History Unplugged Podcast

Parthenon
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  • 一周一更
History Unplugged Podcast

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.

  1. Owning Land Was The Best – and Usually Only – Way to Be Rich in the Ancient World

    22小时前

    Owning Land Was The Best – and Usually Only – Way to Be Rich in the Ancient World

    For millennia, humans eked out survival atop the surface of the Earth and land had no unique value. Eventually, however, humans turned land into an advantage. For several thousand years, control of land meant control of natural resources, like water and wild animals. For several thousand more years it meant agricultural production, raising domesticated animals, harvesting timber. And finally, land became economic might invested in Kings, chiefs, and political leaders around the globe. Large landowners sat atop the pyramid of social hierarchy. Today’s guest is Michael Albertus, author of “Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies.” We see how modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    45 分钟
  2. Benjamin Franklin – In the 200 Years After His Death – Funded New Businesses, Supported Boston and Philadelphia, and Play Pranks

    5天前

    Benjamin Franklin – In the 200 Years After His Death – Funded New Businesses, Supported Boston and Philadelphia, and Play Pranks

    When Benjamin Franklin died on April 12, 1790, he made a final bet on the future of the United States -- a gift of 2,000 pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. Today’s guest is Michael Meyer, author of Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet. He traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. Over time, Franklin’s wager was misused, neglected, and contested—but never wholly extinguished. Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    38 分钟
  3. When American Gilded Elite Bought Up English Country Houses, It Create an Epic Transatlantic Clash of Cultures

    1月28日

    When American Gilded Elite Bought Up English Country Houses, It Create an Epic Transatlantic Clash of Cultures

    For generations, the great palaces of Britain were home to living histories, noble families that had reigned for centuries. But by the end of the nineteenth century, members of elite society found themselves, for the first time, in the company of arrivistes. Their new neighbors—from chorus girls to millionaire greengrocers to guano impresarios—lacked lineage and were unencumbered by the weight of tradition.  In the new book The Power and the Glory, the author -- and today’s guest -- Adrian Tinniswood reconstructs life in the country house during its golden age before the Great War, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the earth’s population and its stately homes were at their most opulent. But change was on the horizon: the landed classes were being forced to grapple not only with new neighbors, but also with new social norms and expectations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    44 分钟
  4. The Untold History of Earth: Hobbits Really Existed, Dinosaurs Had Feathers, and Yetis Roamed Our Planet

    1月23日

    The Untold History of Earth: Hobbits Really Existed, Dinosaurs Had Feathers, and Yetis Roamed Our Planet

    The Old English poem Beowulf is a vital source of information on history, language, story and belief from the darkest of the Dark Ages. Only one copy is known to exist (it’s in the British Library), and that was rescued from a fire that is known to have destroyed many other manuscripts. If Beowulf didn’t exist, how much would we know about that period? It’s a sobering thought that between 410 and 597, no scrap of writing survives from what is now England. This is an interval comparable in length between now… and the Napoleonic Wars. The same is true about fossils — what we know of the fossil record is an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot on what really happened. Almost everything that once existed on our planet has been lost. This means that anything new we find has the potential to change everything.  Today guest, Henry Gee, author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, zips through the last 4.6 billion years to tell a tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1 小时 9 分钟
  5. How Did Gold Beat Out Every Other Precious Metal To Become Humanity’s Dominant Currency For the Last 2,600 Years?

    1月21日

    How Did Gold Beat Out Every Other Precious Metal To Become Humanity’s Dominant Currency For the Last 2,600 Years?

    Why has gold reigned as the world’s go-to precious metal for over 2,600 years? It’s not as rare as platinum, durable as diamonds, or malleable as copper. What is it about this metal that made it the standard unit of coinage, from China to Mesoamerica? It’s a very long story, but gold’s scarcity, durability, malleability, and universal appeal made it ideal for trade and wealth preservation, starting with the Lydians of 550 BC. Unlike tin, copper, or bronze, gold’s intrinsic properties allowed it to serve as a stable and universally recognized unit of exchange, laying the foundation for its historical role in economies. In today’s episode, we explore gold’s history, the evolution of monetary systems (from China’s early use of paper money in the Middle Ages to Great Britain’s establishment of the gold standard in the late 17th century), and how the gold standard of the last century facilitated international trade and stability but was ultimately abandoned due to its deflationary pressures and limitations. The pivotal moment came in 1971 when President Nixon ended dollar-gold convertibility, ushering in the fiat currency era. To discuss these topics is today’s guest, Collin Plume, author of “Silver Is the New Oil: Strategies for Profiting From the Next Industrial Revolution” and CEO of Noble Gold Investments. He offers insights into modern trends, including nations increasing gold reserves, gold-backed cryptocurrencies, and the future role of gold in global finance. Links: Silver Is the New Oil Noble Gold Investments See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    36 分钟
  6. The 160-Minute Race to Save the Titanic

