History Unplugged Podcast

3,373
History #38

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.

Recent Episodes
  • Britain Learned How to Set Up Its Global Empire on a Tiny Bermudan Island
    Apr 22, 2025 – 44:02
  • The Hatfield-McCoy Feud Started Over a Pig and Nearly Escalated Into a Regional War
    Apr 17, 2025 – 45:20
  • The 1845 Potato Blight Struck Across Northern Europe. Why Did Only Ireland Starve?
    Apr 15, 2025 – 48:41
  • A Simple Tennessee Preacher Transformed Abolitionism from a Deeply Unpopular Radical Movement to a Centrist Cause
    Apr 10, 2025 – 51:18
  • How Benjamin Franklin’s Stove Invention Kept Early America From Freezing
    Apr 8, 2025 – 41:53
  • Roman Churches Had No Involvement in Marriage. How Did It Become a Holy Sacrament by the Middle Ages?
    Apr 3, 2025 – 38:25
  • How a Mess Cook Saved Dozens of Sailors from Shark Infested Waters Off the Coast of Guadalcanal
    Apr 1, 2025 – 28:21
  • Humanity’s Past Suggests We Only Have 10,000 Years to Change or Go Extinct
    Mar 27, 2025 – 53:19
  • The 16th Century Ottomans Nearly Conquered Europe. Why Did European Kingdoms Make So Many Alliances With Them?
    Mar 25, 2025 – 51:05
  • Fort Stanwix and the Forgotten Revolutionary War Siege That Convinced France to Help the US
    Mar 20, 2025 – 42:07
  • Enough is Enuf, Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell
    Mar 18, 2025 – 39:21
  • Did Haiti’s First and Last King Squander the Revolution or Succeed in Underappreciated Ways?
    Mar 13, 2025 – 51:04
  • What Ancient Greeks and Victorian Explorers Thought Was at the North Pole
    Mar 11, 2025 – 41:34
  • Nothing Healed America’s Wounds After the Civil War Like Baseball
    Mar 6, 2025 – 50:35
  • How an 1870 Murder Created San Francisco
    Mar 4, 2025 – 37:52
  • Failed Futures: If Alexander The Great Hadn’t Died, He Might Have Conquered Europe, Circumnavigated Africa, and Built His Own Silk Road
    Feb 27, 2025 – 34:20
  • Why the Anabasis is the Second-Most Influential Greek Epic (After Homer’s Works)
    Feb 25, 2025 – 48:43
  • The American Revolution Would Have Been Lost Without a Ragtag Fleet of Thousands of Privateers
    Feb 20, 2025 – 59:36
  • Did Lincoln Save Global Democracy or Undermine It Using Wartime Powers?
    Feb 18, 2025 – 57:26
  • The 1541 Spanish Expedition Down the Amazon to Find the Imaginary “El Dorado” and Valley of Cinnamon
    Feb 13, 2025 – 40:32
  • Everyday Life for the 500K German POWs House in America During World War Two
    Feb 11, 2025 – 01:02:31
  • The Arsenal of Democracy: How the Revolver and Repeating Rifle Democratized Gun Ownership and Armed the United States
    Feb 6, 2025 – 56:07
  • Owning Land Was The Best – and Usually Only – Way to Be Rich in the Ancient World
    Feb 4, 2025 – 44:24
  • Benjamin Franklin – In the 200 Years After His Death – Funded New Businesses, Supported Boston and Philadelphia, and Play Pranks
    Jan 30, 2025 – 37:53
  • When American Gilded Elite Bought Up English Country Houses, It Create an Epic Transatlantic Clash of Cultures
    Jan 28, 2025 – 44:09
  • The Untold History of Earth: Hobbits Really Existed, Dinosaurs Had Feathers, and Yetis Roamed Our Planet
    Jan 23, 2025 – 01:08:48
  • How Did Gold Beat Out Every Other Precious Metal To Become Humanity’s Dominant Currency For the Last 2,600 Years?
    Jan 21, 2025 – 36:05
  • The 160-Minute Race to Save the Titanic
    Jan 16, 2025 – 47:13
  • 200 Years Before the French Revolution, German Peasants Tried to Overthrow The Holy Roman Empire
    Jan 14, 2025 – 54:27
  • What the Middle Ages Can Teach Us About Pandemics, Mass Migration, and Tech Disruption
    Jan 9, 2025 – 53:15
  • Did Orson Welles’s 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’ Broadcast Really Cause a Mass Panic?
    Jan 7, 2025 – 48:26
  • A Talk With The Polar Geographer Who Discovered Shackleton’s Endurance Under 10,000 ft of Frozen Water
    Jan 2, 2025 – 43:26
  • The Founding Fathers Were 20 and 30-Somethings. Why Is America Now a Gerontocracy?
    Dec 31, 2024 – 42:13
  • A Pre-WWI French Philosopher Was More Popular Than Elvis and Possibly Entered the US Into the Great War
    Dec 26, 2024 – 43:13
  • While Starving at Besieged Leningrad, Scientists Hid Drought-Resistant Crop Seeds That Could Prevent Future Famines
    Dec 24, 2024 – 40:30
  • Surviving Nearly 2 Years of Shipwreck on a South Pacific Island in the 1880s
    Dec 19, 2024 – 43:13
  • How Did 450 Boers Defeat 15,000 Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 1838?
    Dec 17, 2024 – 48:45
  • Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 9: The End of North African Piracy and the Beginning of American Global Naval Hegemony
    Dec 12, 2024 – 58:31
  • When Did Americans Become Americans? 1945, 1865, 1787, or 1776?
    Dec 10, 2024 – 46:41
  • Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 8: The Second Barbary War (1815)
    Dec 5, 2024 – 38:38
  • How Much of a Nation’s Fate is Bound Up In Its Geography?
    Dec 3, 2024 – 41:50
  • Key Battles of the Barbary War, Episode 7: An Uneasy Peace -- The Interbellum Period and the War of 1812
    Nov 28, 2024 – 43:36
  • The Scramble for More Aircraft Carriers in WW2 Meant Retrofitting Cruisers Into These Sorts of Ships
    Nov 26, 2024 – 53:52
  • Key Battles of the Barbary War, Episode 6: Swashbuckling Ship Battles and 500-Mile Desert Marches Won the First Barbary War
    Nov 21, 2024 – 41:15
  • Knights Could Still Be Found on English Battlefields in the 1640s. What Were They Doing There?
    Nov 19, 2024 – 41:49
  • Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 5: The Destruction of the USS Philadelphia
    Nov 14, 2024 – 36:58
  • The Jewish Confederates
    Nov 12, 2024 – 56:34
  • Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 4: The First Barbary War (1801-05)
    Nov 7, 2024 – 36:46
  • Was The Vietnam War Unwinnable?
    Nov 5, 2024 – 59:12
  • Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 3: The Barbary States and Their 300-Year Reign of Mediterranean Piracy
    Oct 31, 2024 – 37:51
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