History Unplugged Podcast

Did technological and social change happen fast enough in the 2,000-year period between 1000 BC and AD that a time traveller would notice he were transported from one to the other?

Why has a puny strip of sea stopped invading armies almost as effectively as the Atlantic Ocean has for America? Because staging a successful amphibious assault is extremely hard.

Learn about King Musa, 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 or a barely-remembered high school history lesson on the U.S. Cold War policy of Soviet containment. For this reason, some historians have dubbed it the Forgotten War.To explore this forgotten war, I talked with Rachel Reed, who's written a new book on the conflict. But she doesn't write about the politics or military tactics of the war. Instead, she focuses on the four-legged heroes that supported the war efforts. Reed’s book K-9 Korea: The Untold Story of America’s War Dogs in the Korean War is an account of canines working side-by-side with servicemen to perform sentry duty on critical supply and weapons depots.When the 8125th Sentry Dog Detachment landed in Incheon, Korea, the soldiers—man and dog— were unsure of the fates that awaited them. The human warriors soon learned that their lives depended on their canine companions for safety and strength to face unimaginable situations. 

Want to conquer Europe in the Middle Ages? You need plenty of knights mounted on steeds to launch a full cavalry charge. Once they take out their enemies in pitched battle, you need engineers to launch a siege on your enemies castles.Want to conquer Europe in 1600? Everything has changed. Cannon makes castles obsolete. Firearms and pikes have displaced knights as the dominant force on the battlefield. The scale of war has also grown from a few thousand soldiers on the battlefield to tens or even hundreds of thousands.To explain this change is Patrick Wyman of the Tides of History Podcast. Patrick is a medievalist by training and explores how events in the far past still have influence today.

How do we separate myth from fact in ancient history? How do we do this when it comes down to one of the most beloved and well-known stories of all time: The Nativity? Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a Catholic priest from Greenville, South Carolina, is attempting to do that. He has set out on a quest to investigate whether there is a kernel of historical truth beneath the many legends of the Magi story. Now he thinks he has found it. The Magi were real, but they weren't from the “Orient.” Nor were they kings. Rather, they were a political delegation from a mostly-forgotten kingdom to the south called the Nabateans. And they set out for Israel for reasons both religious and political. It wasn't an easy project for Fr. Longenecker to research. While he was always fascinated by the nativity story, he knew that plenty of legendary embellishment had filled in the gaps. Matthew's bare bones account only speaks of “wise men from the East” who see a star and journey to Jerusalem, winding up in Bethlehem to pay homage to the newborn Jesus Christ before returning to their country by a different route. There's no mention of three kings, lavish costumes, camels, nor where they came from in the biblical account. No start leads them through the desert to Bethlehem. They aren't even called kings (?!) Furthermore, most Biblical scholars outright reject that the magi were historical at all. The Catholic Bible scholar Raymond Brown in his monumental study, The Birth of the Messiah notes that it was a mark of modernist orthodoxy not to believe in the historicity of the Magi story. Fr. Longenecker found that as it turns out that because of scholars' assumption that the Magi story was a fairy tale very few scholars had taken the time to investigate thoroughly the possible identity of the wise men. His research brought him into contact with new technologies which shed light on the subject. Some fresh archeological findings and new understandings from the Dead Sea Scrolls also contributed to the quest. As it turns out, it is perfectly probable that there were wise men who had the motive, the means and the method to pay homage to Jesus Christ just as Matthew recorded. The simple truth is that Matthew’s account is factual not fictional. His book The Mystery of the Magi—The Quest for the True Identity of the Three Wise Men will be published next Advent by Regnery Press. In this episode we answer the following questions: Did the wise men ride camels? What was the star of Bethlehem? Were they really called Balthasar, Melchoir and Kaspar? Are their relics preserved in Cologne Cathedral? Where do Anthony and Cleopatra fit into the story? Why did they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh? Was there really a magical star that led them across the desert?

Being a historical consultant for movies is never easy. How do you get the period details right while keeping it contained within an interesting narrative? But being a historical consultant about one of the most recognizable figure in history is even harder. That’s why today’s guest Catherine Clinton had her work cut out for her.For the 2012 Steve Spielberg movie “Lincoln,” Clinton—a U.S. academic historian and expert on Mary Lincoln—was consulted by filmmakers over costume details and details about the Lincolns’ lives.In this episode we discussPopular misconceptions about Mary Todd that historians know is falseWhether her reputation as a hellcat or maniac is deserved, and if not, why it became distortedChallenges of portraying historical fact while cutting necessary corners for a 2-hour film narrativeWhat “Lincoln” portrayed about Abraham and Mary Todd that other film makers have missedLessons from the life of Abraham and Mary Todd we should remember today

