Inflation, and a Bloated Bureaucracy
It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and…
History Unplugged PodcastWhy the Atomic Bombing of Japan is as Justified in 2025 as it was in 1945
It's been 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the question of whether or not those bombings were justified has never been more…
History Unplugged PodcastSurviving the Siege of Leningrad with Sawdust Bread and Iron Determination
The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million…
History Unplugged PodcastDepression-Era Governor Huey Long Wanted to Confiscate Individual Fortunes Over $1 Million, Possibly Leading to His 1935 Assassination
The most radical piece of legislation in the 20th century was Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Plan,” a bold proposal to…
History Unplugged PodcastRope Equals Fire as Humanity’s Most Important Invention: It Allowed Hunting Mammoths and Building Pyramids
“‘Rope!’ muttered Sam[wise Gamgee]. ‘I knew I’d want it, if I hadn’t got it!’” Sam knew in the Lord of the…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Scopes Trial Was Entirely Orchestrated But Became an Unintended 1920s Culture War Touchpoint
July 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial – a trial that exposed profound divisions in America over religion, education, and public…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Panda Was First Discovered By Theodore Roosevelt’s Sons During a 9-Month Expedition in Himalayan China
In the late 1920s, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his younger brother Kermit, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, wanted fame and glory apart from the family…
History Unplugged PodcastHow Do We Really Know What Happened in the Past When Many Historians Were Propagandists and AI is Fabricating Everything Else?
“History is written by the winners.” This aphorism is catchy and it makes an important point that a lot of what we know about history was written…
History Unplugged PodcastEugénie de Montijo: The Spanish Empress Who Built Modern Paris and is Blamed For Imperial France’s Downfall
Thirty-three years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Empire, his nephew (known as Napoleon III) became the first president of France before becoming…
History Unplugged PodcastJohn Adams: The Most Influential Yet Overlooked Founding Father?
John Adams is arguably America’s most underrated Founding Father. He has no currency that bears his image. No national holidays celebrate his birth…
History Unplugged PodcastWhy Thomas More -- Henry VIII’s Hatchet Man and Heretic Hunter -- Was Himself Executed For Heresy After the English Reformation
Thomas More was one of the most famous—and notorious—figures in English history. Born into the era of the Wars of the Roses, educated during the…
History Unplugged PodcastDon’t Look to 1903s Germany to Understand American Populism. Look to 1830s New York Revivals Instead.
Something strange happened in Upstate New York during the 1830s. This area was called the "Burned-Over District" because so many fiery religious revivals swept…
History Unplugged PodcastOperation Barbarossa Saw Millions of POW Executions, Civilian Murders, and Starvation Deaths
Operation Barbarossa, launched by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941, aimed to swiftly conquer the Soviet Union, targeting key cities like Moscow, Leningrad, and…
History Unplugged PodcastPistol Duels Existed Across the 19th-Century World, But Only the Chaos of the American West Produced Gunfighters
To understand American history and its deep-seated relationship with violence, we must look to the last three decades of the 1800s in the American West, which…
History Unplugged PodcastRome Definitively Eclipsed Greece in 197 BC By Making the Alexandrian Phalanx/Cavalry Obsolete
The battle of Cynoscephalae represents a key moment in the history of the Greco-Roman world. In this one battle the Macedonian hold over mainland Greece was…
History Unplugged PodcastExploring the Wreckage of the Britannic (the Titanic’s Sister Ship) and Discovering Why It Sunk in 50 Minutes
The RMS Titanic is history’s most famous shipwreck, but it wasn’t the only ship of its kind. The White Star Line built two other nearly identical…
History Unplugged PodcastDid Tariffs Make America a Manufacturing Powerhouse Or Trigger Economic Misery and Stifle Global Trade?
