History Unplugged Podcast
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History Unplugged Podcast

Scott Rank
For history lovers who listen to podcasts, History Unplugged is the most comprehensive show of its kind. It's the only show that dedicates episodes to both interviewing experts and answering questions from its audience. First, it features a call-in show where you can ask our resident historian (Scott Rank, PhD) absolutely anything (What was it like to be a Turkish sultan with four wives and twelve concubines? If you were sent back in time, how would you kill Hitler?). Second, it features long-form interviews with best-selling authors who have written about everything. Topics include gruff World War II generals who flew with airmen on bombing raids, a war horse who gained the rank of sergeant, and presidents who gave their best speeches while drunk.
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Steering an Aerial Plywood Box Through Enemy Fire: The Glider Pilots of WW2
August 29, 2024 - 41 min
In World War II, there were no C-130s or large cargo aircraft that could deliver heavy equipment– such as a truck or artillery piece – in advance of an airborne invasion. For that, you needed to put that equipment, along with its crew, in a glider. These were unpowered boxes of plywood, pulled by a towing plane into enemy territory by a single cable wrapped with telephone wire.The men who flew on gliders were all volunteers, for a specialized duty that their own government projected would have a 50 percent casualty rate. In every major European invasion of the war they led the way. They landed their gliders ahead of the troops who stormed Omaha Beach, and sometimes miles ahead of the paratroopers bound for the far side of the Rhine River in Germany itself. From there, they had to hold their positions. They delivered medical teams, supplies and gasoline to troops surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge, ahead even of Patton's famous supply truck convoy. These all-volunteer glider pilots played a pivotal role from the day the Allies invaded Occupied Europe to the day Germany finally surrendered. Yet the story of these anonymous heroes is virtually unknown.To explore these stories with us is today’s guest, Scott McGaugh, author of “Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin: The Glider Pilots of World War II.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Why Few Presidents Had Beards, And Only One Had a Mullet
August 27, 2024 - 34 min
From George Washington’s powdered pigtail to John Quincy Adams’ bushy side-whiskers and from James Polk’s masterful mullet to John F. Kennedy’s refined Ivy League coif, the tresses of American leaders have long conveyed important political and symbolic messages.There are surprising, and multi-dimensional ways that hair has influenced the personalities, public and private lives, personal scandals, and tragedies of the men and women who have occupied the White House and influenced the nation at large.To explore this unconventional aspect of American history is today’s guest, Ted Pappas, author of “Combing Through the White House: Hair and Its Shocking Impact on the Politics, Private Lives, and Legacies of the Presidents.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How Much Did Average Germans Know About the Holocaust During World War Two?
August 22, 2024 - 40 min
This is the question that historians have argued since the end of World War Two. How much did an average person know, and, more importantly, how responsible were they?  What made people “perpetrators,” “bystanders,” and “victims” within a wider context of coercion and consent?To explore this question is today’s guest, Richard Evans, author of “Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.” We look at a connected series of biographical portraits of key Nazi figures that follows power as it radiated from Hitler to the inner and outer circles of the regime’s leadership. This includes personal lives of figures whose names appear in nearly all Nazi biographies, like Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels (“The Policeman” and “The Propagandist”), as well as professionals with skills deemed advantageous to the Nazi agenda, including Julius Streicher (“The Schoolmaster”) and the eugenicist Karl Brandt (“The Professional”), and some of the women in Hitler’s orbit such as Ilse Koch (“The Witch”) and Leni Riefenstahl (“The Star”).Through these biographies, one of our greatest historians explores the enduring and unnerving questions: How could human beings carry out such terrible and murderous atrocities? Were they degenerate, deranged psychopaths, or were they ordinary men doing their jobs? How can examining individual personalities help us reach an understanding of the evil and immorality that sustained the Nazi regime?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Carthage Lost the 2nd Punic War from Hannibal’s Logistics Failure and His Brother’s Bad Strategy
August 20, 2024 - 47 min
Iberia was one of three crucial theatres of the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. Hannibal of Carthage’s siege of Saguntum in 219 BC triggered a conflict that led to immense human and material losses on both sides, pitting his brother Hasdrubal against the Republican Roman armies seeking to gain control of the peninsula. Then, in 208 BC, the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hasdrubal at Baecula, forcing Hasdrubal’s army out of Iberia and on to its eventual annihilation at the Metaurus.Today’s guest, Mir Bahmanyar, author of “Second Punic War in Iberia: 220-206 BC” brings to life the key personalities and events of this important theatre of the war, and explains why the Roman victory at Baecula led to a strategic shift and Carthage’s eventual defeat. It covers Scipio Africanus’ brilliant victory at Ilipa in 206 BC, where he crushed the army of Mago Barca and Hasdrubal Gisco.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Real Robin Hood May Have Been an Anglo-Saxon Hitman Who Killed an English King
August 15, 2024 - 43 min
