Podcast Episodes
Scroll down to see the latest episodes in our podcast History Unplugged. You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or Android by clicking here.
Scroll down to see the latest episodes in our podcast History Unplugged. You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or Android by clicking here.
What is the purpose of a dangerous journey in the twenty-first century? What is the reason to explore when so much of the globe has been surveyed, mapped, photographed, filmed, and catalogued? What can be gained by undertaking dangerous expeditions when little or no new information can be obtained and…
Lope Martín was a little-known 16th century Afro-Portugese pilot known as the "Columbus of the Pacific"--who against all odds finished the final great voyage of the Age of Discovery. He raced ahead of Portugal’s top navigators in the notoriously challenging journey from the New World to Asia and back, only…
Ernest Shackleton was among the last of a group of intrepid men from the Golden Age of Discovery in the Victorian era. He sought honor for England and himself in embarking on a dangerous journey to lead a team of men to cross the Antarctic continent. His story approaches the…
Henry Stanley was a soldier-turned-journalist-turned explorer who charged wide swaths of the Congo. He famously searched for the source of the Nile, commanded the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (a major expedition into the interior of Africa), and, most famously, searched and found missionary and fellow explorer David Livingstone.” He was…
James Cook came from a humble village upbringing. But by the end of his career, he circumnavigated the globe several times, discovered Australia and explored its west coast, mapped much of the South Pacific, and was worshipped as a deity by some Hawaiian natives. He also made incredible contributions to…
Ferdinand Magellan was ready to conquer the natives with nothing but a few loyal soldiers. He had already discovered vast new swaths of the globe and crossed the world's largest ocean. Capturing this small island in the Philippines seemed a trifle by comparison. Magellan's confidence was supreme. He faced down…
I’m please to announce that Steve Guerra is launching a new podcast called Beyond the Big Screen that comes out next week. If you member from a few years back, Steve and I co-hosted a series called Hollywood Hates History that looked at some of the worst historical epics ever…
What would have happened if China discovered America before Europe? More importantly, what would have happened if it colonized America? It is a plausible scenario. Prior to the nineteenth century, China was the wealthiest, most technologically advanced civilization in the world and dominated trade along the Pacific coast. Its navy…
Abu Abdullah Ibn Battuta was a 14th-century Islamic scholar who spent 20 years travelling the full extent of the Islamic world, which stretched from West Africa to the Middle East to Southern Russia to Western China down to the island of Java. All of these newly-Islamicized lands needed legal experts,…
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,…