History Unplugged Podcast

The Allied Forces hoped the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would finally convince Imperial Japan to end the war. If not, they were prepared to launch Operation Downfall—the proposed plan for the invasion of Japan in November of 1945 and the spring of 1946. If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in history. It also would have meant millions of Ja...

Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan loom large in Western popular consciousness as two of history’s most fearsome warrior-leaders. Chroniclers referred to them as “The Scourge of God” and “Universal Lord” both fascinate and repel. But few people today are aware of their place in a succession of nomadic warriors who used campaigns of terror to sweep across the Eurasian steppes. They toppled empires and...

There are few episodes in history that are so misunderstood as the condemnation of Galileo. His trial has become a stock argument to show the fundamental clash between science and dogmatism. Turns out the whole affair was actually a giant clash of egos, with churchmen and scientists on both sides of the argument.   TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews rea...

According to legends of the Middle Ages, knights used the chastity belt on their wives as an anti-temptation device before embarking on the Crusades. When the knight left for the Holy Lands, his Lady would wear a chastity belt to preserve her faithfulness to him. The metal teeth that surrounded her "credentials" would also tear to shreds the member of any would-be seducer. However, there is no rel...

If you want to be a French king who is also named Louis, then you have to slap enough Roman numerals at the end of your name to look like an encrypted message. Why are so many French kings named Louis? What significance does the name have for the French people? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or St...

Doctors love to say that eight hours of nightly rest is vital to good health. But did people in the past get this much sleep, more, or less? And how did the lack of a lightbulb affect their sleep cycles. Turns out quite a bit. People actually hit the hay very early and woke up a few hours each night—sort of a reverse midnight siesta. Important cultural activity took place during this time, includi...

Pirates are popular these days: they adorn our favorite brands of bargain-basement rum and populate beloved Disneyland rides and multibillion-dollar film franchises. But who were these men and women who actually inhabited the Caribbean of the 1700s and made a living preying off trade vessels? How much of the myth of piracy is based on fact? And how much high seas adventure, myth and magic, voodoo,...

It's good to be as rich as a Rockefeller. John—the patriarch of the family—rose from a lowly Ohioan bookkeeper to the leader of Standard Oil, which owned 90 percent of America's petroleum until it was broken up by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1911. He was the world's first billionaire, owning mansions in New York, Florida, and Ohio, along with several golf golf courses. But was all that money rea...

Scientific progress has moved steadily forward across much of the world for centuries, with few examples of abatement. The Scientific Revolution is often considered to have begun at Copernicus's 1543 publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Here moderns challenged the ideas of ancient scholars, rather than accepting them at face value. Most fault the so-called Dark Ages for this...

This episode is fifth in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. The Man in the High Castle is Phillip K. Dick's most chilling book and the most famous example of alternate history. It's set in 1962, fifteen years after the Axis Powers emerge triumphant in World War Two and rule over th...

This episode is fourth in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. Lest Darkness Fall, written in 1939 by L. Sprague de Camp, is one of the classics of the alternate history genre. American archeologist Martin Padway gets sent back to Rome in 535 AD. He introduces new technology to the I...

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. -Joseph Stalin When consider major historical events that involved millions of people— World War 2, the Great Depression, the Cold War—it's easy to forget that real people with their own stories were part of those events. Today we're zeroing in on one story. And that's the story of James Shively, an Air Force Pilot who was shot down ove...

This episode is third in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. Today's book is Harry Turtledove's wonderful book Agent of Byzantium. In this book, Turtledove imagines that the Prophet Muhammed, instead of developing Islam, converted to Christianity  and became a celebrated prelate and...

This episode is second in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. Today's book is Kim Stanley Robinson's 2002 book The Years of Rice and Salt. It explores how world history would have developed if the Black Death had killed 99 percent of Europe's population, with the Islamic world, the...

This episode is the first of a five-part series in our Alternate History Week—our version of Shark Week, if you will. We are looking at famous books of alternate history, and I'm discussing why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. The first book in this series is 1632. Eric Flint's book imagines that a West Virginia town gets sent back to 1632 Germany, during the Thirty Years War, a...

There was an event in history worse than World War I, worse than the Mongol invasions that killed 40 million, worse than the little Ice Age that triggered famines and rebellions across the medieval world. This event was the "Dark Ages before the Dark Ages." It was the Bronze Age Collapse of 1177 BC, and it was so monumental that it inspired Homer’s ‘The Iliad’   TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an hones...

Since the 1950s, many classicists and military historians have believed that an ancient Roman bloodline lives on in a Chinese village. The town of Liqian sits on the edge of the Gobi desert, and 4,500 miles from Rome. They have tried to prove that the ruddy-skinned, light-eyed, and fair-haired residents of Liqian are lost relatives of a missing Roman battalion of mercenaries that fought against th...

Thomas Cahill argues in his best-selling book How the Irish Saved Civilization that Ireland played a critical role in Europe's evolution from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Is his narrative correct? Without Ireland, he argues, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Gr...

Rome and China were the two poles of the Silk Road. One sent precious porcelain, spices, and silks, the other sent out glassware and high-quality cloth. As Rome expanded into the Near East and China into Central Asia, did the two empires learn much of each other? Furthermore, did the two empires ever attempt direct contact?   TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and...

The United States has accepted immigrants throughout its history, but America has its emigrants as well. Did you know there is a city in Brazil founded by Confederates who wanted to flee the U.S. during Reconstruction? Welcome to Americana, Brazil.   TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher See...

General Curtis LeMay is perhaps the most misunderstood general of the 20th century, despite the fact that he played a major role in so many important military events of the last century: he turned the air war in Europe from a dismal failure to a great success, he helped defeat Japan without a costly land invasion, he commanded the start of Berlin Air Lift, and he was on the Joint Chiefs during the...

Conspiracy theorists have many "reasons" for why we've never been to the moon: the Van Allen radiation belts are too deadly, the challenges are too difficult, re-entry into the atmosphere is too hot. But Jason Funk, who asked today's question, points out that the cranks have at least one point—if we did go to the moon in 1960s, why haven't we been back after five decades of technological evolution...

I had the extraordinary pleasure to talk with Captain Jerry Yellin, a 93-year-old World War Two vet who flew the final combat mission in World War Two's Pacific Theatre. Yellin piloted for the 78th Fighter Squadron and was part of the 1945 bombing campaigns that ultimately triggered Japan's surrender. From April to August of 1945, Yellin and a small group of fellow fighter pilots flew dangerous bo...

Being a Roman isn't easy. Running an intercontinental empire across hundreds of languages, customs, and ethnic groups without the benefit of telegraphs or steam power requires constant vigilance or the whole enterprise will fall apart. Let's look at the Roman borderland's with Persia to see what life was like on the periphery of the empire.   TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes....

Did you know that over 400,000 German POWs were settled in the United States during World War II? Did you know that they may have built some of the stone buildings that make up your town square? Or that they were responsible for bringing in America’s harvest in the fall of 1945 when most men were still off to war? Learn about this fascinating but understudied part of America’s history. TO HELP OUT...