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History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

300 episodes

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 long-form interviews with best-selling authors who have written about everything. Topics include gruff World War II generals who flew with airmen on bombing raids, a war horse who gained the rank of sergeant, and presidents who gave their best speeches while drunk.

Episodes page 2 of 6

  1. A Land Flowing with Pork and Beef: Colonial America’s Rise to the World’s Meat Consumption Capital

    · 51 min

    When European settlers arrived in North America, they enjoyed a level of meat consumption that was absolutely unimaginable in the Old World. An average European was lucky to see meat once a week while even a poor…

  2. Passenger Pigeons Once Numbered in the Billions and Blotted Out the Skies for Days. They Went Extinct in 30 Years.

    · 44 min

    In America’s first hundred years, the animal you were most likely to see was a passenger pigeon. And you saw a lot of them. Flocks were so numerous they literally blotted out the sun for days and their combined weight…

  3. Tooth Enamel Tells All: Genetic Testing and Why It’s Rewriting Our Understanding of Early Medieval Migration

    · 53 min

    Europe's borders in the Middle Ages were created by one man, and he wasn't even born in the Middle Ages, nor was he Christian. It was Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome from 284 to 305. His reforms that chained tenant…

  4. 95% of Ancient Greek Theater Is Gone. Here's How One Classicist Resurrected 500 Lost Playwrights

    · 38 min

    Of the estimated 1,500 plays written in ancient Greece, only 33 complete works survive today—the rest were lost because medieval scribes deemed low-brow comedies and mass entertainment unworthy of expensive parchment…

  5. How Medieval Monks Used the 7 Deadly Sins to Map Human Behavior…and LinkedIn Weaponized them Against Us

    · 54 min

    When medieval historian Peter Jones found himself spiraling into depression while teaching at a frigid Siberian university with icicles sprouting from his eyelashes, he asked himself what a medieval sufferer would…

  6. 1,000% Profit Per Voyage: The Economics of Civil War Smuggling and Blockade Running

    · 39 min

    In August 1863, as Lee's army retreated from Gettysburg and Vicksburg fell to Grant, the Union's Anaconda Plan deployed hundreds of ships to strangle 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline, triggering hyperinflation and…

  7. The Lost Voices of Pompeii: Lives Cut Short When Vesuvius Erupted, Including a Fish Sauce Tycoon and an Isis Priest

    · 50 min

    Pompeii's story is usually told through the lens of catastrophe—perfectly preserved bodies frozen in ash, a civilization erased in hours, sort of like a Roman version of the Chicxulub impactor that killed the dinosaurs…

  8. The Body Worth Stealing: Why Medieval Cities Fought Over Francis of Assisi’s Corpse

    · 38 min

    When St. Francis of Assisi was near death in 1226, he joked with companions that his corpse would be practically as valuable as gold. And he was right: In medieval Europe, relics, or the physical remains of saints,…

  9. The Alphabet as Artifact: How Egyptian Pictograms Became Your ABCs

    · 57 min

    The alphabet you're reading right now is a 3,800-year-old archaeological artifact, preserving ancient decisions in plain sight—from the upside-down ox head that became the letter A to the demotion of zeta from sixth…

  10. Greenland is Nothing: American Nearly Acquired El Salvador, Canada, and the Kamchatka Peninsula

    · 43 min

    America’s desire to expand its borders has existed since its first colonies – from attempts to settle beyond the Appalachian Mountains in the 18th century to Manifest Destiny in the 19th century down to talks today to…

  11. From Big Village to Global Power: The Thousand-Year Rise of Moscow, Russia's Fortress Capital

    · 56 min

    When St. Petersburg nobility mockingly called Moscow a "big village," in the 19th century – a time when they lived in all the excess found in a Tolstoy novel -- they couldn't have imagined the provincial fortress would…

  12. American Civilians Caught Behind Enemy Lines After Pearl Harbor, and How They Were Repatriated

    · 48 min

    In the wake of Pearl Harbor, more than ten thousand Americans living abroad became trapped in Japanese-controlled territories, and with rumors of ill treatment and torture, the U.S. State Department was desperate to…

  13. Washington's Crossing from the Other Side: Three Hessian Soldiers' Stories of Defeat and Capture at the Battle of Trenton

    · 46 min

    Emanuel Leutze's iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware shows the general standing heroically at the bow of his boat, staring toward an unseen enemy across the icy river. But who were those enemies waiting on…

  14. From Bronze to Blood: How the Sword Became Humanity's First Murder Weapon

    · 48 min

    For nearly two thousand years, swords reigned as humanity's weapon of choice—the first tools designed exclusively to kill other humans rather than hunt animals. When archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a rusty…

  15. Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right

    · 47 min

    Science progresses through breakthrough discoveries, but behind many of the field's greatest advancements lies a darker history of scientific dysfunction—hostile competition, information hoarding, and criticism that…

