History Unplugged Podcast

By Scott Rank, PhD

Society & Culture History

What's History Unplugged Podcast about?

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.

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Despite the Spartans’ Last ...

03.30.2023

The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their toughness, stoicism and martial prowess. They were feared for never surrendering and never running from a fight, always preferring death to dishonor. But was ...

History Unplugged Podcast episodes:

03.30.2023 Despite the Spartans’ Last Stand at Thermopylae, They Are Still the Most Overrated Warriors of the Ancient World The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their toughness, stoicism and martial prowess. They were feared for never surrendering and never running from a fight, always preferring death to dishonor. But was ...
03.28.2023 The Real-Life King Arthur May Have Been a Roman Equestrian Who Served Marcus Aurelius King Arthur. The search for the historical figure behind what is arguably the most famous cycle of legends ever has been relentless over the centuries. Many think he was a Romano-British military commander in the 5th/6th centuries who fought the ...
03.23.2023 How Botany Was Weaponized in the 19th Century For Imperial Expansion of Plantations, And How Humble Gardeners Pushed Back In 19th century America, no science was more important than botany. Understanding plants meant more productive plantations, more wealth extracted from cash crops, and more money flowing into the United States. The science of botany became weaponized, fueling ideas of ...
03.21.2023 Nicolas Said was an Enslaved Africa Who Gain Emancipation, Traveled to Europe’s Royal Courts, and Fought in the Civil War In the late 1830s a young black man was born into a world of wealth and privilege in the powerful, thousand-year-old African kingdom of Borno. But instead of becoming a respected general like his fearsome father (who was known as ...
03.20.2023 Pizza, Pinocchio and the Papacy: Finding the Very Best and Very Worst of Italy What do Italian unification, Pinocchio and pizza have in common? In this episode preview from History of the Papacy, host Steve Guerra dives in!The Risorgimento was a period of political and social upheaval in Italy that lasted from the early ...
03.16.2023 This 1791 US Military Defeat Was 3x Worse than Little Bighorn And Nearly Destroyed the Army November 4, 1791, was a black day in American history. General Arthur St. Clair’s army had been ambushed by Native Americans in what is now western Ohio. In just three hours, St. Clair’s force sustained the greatest loss ever inflicted ...
03.09.2023 The KGB Agent Who Lived Incognito in New York for 10 Years That Was Exchanged at the Bridge of Spies Rudolf Ivanovich Abel was one of the most integral agents of the KBG, the Soviet Union’s most renowned spy network during the Cold War of the 1950s. He may have infiltrated Los Alamos labs and fed critical intelligence back to ...
03.07.2023 How a Slave Coupled Escaped the Antebellum South in Disguise In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. They escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a ...
03.02.2023 Operation Torch: WW2’s first Paratrooper Missions Were On One-Way Flights With Drops Into Total Darkness The December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor thrust theUnited States into World War II. Just six months later in May 1942,flying new C-47 transport aircraft, the 60th Troop Carrier Group ledthe way as the first U.S. TCG to ...
02.28.2023 Anne Frank Was Only One of Thousands in Occupied Netherlands That Kept Diaries. Others Include Dutch Nazis, Farmers, and Resisters Growing up in New York as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Nina Siegal had always wondered about the experience of her mother and maternal grandparents living in Europe during World War II. She had heard stories of the war ...
02.23.2023 How Shakespeare Impacted U.S. Presidents, from John Adams to JFK There are countless ways Shakespeare has made his way into unexpected corners of American life. It starts at the top with our presidents. Shakespeare is a longtime ally of America’s Commanders-in-Chief: Thomas Jefferson took a pilgrimage to his house, John ...
02.22.2023 The Unexpected Turbulence of the Eisenhower Years Some remember Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency as a time of peace and prosperity, but in reality, it was an era of constant global crises. In this episode preview from This American President, host Richard Lim explores how Eisenhower skillfully navigated ...
