History Unplugged Podcast

Did Abraham Lincoln preserve democracy during the Civil War, or did he endanger it in the process? To explore this paradox, we’re joined by renowned historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, author of Our Ancient Faith. Guelzo takes us deep into the high-stakes decisions of Lincoln’s presidency, from the suspension of habeas corpus to the Emancipation Proclamation. He argues that Lincoln’s vision of democracy was rooted in a moral imperative to save the Union as a global symbol of self-governance. But was his willingness to push the boundaries of executive power a necessary evil—or a dangerous precedent? We discuss how Lincoln reconciled his wartime decisions with the principles of the Founding Fathers, why the 1864 election might be democracy's greatest test, and how his book, Our Ancient Faith, sheds light on Lincoln’s belief in the Union as a sacred trust. Whether you see Lincoln as the Great Emancipator or the reluctant authoritarian, this episode will leave you rethinking what it means to lead a democracy in its darkest hour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Spanish conquistators slowly moved through Latin America, they encountered levels of wealth that were unimaginable. Most famously, Incan Emperor Atahualpa was captured by Francisco Pizarro and paid a ransom of a room filled with gold and then twice over with silver. The room was 22 feet long by 17 feet wide, filled to a height of about 8 feet. Such events fired the imaginations of the Spanish, who created myths such as of El Dorado, the “gilded man” who, legend held, was daily powdered from head to toe with gold dust, which he would then wash from himself in a lake whose silty bottom was now covered with gold dust and the golden trinkets tossed in as sacrificial offerings. The story was fake but it lead to real expeditions, some of which were so dangerous that they nearly killed party members. Such is the 1541 expedition led by Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco’s brother, to find El Dorado, and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana down the Amazon to find these riches. Today’s guest is Buddy Levy, author of River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana and the Deadly First Voyage through the Amazon. He reconstructs the first complete European exploration of the world’s largest river and the relentless dangers around every bend. Quickly, the enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, and hunting dogs are decimated by disease, starvation, and attacks in the jungle. Hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, Pizarro and Orellana make a fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returns home barefoot and in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men continue downriver into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon jungle and river. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During World War II, approximately half a million German prisoners of war were held in the United States, housed in 700 camps spread across the country, from Florida to Maine. These POWs were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, often working in agriculture and other industries to alleviate domestic labor shortages. Today, evidence of these POW camps has all but vanished, and with them the harrowing knowledge of what happened beyond the battlefield. But today’s guest, William Geroux (Jer-oh), author of “The Fifteen: Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America,” not only exposes the forgotten history of these POW camps on American soil, but of the Nazi power games that dominated life within them. While German prisoners were protected by the Geneva Convention and generally treated fairly by their American captors, ardent Nazis in dozens of the camps began to punish and attack their fellow German inmates who failed to live up to Nazi ideology. What followed was a grisly series of murders in the heart of the United States.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The United States is the most heavily armed nation in the world, with an estimated 400 million guns in private hands. But few know that this legacy can be directly traced back to a handful of gunmakers who worked in the Springfield Armory of Massachusetts in the early 1800s. Their names became synonymous with American guns—Colt, Smith, Wesson, Winchester, and Remington among them – and they made firearms portable, powerful, rapid firing, and distinctly American. They also created the nation’s industrial base by making guns out of interchangeable parts, becoming early adopters of the assembly line process. Today’s guest is John Bainbridge, Jr., author of Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them. More than just keen inventors and wily businessmen, these iconic gun barons were among the founding fathers of American industry. Their visionary work in the development of rapid-fire weaponry helped propel the U.S. into the forefront of the world’s industrial powers in the mid-nineteenth century.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For millennia, humans eked out survival atop the surface of the Earth and land had no unique value. Eventually, however, humans turned land into an advantage. For several thousand years, control of land meant control of natural resources, like water and wild animals. For several thousand more years it meant agricultural production, raising domesticated animals, harvesting timber. And finally, land became economic might invested in Kings, chiefs, and political leaders around the globe. Large landowners sat atop the pyramid of social hierarchy. Today’s guest is Michael Albertus, author of “Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies.” We see how modern history has been defined by land reallocation on a massive scale. From the 1500s on, European colonial powers and new nation-states shifted indigenous lands into the hands of settlers. The 1900s brought new waves of land appropriation, from Soviet and Maoist collectivization to initiatives turning large estates over to family farmers. The shuffle continues today as governments vie for power and prosperity by choosing who should get land.