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
  • Exploring the Wreckage of the Britannic (the Titanic’s Sister Ship) and Discovering Why It Sunk in 50 Minutes
    Jun 19, 2025 – 48:25
  • Did Tariffs Make America a Manufacturing Powerhouse Or Trigger Economic Misery and Stifle Global Trade?ads)
    Jun 17, 2025 – 44:55
  • Alan Pinkerton: The Private Detective Who Saved Lincoln’s Life and Built America’s Contract Security State
    Jun 12, 2025 – 50:07
  • MacArthur’s Plans to Drop 50 Nuclear Bombs During the Korean War
    Jun 10, 2025 – 50:45
  • The Many Ways That Rome Never Fell and Lives On Today
    Jun 5, 2025 – 37:16
  • Hooves of History: How Horses Created Ancient Warfare, Built the Silk Road, and Became the Dividing Line Between Nobleman and Peasant
    Jun 3, 2025 – 44:28
  • Moonshining Survived (and Thrived) At Least Two Decades After Prohibition Ended
    May 29, 2025 – 45:47
  • How to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer
    May 27, 2025 – 53:08
  • How American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship
    May 22, 2025 – 46:06
  • Did WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands?
    May 20, 2025 – 47:51
  • How a British Governor of Virginia Raised an Ex-Slave Regiment in 1776 to Fight Patriots and Triggered the Revolutionary War
    May 15, 2025 – 55:09
  • How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader
    May 13, 2025 – 55:46
  • Microbes Were Discovered in the 1600s. Why It Take 200 Years For Doctors To Start Washing Their Hands?
    May 8, 2025 – 54:16
  • From Einstein’s Chalkboard to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Test: The 50-Year Path to the Atomic Bomb
    May 6, 2025 – 48:14
  • Japan’s Desperate Air Battles Against the US in the Final Months of WW2
    May 1, 2025 – 37:15
  • D-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944
    Apr 29, 2025 – 42:08
  • Pilgrimages Involved Penitent Marches, Visiting Holy Places, and Watching Drunken Emperors Go on Chariot Rides
    Apr 24, 2025 – 44:53
  • 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
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