History Unplugged Podcast

Frederick Bruce Thomas was born in 1872 to former slaves and spent his youth on his family’s prosperous farm in Mississippi. However, a resentful, rich white planter's attempt to steal their land forced them to escape to Memphis. And when Frederick's father was brutally murdered by another black man, the family disintegrated. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick went to London in 1894, then traveled throughout Europe, and decided to go to Russia in 1899, which was highly unusual for a black American at the time. Frederick found no color line in Russia and made Moscow his home. During the next nineteen years he renamed himself “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas,” married twice, acquired a mistress, took Russian citizenship, and by dint of his talents, hard work, charm, and guile became one of the city’s richest and most famous owners of variety theaters and restaurants. The Bolshevik Revolution ruined him and he barely escaped with his life and family to Turkey in 1919. Starting with just a handful of dollars out of the millions he had lost, Frederick made a second fortune in Constantinople by opening a series of celebrated nightclubs that introduced jazz to Turkey. However, because of the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and his own extravagance, he fell on hard times, was thrown into debtor's prison, and died in Constantinople in 1928.Although widely known during his lifetime, Frederick Thomas is now virtually forgotten. The few references to him that have been published during the past eighty years are all brief and often wrong. Vladimir Alexandrov, today’s guest and author of the book “The Black Russian,” researched Frederick Thomas’s life and times exhaustively in archives and libraries throughout the United States, as well as in Russia, France, England, and Turkey, and found a great deal of information about him. Frederick Thomas is fascinating because of the extraordinary way he escaped the constraints of his humble origins and being black in the United States, because of how his life went from rags to riches to ruin not once but twice as a consequence of revolutionary transformations in two exotic societies, and because of the contrasting roles that race played in his life abroad--from being invisible in Russia, to returning to haunt him in Turkey, when he most needed help and the American government turned him down.

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 pandemics, climate change, mass migration, and controversial technological changes, just as we do now in 2021. 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, the Prophet 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.

At the beginning of World War II, military planners set out to form the most ruthless, skilled, and effective force the world had ever seen. The U.S. Marines were already the world’s greatest fighters, but leadership wanted a select group to conduct special operations at the highest level in the Pacific theater. And so the Marine Raiders were born.These young men, the cream of the crop, received matchless training in the arts of war. Marksmen, brawlers, and tacticians, the Marine Raiders could accomplish their objective before the enemy even knew they were there.Yet even though one of their commanders was President Roosevelt’s son, they have largely been forgotten. To explore their legacy, we are joined by Carole Engle Avriett, author of “Marine Raiders: The True Story of the Legendary WWII Battalions.”We discuss:- The personal narratives of four men who served as Marine Raiders- Frontline accounts of the Raiders’ most important engagements- The explanation for their obscurity, despite their earlier fame

South Africa, despite abolishing apartheid in the 1990s, still stays very fraught with racial tension, making the United States' experience of 2020 pale in comparison. A series of settlements and wars from over a hundred years ago and over hundreds of years still ripple South Africa today with their effects. But South Africa didn't become what it is today by accident, though Europeans did settle it by accident ... at least at first.Over the 18th & 19th centuries, white settlements expanded quite intentionally across southern Africa... but quite chaotically too. Those European settlers weren't the only ones expanding in southern Africa. The Zulu tribe rapidly expanded and "adopted" other tribal members who they didn't annihilate. These clashes often didn't follow racial lines, and nor were they always over resources. Most of these clashes remain forgotten by most of the world. And even the so-called Boer War remains extremely misunderstood. Today's guest Michael Buster hosts the Forgotten Wars Podcast, a more than 40-chapter podcast with the first season focusing on these clashes over control of southern Africa with the bulk of the season focusing on Anglo-Boer Wars, fought in the 1880s and early 1900s.Some have mischaracterized the Anglo-Boer War as the British Empire's Vietnam War, while others have drawn parallels between it and US invasion of Iraq in 2003, or just another war over natural resources (in this case gold and diamonds). But the ripple effects and implications of this regional war go way beyond the boundaries of South Africa.We discuss:- How the British botched abolition in the Cape Colony and sowed the seeds for many future wars. We contrast this approach with the approach Abraham Lincoln took to abolition in slave state(s) that stayed in the Union.- How did this war helped "make" Winston Churchill? His time as a POW led to to lucrative book sales that helped him fund his first campaign and win a seat in the House of Commons- Whether the British really invented concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War- How to win a war fought thousands of miles from your motherland.

