History Unplugged Podcast

Frederick Douglass made the strongest arguments for abolition in antebellum America because he made the case that abolition was not a mutation of the Founding Father’s vision of America, but a fulfillment of their promises of liberty for all. He had a lot riding on this personally – Douglas was born into slavery in Maryland around 1818, escaped to the North in 1838, and became a renowned public speaker in Europe and the United States, captivating audiences with his powerful oratory and firsthand accounts of enslavement. Initially, in the 1840s, Douglass denounced the United States as a hypocritical nation that failed to uphold its ideals of liberty due to its support of slavery. He was part of the same radical abolitionist faction as William Lloyd Garrison, who publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution in 1854 a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society event, calling it “a covenant with death” and “an agreement with hell” due to its protections for slavery. But by the 1850s, Douglas’s views evolved to see the Constitution as an antislavery document that could be leveraged to fulfill the promise of freedom for all. His transformation reflected a strategic shift, advocating for reform within the system while maintaining his fierce commitment to abolishing slavery and securing equal rights. He was also a critic of Abraham Lincoln who later became friends with the president. Douglass disagreed with Abraham Lincoln's initial hesitancy to prioritize abolition and his gradual approach to emancipation, but agreed with Lincoln's eventual commitment to the Emancipation Proclamation and the use of Black soldiers in the Civil War, seeing these as critical steps toward ending slavery and aligning with the Constitution's promise of liberty. In “Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln,” Jonathan W. White, today’s guest, assembled Frederick Douglass’s most meaningful and poignant statements about Abraham Lincoln, including a dozen newly discovered documents that have not been seen for 160 years. We see the anger Douglass directed at Lincoln throughout much of the Civil War as he moved slowly, but methodically, toward emancipation. Douglass’s writings also reveal how three personal interactions between these two led to powerful feelings of friendship and mutual admiration. After Lincoln’s assassination—as Jim Crow laws spread across the South—Douglass expressed greater appreciation for Lincoln’s statesmanship during the Civil War and praised him as a model for postwar America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social media for thirty minutes? Despite the promise of modern industrialization, many people experience both a scarcity of free time and a disappointment in it. Here to explain why this is today’s guest Gary Cross, author of “Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal.” We discuss a broad historical explanation of why our affluent society does not afford more time away from work and why that time is often unsatisfying. We begin with a survey of the past 250 years to understand the roots of our conception of free time and its use. By the end of the nineteenth century, a common expectation was that industrial innovations would lead to a progressive reduction of work time and a subsequent rise in free time devoted to self-development and social engagement. However, despite significant changes in the early twentieth century, both goals were frustrated, thus leading to the contemporary dilemma. Cross touches on leisure of all kinds, from peasant festivals and aristocratic pleasure gardens to amusement parks, movie theaters and organized sports to internet surfing, and even the use of alcohol and drugs. This wide-ranging cultural and social history explores the industrial-era origins of our modern obsession with work and productivity, but also the historical efforts to liberate time from work and cultivate free time for culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan are known for discoveries, but it was Captain James Cook who made global travel truly possible. Cook was an 18th-century British explorer who mapped vast regions of the Pacific, including New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coast, with unprecedented accuracy. He meticulously conducted soundings to measure ocean depths and created highly detailed maps, providing accurate navigational charts that guided explorers and sailors for generations. His three voyages (1768–1779) also advanced scientific knowledge through detailed observations of astronomy, natural history, and indigenous cultures, earning him enduring recognition as one of history’s greatest navigators. Pacific Islanders literally worshipped him. In January 1779, when he sailed into a volcanic bay known by Hawaiians as “the Pathway of the Gods,” Cook beheld thousands of people seemingly waiting for him on shore. Once he came on land, people prostrated themselves and chanted “Lono,” the name of a Hawaiian deity. Today’s guest is Hampton Sides, author of “The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.” We take a look at Cook’s third and final voyage (1776–1779), detailing his exploration of the Pacific, encounters with indigenous cultures, and tragic death in Hawaii Cook was a brilliant yet complex navigator grappling with the moral and cultural challenges of European exploration in an era of expanding empires.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, government officials launched a decades-long “war on anarchy,” a brutal program of spying, censorship, and deportation that set the foundations of the modern surveillance state. The lawyers who came to the anarchists’ defense advanced groundbreaking arguments for free speech and due process, inspiring the emergence of the civil liberties movement. Today’s guest is Michael Willrich, author of “American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.” We look at this tumultuous era and parallels with contemporary society.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Horse racing was the most popular sport in early America, drawing massive crowds and fueling a cultural obsession with horses’ speed and pedigree. In the early 1800s, every town in America with a few thousand people had a horse racing track, with major cities drawing crowds of up to 50,000. In the midst of this was Alexander Keene Richards (1827–1881), one of the nineteenth century’s most significant Thoroughbred importers and breeders. Richards was like automotive designer Carroll Shelby, Matt Damon’s character in Ford v. Ferrari, who revolutionized the sport by blending innovation with a relentless drive to perfect the breeding and training of Thoroughbreds. Today’s guest is Gary Odell, author of Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards. We explore how Richards traveled thousands of miles on expeditions into the heart of the Syrian desert to obtain Arabian stock of the purest blood. He became the first American to venture into the desert to bargain directly with nomadic tribesmen for their horses. The Civil War interrupted Richards’s equine breeding experiment. After the war, he was bankrupt and spent the rest of his life attempting to rebuild his Thoroughbred facility. But Richards’ willingness to look globally for solutions—traveling to the Middle East for superior bloodlines—parallels today’s international talent scouting and cross-cultural exchanges in sports, fostering a legacy of globalized athletic improvement that shapes how American sports, from horse racing to other disciplines, prioritize scientific innovation and cultural adaptability.