  16. How Two California Wines Shattered Centuries of French Supremacy in a Blind Taste Test

    · 37 min

    In 1976, nine French wine judges did the unthinkable: they blindly selected two California wines over France's most elite vintages in what became known as the Judgment of Paris. This shocking upset sent shockwaves…

  17. How an Italian Engineer with 700 Knights Defeated 100,000 Ottoman Troops at the Siege Rhodes

    · 43 min

    Throughout the 16th century, one man stood between the Ottoman Empire and European domination, yet his name has been largely forgotten. Gabriele Tadino was an Italian military engineer whose genius transformed medieval…

  18. Why America's Military Never Became a Threat to Democracy

    · 52 min

    America's Founding Fathers feared a standing army would inevitably threaten civilian governance. Yet 250 years later, the U.S. military remains a strange outlier among nearly every nation that has ever…

  19. How Christianity Shaped America's 500-Year Mission to Become a Holy Land

    · 52 min

    Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for those who point to the…

  20. Every Communication Breakthrough—From Cave Art to AI Video—Exists to Tell Stories

    · 58 min

    There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created the earliest…

  21. The East’s Auschwitz: How Imperial Japan’s Secret Experimenters Escaped Justice

    · 45 min

    During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries conducted without…

  22. The Chemistry of Conquest: Behind the USSR’s State-Sponsored (and Steroid-Powered) Olympic Glory

    · 1 h 04 min

    Since the era of Joseph Stalin, Moscow’s rulers have sent Russian athletes into the Summer and Winter Olympics with one command: you must win. These competitors operated under a "win-at-all-costs" doctrine most notably…

  23. Daniel Boone’s Life as a Frontiersman and Adopted Son of a Shawnee Chief

    · 43 min

    Daniel Boone is considered one of the United States' first folk heroes for his exploration beyond the thirteen colonies into Kentucky. His exploits are rightfully legendary. He famously rescued his daughter and two…

  24. The Loss and Re-Discovery of the $20 Billion Imperial Spanish Treasure Ship

    · 52 min

    The most valuable shipwreck of all time is the San José galleon—an 18th century Spanish ship that carried 11 million gold coins, silver, and emeralds—and worth $20 billion in today's currency. It sunk in a battle with…

  25. Thomas Willing: The Revolutionary War Arms Dealer Who Led the First Bank of the United States

    · 55 min

    America’s revolutionary war would have almost certainly been lost if not for the colony’s wealthiest merchant. Thomas Willing was a prominent Philadelphia merchant and financier who, in partnership with Robert Morris,…

  26. The Man Who Sold the War: Tom Paine's Journey from Common Sense to Global Firebrand

    · 44 min

    Most of us only know Thomas Paine for one thing: writing Common Sense in 1776, which helped kickstart the Revolution by selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But he was far more than a writer. Paine actively served…

  27. The Original Body Builders: How Greek Halteres and Celtic Gabal Stone Lifts Built the World's First Strongmen

    · 48 min

    Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed…

  28. Truman’s Deep Regret at the Atomic Age He Created

    · 57 min

    In the eight decades since the United States deployed the most destructive weapon ever used, conventional wisdom has held that American leaders were faced with a difficult choice: Invade Japan, which would have cost…

  29. How Soccer Created African and Latin American Nations

    · 47 min

    National pride often comes from shared heritage—like a common language or ethnic background. Religious Nationalism can be seen in historical Russia, where being part of the Orthodox Church was considered key to being…

  30. The Sawmill – Along With Gunpowder and the Printing Press – Created the Modern World

    · 34 min

    The wind-powered sawmill was invented around 1592 in the Netherlands, immediately transforming the nature of labor and industry. This mechanical marvel replaced slow, muscle-powered sawyers, allowing timber to be cut…

  31. Gears, Gold, and Global Peace: A Steampunk Bitcoin Journey Through an Alternate 20th Century

    · 1 h 05 min

    We have paper money today because it functioned as an IOU, certifying that the holder could redeem it for an equivalent amount of physical gold or silver from the bank's vault. That’s where the English pound got its…

  32. Before the Cold War, Russia and America Were the Closest of Distant Friends

    · 47 min

    Nearly a century of Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia hide the incredibly close friendship that the two nations enjoyed before this period. From America’s colonial founding in the 1600s to the eve…

  33. The Horrifying Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Titanic of the Great Lakes

    · 48 min

    One of the worst nautical disasters in recent American history is the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 10, 1975, the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake…

  34. Inside the Deadly German U-Boats That Brought Britain to Its Knees (But Were Deadlier for Their Own Crews)

    · 41 min

    Over the course of World War II, Germany’s submariners sank over three thousand Allied ships, nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. Winston Churchill famously declared the only…