    1月16日

    The 160-Minute Race to Save the Titanic

    One hundred and sixty minutes. That is all the time rescuers would have before the largest ship in the world slipped beneath the icy Atlantic. There was amazing heroism and astounding incompetence against the backdrop of the most advanced ship in history sinking by inches with luminaries from all over the world. It is a story of a network of wireless operators on land and sea who desperately sent messages back and forth across the dark frozen North Atlantic to mount a rescue mission. More than twenty-eight ships would be involved in the rescue of Titanic survivors along with four different countries. At the heart of the rescue are two young Marconi operators, Jack Phillips 25 and Harold Bride 22, tapping furiously and sending electromagnetic waves into the black night as the room they sat in slanted toward the icy depths and not stopping until the bone numbing water was around their ankles. Then they plunged into the water after coordinating the largest rescue operation the maritime world had ever seen and thereby saving 710 people by their efforts.The race to save the largest ship in the world from certain death would reveal both heroes and villains. It would begin at 11:40 PM on April 14, when the iceberg was struck and would end at 2:20 AM April 15, when her lights blinked out and left 1500 people thrashing in 25-degree water. Although the race to save Titanic survivors would stretch on beyond this, most people in the water would die, but the amazing thing is that of the 2229 people, 710 did not and this was the success of the Titanic rescue effort. We see the Titanic as a great tragedy but a third of the people were rescued and the only reason every man, woman, and child did not succumb to the cold depths is due to Jack Phillips and Harold McBride in an insulated telegraph room known as the Silent Room. These two men tapping out CQD and SOS distress codes while the ship took on water at the rate of 400 tons per minute from a three-hundred-foot gash would inaugurate the most extensive rescue operation in maritime history using the cutting-edge technology of the time, wireless. To talk about this race against time is frequent guest Bill Hazelgrove, author of the new book One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    47 分钟
  7. 200 Years Before the French Revolution, German Peasants Tried to Overthrow The Holy Roman Empire

    1月14日

    200 Years Before the French Revolution, German Peasants Tried to Overthrow The Holy Roman Empire

    The German Peasants’ War of 1524-1525 was the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants—roughly 2% of the male population—were slain in a mere two months. While the peasant forces would ultimately prove no match for the lords, for a period of several months they managed to take control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany in pursuit of a more egalitarian order. The rebels pushed against the structures of lordship and embraced the radical and ecological potential of the Reformation in which Earth’s natural resources were gifts from God to all of humanity. Today’s guest is Lyndal Roper, author of “Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War.”  We see that neither the Reformation nor the Peasants’ War can be fully understood in isolation from one another, and that the rebels’ fight for freedom was a direct response to the period of reform. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    55 分钟
  8. What the Middle Ages Can Teach Us About Pandemics, Mass Migration, and Tech Disruption

    1月9日

    What the Middle Ages Can Teach Us About Pandemics, Mass Migration, and Tech Disruption

    The medieval world – for all its plagues, papal indulgences, castles, and inquisition trials – has much in common with ours. People living the Middle Ages dealt with deadly pandemicsmass migration, and controversial technological changes, just as we do now.Today’s guest, Dan Jones, author of POWERS AND THRONES: A New History of the Middle Ages looks at these common features through a cast of characters that includes pious monks and Byzantine emperors, chivalric knights and Renaissance artists. This sweep of the medieval world begins with the fall of the Roman empire and ends with the first contact between the Old World and the New. Along the way, Jones provides a front row seat to the forces that shaped the Western world as we know it. This is the thousand years in which our basic Western systems of law, commerce, and governance were codified; when the Christian Churches matured as both powerful institutions and the regulators of Western public morality; and when art, architecture, philosophical inquiry and scientific invention went through periods of seismic change. We discuss:• The height of the Roman empire and its influential rulers, as well as the various reasons it fell, including climate change pushing the Huns and so-called “barbarian” tribes to the empire’s borders.• The development of Christianity and Islam, as well as the power struggles and conflict ignited in the name of religion, chivalric orders such as the Knights Templar, and the rise of monasteries as major political players in the West.• The intimate stories of many influential characters of the Middle Ages, such as Constantine I, Justinian, Muhammad, Attila the Hun, Charlemagne, El Cid, Leonardo Da Vinci, Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, Martin Luther, and many more.• The development of global trade routes and commerce across Europe, Asia, and Africa and the expanding map during the Age of Exploration.• The Black Death, which decimated up to sixty percent of the local population in the fourteenth century and led to widespread social unrest and the little Ice Age, the period between 1300-1850 triggered by volcanic activity that created a climate so regularly and bitterly cold that it contributed to the Great Famine of 1315-21. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    54 分钟
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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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