Kim Philby—the master British spy and notorious KGB double agent—had an incredible amount of influence on the Cold War. He became the mentor, and later, mortal enemy, of James Angleton, who would eventually lead the CIA. Philby was also in the running at one point to lead MI6, which would have made the Cold War very different.Philby's life and career has inspired an entire literary genre: the spy novel of betrayal. Philby was one of the leaders of the British counter-intelligence efforts, first against the Nazis, then against the Soviet Union. He was also the KGB's most valuable double-agent, so highly regarded that his image is on the postage stamps of the Russian Federation even today.To delve into Philby’s life is today’s guest, Michael Holzman, author of the new book “Spies and Traitors: Kim Philby, James Angleton, and the Friendship and Betrayal that Would Shape M16, the CIA, and the Cold War.”Before he was exposed, Philby was the mentor of James Jesus Angleton, one of the central figures in the early years of the CIA who became the long-serving chief of the counter-intelligence staff of the Agency.James Angleton and Kim Philby were friends for six years, or so Angleton thought. Then they were enemies for the rest of their lives. This is the story of their intertwined careers and a betrayal that would have dramatic and irrevocable effects on the Cold War and US-Soviet relations, and have a direct effect on the shape and culture of the CIA in the latter half of the twentieth century.Spanning the globe, from London and Washington DC, to Rome and Istanbul, Spies and Traitors gets to the heart of one of the most important and flawed personal relationships in modern history.

This is an excerpt from an episode of This American President, a great history podcast that is the newest member of the Parthenon Podcast Network. You can find it at www.spreaker.com/show/this-american-president or wherever you listen to podcasts.He might look like an old man on the one-dollar bill, but George Washington was once a bona fide action hero. This episode explores our first president’s legendary exploits during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

The biggest and most controversial historical debate in 2021 is the 1619 Project. Released last year in a special issue of the New York Times Magazine, it is a collection of articles which "aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the United States'] national narrative.” More specifically, it claims that the United States is fundamentally and irrevocably racist. Slavery, not the Constitution or 1776, are at the core of American identity. It reviews slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated with the understanding that it must soon evaporate, but as the prize that the Constitution went out of its way to secure and protect. Specific claims include the following: the Revolutionary War was fought above all to preserve slavery, that capitalism was birthed on the plantation, and features of American society like traffic jams or affinity for sugar are connected to slavery and segregation.The project was condemned by historians from left to right. Princeton historian Allen Guelzo said that “the 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory. And like all conspiracy theories, the 1619 Project announces with a eureka! that it has acquired the explanation to everything.” Fellow Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has circulated a letter objecting to the project, and the letter acquired signatories like James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes, all leading scholars in their field who object to very basic factual inaccuracies in the project.Despite the 1619 Project’s numerous historical inaccuracies, the project has spread like wildfire. The creator Nicole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for Commentary. Hundreds of newspapers have endorsed it. Most concerning, public schools began incorporating into their curricula early this year. The Pulitzer Center helped turn the 1619 Project into a curriculum that’s now taught in more than 4,500 schools across the nation. It threatens to destroy civics education as it has been taught for generations in K-12 education. History teachers, under such a program, would abandon the narrative of the Civil War, emancipation, and the Civil Rights movement. Instead, they would ask students how societal structures perpetuate the enslavement of black people.Today’s guest is Dr. Mary Grabar, author of “Debunking The 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America.”She provides an extensive look at the divisive and false tactics used to associate America with the exact opposite values of its founding. This episode is different because I am explicitly endorsing the argument of this author and denouncing the 1619 project. I almost never do this because I don’t want to tell you, the listener, how to think. Rather, I let a guest present his or her arguments, make the case as best as possible, play devil’s advocate when needed, but ultimately provide the best historical raw material so that you, the audience, and be the judge.I’m making an exception with the 1619 project because I think the arguments are so poorly constructed, juvenile, and political in nature that they don’t deserve the dignity of being taken seriously. Normally, I would ignore such poorly crafted arguments, in the same way that I wouldn’t have on a guest who says that aliens built the pyramids, or that a German U-Boat sunk the Titanic. At the risk of being political, I think that the 1619 project is at the same intellectual level as UFO conspiracy theories. The problem is that it has elite support. But the effects of 1619 are seeping into public school curricula. The date of 1619 is entering public consciousness. This is only because of politics, because the political claims of the project line up with the political beliefs of certain teachers, Pulitzer committee members, and others.

