PODCAST: HISTORY UNPLUGGED
J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-Year Career of Blackmail, Entrapment, and Taking Down Communist Spies
Podcast episodes from History Unplugged.
Some disasters hurt society (Hurricane Katrina in 2005). Bigger ones permanently alter it (the Black Death in the 1300s; Mao's Great Leap Forward). The worst of disasters completely destroy a civilization and leave behind so few they take centuries to recover (the Mongolian slaughter of Iran in the…
The death of thirty percent of Europe's population in the fourteenth century permanently altered the medieval social order, and many scholars credit the Black Plague with ushering in the Renaissance. But this is not the whole story—after all, plagues have ravaged the ancient world throughout human history without a…
Fascism is loved by few, but many at least credit Mussolini's heavy-handed rule for making Italy's notoriously disastrous train system operate effectively. Was this actually true or was it more of Il Duce's propaganda?
In the year 1884, four months after Theodore Roosevelt’s wife and mother died, there was still a Wild West; and though it would end soon, there was yet room for one more man who had lost everything. Roosevelt boarded a train in the middle of the night. The engine chugged…
The origins of some cultural practices are lost to the mists of time. Not so the high five. We can trace it back to a specific day at a specific baseball game. From then on the world was never the same.
One of the most widespread and pernicious bits of common knowledge about the Middle Ages that is incorrect is the idea that everyone believed the world to be flat. This is ridiculous. Nobody thought that. Anyone who knew about astronomy (which was almost everyone), had been on a boat, or…
Which world leader or dictator had the best chance at world domination? (i.e. Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander the Great). In this episode I discuss whether such a goal is even possible, and if so, under what conditions.
Giussepe Pinetti: You might not know the name, but he's considered the guy who made magic into a respected theatrical art form. Before him, it was practiced mostly by buskers on street corners, or at private engagements for the rich, not public theaters. He single-handedly changed the persona of magician…
Learn about King Musa I of Mali, the man so rich he crashed the value of gold in Egypt by giving away too many gifts while on an extended vacation.
The Korean War is widely misunderstood in the 21st century. Most have a sepia-toned nostalgia of the bravery of World War Two, or the less black-and-white nature of the Vietnam War. But not Korea. If anyone thinks of it, they might think of reruns of M*A*S*H on Nick at Nite…