02.21.2023 A Union Spy's Mission to Stop the Confederates From Building a Secret Navy in Britain In 1861, just as the Civil War began, the leaders of the Confederacy soon realized they were outmatched when it came to military might, especially in terms of Naval power. (For example, the U.S. Navy had 42 commissioned ships as ...
02.16.2023 WW2 Bombing Raids on Germany Were Bloodbaths for the Allies Until a Futurist Fighter Plane (the P-51) Was Developed One of the lowest points of World War 2 for the Allies was autumn 1943, when bombing runs from England to Germany were ramping up. Hundreds of B-17s flew out to strike military targets, but they flew unescorted due to ...
02.14.2023 John Burgoyne: The British Playboy Who Lost the Revolutionary War No British General of the Revolutionary War has been written about more than John Burgoyne. That’s because of his surrender of his army at Saratoga, New York in 1777, widely seen as the turning point in the Revolutionary War. He ...
02.09.2023 How Britain Stole Intelligence from Nazi High Command Via Their German Drinking Buddies "How might the British have handled Hitler differently?” remains one of history’s greatest "what ifs."Many fault the Neville Chamberlain administration of the 1930s with trying to appease the Fuhrer by any means necessary. But they failed, still got a war, ...
02.07.2023 The Encyclopedia: One Book’s Quest to Hold the Sum of All Knowledge What if one book could contain the sum of mankind’s knowledge? Scholars and chroniclers have tried to write this book since antiquity, penning several so-called universal histories (perhaps the best was Rashid al-Din’s “Compendium of the Chronicles” that was commissioned ...
02.02.2023 How Much Can One Individual Alter History? More and Less Than You Think How far can a single leader alter the course of history? Thomas Carlyle, who promoted the Great Man Theory, says that talented leaders are the primary – if not the sole – cause of change. This view has been challenged ...
01.31.2023 The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East The most disruptive and transformative event in the Middle Ages wasn’t the Crusades, the Battle of Agincourt, or even the Black Death. It was the Mongol Conquests. Even after his death, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire grew to become the largest ...
01.26.2023 Weather Itself Was WW2's Fiercest Enemy: The Sinking of the USS Macaw On January 16, 1944, the submarine rescue vessel USS Macaw ran aground at Midway Atoll while attempting to tow the stranded submarine USS Flier. The Flier was pulled free six days later but another three weeks of salvage efforts plagued ...
01.24.2023 A Short History of War Some anthropologists once believed that humanity lived in a peaceful state that lacked large-scale warfare before the arrival of large civilizations and all its wealth inequality and manufacture of weapons. But archeological findings have shown over and over that warfare ...
01.19.2023 Stories From 300 British Men Executed For Cowardice During WW1 Over 300 men were executed by the British Army for desertion and cowardice during the first World War. In this episode preview from Vlogging Through History, host Chris Mowery explores the process for executions and the stories of the men ...
01.19.2023 The 1911 McNamara Bros. Murder Trial was the OJ Simpson/Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard Case of Its Time Considered by many to be one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers in the country, Clarence Darrow became nationally recognized for his eloquence, withering cross-examinations, and compassionate support for the underdog, both in and out of the courtroom.Though his fifty-year-long ...
01.17.2023 Daniel Webster -- Perhaps History’s Greatest Orator -- Turned Virginians and New Yorkers Into Americans When the United States was founded in 1776, its citizens didn’t think of themselves as “Americans.” They were New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians. It was decades later that the seeds of American nationalism—identifying with one’s own nation and supporting ...
01.12.2023 How Ottoman Sultan Suleyman Conquered Most of Europe and the Mediterranean While Avoiding Assassination Within a decade and a half, Ottoman Sultan Suleyman, who reigned form 1520 to 1566, held dominion over twenty-five million souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, and with the help of his brilliant pirate commander Barbarossa placed more ...