Jazz is the most American of musical genres. But its origins are shrouded in mystery. Some like to think that Louis Armstrong and his bluesmen friends were sitting at a bar in New Orleans, when a solar eclipse and Haley's Comet occurred at the same time, causing the musical troupe to start using a swing rhythm. But musicologist Bill McKemy thinks that the origins of jazz can be traced more directly to one man. That is Nathaniel Clark Smith: The Melchizedek of Jazz. Smith was African-American musician, composer, and music educator in the United States during the early decades of the 1900s. Over the next 30 years he would lead bands in Chicago, Wichita, Kansas City, the Tuskegee Institute, and in St. Louis. He was an important educator for many of the prominent early Jazz musicians from Kansas City, Chicago, and St. Louis. And man was his life hard. To make ends meet he played in a minstrel show in the 1890s. He threatened lynching by having Tuskegee students play classical music and other forms of “non-black” music, against the wishes of Booker T. Washington. He risked his life to embrace the slowly emerging new opportunities for non-whites in the United States.  

Language not only defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators, but it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries. For example... How did different languages come to be? Why isn't there just a single language? How does a language change, and when it does, is that change indicative of decay or growth? How does a language become extinct?   In today's episode I speak with Dr. John McWhorter, a linguist from Columbia University. He, addresses these and other issues, such as how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago has evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today. We go broad and deep. For the broad, we explore language families, starting with Indo-European, comprising languages from India to Ireland including English. Other language families discussed are Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Bantu, and Native American. This gets us into the heated debate over the first language. For the deep, we get into pidgins and creoles. When people learn a language quickly without being explicitly taught, they develop a pidgin version of it. Then if they need to use this pidgin on an everyday basis it becomes a real language, a creole. Some people argue that Black English is a creole, and Professor McWhorter really gets into this issue.    

In the wreckage of World War 1, Germany was slapped with a war reparations bill worth billions and the loss of much of its land. This and many other reasons launched the Second World War. 

The reasons for the Great War go way beyond the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Learn about the causes of one of humanity's most vicious wars.

Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with war elephants is considered one of the most daring move of the Punic Wars. But is it professionally accepted among historians that he actually crossed the Alps, and if so, is there any physical evidence?

When did the ancient Greeks stop making armies or supplying fighting men? One moment they're beating up the the Persian empire and conquering the known world, and the next, they're slave tutors for the Romans or philosophers in their major cities.  Learn about why the Greeks dominated the Eastern Mediterranean in the ancient world and why their star fell against the Romans.

You and your ancestor from 1,000 years ago have almost nothing in common. Your clothes are different. Your worship rituals are different. Your thoughts about the opposite sex are definitely different. Almost the only similarity is that both of you are driven to obtain food. In fact, one could say that civilization itself began in the quest for food. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: “Gastronomy governs the whole life of man.” In this episode, Professor Ken Albala of the University of the Pacific puts the subject of food and its importance in history on the table. Ken has studied widely on the types of cuisine that would be featured at a Roman feast, a medieval banquet, or a Renaissance Italian civic celebration. He’s ground Italian flour to make the sort of bread one would eat in Pompeii. He’s made stewed rabbit in a homemade clay pot the way an Elizabethean peasant would. He hasn’t tried field-mouse-on-a-stick (a popular Roman delicacy) but probably not for lack of trying. In this episode we discuss how Roman food reflected social rank, wealth, and sophistication; why the Middle Ages produced some of history’s most outlandish and theatrical presentations of food, such as gilded boars’ heads, “invented” creatures, mixing parts of different animals; and cooked peacocks spewing flames; modern foody gastronomy; and finally, one of my favorite desserts, Turkish Chicken pudding.

The Electoral college is one of the most confusing—and, after the 2016 election, contentious—parts of American democracy. After losing two of the past five presidential races in the Electoral College (EC), Democrats are determined to never let it happen again. And many Americans—on both the left and the right—find it to be a confusing and antiquated system we would do well to get rid of.   But others think it's an indispensible part of American democracy. One of them is today's guest, Tara Ross, a legal scholar and author of The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule. Tara argues the EC is neither outdated nor unfair—and the stability of the United States depends on it.   She argues the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. They ingeniously balanced the will of the majority and the interests of minorities, avoiding the instability that has bedeviled every other democracy.   In this interview we discuss:   Why the Electoral College safeguards national unity How the Electoral College prevents political crises in tight elections How the Founders came up with the Electoral College—and why they thought it was so important Why the Electoral Colege was meant to be more important than the popular vote Why the Electoral College doesn’t favor one party over the other Why the Electoral College is inappropriately—and incorrectly—labeled a “relic of slavery”       ABOUT TARA ROSS   Tara Ross has spent much of her legal career studying and defending the Electoral College. She is the author of two previous books, Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College and We Elect a President: The Story of Our Electoral College and her tutorial “Do You Understand the Electoral College?” is one of Prager University’s most popular videos ever, with more than fifty million views. She has written for the National Law Journal, USA Today, the Washington Times, National Review, and the Weekly Standard.   RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders' Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule  Tara Ross's website