History Unplugged Podcast | American History, World History, World War 2, U.S. Presidents, Civil War

America attempted to legislate morality in the 1920s by outlawing the production, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquors through the Volstead Act. But that didn't stop the drinks from flowing during the “dry” years. Famous organized crime networks formed to meet the demand, and we all know about the Prohibition-era mobsters like Chicago's Al Capone and New York's Lucky Luciano. But did you know about one of the darkest, most corrupt, most lawless corner of the United States at this time? That's right. Kansas City. Kansas City of the 20s and 30s was ruled with an iron fist by Tom Pendergast. He controlled the city without holding elected office. The “Pendergast Machine” ran local government and the Democratic Party in Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri, during the Progressive Era and Great Depression. Political offices were bought. Ballot boxes were stuffed. He grew his empire by trading favors, building constituencies one precinct at a time, controlling votes, controlling politicians, and later controlling city government and the police department. His office at 1908 Main Street was called the unofficial capital of Missouri. The city's poor and working class lined out in front for several blocks, seeking help from Pendergast. He granted it like a king holding court, offering jobs or retributive justice to those who needed it. To talk with us about the Pendergast Machine is Dr. Jason Roe. He is a digital history specialist and editor for the Kansas City Library’s digitization and encyclopedia website project. But the Pendergast years weren't all bad. The libertine spirit of the city made it a magnet for artists and musicians. Jazz and other cultural milestones thrived in the “Wide Open” environment of Kansas City. Musicians such as Charlie Parker said jazz was born in New Orleans but grew up in KC. Most of all, Pendergast single-handedly launched the career of an obscure Missourian World War One vet into public office. He then orchestrated his rise to Missouri Senator. The young man then fell into the vice presidency. Then, after the death of America's longest-serving president, into the Oval Office. That man's name was Harry Truman.   RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE  Jason's writings on the KC Public Library website Jason's project Civil War on the Western Border   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

Was there a real life Dr. Frankenstein who tried to bring the dead back to life by science and alchemy? Yes there was, and his name was Johann Dippel. He lived in the transitional period between alchemy and modern science. He may have experimented on bringing dead animals back to life, but because of these daring experiments modern chemistry, biology, and even the medical sciences owes him much.   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

In the early 1800s there was no English explorer greater than James Holman. He covered a distance almost twenty times farther than Marco Polo on foot or cart—almost never using trains or steamships. He travelled among 200 different cultures, charted undiscovered parts of Australia, and by October 1846 had visited every inhabited continent. He did all this despite being completely blind. How did Holman travel the world when any sort of international exploration was exceptionally dangerous? Learn how in this episode.   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

Few will dispute that China has one of the most ancient cultures on earth, but is there any truth to the claim—made by many residents of China—that there is a 5,000-year-long line of continuity in its culture? Would an inhabitant of present-day China from five millennia ago really have anything in common with a bullet-train-riding businessman from Guangzhou drinking a Starbucks while on his way to Beijing? The answer, as always, is tricky, but there is some truth to the claim. Or at least more truth to the claim than almost any other culture could make.   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

Why do Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks? Are we trying to take the National Anthem as literally as possible, creating “Bombs Bursting in Air”? Or is there another reason? It turns out that much of the festival trappings of the Fourth of July date way further back than most realize. They even predate the founding of the United States. Many of the most cherished "American" traditions go back to Renaissance Italy. Some even extend back to Imperial China. However, hot dogs are still pure U, S, and A. Nothing can change that.   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

Probably the most contentious—and politicized—issue in history has to do with the origins of the nation of Israel. That's because the heart of the historical debate is who is the “rightful” owner of the land: The Israelis or the Palestinians? Believe me, I lived in the Middle East, and this issue can easily set people off for hours. Some say Jewish residents of Israel are recent arrivals whole stole the land from its rightful Palestinian inhabitants. Opponents say that Jewish residents have a rightful 5,000-year-old claim to the land, and opposition to Israel has its roots in anti-Semitism. David Brog has decided to tackle this issue head-on in his new book Reclaiming Israel’s History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace. He admits to Israel’s “sins both large and small,” but argues that in any fair-minded analysis these have been far outweighed by Israel’s commitment to Western values, including freedom, democracy, and human rights. In this episode we discuss The presence of Jewish people in the Land of Israel for over the last 3,000 years and their movement to Europe and beyond How modern Jewish immigration to Palestine did not displace Arabs but instead sparked an Arab population boom The creation of Israeli and Palestinian identity in the modern-era and how national identity gets politicized What the right and left get wrong about the Israeli-Palestinian debate How lives are literally at stake based on whether the history of this region can be recovered   RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE David's book: Reclaiming Israel’s History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace   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

  Any fan of Shakespeare knows how much the English language has changed over the last 400 years. A student of Chauncer knows even better. A brave student of Beowulf knows almost better than anyone else. You literally have to be a scholar to read "English" of 1,000 years ago. But are there any languages that haven't changed to this degree? Languages that a normal citizen can pick up a text from a millenium ago and understand perfectly? The answer is yes. Listen to this episode to learn which one. 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