At a time when debates over tariffs, regulation, and the scope of government are back at center stage. Is this time in American history unprecedented, or can…
History Unplugged PodcastAlan Pinkerton: The Private Detective Who Saved Lincoln’s Life and Built America’s Contract Security State
Alan Pinkerton is perhaps the most over-achieving barrel-maker who ever lived. After practicing his trade in rural Illinois for a few years in the 1850s, the…
History Unplugged PodcastMacArthur’s Plans to Drop 50 Nuclear Bombs During the Korean War
The Korean War came dangerously close to going nuclear, and if would have if Gen. Douglas MacArthur had gotten his way. He proposed using 30 to 50 nuclear…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Many Ways That Rome Never Fell and Lives On Today
Rome’s Western Empire may have fallen 1,600 years ago, but its cultural impact has a radioactive half-life that would make xenon jealous. Over a billion…
History Unplugged PodcastHooves of History: How Horses Created Ancient Warfare, Built the Silk Road, and Became the Dividing Line Between Nobleman and Peasant
In order to become rich, powerful, and prestigious in the pre-modern world, nothing mattered more than horses. They were the fundamental unit of warfare…
History Unplugged PodcastMoonshining Survived (and Thrived) At Least Two Decades After Prohibition Ended
The Prohibition era (1920–1933), enacted by the 18th Amendment, birthed an overnight economy of moonshiners who distilled and distributed homemade liquor…
History Unplugged PodcastHow to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer
What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate…
History Unplugged PodcastHow American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship
As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of passageways…
History Unplugged PodcastDid WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands?
2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of Germany’s surrender and the fall of the Third Reich. Likewise, World War II is the single most studied conflict…
History Unplugged PodcastHow a British Governor of Virginia Raised an Ex-Slave Regiment in 1776 to Fight Patriots and Triggered the Revolutionary War
As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the…
History Unplugged PodcastHow a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader
He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed…
History Unplugged PodcastMicrobes Were Discovered in the 1600s. Why It Take 200 Years For Doctors To Start Washing Their Hands?
Scientists and enthusiastic amateurs first confirmed the existence of living things invisible to the human eye in the late sixteenth century. So why did it…
History Unplugged PodcastFrom Einstein’s Chalkboard to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Test: The 50-Year Path to the Atomic Bomb
The story of the atomic age began decades before Robert Oppenheimer watched a mushroom cloud form over the New Mexico desert at the Trinity nuclear test in mid…
History Unplugged PodcastJapan’s Desperate Air Battles Against the US in the Final Months of WW2
The B-29 Bomber led the Allied strategic bombing offensive against Japan, succeeding when US Bomber Command switched from high-level daytime precision bombing…
History Unplugged PodcastD-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944
Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for…
History Unplugged PodcastPilgrimages Involved Penitent Marches, Visiting Holy Places, and Watching Drunken Emperors Go on Chariot Rides
Pilgrimages are a universal phenomenon, from China’s bustling Tai Shan to the ancient Jewish treks to Jerusalem. But why? What is it about a grueling…
History Unplugged PodcastBritain Learned How to Set Up Its Global Empire on a Tiny Bermudan Island
Years before Jamestown planters made New World farming profitable by growing tobacco, and years before their countrymen up north in Plymouth Colony managed to…
History Unplugged PodcastThe Hatfield-McCoy Feud Started Over a Pig and Nearly Escalated Into a Regional War
The origins of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict (between the Hatfield family of West Virginia, led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield, and the McCoy family…
History Unplugged PodcastThe 1845 Potato Blight Struck Across Northern Europe. Why Did Only Ireland Starve?
In 1845, a novel pathogen attacked potato fields across Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia—but only in Ireland were the effects apocalyptic. At least one…
History Unplugged PodcastA Simple Tennessee Preacher Transformed Abolitionism from a Deeply Unpopular Radical Movement to a Centrist Cause
Sitting high above the small community of Ripley, Ohio, a lantern shone in the front window of a small, red brick home at night. It was a signal to slaves just…
History Unplugged PodcastHow Benjamin Franklin’s Stove Invention Kept Early America From Freezing
The biggest revolution in Benjamin Franklin’s lifetime was made to fit in a fireplace. Assembled from iron plates like a piece of flatpack furniture, the…
History Unplugged PodcastRoman Churches Had No Involvement in Marriage. How Did It Become a Holy Sacrament by the Middle Ages?