01.10.2023 Yoga Came to America via an Indian Monk at the 1893 Worlds Fair If you are one of the 40 million people in the United States who practice yoga, or if you have ever meditated, you have a forgotten Indian monk named Swami Vivekananda to thank. Few thinkers have had so enduring an ...
01.05.2023 A Modern-Day Knight Discusses What Knightly Service Means in 2023 (Essentially, Less Crusading and More Volunteering) In 1348, King Edward III founded a charity for impoverished men-at-arms, who came to be known as the Alms Knights (or Poor Knights). These knights were destitute because their families ransomed them in foreign wars, and their sovereign didn’t see ...
01.03.2023 J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-Year Career of Blackmail, Entrapment, and Taking Down Communist Spies J. Edgar Hoover was possibly the most powerful non-elected person in modern American history. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he used the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. He ...
12.29.2022 The Irish Conquered the World With Plentiful Cheap Labor and Pints of Guinness When people think of Irish emigration, they often think of the Great Famine of the 1840s, which caused many to flee Ireland for the United States. But the real history of the Irish diaspora is much longer, more complicated, and ...
12.27.2022 Two British Sisters – A Typist and a Romance Novelist – Save Jewish Artists from the Holocaust With a Clever Con Involving Opera In 1937, two British sisters, Louise and Ida Cook, seemed headed for spinsterhood due to so many men of their generation dying in World War One. Louise was a typist, and Ida was becoming a famous romance novelist, who would ...
12.22.2022 The Double Victory Campaign: Over 1 Million Black Americans Enlisted in WW2 To Fight Fascism Abroad and Win Equality at Home In the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, American men famously flooded recruiting offices across the nation to join the war effort. These stories are well documented and attested by eye witnesses, but a part of this story ...
12.20.2022 Everyone Loves Free Markets. But This Meant One Thing To Romans And Something Completely Different to Milton Friedman “Free market” is a concept beloved by many but understood in incredibly different ways. Most use Milton Friedman’s definition: the absence of any and all government activity in economic affairs. In the Cold War, free markets were understood to be ...
12.15.2022 Failed Futures: Russia's Plans to Defeat the U.S. in the Cold War Was it ever possible for the Soviets to win the Cold War? Looking back, its defeat seemed inevitable. The USSR had a political system hated by much of its population, a backwards economy, and harsh geographic conditions that made development ...
12.13.2022 Failed Futures: The Confederacy Had Colossal Plans After the Civil War to Spread Slavery Across the Globe And Become Fabulously Wealthy Confederate leaders were nothing if not dreamers. They did not merely want to maintain slavery in a quiet corner of the world and hold onto antiquated traditions. They saw themselves as true progressives that would lead a neo-feudal order, becoming ...
12.08.2022 Failed 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 Plutarch’s essay collection Moralia. There’s plenty of truth in that unattributed quote ...
12.07.2022 Failed Futures: The Post-War Plans of Alexander the Great, the Confederacy, and the Soviet Union that Never Happened This is a preview of an upcoming series on this podcast that looks at the detailed post-war plans from generals and heads of state that never came about because said leaders either died or lost their war. Alexander the Great ...
12.06.2022 Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and the Other Brilliant But Eccentric Characters That Electrified Our World You flick on a light without thinking about it. But what about the fascinating and bizarre stories hidden behind that simple action? Fortunes were made and lost, ideas stolen, rivalries pursued, dogs electrocuted, beards set on fire, arms amputated, and ...
12.01.2022 Republicans Controlled 1920s America But Were Later Crushed By the New Deal Coalition. How Do These Realignments Happen? The pendulum in American electoral politics never swung harder than the 1920s to 1930s. In the 1924 presidential election, Democrats lost every state outside the Jim Crow south and barely scraped together 25 percent of the popular vote. In less ...
