History Unplugged Podcast

The Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War remains one of the most ambitious yet least talked about military ventures of the 20th century. Coinciding with the end of the first World War, some 180,000 troops from several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Romania, among others, were sent to fight alongside Russian “Whites” against the Red Army. Despite one victory for the Allied troops – independence for the Latvians and the Estonians – the two-year long attempt at reversing the 1917 Russian Revolution ended in humiliating defeat. To explore this crucial event of the early 20th century is today’s guest, Anna Reid, author of “A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War.” What was originally aimed to prevent Germany from exploiting the power vacuum in Eastern Europe left by the Russian Revolution ultimately morphed into the Allies’ gamble to destroy Communist ideology. It was a mixture of good intentions and self-delusion, flag-waving and empty promises, cover-ups, exaggerations, and downright lies from politicians.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During World War II, the U.S. and Japan were locked in bitter hatred, fueled by propaganda portraying each other as ruthless enemies, exemplified by dehumanizing "Tokyo Woe" posters in the U.S. and Japanese depictions of Americans as barbaric invaders. After the war, the feelings seemed to turn 180 degrees overnight. By the early 1950s, American servicemen in the occupying forces learned about Japanese tea ceremonies and traditions during the U.S. occupation, fostering cultural appreciation. By the 1950s, dishes like teriyaki and sukiyaki became popular in America, with Kyu Sakamoto’s 1963 hit song “Sukiyaki” topping U.S. charts, signaling a growing fascination with Japanese culture. This led the way to the Japanese automotive and electronics invasion a decade later, with brands like Nikon, Canon, and Toyota crushing the domestic market. How did sentiments between the nations change so quickly? Much of it has to do with the success of the American occupation of Japan after the war, which rebuilt Japan’s economy and fostered mutual respect. To explain this period is today’s guest, Christopher Harding, author of “A Short History of Japan.” We look at Japan’s own view of its past, the transformative policies of General Douglas MacArthur’s administration that democratized and modernized Japan, the role of cultural exchanges in softening mutual perceptions, and how Japan’s rapid post-war recovery laid the groundwork for its emergence as a global economic power by the 1960s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? To explore these questions is today’s guest, Robin Lane Fox, a scholar and teacher of Homer for over 40 years. He’s the author of “Homer and His Iliad” and he addresses these questions, drawing on a lifelong love and engagement with the poem. He argues that the poem is the result of the genius and single oral poet, Homer, and that the poem may have been performed even earlier than previously supposed a place, a date, and a method for its composition—subjects of ongoing controversy. Lane Fox considers hallmarks of the poem; its values, implicit and explicit; its characters; its women; its gods; and even its horses.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 1930s, New Deal-era technocrats devised a solution to homelessness and poverty itself. They believed that providing free or low-cost urban housing projects could completely eliminate housing scarcity. Planners envisioned urban communities that would propel their residents into the middle class, creating a flywheel of abundance where poverty was eradicated. However, once construction began after World War II, these projects quickly became dangerous, poorly maintained slums, serving as breeding grounds for crime and decay. By the 1970s, crime rates were so high that levels of violence rivaled those of war zones in Sub-Saharan Africa. What happened? Why did so many of the best and brightest who promoted housing projects—like First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt or city planner Robert Moses—create one of the worst government debacles of the 20th century? Why didn’t they foresee that housing projects would become hotbeds of crime, completely destroying the social fabric of the neighborhoods they aimed to help? Today’s guest is Howard Husock, author of “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing.” He explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group of New York City philanthropists, politicians, and business magnates who first championed public housing as a solution to urban blight. We explore everything that went wrong and what can be done to avoid these same mistakes in the future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union soldiers who played a decisive role in the Civil War, only to be scrubbed from the history books. One such group was the First Alabama Calvary, formed in 1862. It went on raids that destroyed Confederate communications and also marched with Sherman’s forces across the South. They aided the fall of Vicksburg and the burning of Atlanta. Today’s guest is Howell Raines, author of “Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History.” As Raines has pieced together, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s decisive effort to burn Atlanta was facilitated by an unsung regiment of 2,066 yeoman farmers and former slaves from Alabama—including at least one member of Raines’s own family. So why have the best-known Civil War historians, including Ken Burns and Shelby Foote, given only passing – or no – attention to this regiment of southerners who chose to fight for the North – a regiment that General Sherman hailed as one of the finest in the Union? We explore this question through an account of Alabama’s Mountain Unionists and their exploits, along with investigating why they and others like them were excised from the historical record.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.