History Unplugged Podcast

James Cook Mapped the Globe Before Dying At the Hands of Hawaiians Who Once Worshipped Him

American Anarchists: The Original Domestic Extremists

100 Years Before Ford v. Ferrari, a Horse Breeder Revolutionized Thoroughbred Racing Through a Similar Obsession With Progress

Western Rome Fell Due to Germanic Immigration, Mass Inflation, and a Bloated Bureaucracy

Why the Atomic Bombing of Japan is as Justified in 2025 as it was in 1945

Surviving the Siege of Leningrad with Sawdust Bread and Iron Determination

Depression-Era Governor Huey Long Wanted to Confiscate Individual Fortunes Over $1 Million, Possibly Leading to His 1935 Assassination

Rope Equals Fire as Humanity’s Most Important Invention: It Allowed Hunting Mammoths and Building Pyramids

The Scopes Trial Was Entirely Orchestrated But Became an Unintended 1920s Culture War Touchpoint

The Panda Was First Discovered By Theodore Roosevelt’s Sons During a 9-Month Expedition in Himalayan China

How Do We Really Know What Happened in the Past When Many Historians Were Propagandists and AI is Fabricating Everything Else?

Eugénie de Montijo: The Spanish Empress Who Built Modern Paris and is Blamed For Imperial France’s Downfall

John Adams: The Most Influential Yet Overlooked Founding Father?

Why Thomas More -- Henry VIII’s Hatchet Man and Heretic Hunter -- Was Himself Executed For Heresy After the English Reformation

Don’t Look to 1903s Germany to Understand American Populism. Look to 1830s New York Revivals Instead.

Operation Barbarossa Saw Millions of POW Executions, Civilian Murders, and Starvation Deaths

Pistol Duels Existed Across the 19th-Century World, But Only the Chaos of the American West Produced Gunfighters

Rome Definitively Eclipsed Greece in 197 BC By Making the Alexandrian Phalanx/Cavalry Obsolete

Exploring the Wreckage of the Britannic (the Titanic’s Sister Ship) and Discovering Why It Sunk in 50 Minutes

Did Tariffs Make America a Manufacturing Powerhouse Or Trigger Economic Misery and Stifle Global Trade?ads)

Alan Pinkerton: The Private Detective Who Saved Lincoln’s Life and Built America’s Contract Security State

MacArthur’s Plans to Drop 50 Nuclear Bombs During the Korean War

The Many Ways That Rome Never Fell and Lives On Today

Hooves of History: How Horses Created Ancient Warfare, Built the Silk Road, and Became the Dividing Line Between Nobleman and Peasant

Moonshining Survived (and Thrived) At Least Two Decades After Prohibition Ended

How to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer

How American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship

Did WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands?

How a British Governor of Virginia Raised an Ex-Slave Regiment in 1776 to Fight Patriots and Triggered the Revolutionary War

How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader

Microbes Were Discovered in the 1600s. Why It Take 200 Years For Doctors To Start Washing Their Hands?

From Einstein’s Chalkboard to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Test: The 50-Year Path to the Atomic Bomb

Japan’s Desperate Air Battles Against the US in the Final Months of WW2

D-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944

Pilgrimages Involved Penitent Marches, Visiting Holy Places, and Watching Drunken Emperors Go on Chariot Rides

Britain Learned How to Set Up Its Global Empire on a Tiny Bermudan Island

The Hatfield-McCoy Feud Started Over a Pig and Nearly Escalated Into a Regional War

The 1845 Potato Blight Struck Across Northern Europe. Why Did Only Ireland Starve?

A Simple Tennessee Preacher Transformed Abolitionism from a Deeply Unpopular Radical Movement to a Centrist Cause

How Benjamin Franklin’s Stove Invention Kept Early America From Freezing

Roman Churches Had No Involvement in Marriage. How Did It Become a Holy Sacrament by the Middle Ages?

How a Mess Cook Saved Dozens of Sailors from Shark Infested Waters Off the Coast of Guadalcanal

Humanity’s Past Suggests We Only Have 10,000 Years to Change or Go Extinct

The 16th Century Ottomans Nearly Conquered Europe. Why Did European Kingdoms Make So Many Alliances With Them?

Fort Stanwix and the Forgotten Revolutionary War Siege That Convinced France to Help the US

Enough is Enuf, Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell

Did Haiti’s First and Last King Squander the Revolution or Succeed in Underappreciated Ways?

What Ancient Greeks and Victorian Explorers Thought Was at the North Pole

Nothing Healed America’s Wounds After the Civil War Like Baseball

How an 1870 Murder Created San Francisco