Rome didn’t fall in 476 when Romulus, the last of the Roman emperors in the west, was overthrown by the Germanic leader Odoacer, who became the first Barbarian to rule in Rome. Nor did it fall in 1453 when the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople. Depending on how you define ‘Rome,’ it didn’t fall until the Napoleonic Wars. Or the end of hostilities following World War I. If you visit Turkey, you might meet somebody who still calls himself a Roman. Listen to this episode 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

The horrors of the Holocaust are as vivid now as they were in 1945 when the world discovered the horrors of Nazi Germany's atrocities. But why did Hitler hate the Jews so vehemently? Furthermore, why did he shift precious resources away from the war effort and toward the erradication of an ethnic group that posed no military threat to Nazi Germany? To answer this question I called up Richard Weikart, a scholar of 20th century Europe and author of the book Hitler's Religion. Check out Richard’s book by clicking here. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard Weikart is a professor of modern European history at California State University, Stanislaus, and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He has published numerous scholarly articles, as well as five previous books including The Death of Humanity: and the Case for Life (Regnery, 2016) and From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. He has appeared in several documentaries, including Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In addition to scholarly journals, his work has been featured and discussed in the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, Christianity Today, World magazine, BreakPoint, Citizen, various radio shows, and other venues. Weikart lives in Snelling, CA, with his wife and children. 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

By the late 1800s Europe's Great Powers controlled nearly 80 percent of the African continent. Much research has analyzed the brutal aspects of its colonization—particularly in the Belgian Congo—but less on why Europe colonized Africa. Were the reasons only for financial exploitation or was there another reason? Listen to this episode 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

In today's episode we are possibly going to bite off more than we can chew... by discussing the entire history of Russia. OK, maybe not the entire history of Russia. But we will discuss how invasions of Russia over the centuries have shaped its psyche today, and even explain Vladimir Putin's rationale for invading the Crimea. Thankfully we have a guest who can guide us through our figurative Siberia. He is Mark Schauss, host of the Russian Rulers in History Podcast. Mark has spent over 200 episodes looking at all rulers in Russia's history, from Rurik the Varangian Chieftan who founded Kievan Rus in the 800s to Vladimir Putin. Mark thinks that the dozens of invasions of Russian — the Viking raids of Kiev, the Mongol Raids in the 1200s, the Ottoman invasions of the 1500-1700s, the Napoleonic Invasion of the early 1800s, and Nazi Germany's invasion of 1941 — created the Russian psyche of today. That is why Russia invading its neighbors might seem aggressive to other nations but perfectly natural to a nation that spent much of its existence under threat of being swallowed up. But Mark notes that the constant flow of people in and out of Russia had good consequences as well. Catherine the Great, fearful of smallpox killing her population in the 1700s, had them inoculated on a massive scale. News of the program's success spread around the world, even reaching George Washington and prompting him to inoculate American soldiers in a similar way. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Russian Rulers in History Podcast Russian Rulers in History podcast in iTunes ABOUT MARK Mark's podcast has been downloaded more than 2 million times. He is also an internationally known lecturer on environmental and nutritional health issues and has spoken in North America, Asia, South America, Europe and soon in Australia. 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

Depression is not a modern phenomenon. Take the example of Abraham Lincoln. He is an unusual psychological case study. He was both chronically melancholy, and yet among the strongest people in history. Here's a quick rundown: Lincoln lost his one true love and married Mary Todd, a mentally unstable woman who abused him. He loved his sons deeply but one died very young, and another (Willie) died at 11 in the White House. This almost brokeLincoln. But the same philosophical-psychological outlook caused Lincoln to be both depressed and incredibly strong. Learn about how depression plagued the past as much as it does the present.   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

The ancients had abilities that have fallen into near-complete disuse in the modern age. Consider memorization. The average peasant of 1,000 years ago had 10x more memorized than you ever will. They cultivated the skill in the ars memoriae, who were living databases of information. Plus they were infinitely more handy than us. Can you sew your own clothing? That one is easy. What about making your own shoes, butchering an animal, removing its skin, tanning the leather, then rending the fat to make candles? If you can answer ‘yes’ to all those things, then you are merely average for a medieval peasant.   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

Today's question is a tricky one that has to do with global politics, colonialism, and threatens to enter the minefield of race. Why do so many African nations sit at the bottom of global development indexes? The answer has nothing to do with race—consider Botswana, one of the great economic successes of the past 50 years. After all, half a century ago people were asking why every nation run by Asians is poor. Rather, the issue has to do with harsh environmental conditions of the African continent, its lack of natural harbors that makes water transport difficult, and the growing pains that all young nation-states experience.   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

Did the greatest king who ever lived ever live? That's a tricky question. The fabled first king of England, the mythological figure associated with Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, may have been based on a 5th to 6th century Roman-affiliated military leader who staved off invading Saxons. Learn how the legend of Arthur (and Merlin) grew over the centuries and became popularized by such writers as Geoffrey of Monmouth until he was practically synonymous with England herself by the High Middle Ages. 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