The History Guy

Welcome to the History Guy Podcast: Counterfactuals. What is a counterfactual? At it’s most basic, it is a ‘what if’. It’s a way of understanding history as it is by discussing what it could have been. Today, we talk about one of the deadliest diseases in human history, and one we often don’t think about at all today: Rabies. How has it changed the world, and what might be different without it?

On today’s episode we talk about an unsung hero of the modern age: the elevator. Without them, the world wouldn’t be the same. 

On today’s episode we talk about a man whose influence on the trajectory of American history is undeniable and pervasive, but whose name you may never have heard of: John Hay, a secretary to President Lincoln and Secretary of State under Mckinley and Teddy Roosevelt. What might the world be like without him?

On today’s episode we talk about a pivotal battle in a poorly remembered war: The battle of Paardeberg in the Second Anglo-Boer War. The war would consolidate all of South Africa under British Colonial rule, and radically transform the Canadian military. But what if it didn’t?

On today’s episode, we talk about a little remembered campaign of the Civil War fought west of the Mississippi, when a former Missouri governor attempted to shake things up as hope for the south dwindled. Ultimately it all went wrong - but what if it didn’t?

On today’s episode, we talk about an incredibly deadly creature, which has determined the course of nearly all human history just by existing: The Mosquito. How has the mosquito determined the course of war, and what wars might have gone differently if it didn’t exist?

On today’s episode, we talk about something that has held together history, literally. Even though there’s probably a roll in just about every household in America, we often overlook the utility and ubiquity of duct tape. But what would we do without it?

On today’s episode, we talk about the USS Wyoming and the 1863 battle of the Shiminoseki Straits - a seemingly minor event overshadowed by the American Civil War. But this battle might have altered the course of history. 

On today’s episode we talk about the first commercially successful ‘plastic’, the beginning of the plastic revolution that has so altered human society. But what if it happened differently?

On today’s episode, we talk about a soviet submarine disaster in the Atlantic, which averted potentially disastrous outcomes only by the heroism of its crew. But what might have happened if it went differently?

On today’s episode, we talk about the beautiful islands of Samoa, which were the background to a clash between the relatively nascent empires of the United States and Germany in the 1880s. As the crisis came to a head, however, nature put a dramatic end to human ambition. But what if it had gone differently?

On today's episode, we discuss the Blight that nearly wiped out wine, and how wine and indeed the world might be different if it had unfolded differently.

On today’s episode we talk about one of the most fraught elections in American history, where violence, initmidation and outright fraud precipitated a constitutional crisis - the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden.

On today’s episode, we talk about the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line on New Years Day, 1781, and how it might have altered the trajectory of the American Revolution, and everything after.

On today's episode, we talk about a forgotten part of the Battle of the Bulge - Elsenborn Ridge, where outnumbered allied units held against veteran German divisions, and what the chances were that the Reich could have turned the tide in 1944.

On today’s episode we talk about what is often called the last invasion of mainland Britain - a disastrous and almost farcical series of blunders that ended in abject disaster. But what if it didn’t?

Today we talk about the most numerous bird on the planet - the chicken - and how the world might be different if we never domesticated it.

On today’s episode, we talk about some of the first steel-hulled ships the United States ever built, and how those first few ships might have set the tone for the entire 20th century.

On today’s episode, we venture to Asia to talk about a battle that determined the course of Chinese history, and that has become such an integral part of Chinese historical mythology that it is sometimes difficult to sort fact from fiction. What might have changed if the battle went a different way?

On today’s episode we talk about one of the most ubiquitous human creations in the modern world: Concrete. What would the modern world look like without this grey material we all take for granted?

On today’s episode, we talk about a little-remembered presidential visit in the wake of Pearl Harbor - Christmas, 1941, when Winston Churchill risked the U-boats of the Atlantic to visit his new allies in the White House.

Today we talk about a little remembered battle that could have been a turning point in the First World War - a battle between the German High Seas fleet and the Russian Baltic fleet in the Gulf of Riga.

On today’s episode we talk about the little remembered espionage side of the civil war, particularly the CSA’s more outlandish ideas to take the war to the Union. And of course, we talk about what the world might look like if it all happened differently.

On today’s episode we talk about a bird that was once so numerous that Americans thought it would be impossible to kill them all. Until, suddenly, they did. What might the world look like if the passenger pigeon hadn’t gone extinct?

On today’s episode we talk about the incredible popularity and influence of an odd product: Ketchup. What would the world be like without it?