History Unplugged Podcast

The pirates that exist in our imagination are not just any pirates. Violent sea-raiding has occurred in most parts of the world throughout history, but our popular stereotype of pirates has been defined by one historical moment: the period from the 1660s to the 1730s, the so-called "golden age of piracy." The Caribbean and American colonies of Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands—where piracy surged across these decades—are the main theater for buccaneering, but this is a global story. From London, Paris, and Amsterdam to Curaçao, Port Royal, Tortuga, and Charleston, from Ireland and the Mediterranean to Madagascar and India, from the Arabian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. Familiar characters like Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, Bonny and Read, Henry Every, and Captain Kidd all feature here, but so too will the less well-known figures from the history of piracy, their crew-members, shipmates, and their confederates ashore; the men and women whose transatlantic lives were bound up with the rise and fall of piracy. To explore this story is today’s guest, Richard Blakemore, author of “Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer China and master the sea? Kublai Khan is one of history's most fascinating characters. He brought Islamic mathematicians to his court, where they invented modern cartography and celestial measurement. He transformed the world's largest land mass into a unified, diverse and economically progressive empire, introducing paper money. And, after bitter early setbacks, he transformed China into an outward looking sea-faring empire. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aesop’s fables are among the most familiar and best-loved stories in the world. Tales like “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Dog in the Manger,” and “Sour Grapes” have captivated audiences for roughly 2,600 years. Written by a non-Greek slave (who may not have existed but was reported to be very ugly), Aesop was an outsider who knew how to skerwer Greek society and identify many of the contraditions of antiquity. HIs tales offer us a world fundamentally simpler to ours—one with clear good and plain evil—but nonetheless one that is marked by political nuance and literary complexity. Today’s guest is Robin Waterfield, author of “Aesop’s Fables: A New Translation.” Newly translated and annotated by renowned scholar Robin Waterfield, this definitive translation shines a new light on four hundred of Aesop’s most enduring fables. We look at historical accounts of Aesop, how his tales were recorded, and shine a new light on four hundred of Aesop’s most enduring fables. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the dawn of the Greek Classical Era up to World War II, thousands have lost their lives fighting over the pass at Thermopylae.. The epic events of 480 BC when 300 Spartans attempted to hold the pass has been immortalized in poetry, art, literature and film. But that is not the only battle fought there. Twenty-six other battles and holding actions took place, and they were fought by Romans, Byzantines, Huns and Ottomans during the early and late medieval periods and finally the two desperate struggles against German occupying forces during World War II. To discuss it is today’s guest, Michael Livingston, author of “The Killing Ground: A Biography of Thermopylae” The Killing Ground details the background and history of each conflict, the personalities and decision making of the commanders, the arms and tactics of the troops, and how each battle played out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1864, a young Austrian archduke by the name of Maximilian crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been lured into the voyage by a duplicitous Napoleon III (the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte). Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor had promised Maximilian a hero's welcome. Instead, he walked into a bloody guerrilla war. With a head full of impractical ideals - and a penchant for pomp and butterflies - the new 'emperor' was singularly ill-equipped for what lay in store. In this episode we are looking at this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond. To discuss his life is today’s guest, Edward Shawcross, author of “The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the past few years, much has been written and created around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, but little attention is paid to those whose lives were ended or forever changed when the bombs dropped in Japan. In this episode, we delve into the experiences of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. On that day the Enola Gay released its devastating payload, ushering in the nuclear age. The survivors, now with an average age of over 90, provide some of the last living testimonies of the horrors that unfolded in the seconds, minutes, and hours following the explosion. Today’s guest is M.G. Sheftall, author of The Stories of Hibakusha. Sheftall has spent years interviewing those who were young adolescents at the time of the bombing, now elderly but still haunted by their memories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The original Harlem Globetrotters weren’t from Harlem, and they