For much of Christian history, the Church had little involvement in marriage, which was primarily a contract between families. It wasn’t until the fourth…
History Unplugged PodcastHow a Mess Cook Saved Dozens of Sailors from Shark Infested Waters Off the Coast of Guadalcanal
On the night of September 5, 1942, the USS Gregory (APD-3), a converted destroyer turned high-speed transport, was caught in a deadly ambush near Guadalcanal…
History Unplugged PodcastHumanity’s Past Suggests We Only Have 10,000 Years to Change or Go Extinct
We are living through a period that is unique in human history. For the first time in more than ten thousand years, the rate of human population growth is…
History Unplugged PodcastThe 16th Century Ottomans Nearly Conquered Europe. Why Did European Kingdoms Make So Many Alliances With Them?
The determined attempt to thwart Ottoman dominance was fought by Muslims and Christians across five theaters from the Balkans to the Mediterranean and the…
History Unplugged PodcastFort Stanwix and the Forgotten Revolutionary War Siege That Convinced France to Help the US
After a series of military defeats over the winter of 1776–1777, British military leaders developed a bold plan to gain control of the Hudson River and…
History Unplugged PodcastEnough is Enuf, Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell
No language is as inconsistent in spelling and pronunciation as English. Kernel and colonel rhyme, but read changes based on past or present tense. Ough has…
History Unplugged PodcastDid Haiti’s First and Last King Squander the Revolution or Succeed in Underappreciated Ways?
Slave, revolutionary, king, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of…
History Unplugged PodcastWhat Ancient Greeks and Victorian Explorers Thought Was at the North Pole
The North Pole looms large in our collective psyche—the ultimate Otherland in a world mapped and traversed. It is the center of our planet’s…
History Unplugged PodcastNothing Healed America’s Wounds After the Civil War Like Baseball
The nineteenth century was a time of rapid growth and development for the game of “base ball,” and players George Wright and Albert Spalding were…
History Unplugged PodcastHow an 1870 Murder Created San Francisco
Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged…
History Unplugged PodcastFailed Futures: If Alexander The Great Hadn’t Died, He Might Have Conquered Europe, Circumnavigated Africa, and Built His Own Silk Road
And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer. That’s a quote from Hans Gruber in Die Hard, which is a very convoluted paraphrase from…
History Unplugged PodcastWhy the Anabasis is the Second-Most Influential Greek Epic (After Homer’s Works)
Imagine being stranded thousands of miles deep in enemy territory with 10,000 soldiers, no allies, no clear way home, and the only means of escape was by foot…
History Unplugged PodcastThe American Revolution Would Have Been Lost Without a Ragtag Fleet of Thousands of Privateers
Privateers were a cross between an enlisted sailor and an outright pirate. But they were crucial in winning the Revolutionary War. As John Lehman, former…
History Unplugged PodcastDid Lincoln Save Global Democracy or Undermine It Using Wartime Powers?
Did Abraham Lincoln preserve democracy during the Civil War, or did he endanger it in the process? To explore this paradox, we’re joined by renowned…
History Unplugged PodcastThe 1541 Spanish Expedition Down the Amazon to Find the Imaginary “El Dorado” and Valley of Cinnamon
As Spanish conquistators slowly moved through Latin America, they encountered levels of wealth that were unimaginable. Most famously, Incan Emperor Atahualpa…
History Unplugged PodcastEveryday Life for the 500K German POWs House in America During World War Two
During World War II, approximately half a million German prisoners of war were held in the United States, housed in 700 camps spread across the country, from…