It's no coincidence that the bird we eat for Thanksgiving and a Middle Eastern country are both called Turkey. One was named after the other, and it all has to do with a 500-year-old story of emerging global trade, mistaken identity, foreign language confusion, and how the turkey took Europe by storm as a must-have status symbol for the ultra-wealthy.

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.

The British East India Company is perhaps the most powerful corporation in history. It was larger than several nations and acted as emperor of the Indian subcontinent, commanding a private army of 260,000 soldiers (twice the size of the British Army at the time). The East India Company controlled trade between Britian and India, China, and Persia, reaping enormous profits, flooding Europe with tea, cotton, and spices. Investors earned returns of 30 percent or more.With SpaceX building reusable rockets and drawing up plans to colonize Mars, could we be seeing a new British East India Company for the 21st century? The idea isn't that far-fetched. In the terms of service for its Starlink satellite internet, one clause reads the following: "For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement."To answer the question of whether or not space tycoons will be able to control the Moon or Mars is today's guest is Ram Jakhu, an associate professor at McGill University and a researcher on international space law.In this episode we discuss:-- How the East India Company’s control over India foreshadows SpaceX’s control over Mars and what happens when a corporation effectively controls a nation (or in this case, a planet)-- Laws that apply to seasteading and their relevance to space colonies-- Why some military strategists think space will inevitably be the new warfighting domain, and whether or not this is true-- The past and future of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, an international treaty that prevents any country from claiming sovereignty over outer space or any celestial body

The history of exploration and establishment of new lands, science and technologies has always entailed risk to the health and lives of the explorers. Yet, when it comes to exploring and developing the high frontier of space, the harshest frontier ever, the highest value is apparently not the accomplishment of those goals, but of minimizing, if not eliminating, the possibility of injury or death of the humans carrying them out.To talk about the need for accepting risk in the name of discovery – whether during Magellan’s voyage in which 90 percent of the crew died or in the colonization of Mars – is aerospace engineer and science writer Rand Simberg, author of Safe Is Not An Option: Overcoming The Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive That Is Killing Our Expansion Into Space.For decades since the end of Apollo, human spaceflight has been very expensive and relatively rare (about 500 people total, with a death rate of about 4%), largely because of this risk aversion on the part of the federal government and culture. From the Space Shuttle, to the International Space Station, the new commercial crew program to deliver astronauts to it, and the regulatory approach for commercial spaceflight providers, our attitude toward safety has been fundamentally irrational, expensive and even dangerous, while generating minimal accomplishment for maximal cost.Rand explains why this means that we must regulate passenger safety in the new commercial spaceflight industry with a lighter hand than many might instinctively prefer, that NASA must more carefully evaluate rewards from a planned mission to rationally determine how much should be spent to avoid the loss of participants, and that Congress must stop insisting that safety is the highest priority, for such insistence is an eloquent testament to how unimportant they and the nation consider the opening of this new frontier.Can you talk about the dangers of voyages in the Age of Discover, namely Magellan? Marco Polo walking through mountain passes and suffering cold, diseases, and the threat of starvation. Ibn Battuta getting shipwrecked numerous times. Attacked by pirates.Captain Cook was elected a member of theroyal society in 1775, for his geographic discoveries, but also determining a prevention for scurvey.[leeding gums which turn blue-ish purple and feel spongybulging eye ballscorkscrew hair (only in non-infantile scurvy), particularly noticeable on your arms and legsloosened teeth which will eventually fall out in the advanced stages of scurvyfeverswollen legs, particularly swelling over the long bones of your body1.Are there any particular stories of exploration from history that resonate with you and serve as a model of balancing safety with risk-taking? If so, why?2.Walk us through the dangers of the early Space Age. There are notable tragedies, such as Apollo 1, and many failures of the Soviet Space Program, but overall, what was the risk level in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs?3.Take us to the present day. What is the ISS’s approach to safety?4.In what ways is American society far less risk-tolerant, and what do you think brought about this change from the 1960s?5.Future space flights that are privately funded will be given far wider berth on risk than a manned NASA flight. Walk us through your “actuarial table” of balancing risk identification, mitigation, and overall cost.6.Overall, how do you think we should understand safety when it comes to human exploration of space?

