History Unplugged Podcast

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 dates back as far as homo sapiens themselves (such as the Bronze Age Battle of Tollense River, about which we known nearly nothi...

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 involved. To continue listening to Vlogging Through History, check out: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3X3USwk Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3WX5A7E Parthenon: htt...

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 career was replete with momentous cases, specifically his work in the Scopes Monkey Trial and the Leopold and Loe...

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 its broader interests—began to take root. But what kind of nationalism should Americans embrace? The state-focused and racist nationalis...

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 Christians than ever before or since under Muslim rule. He launched voyages into the Indian Ocean, threatened to conquer all of Europe, and took firm control...

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 impact on both Eastern and Western life as him, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Wes...

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 fit to leave them as beggars. He also wanted them to commit to praying for the souls of him and his descendants, setting up a chapel for this very purpos...

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 ruthlessly rooted out real and perceived threats to the United States, from bank robbers to Soviet spies to civil rights groups, calling Martin Luther King, Jr. “the c...

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 more global. Today’s guest, Sean Connolly, author of “On Every Tide: The Making and Remaking of the Irish World,” argues that the Irish exodus helped make the modern world....

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 go on to write over 100 books. They found refuge in their love of music, with frequent visits to Germany and Austria to see their favorite opera stars perform. But with the clo...

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 left out or overlooked is that black Americans joined with an equal level of fervor. Over one million black men and women served in the war, playing crucial roles...

“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 a feature of liberty that set the free world apart from the planned economies of communist nations. Politicians use “free markets” as a stand-in for less...

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 challenging. But as late as the 1980s, few thought it would fall apart as catastrophically as it did. How close was the USSR to victory? Was it structurally d...

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 massively wealthy with trade, and dominate the Western Hemisphere. In the antebellum era, leading Southern politicians, diplomats, clerics, planters, f...

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 was said to have plans to launch conquest along the Mediterranean all the way to Spain and send naval expeditions around Arabia and Africa. The Confederacy wanted to dominate...

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 decapitated human heads reanimated all with the invention and evolution of electricity. To discuss this history that we take for granted is Kathy...

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 than 10 years, they built the New Deal Coalition, a tremendously powerful political force that included everyone from the KKK on one side to black communis...

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 how The Great Gatsby was written has not been told except as embedded chapters of much larger biographies. This story is one of heartbreak, infidelity, struggle, a...

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). We discuss the most overlooked and underappreciated people in history and get into why they were overlooked and underappreciated in the first place...

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 were also key players in the Early American Republic. They pushed changes in public opinion about slavery, moving the Overtone window on slavery fro...

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 Alsop, grew increasingly famous, was not what either of her parents had imagined it would be. Her mother’s strict Catholicism and her father’s...

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 jewelry, trading them for raw materials. This culture of business spread and grew more sophisticated. Four thousand years ago the fir...

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 to a black regiment during the Civil War. The soldiers under his care were survivors of the Ft. Pillow Massacre, in which the C...

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 son, Tommy, at the Manzanar Relocation Center. But her beliefs were, to put it simply, complicated. While in the camp, Elai...

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, the magazine was considered one of the most influential in the literary world and his advocacy on nuclear disarmament affect world politics ( his 1945 anti-nu...