  35. Manifest Destiny, Powered by Coal: How “Black Gold” Conquered the American Continent

    · 49 min

    America’s growth from a rugged frontier nation to the globe’s industrial superpower in the space of 100 years can be explained by one word: coal. Before coal dominance, American buildings were defined by height limits…

  36. Ancient Athens Picked Its Leaders by Lottery for Over 200 Years. Some Think This System Should Replace Electoral Democracy

    · 52 min

    For almost two centuries, Ancient Athens—the most successful democracy in history—selected citizens by lottery to fill government positions. Athens adopted sortition—a random lottery system—to select most public…

  37. How Would Nixon Have Handled the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    · 29 min

    The "Madman Theory" was Richard Nixon's foreign policy strategy during the Vietnam War era, where he deliberately cultivated an image of being unpredictable and irrational—hinting he might escalate to nuclear…

  38. Diogenes, the Father of Ancient Greek Stoicism, Loving Trolling His Audience and Could Out-Shock Borat

    · 49 min

    The famous street artist Banksy shocked the art world in 2018 when his painting, Girl with Balloon, partially shredded itself moments after selling it for over a million dollars. at a Sotheby's auction in London.…

  39. Blown Off Course: How History’s Windy Turning Points Sank the Armada and Saved Japan from the Mongols

    · 46 min

    The greatest energy source for civilization before the steam engine was wind. It powered the global economy in the Age of Sail. Wind-powered sail ships made global shipping fast and cheap by harnessing free, reliable…

  40. Maps Have Bigger Problems Than the Mercator Projection. They Invent Mountain Ranges and Usually Eliminate New Zealand

    · 46 min

    Maps have always had problems. Five hundred years ago, maps were wildly inaccurate simply because cartographers were drawing the edge of the known world, limited by slow ships and nonexistent satellite data, resulting…

  41. The Great Mathematicians of the Early 1900s Ran into an Unsolvable Problem. They Realized Math Made No Sense

    · 46 min

    In the 1800s, it seemed like mathematics was a solved problem. The paradoxes in the field were resolved, and even areas like advanced calculus could be taught consistently and reliably at any school. It was clearly…

  42. The American Revolution was a World War in All but Name

    · 57 min

    The Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, known as the "shot heard round the world," marked the first military engagements of the American Revolution. Ralph Waldo Emerson named it that because it launched…

  43. How Napoleon and Churchill Used Neuroscience to Make a Better Soldier and More Loyal Public

    · 45 min

    The brain acts in strange ways during wartime. Even in active combat situations, when soldiers are one mistake away from death, many can’t fire on their enemies because their brain is triggering compassion centers…

  44. William F. Buckley JR.'s Guide to Friendship in a Polarized Era

    · 40 min

    William F. Buckley Jr., the charismatic intellectual who defined modern American conservatism, was famously skilled at forging friendships across the ideological divide, a talent that helped him both shape the…

  45. What it Was Like Living Through the USSR’s Collapse

    · 56 min

    The Collapse of the Soviet Union was twice as devastating as the Great Depression for those who lived there. It immediately led to widespread economic chaos and a breakdown of public services, plunging millions into a…

  46. The Battle of Agincourt, 1415: Longbowmen, Bands of Brothers, and Henry V’s Triumph

    · 53 min

    From Shakespeare's 'band of brothers' speech to its appearances in numerous films, Agincourt rightfully has a place among a handful of conflicts whose names are immediately recognized around the world. The Battle of…

  47. Clarence Dillon: The Roaring 20s Wall Street Baron Who Wrote the Rules for Corporate Takeovers, Junk Bonds, and Bankruptcy

    · 45 min

    J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles E. Mitchell are names that come to mind when thinking of the most prominent icons of wealth and influence during the Roaring Twenties. Yet the one figure who has escaped…

  48. A Utah Indian Chief Controlled the 1800s Mountain West Through Slave Trading, Building Pioneer Trails, Horse Stealing, and Becoming Mormon

    · 1 h 00 min

    The American Indian leader Wakara was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West. He and his pan-tribal cavalry of horse thieves and slave traders dominated the Old Spanish Trail,…

  49. Why Did Rome Fall? Wrong Question. How Did it Last 2,000 Years Despite Changing its Religion, Language, and Government?

    · 54 min

    Rome began as a pagan, Latin-speaking city state in central Italy during the early Iron Age and ended as a Christian, Greek-speaking empire as the age of gunpowder dawned. Everything about it changed, except its Roman…

  50. The Real Deadwood: A Gold Rush Town Built in a War Zone but Obliterated in an Inferno

    · 38 min

    Gunslinging, gold-panning, stagecoach robbing, whiskey guzzling – the myth and infamy of the American West is synonymous with its most famous town: Deadwood, South Dakota. The storied mining town sprang up in early…

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