Contrary to popular belief, Robin Hood may not have been the merry medieval outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Rather, a look at real historical figures who inspired the legend are narrowed down to the most unlikely suspect: an Anglo-Saxon hitman who may have assassinated the King of England.Today’s guest, Peter Staveley, proposes that Robin Hood lived during the time of William II (near the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066), rather than Richard I and Prince John of the late 1100s. He argues that Robin was responsible for the death of William II, also known as Rufus, in what was long considered a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1100. This act conveniently paved the way for William’s brother to ascend the throne as Henry I. Staveley places Robin deep within the geography of South Yorkshire, with strong ties to historic Hallamshire, Loxley, Bradfield, and Ecclesfield, challenging the traditional narrative and the long-held association with Nottingham.We explore how Yorkshire, particularly Sheffield, might reclaim the legacy of Robin Hood from Nottingham and reveal the true, rougher man behind the legend.Staveley is author of “Robin Unhooded, And the Death of a King.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Civilization Owes Its Existence to the Horse
August 13, 2024 - 40 min
The use of horses by humans began roughly 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Pontic- Caspian Steppe when a daring man (or a woman – we have no way of knowing) jumped on the back of a docile mare. Thus began  the horse’s unrivalled historical influence across millennia to the present day.The horse dominated every facet of humanity—as a mode of transportation, a vehicle of trade, an essential farming tool, a status symbol, a formidable weapon of war, a source of energy, an agent of both lethal disease and lifesaving medicine, a participant in sport, and, of course, a steadfast and loyal companion.For most of us, horses are not part of our everyday, practical lives, and are instead relegated to entertainment and recreation through racing, rodeos, and equestrian or television shows and movies depicting bygone eras. But this is a relatively recent development as cars “unseated” the horse as the primary method of transportation a mere one hundred years ago. To demonstrate the profound historical impact of the horse on our global civilization, we are joined by Timothy Winegard, author of “The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Charles Cowlam: The Civil War Con-Man Who Received Presidential Pardons From Both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis
August 8, 2024 - 35 min
Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” He was a chameleon in a world of strangers, and scholars have overlooked him due to his elusive nature. Reconstruction offered additional opportunities for Cowlam to repackage his identity. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal and persuaded Republicans in Florida to allow him to run for Congress. After losing the election, Cowlam moved to New York, where he became a serial bigamist and started a fake secret society inspired by the burgeoning Granger movement. When the newspapers exposed his lies, he disappeared and spent the next decade living under an assumed name. He resurfaced in Dayton, Ohio, claiming to be a Union colonel suffering from dementia to gain admittance into the National Soldiers’ Home.  Today’s guest, Frank Garmom, author of A Wonderful Career in Crime, Cowlam’s stunning machinationsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Extent of Soviet Infiltration Into Depression and Cold War America
August 6, 2024 - 49 min
Soviet espionage existed in the United States since the U.S.S.R.’s founding and continued until its dissolution in the 1990s. It reached its height in World War 2 and the early Cold War, especially to steam atomic weapon’s technology (revealed to the public with the trials and executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Americans who fed intelligence back to the Soviets).The funnel for Americans into Soviet espionage was the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Throughout its history, the American Communist Party attracted a variety of seemingly contradictory people. Democratic, reform-minded individuals who wanted to end inequality worked alongside authoritarians and ideologues who espoused Soviet propaganda. These factions reached loggerheads following Nikita Khrushchev’s revelation of Joseph Stalin’s crimes, leading to the organization’s decline into political irrelevance.   To look at this history is today’s guest, Maurice Isserman, author of “Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
America’s First Crime Boss Was Female Immigrant-Turned-Criminal Mastermind
August 1, 2024 - 43 min
In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth?In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (nearly $300 million today) had passed through her Lower East Side shop. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime,” she planned robberies of cash, gold and diamonds throughout the country.But Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of the finest bank robbers, housebreakers and shoplifters, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.To discuss this story is today’s guest, Margalit Fox, author of The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum. We look at a colorful fixture of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with nefarious rogues, capitalist power brokers and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all straddling the line between underworld enterprise and “legitimate” commerce.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The War Under No-Man’s Land: Military Mining and Tunnel Combat in World War One
July 30, 2024 - 45 min
Beneath the trench warfare of World War One existed an entirely separate war underground: battles in the mines and dugouts between the Great Powers. In 1914–17, the underground war was a product of static trench warfare, essential to survive it and part of both sides' attempts to overcome it.In the stagnant, troglodyte existence of trench warfare, military mining was a hidden world of heroism and terror in which hours of suspenseful listening were spent monitoring the steady picking of unseen opponents, edging quietly towards the enemy, and judging when to fire a charge. Break-ins to enemy mine galleries resulted in hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness.  We are joined by Simon Jones to discuss the ingenuity, claustrophobia and tactical importance of the underground war. He is the author of “The War Underground, 1914-1918: Tactics and Equipment.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Meet Your Host
Meet Your Host
Scott Rank is the host of the History Unplugged Podcast and a PhD in history who specialized in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Before going down the academic route he worked as a journalist in Istanbul. He has written 12 history books on topics ranging from lost Bronze Age civilizations to the Age of Discovery. Some of his books include The Age of Illumination: Science, Technology, and Reason in the Middle Ages and History’s 9 Most Insane Rulers.. Learn more about him by going to scottrankphd.com.
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