The human race is about to go to the stars. Big rockets are being built, and nations and private citizens worldwide are planning the first permanent settlements in space.When we get there, will we know what to do to make those first colonies just and prosperous places for all humans? How do we keep future societies from becoming class segregated, neo-feudal dystopian nightmares (like Blade Runner) and instead become havens of equality and material abundance for all (like Star Trek)? Believe it or not, American colonial history provides us an example of each one.Today’s guest is Robert Zimmerman, author of “Conscious Choice,” which describes the history of the first century of British settlement in North America. That was when those settlers were building their own new colonies and had to decide whether to include slaves from Africa.In New England slavery was vigorously rejected. The Puritans wanted nothing to do with this institution, desiring instead to form a society of free religious families, a society that became the foundation of the United States of American, dedicated to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.In Virginia however slavery was gladly embraced, resulting in a corrupt social order built on power, rule, and oppression.Why the New England citizens were able to reject slavery, and Virginians were not, is the story with direct implications for all human societies, whether they are here on Earth or on the far-flung planets across the universe.

The discovery of the New World irrevocably changed the economy of the Old World. Triangle trade, manufactured goods went from Britain to the Americas, which sent food staples to the Indies, which sent cash crops back to England. It also caused investment dollars to flood into exploration ventures. As far back as the 1500s, tracts of land were sold in Kentucky through British crown land patents, helping fund the Virginia Colony of London, which set up Jamestown. Most importantly, it gave Europe a terra nova where the old social hierarchies no longer mattered. New forms of egalitarianism developed.With the development of cheaper rocketry by Elon Musk and others, something similar is going to happen very soon. Today’s guest, astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin, spells out the potential of these new in a way that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges. A new Triangle Trade will be development between Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Investment dollars will flood into speculative ventures such as asteroid mining. And all sorts of new human societies will be possible.Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars.Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this—to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn’t enough for all.

With private space companies launching rockets, satellites, and people at a record pace, and with the U.S. and other governments committing to a future in space, today’s guest Glenn Harlan Reynolds looks at how we got here, where we’re going, and why it matters for all of humanity. Reynolds is a law professor and former executive vice president of the National Space Society, thinks commercial space is essential to the future.Author of the book “America’s New Destiny in Space,” he discusses America’s future in space, which will be dominated by the private sector rather than the work of government space agencies. We explore how space will inspire innovation, possibly create trillions of dollars in wealth, and pump incredible new energy into human civilization. Reynolds describes three phases of spaceflight in history so far. Visionary (early 20th century), “command-economy,” from the Apollo to the Shuttle eras, and finally, a “sustainable” phase, which he defines as “spaceflight that generates enough economic value to pay its own way.”This means that getting into space has become far cheaper than it used to be, and that it promises to get much cheaper still. This creates immediate possibilities like cheap satellite Internet from SpaceX’s Starlink, but also more exotic technologies: space-based solar power, asteroid mining, and helium-3 extraction from the Moon. Reynolds also talks about what we need to do to bring about this future: little regulation and the government acting as a customer, but otherwise getting out of the way.

No decade transformed Western Civilization like the 1490s. Before then, Europe was a gloomy continent split into factions, ripe for conquest by the Islamic world. It had made no significant advances in science or literature for a century. But after a Spanish caravel named Nina returned to the Old World with news of a startling discovery, the dying embers of the West were fanned back to life. Shipbuilding began at a furious pace. Trade routes to Africa, India, and China quickly opened. At the same time, printing presses spread new ideas about science, religion, and technology across the continent. Literacy rates exploded. Because of the Age of Discovery, for the first time in generations, Europeans had hope in the future.Today, an Age of Discovery 2.0 is upon us. With Elon Musk promising affordable rocket rides to the Moon and Mars within a decade, planetary bodies will be as accessible to humans as the New World was to adventurers in the 1500s.How will the Age of Discovery 2.0 change our civilization the way the first one did five centuries ago?To find the answers, History Unplugged is interviewing historians, scientists, and futurists who have spent decades researching this question. We will learn how:•Spain’s 16th-century global empire was built on the spice trade (cinnamon was worth more than gold) and those same economics will lead to Mars colonization (its stockpiles of deuterium are a key ingredient for cheap fusion power•How slavery was a conscious choice in the American colonies (Virginia embraced it while Puritan New England rejected it) and how the same choices on human rights could make the future a libertarian paradise or a neo-feudal dystopia•How the East India Company’s control over India foreshadows SpaceX’s control over Mars and what happens when a corporation effectively controls a nation (or in this case, a planet).•The labor shortage – and lack of regulation – in off-world colonies will lead to incredible innovation, as did the lack of workers and government restriction in colonial America drove the rise of “Yankee ingenuity’s” wave of inventions.