didn’t start out as globetrotters. The talented team, started by Jewish immigrant Abe Saperstein, was from Chicago’s South Side and toured the Midwest in Saperstein’s model-T. But with Saperstein’s savvy and the players’ skills, the Globetrotters would become a worldwide sensation At 5’3”, Saperstein is not who we might imagine would bring the sport of basketball to the entire world, pioneer the three-point shot, or to befriend the likes of Jesse Owens, Satchel Paige, and Wilt Chamberlain to name a few. Born in 1902 in London’s Whitechapel slum neighborhood to parents who had immigrated from Poland, Saperstein and his family then immigrated to America in 1906. He founded the team in the 1920s, steadily building a reputation for talent and comedy until their footprint covered the entire world. Abe Saperstein’s impact went well beyond the Harlem Globetrotters. He helped keep baseball’s Negro Leagues alive, was a force in getting pitching great Satchel Paige his shot at the majors, and befriended Olympic star Jesse Owens when he fell on hard times. When Saperstein started the American Basketball League, he pioneered the three-point shot, which has dramatically changed the sport. Today’s guests, Mark Jacob and Matthew Jacob, authors of “Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports” piece together the of his life. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Was Harry Truman really our poorest president or simply a man up at 2 a.m. struggling with financial anxiety? Did Calvin Coolidge get bad advice from his stockbroker to buy stocks in 1930 as the market continued to crash? Is it true George Washington enhanced his net worth by marrying up? We often think of the US presidents as being above the fray. But the truth is, the presidents are just like us—worried about money, trying to keep a budget, and chasing the American financial dream. While some presidents like Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford became wildly successful with money, others like Thomas Jefferson and Joe Biden struggled to sustain their lifestyle. The ability to win the presidency is no guarantee of financial security, although today it’s a much easier path to monetize. Today’s guest is Megan Gorman, author of “All the Presidents’ Money.” We look at the different personal money stories of the presidents. Grit, education, and risk are just some of the different ways that the presidents over the last 250 years have made (or lost) money. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. Some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history include the taking and retaking of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the 'high-water mark' of Ottoman advance into Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe and the modern Middle East. To explore this history is today’s guest, Simon Mayall, author of “The House of War: The Struggle between Christendom and the Caliphate.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More Americans have peanut allergies today than at any point in history. Why? In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strict recommendation that parents avoid giving their children peanut products until they're three years old. Getting the science perfectly backward, triggering intolerance with lack of early exposure, the US now leads the world in peanut allergies-and this misinformation is still rearing its head today. How could the experts have gotten it so wrong? Could it be that many modern-day health crises have been caused by the hubris of the medical establishment? Experts said for decades that opioids were not addictive, igniting the opioid crisis. They demonized natural fat in foods, driving Americans to processed carbohydrates as obesity rates soared. These failures of medical groupthink have been seen throughout history. Philosophers of the 16th century who claimed that blood circulated throughout the body (instead of resting in a layer below the epidermis) faced capital punishment. James Lind, who discovered that Vitamin C prevented scurvy, was ignored for 40 years. Ignaz Semmelweis was rejected by the medical community for suggesting that doctors should perhaps wash their hands before operating on patients. Today’s guest is Marty Makary, author of “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What it Means for Our Health.” We see how when modern medicine issues recommendations based on good scientific studies, it shines. Conversely, when medicine is interpreted through the harsh lens of opinion and edict, it can mold beliefs that harm patients and stunt research for decades. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Appleton Oaksmith was a swashbuckling Civil War-era sea captain whose life intersected with some of the most important moments, movements, and individuals of the mid-19th century, from the California Gold Rush, filibustering schemes in Nicaragua, Cuban liberation, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. But in his life we also see the extraordinary lengths the Lincoln Administration went to destroy the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade. That’s because he spent years working as an outlaw mariner for the Confederacy and later against the Klan. Oaksmith lived in the murky underworld of New York City, where federal marshals plied the docks in lower Manhattan in search of evidence of slave trading. Once they suspected Oaksmith, federal authorities had him arrested and convicted, but in 1862 he escaped from jail and became a Confederate blockade-runner in Havana. The Lincoln Administration tried to have him kidnapped in violation of international law, but the attempt was foiled. Always claiming innocence, Oaksmith spent the next decade in exile until he received a presidential pardon from U.S. Grant, at which point he moved to North Carolina and became an anti-Klan politician. To look at this story is today’s guest, Jonathan White, author of “Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. But it has been received by different cultures and language groups in (sometimes) radically different ways. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture. It was spread by merchants, missionaries, and colonizers Asia, Africa, and to the Americas. Local communities adapted the "alien" book through a blend of cultural integration and reinterpretation. For instance, 20th-century Chinese theologians described similarities between Confucianism and biblical texts, while Native Americans placed themselves directly into biblical narratives—a group of 18th-century Mohican converts renamed themselves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, proclaiming themselves "patriarchs of a new nation of believers." Today’s guest is Bruce Gordon, author of “The Bible: A Global History.” We discuss the story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ different needs. The people who received it interpreted it in radically different ways, from desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In World War II, there were no C-130s or large cargo aircraft that could deliver heavy equipment – such as a truck or artillery piece – in advance of an airborne invasion. For that, you needed to put that equipment, along with its crew, in a glider. These were unpowered boxes of plywood, pulled by a towing plane into enemy territory by a single cable wrapped with telephone wire. The men who flew on gliders were all volunteers, for a specialized duty that their own government projected would have a 50 percent casualty rate. In every major European invasion of the war they led the way. They landed their gliders ahead of the troops who stormed Omaha Beach, and sometimes miles ahead of the paratroopers bound for the far side of the Rhine River in Germany itself. From there, they had to hold their positions. They delivered medical teams, supplies and gasoline to troops surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge, ahead even of Patton's famous supply truck convoy. These all-volunteer glider pilots played a pivotal role from the day the Allies invaded Occupied Europe to the day Germany finally surrendered. Yet the story of these anonymous heroes is virtually unknown. To explore these stories with us is today’s guest, Scott McGaugh, author of “Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin: The Glider Pilots of World War II.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From George Washington’s powdered pigtail to John Quincy Adams’ bushy side-whiskers and from James Polk’s masterful mullet to John F. Kennedy’s refined Ivy League coif, the tresses of American leaders have long conveyed important political and symbolic messages. There are surprising, and multi-dimensional ways that hair has influenced the personalities, public and private lives, personal scandals, and tragedies of the men and women who have occupied the White House and influenced the nation at large. To explore this unconventional aspect of American history is today’s guest, Ted Pappas, author of “Combing Through the White House: Hair and Its Shocking Impact on the Politics, Private Lives, and Legacies of the Presidents.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the question that historians have argued since the end of World War Two. How much did an average person know, and, more importantly, how responsible were they? What made people “perpetrators,” “bystanders,” and “victims” within a wider context of coercion and consent? To explore this question is today’s guest, Richard Evans, author of “Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.” We look at a connected series of biographical portraits of key Nazi figures that follows power as it radiated from Hitler to the inner and outer circles of the regime’s leadership. This includes personal lives of figures whose names appear in nearly all Nazi biographies, like Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels (“The Policeman” and “The Propagandist”), as well as professionals with skills deemed advantageous to the Nazi agenda, including Julius Streicher (“The Schoolmaster”) and the eugenicist Karl Brandt (“The Professional”), and some of the women in Hitler’s orbit such as Ilse Koch (“The Witch”) and Leni Riefenstahl (“The Star”). Through these biographies, one of our greatest historians explores the enduring and unnerving questions: How could human beings carry out such terrible and murderous atrocities? Were they degenerate, deranged psychopaths, or were they ordinary men doing their jobs? How can examining individual personalities help us reach an understanding of the evil and immorality that sustained the Nazi regime? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Iberia was one of three crucial theatres of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. Hannibal of Carthage’s siege of Saguntum in 219 BC triggered a conflict that led to immense human and material losses on both sides, pitting his brother Hasdrubal against the Republican Roman armies seeking to gain control of the peninsula. Then, in 208 BC, the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hasdrubal at Baecula, forcing Hasdrubal’s army out of Iberia and on to its eventual annihilation at the Metaurus. Today’s guest, Mir Bahmanyar, author of “Second Punic War in Iberia: 220-206 BC” brings to life the key personalities and events of this important theatre of the war, and explains why the Roman victory at Baecula led to a strategic shift and Carthage’s eventual defeat. It covers Scipio Africanus’ brilliant victory at Ilipa in 206 BC, where he crushed the army of Mago Barca and Hasdrubal Gisco.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Contrary to popular belief, Robin Hood may not have been the merry medieval outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Rather, a look at real historical figures who inspired the legend are narrowed down to the most unlikely suspect: an Anglo-Saxon hitman who may have assassinated the King of England. Today’s guest, Peter Staveley, proposes that Robin Hood lived during the time of William II (near the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066), rather than Richard I and Prince John of the late 1100s. He argues that Robin was responsible for the death of William II, also known as Rufus, in what was long considered a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1100. This act conveniently paved the way for William’s brother to ascend the throne as Henry I. Staveley places Robin deep within the geography of South Yorkshire, with strong ties to historic Hallamshire, Loxley, Bradfield, and Ecclesfield, challenging the traditional narrative and the long-held association with Nottingham. We explore how Yorkshire, particularly Sheffield, might reclaim the legacy of Robin Hood from Nottingham and reveal the true, rougher man behind the legend. Staveley is author of “Robin Unhooded, And the Death of a King.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The use of horses by humans began roughly 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Pontic- Caspian Steppe when a daring man (or a woman – we have no way of knowing) jumped on the back of a docile mare. Thus began the horse’s unrivalled historical influence across millennia to the present day. The horse dominated every facet of humanity—as a mode of transportation, a vehicle of trade, an essential farming tool, a status symbol, a formidable weapon of war, a source of energy, an agent of both lethal disease and lifesaving medicine, a participant in sport, and, of course, a steadfast and loyal companion. For most of us, horses are not part of our everyday, practical lives, and are instead relegated to entertainment and recreation through racing, rodeos, and equestrian or television shows and movies depicting bygone eras. But this is a relatively recent development as cars “unseated” the horse as the primary method of transportation a mere one hundred years ago. To demonstrate the profound historical impact of the horse on our global civilization, we are joined by Timothy Winegard, author of “The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” He was a chameleon in a world of strangers, and scholars have overlooked him due to his elusive nature. Reconstruction offered additional opportunities for Cowlam to repackage his identity. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal and persuaded Republicans in Florida to allow him to run for Congress. After losing the election, Cowlam moved to New York, where he became a serial bigamist and started a fake secret society inspired by the burgeoning Granger movement. When the newspapers exposed his lies, he disappeared and spent the next decade living under an assumed name. He resurfaced in Dayton, Ohio, claiming to be a Union colonel suffering from dementia to gain admittance into the National Soldiers’ Home. Today’s guest, Frank Garmom, author of A Wonderful Career in Crime, Cowlam’s stunning machinationsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Soviet espionage existed in the United States since the U.S.S.R.’s founding and continued until its dissolution in the 1990s. It reached its height in World War 2 and the early Cold War, especially to steam atomic weapon’s technology (revealed to the public with the trials and executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Americans who fed intelligence back to the Soviets). The funnel for Americans into Soviet espionage was the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Throughout its history, the American Communist Party attracted a variety of seemingly contradictory people. Democratic, reform-minded individuals who wanted to end inequality worked alongside authoritarians and ideologues who espoused Soviet propaganda. These factions reached loggerheads following Nikita Khrushchev’s revelation of Joseph Stalin’s crimes, leading to the organization’s decline into political irrelevance. To look at this history is today’s guest, Maurice Isserman, author of “Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.