11.29.2022 F. Scott Fitzgerald was Every Bit the Alcoholic, Grandiose Delusional Dreamer as His Fictional Character Jay Gatsby The Great Gatsby has sold 25 million copies worldwide and sells 500,000 copies annually. The book has been made into three movies and produced for the theatre. It is considered the Greatest American Novel ever written. Yet, the story of ...
11.24.2022 The Most Underrated People in History Include a U.S. President, Soviet Officer, and a Farmer Who Saved 2 Billion Lives Today’s episode is a round table of the podcasters who make up the Parthenon Podcast Network (Steve Guerra from Beyond the Big Screen; Josh Cohen from Eyewitness History, Richard Lim from This American President, and Scott Rank from History Unplugged). ...
11.23.2022 "I Sprinted Toward the Gunman": Josh Cohen from Eyewitness History Speaks to the Former Principal of Columbine High School What you will hear in this episode is a sample from Josh Cohen's fantastic new show Eyewitness History, where he speaks with the witnesses of the most important events in living memory. In this episode, Josh speaks with the former ...
11.22.2022 How a Founding Father and His Family Went From Slave Owners to Radical Abolitionists John Jay was a giant in the Founding Fathers generation. He was a diplomat, Supreme Court justice, coauthor of the Federalist Papers, and key negotiator at the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War. His children and grandchildren ...
11.17.2022 Growing Up as the Daughter of WW2 Spies As a child, Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop, along with her five brothers, was raised to revere the tribal legends of the Alsop and Roosevelt families. Her parents’ marriage, lived in the spotlight of 1950s Washington where the author’s father, journalist Stewart ...
11.15.2022 Entrepreneurs in the Ancient World: From Neolithic Fashion Tycoons to Babylon’s 'Silicon Valley' Startup Founders Entrepreneurship didn’t begin with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, or Adam Smith. Depending on how one interprets the archeological record, it goes back at least 9,000 years, when Neolithic tribes set up bead-making factories to transform worthless stones into ...
11.10.2022 The Abolitionist Who Was Chaplain to Black Civil War Soldiers and Started a College Burned Down by the KKK George Richardson (1824-1911) was a traveling Methodist preacher who rode on a circuit across the antebellum Midwestern frontier and became increasingly caught up in the abolitionist movement. He became a “station master” on the Underground Railroad and served as chaplain ...
11.08.2022 The Russian-Jewish Woman Who Voluntarily Interred Herself in a WW2 Japanese Internment Camp During World War II, Elaine Black Yoneda [1906-1988], the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, spent eight months in a concentration camp—not in Europe, but in California. She was an activist who voluntarily joined her incarcerated Japanese-American husband, Karl, and their ...
11.03.2022 In 1963, A Stuttering, Nebbish Magazine Editor Negotiated a Secret Deal Between JFK and Khrushchev, Averting Nuclear War As the editor of the Saturday Review for more than thirty years, Norman Cousins had a powerful platform to shape American public debate during the height of the Cold War. Although he was a low-key, nebbish figure, under Cousins's leadership, ...
11.01.2022 A Traumatized Civil War Vet -- Suffering Crippling Alcoholism and PTSD -- Spent 40 Years Wandering America as a Hobo William Aspinwal was many things. A child soldier. A ladies’ man. A mechanic. A tramp. A drunkard. A husband married five times. Each of these descriptions capture an aspect of his life, yet none do him justice. And they don’t ...
10.27.2022 The Secret Role of Japanese Americans Who Fought in the WW2 Pacific Theatre Several thousand Japanese Americans were trained by the US Military Intelligence Service and sent to the Pacific to serve as interpreters, translators, and interrogators, even as their own families were being held in internment camps in America. Why haven’t we ...
10.25.2022 FDR’s Polio Made Him Wheelchair Bound, But Also an Incredible Orator and Strategic Mastermind The qualities that made Franklin Roosevelt great weren’t things that he was born with but arguable the things that he had to learn in the hardest years of his life. Many thought of Roosevelt as the quintessential political natural. But ...

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