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PODCAST

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

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

history

All Episodes

51:18

A Simple Tennessee Preacher Transformed Abolitionism...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/04/10

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 across the Ohio River. Anyone fleeing bondage could look to Reverend John Rankin’s home for hope. To the slaveholders they fled from, Rankin’s activities as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad invoked rage. Mobs often pelted Rankin with eggs and rocks, bounties were placed on his head, and midnight assassins

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41:53

How Benjamin Franklin’s Stove Invention Kept Early...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/04/08

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 Franklin stove became one of the era's most iconic consumer products, spreading from Pennsylvania to England, Italy, and beyond. It was more than just a material object, however—it was also a hypothesis. Franklin was proposing that, armed with science, he could invent his way out of a climate crisis: a period of global cooling known as

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38:25

Roman Churches Had No Involvement in Marriage. How...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/04/03

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 century that church weddings emerged, and even then, they were mostly reserved for the elite. Fast forward to the High Middle Ages, and marriage became a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, the church has been seen as inseparable with matrimony. What changed over the centuries? To explore this dynamic is today’s guest,

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28:21

How a Mess Cook Saved Dozens of Sailors from Shark...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/04/01

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. The ship had been supporting U.S. Marine forces, ferrying troops and supplies, when it was mistaken for a larger threat by a group of Japanese destroyers. Outgunned and unable to escape, Gregory was hammered by shellfire, set ablaze, and ultimately sank in Ironbottom Sound. Lieutenant Commander Harry F. Bauer, refusing to abandon his men,

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53:19

Humanity’s Past Suggests We Only Have 10,000 Years to...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/27

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 slowing down. In the middle of this century population growth will stop,andthe number of people on Earth will start todecline- fast.As Gee demonstrates, our population has peaked,andisdeclining; our environment is becoming inimical to human life in many locations; our core resources of water, arable land,andair are diminishing;andnew diseases,

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51:05

The 16th Century Ottomans Nearly Conquered Europe....

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/25

The determined attempt to thwart Ottoman dominance was fought by Muslims and Christians across five theaters from the Balkans to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, from Persia to Russia. But this is not merely the story of a clash of civilizations between East and West. Europe was not united against the Turks; the scandal of the age was the alliance between King Francis I of France and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Meanwhile, the resistance of the Saadi dynasty of Morocco to Ottoman

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42:07

Fort Stanwix and the Forgotten Revolutionary War...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/20

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 divide New England from the rest of the colonies. Three armies would converge on Albany: one under Lieutenant General John Burgoyne moving south from Quebec, one under General William Howe moving north from New York City, and a third under Lieutenant Colonel Barrimore St. Leger cutting east from Lake Ontario along the Mohawk River Fort Stanwix

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39:21

Enough is Enuf, Our Failed Attempts to Make English...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/18

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 many pronunciations: ‘aw’ (thought), ‘ow’ (drought), ‘uff’ (tough), ‘off’ (cough), ‘oo’ (through). In response to this orthographic minefield, legions of rebel wordsmiths have died on the hill of spelling reform, risking their reputations to bring English into the realm of the rational:

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51:04

Did Haiti’s First and Last King Squander the...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/13

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 Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to end slavery. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe began fighting with Napoleon's forces against the formerly enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later,

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41:34

What Ancient Greeks and Victorian Explorers Thought...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/11

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 rotation, and its sub-zero temperatures and strange year of one sunset and one sunrise make it an eerie, utterly disorienting place that challenges human endurance and understanding. Erling Kagge and his friend Børge Ousland became the first people “to ever reach the pole without dogs, without depots and without motorized aids,”

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50:50

Nothing Healed America’s Wounds After the Civil War...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/06

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 right in the thick of it. These two young men, the first superstars of the professional game, won the hearts of a country in search of a unifying spirit after a devastating civil war. Today’s guest is Jeff Orens, author of Selling Baseball: How Superstars George Wright and Albert Spalding Impacted Sports in America. While these two men

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38:06

How an 1870 Murder Created San Francisco

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/03/04

Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboatEl Capitanwas pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veil, she drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. “I did it and I don’t deny it,” she said when arrested shortly thereafter. “He ruined

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34:35

Failed Futures: If Alexander The Great Hadn’t Died,...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/27

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 Plutarch’s essay collection Moralia. There’s plenty of truth in that unattributed quote from Mr. Gruber. Alexander the Great’s death at 323 BC in Babylon marked the end of the most consequential military campaign in antiquity. He left behind an empire that stretched from Greece to India, planted the seeds of the Silk Road, and

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48:58

Why the Anabasis is the Second-Most Influential Greek...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/25

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. This was the predicament faced by Xenophon and the Greek mercenaries in Anabasis, one of the most gripping survival stories of the ancient world. In this episode, we delve into the incredible journey of these soldiers, their battles against the elements, rival armies, and even their own internal strife. Xenophon’s firsthand account is

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59:50

The American Revolution Would Have Been Lost Without...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/20

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 secretary of the navy under President Ronald Reagan, observed, “From the beginning of the American Revolution until the end of the War of 1812, America’s real naval advantage lay in its privateers. It has been said that the battles of the American Revolution were fought on land, and independence was won at sea. For this we have the

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57:41

Did Lincoln Save Global Democracy or Undermine It...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/18

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 historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, author of Our Ancient Faith. Guelzo takes us deep into the high-stakes decisions of Lincoln’s presidency, from the suspension of habeas corpus to the Emancipation Proclamation. He argues that Lincoln’s vision of democracy was rooted in a moral imperative to save the Union as a global symbol

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40:47

The 1541 Spanish Expedition Down the Amazon to Find...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/13

As Spanish conquistators slowly moved through Latin America, they encountered levels of wealth that were unimaginable. Most famously, Incan Emperor Atahualpa was captured by Francisco Pizarro and paid a ransom of a room filled with gold and then twice over with silver. The room was 22 feet long by 17 feet wide, filled to a height of about 8 feet. Such events fired the imaginations of the Spanish, who created myths such as of El Dorado, the “gilded man” who, legend held, was daily

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62:46

Everyday Life for the 500K German POWs House in...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/11

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 Florida to Maine. These POWs were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, often working in agriculture and other industries to alleviate domestic labor shortages. Today, evidence of these POW camps has all but vanished, and with themtheharrowing knowledge of what happened beyondthebattlefield. But today’s guest, William Geroux

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56:22

The Arsenal of Democracy: How the Revolver and...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/06

The United States is the most heavily armed nation in the world, with an estimated 400 million guns in private hands. But few know that this legacy can be directly traced back to a handful of gunmakers who worked in the Springfield Armory of Massachusetts in the early 1800s. Their names became synonymous with American guns—Colt, Smith, Wesson, Winchester, and Remington among them – and they made firearms portable, powerful, rapid firing, and distinctly American. They also created the

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44:39

Owning Land Was The Best – and Usually Only – Way to...

History Unplugged Podcast ·

2025/02/04

For millennia, humans eked out survival atop the surface of the Earth and land had no unique value. Eventually, however, humans turned land into an advantage. For several thousand years, control of land meant control of natural resources, like water and wild animals. For several thousand more years it meant agricultural production, raising domesticated animals, harvesting timber. And finally, land became economic might invested in Kings, chiefs, and political leaders around the globe. Large

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1,052 results

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