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Benjamin Franklin died on April 12, 1790, he made a final bet on the future of the United States -- a gift of 2,000 pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall. Today’s guest is Michael Meyer, author of Benjamin Franklin’s Last Bet. He traces the evolution of these twin funds as they age alongside America itself, bankrolling woodworkers and silversmiths, trade schools and space races. Over time, Franklin’s wager was misused, neglected, and contested—but never wholly extinguished. Franklin’s stake in the “leather-apron” class remains in play to this day, and offers an inspiring blueprint for prosperity in our modern era of growing wealth disparity and social divisions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For generations, the great palaces of Britain were home to living histories, noble families that had reigned for centuries. But by the end of the nineteenth century, members of elite society found themselves, for the first time, in the company of arrivistes. Their new neighbors—from chorus girls to millionaire greengrocers to guano impresarios—lacked lineage and were unencumbered by the weight of tradition.  In the new book The Power and the Glory, the author -- and today’s guest -- Adrian Tinniswood reconstructs life in the country house during its golden age before the Great War, when Britain ruled over a quarter of the earth’s population and its stately homes were at their most opulent. But change was on the horizon: the landed classes were being forced to grapple not only with new neighbors, but also with new social norms and expectations.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Old English poem Beowulf is a vital source of information on history, language, story and belief from the darkest of the Dark Ages. Only one copy is known to exist (it’s in the British Library), and that was rescued from a fire that is known to have destroyed many other manuscripts. If Beowulf didn’t exist, how much would we know about that period? It’s a sobering thought that between 410 and 597, no scrap of writing survives from what is now England. This is an interval comparable in length between now… and the Napoleonic Wars. The same is true about fossils — what we know of the fossil record is an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot on what really happened. Almost everything that once existed on our planet has been lost. This means that anything new we find has the potential to change everything. Today guest, Henry Gee, author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, zips through the last 4.6 billion years to tell a tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why has gold reigned as the world’s go-to precious metal for over 2,600 years? It’s not as rare as platinum, durable as diamonds, or malleable as copper. What is it about this metal that made it the standard unit of coinage, from China to Mesoamerica? It’s a very long story, but gold’s scarcity, durability, malleability, and universal appeal made it ideal for trade and wealth preservation, starting with the Lydians of 550 BC. Unlike tin, copper, or bronze, gold’s intrinsic properties allowed it to serve as a stable and universally recognized unit of exchange, laying the foundation for its historical role in economies. In today’s episode, we explore gold’s history, the evolution of monetary systems (from China’s early use of paper money in the Middle Ages to Great Britain’s establishment of the gold standard in the late 17th century), and how the gold standard of the last century facilitated international trade and stability but was ultimately abandoned due to its deflationary pressures and limitations. The pivotal moment came in 1971 when President Nixon ended dollar-gold convertibility, ushering in the fiat currency era. To discuss these topics is today’s guest, Collin Plume, author of “Silver Is the New Oil: Strategies for Profiting From the Next Industrial Revolution” and CEO of Noble Gold Investments. He offers insights into modern trends, including nations increasing gold reserves, gold-backed cryptocurrencies, and the future role of gold in global finance. Links: Silver Is the New Oil Noble Gold InvestmentsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One hundred and sixty minutes. That is all the time rescuers would have before the largest ship in the world slipped beneath the icy Atlantic. There was amazing heroism and astounding incompetence against the backdrop of the most advanced ship in history sinking by inches with luminaries from all over the world. It is a story of a network of wireless operators on land and sea who desperately sent messages back and forth across the dark frozen North Atlantic to mount a rescue mission. More than twenty-eight ships would be involved in the rescue of Titanic survivors along with four different countries. At the heart of the rescue are two young Marconi operators, Jack Phillips 25 and Harold Bride 22, tapping furiously and sending electromagnetic waves into the black night as the room they sat in slanted toward the icy depths and not stopping until the bone numbing water was around their ankles. Then they plunged into the water after coordinating the largest rescue operation the maritime world had ever seen and thereby saving 710 people by their efforts.The race to save the largest ship in the world from certain death would reveal both heroes and villains. It would begin at 11:40 PM on April 14, when the iceberg was struck and would end at 2:20 AM April 15, when her lights blinked out and left 1500 people thrashing in 25-degree water. Although the race to save Titanic survivors would stretch on beyond this, most people in the water would die, but the amazing thing is that of the 2229 people, 710 did not and this was the success of the Titanic rescue effort. We see the Titanic as a great tragedy but a third of the people were rescued and the only reason every man, woman, and child did not succumb to the cold depths is due to Jack Phillips and Harold McBride in an insulated telegraph room known as the Silent Room. These two men tapping out CQD and SOS distress codes while the ship took on water at the rate of 400 tons per minute from a three-hundred-foot gash would inaugurate the most extensive rescue operation in maritime history using the cutting-edge technology of the time, wireless. To talk about this race against time is frequent guest Bill Hazelgrove, author of the new book One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.