Log in

goodpods headphones icon

To access all our features

Open the Goodpods app
Close icon
headphones
History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

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.
profile image

14 Listeners

Share icon

All episodes

Best episodes

Top 10 History Unplugged Podcast Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best History Unplugged Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to History Unplugged Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite History Unplugged Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

History Unplugged Podcast - Did People in the Past Get 8 Hours of Sleep a Night?
play

08/29/17 • 7 min

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, including scheduled prayers, visits to neighbors, and doctors orders that children be conceived at this time. Learn more about how your ancestors slept, or didn't sleep. 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 omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
At the end of the nineteenth century, the world came to know and fear terrorism. Much like today, this was a time of progress and dread, in which breakthroughs in communications and weapons were made, political reforms were implemented, and immigration waves bolstered the populations of ever-expanding cities.
This era also simmered with political rage and social inequalities, which drove nationalists, nihilists, anarchists and republicans to dynamite cities and discharge pistols into the bodies of presidents, police chiefs and emperors. The most notorious incidents were Tsar Alexander II’s murder by the People’s Will in 1881, and the dynamiting of the Café Terminus in Paris in 1894, specifically targeting innocents.
This wave of terrorism was seized upon by an outrage-hungry press that peddled hysteria, conspiracy theories and, sometimes, fake news in response, convincing many a reader that they were living through the end of days.
Against the backdrop of this world of fear and disorder, today’s guest, James Crossland, author of “The Rise of Devils,” discusses the journeys of the men and women who evoked this panic and created modern terrorism “revolutionary” philosophers, cult leaders, criminals and charlatans, as well the paranoid police chiefs and unscrupulous spies who tried to thwart them. We examine how radicals once thought just in their causes became, as Pope Pius IX denounced them, little more than “devils risen up from Hell”.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
Marco Polo’s legacy is arguably the greatest of any medieval figure. While he was by no means the first European to reach China – his father and uncle did so a generation earlier, making the younger Polo's journey possible in the first place– his account, The Travels of Marco Polo, popularized knowledge of India and Asia across the continent. It was a massive bestseller in its first print run and defined ideas about China and the Orient for centuries to come; it has remained in print for centuries and a bestseller ever since. In it he discussed the fabulous wealth of China and the court of Kublai Khan.
While much of his account is filled with incredible exaggerations or outright fictions – mythological animals make numerous cameos in the work – it inspired a new generation of explorers to push past the extents of the known world. His book was incorporated into some important maps of the later Middle Ages, such as the Catalan World Map of 1375, which was read with great interest in the next century by Henry the Navigator and Columbus. The effects of his journey on European intellectual and cultural life were far-reaching. Accounts of the lands in the East stimulated renewed interest in discovery and helped launch the European Age of Exploration.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers—including the most famous, the Vikings—would reshape Europe and beyond. Their ingenuity, daring, resiliency, and loyalty to family and community would propel them to the gates of Rome, the steppes of Russia, the courts of Constantinople, and the castles of England and Ireland. But nowhere would they leave a deeper mark than across the Atlantic, where the Vikings’ legacy would become the American Dream.
Today’s guest Arthur Herman, author of The Viking Heart, discusses this historical narrative but matches it with cutting-edge archaeological discoveries and DNA research to trace the epic story of this remarkable and diverse people (despite myths of racial purity misappropriated by groups like Nazi ethnographers). He shows how the Scandinavian experience has universal meaning, and how we can still be inspired by their indomitable spirit and the strength of their community bonds, much needed in our deeply polarized society today.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image
profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
Today's question comes to us from Justin from the Generation Why Podcast. It's a true crime podcast that you should definitely check out. Here's his question: What murder or assassination through history do you think had the most impact on the world? From Cleopatra to Archduke Franz Ferdinand to JFK, which one do you think changed the world the most? WANT ME TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION ABOUT HISTORY? Click here to learn more. 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 omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
An oft-overlooked chapter in American History is the Creek War, a conflict between the Creek Indians and a young United States hungry for expansion in the early 1800s. It’s remembered as an important early chapter in the life of Andrew Jackson, but what few realize is that it altered the course of early American history more than any other event, opening the Deep South to plantation cultivation and setting the stage for the Civil War. Today’s guest is Peter Cozzens, author of “A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South.” We discuss the dispossession of Indian lands by the young American republic and an unexplored piece of early American history, and a vivid portrait of Jackson as a young, ambitious, and cruel military commander.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

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.

profile image
profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
History Unplugged Podcast - When Did People Start Using Last Names?
play

05/26/17 • 6 min

Today's question comes from Melanie Padon: When did people start using last names and why? How did they come up with them? WANT ME TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION ABOUT HISTORY? Click here to learn more. 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 omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
History Unplugged Podcast - Was The Vietnam War Unwinnable?

Was The Vietnam War Unwinnable?

History Unplugged Podcast

play

11/05/24 • 59 min

It’s been fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, yet the memory of the war lives on, the nationwide protests of the 1970s mirroring ones happening on college campuses today. In today’s episode we take a panoptic overview of the political debates in Washington, the ground and air operations in Southeast Asia, and the shocking erosion of American defense capabilities. We also dive into the five-decade-old question of whether the Vietnam War could have been won (proponents say victory could come by such strategy as Americans invading Laos and Cambodia and cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail; opponents say such policies as “search and destroy” led to recruitment of more Viet Cong soldiers rather than reduce their numbers).

We’re joined by Geoffrey Wawro, author of “The Vietnam War: A Military History.” We discuss whether the American war in Vietnam was a war of choice, pursued for all the wrong reasons. Shedding light on the inner workings of three presidential administrations and their field commanders, we look at political power, its limits, and the devastation that arises when power is compounded by willful delusion and carelessness in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image
profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode
The most tried-and-true method of kings or politicians justifying their hold on power is by promising equality (this was the slogan of the French Revolution, along with liberty and brotherhood). All societies promise equality (regardless of how poorly they delivery), from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today.
Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and postwar reformers and activists.
Today’s guest is Darrin McMahon, author of Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea. We trace equality’s global origins and spread from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today. Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and postwar reformers and activists.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

profile image
profile image

2 Listeners

bookmark
plus icon
share episode

Show more best episodes

Toggle view more icon

FAQ

How many episodes does History Unplugged Podcast have?

History Unplugged Podcast currently has 973 episodes available.

What topics does History Unplugged Podcast cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, History and Podcasts.

What is the most popular episode on History Unplugged Podcast?

The episode title 'The First War on Terror: How Europe Fought Anarchist Suicide Attacks, From 1850 to WW1' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on History Unplugged Podcast?

The average episode length on History Unplugged Podcast is 40 minutes.

How often are episodes of History Unplugged Podcast released?

Episodes of History Unplugged Podcast are typically released every 2 days.

When was the first episode of History Unplugged Podcast?

The first episode of History Unplugged Podcast was released on May 11, 2017.

Show more FAQ

Toggle view more icon

Comments