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabbled over dwindling scraps of power, two men – former comrades on the battlefield – rose to prominence on opposite sides of the great game of empire. Roman general Flavius Stilicho, the man behind the Roman throne, dedicated himself to restoring imperial glory, only to find himself struggling for his life against political foes. Alaric, King of the Goths, desired to be a friend of Rome, was betrayed by it, and given no choice but to become its enemy. Battling each other to a standstill, these two warriors ultimately overcame their differences in order to save the empire from enemies on all sides. And when Stilicho fell, Alaric took vengeance on Rome, sacking it in 410, triggering the ultimate downfall of the Western Empire. To discuss this critical decade in Western history is Don Hollway, author of “At the Gates of Rome: The Fall of the Eternal City, AD 410.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the question of whether or not those bombings were justified has never been more contentious. That wasn't the case in the immediate aftermath: 85% of the American public approved the decision to bomb the cities in 1945, but this has dropped to 56% in more recent years, particularly among younger generations. Only 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds, versus 70% of those 65 and older—the World War II generation—thought it was justified, because there was no other way that Japan would surrender. But starting in the 1960s, newer generations of historians put forward revisionist histories. They argued that Japan was going to surrender anyway, or they were trying to negotiate a surrender, but the United States ignored them. Alternatively, they would say that the purpose of the atomic bombings was to put the United States and its allies on a strong footing in the opening stages of the Cold War. It would scare Russia and show that it was overwhelmingly overmatched in an arms and technology fight. Today's guest is one of the last nuclear-trained bomber pilots in the Navy, who received training and delved deeply into what exactly to do if he had to drop a nuclear payload on a city, and he spent a lot of time pondering these very questions. His name is Lou Casabianca, and he's the author of the book “Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Invasion of Japan: Case Closed.” He argues the decision to drop the bombs was the right one, and it's not a muddled issue. Incontrovertibly putting forth the case that, after all these decades since the bombings, the justification is largely the same as those made in 1945. We answer all the common objections to the dropping of the atomic bombs, what would have happened if they hadn't been used and the United States had to undertake an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and why these questions still matter today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tantalizingly close late that year, but Hitler paused to avoid costly urban fighting. Determined to starve Leningrad into submission, what followed was a winter of unimaginable suffering for ordinary citizens and defenders alike. First-hand accounts from Soviet and German soldiers, many never previously published, together with those of the civilians trapped in the city detail the relentless specter of death which defined life in and around Leningrad. Today’s guest is Prit Buttar, author of “To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42.” Personal vignettes give a glimpse into the reality of life in a city under siege. The teenage volunteer climbers, weak from hunger, scaling the slender spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress to shroud it in camouflage as the German bombers circle overhead like vultures. Or the soldier trombonist completing a long day on the front line to perform Shostakovich’s epic Seventh Symphony alongside a starving and sickly orchestra – an act of defiance broadcast to defenders and attackers alike.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The most radical piece of legislation in the 20th century was Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Plan,” a bold proposal to confiscate individual fortunes exceeding $1 million to fund healthcare, free college education, and a guaranteed minimum income for families struggling through the Great Depression—a plan so radical it sparked theories that his 1935 assassination was orchestrated to silence his challenge to the economic elite. From his early days as a plain-speaking lawyer to his transformative tenure as governor and U.S. senator, Long’s media mastery, colorful antics—like coaching LSU football from the sidelines and delivering drunken speeches—and relentless fight against oligarchies cemented his reputation as the greatest politician of the 20th century. His influence on Roosevelt’s New Deal and parallels to modern figures like Donal Trump and Bernike Sanders reveal a recurring pattern of populist fervor in American politics. Join Scott as he discusses these themes with Thomas E. Patterson, author of “American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana, to uncover how Long’s vision continues to resonate today.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“‘Rope!’ muttered Sam[wise Gamgee]. ‘I knew I’d want it, if I hadn’t got it!’” Sam knew in the Lord of the Rings that the quest would fail without rope, but he was inadvertently commenting on how civilization owes its existence to this three-strand tool. Humans first made rope 50,000 years ago and one of its earliest contributions to the rise of civilization was as a tool for domesticating animals for milk, meat, and work. ncient Egyptians were experts at making strong, three-strand rope from the halfa grass along the banks of the Nile. Rope allowed them to haul two-and-a-half ton limestone blocks to build the pyramids. They also used rope to tie together the planks of their graceful vessels that sailed without the need of a single nail. The Austronesian peoples spread across the islands of the Pacific in the most impressive and daring series of oceanic voyages in human history. And they did it using fast catamaran and outrigger boats held together with coconut fiber rope. Today’s guest is Tim Queeny, author of Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization. We look at the past, present, and future of this critical piece of technology.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.