History Unplugged Podcast

America’s desire to expand its borders has existed since its first colonies – from attempts to settle beyond the Appalachian Mountains in the 18th century to Manifest Destiny in the 19th century down to talks today to purchase Greenland.  But the United States spent two centuries eyeing acquisitions far stranger than California or Oregon—from Canada to the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia and even Syria after World War I. These weren't fever dreams of fringe politicians; they were serious diplomatic efforts involving presidents, congressional debates, and appeals from foreign leaders themselves who saw American annexation as preferable to rule by Mexico, France, or Britain. The difference between success and failure often came down to whether Washington offered full statehood and constitutional protections (like Alaska and Hawaii) or imposed colonial supervision without citizenship (like Cuba and the Philippines), creating either assimilation or nationalist resentment that echoes today. Today's guest is Mark Kawar, author of America, but Bigger: Near-Annexations from Greenland to the Galápagos. We discuss how Woodrow Wilson was the last president to successfully buy land from Denmark (the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1917), why El Salvadoran leaders and Polynesian chiefs actively lobbied for American annexation to escape worse colonial masters, and how the 1919 King-Crane Commission discovered that Syria overwhelmingly requested U.S. oversight because Wilson promised self-determination while European powers reeked of imperial exploitation. Kawar also explains the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which let America claim dozens of Pacific islands for fertilizer deposits, and why American Samoans today are U.S. nationals but not automatically citizens—a legacy of the "unincorporated territory" loophole that still defines places like Guam.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When St. Petersburg nobility mockingly called Moscow a "big village," in the 19th century – a time when they lived in all the excess found in a Tolstoy novel -- they couldn't have imagined the provincial fortress would become the heart of a nation spanning eleven percent of Earth's landmass and eleven time zones. It had a long warm-up time to get there. For nearly a millennium, Moscow has endured Tatar Mongols, Swedish armies, Napoleon, Hitler, devastating fires that never stopped burning even in snow and rain, and the Soviet destruction of its sacred churches—each catastrophe reinforcing the city's identity as both glittering prize and perpetual phoenix rising from ashes. From the 1147 seizure of boyar Stepan Kuchka's land by Prince Yuri to Putin's current authoritarian rule, Moscow's history of autocracy, violence, and resurrection holds the key to understanding why liberal democracy has never thrived in Russia (and why some say it shouldn’t) and why most Russians simultaneously hate the Ukraine war yet believe it's justified. Today's guest is Simon Morrison, author of A Kingdom and a Village: A One-Thousand Year History of Moscow. We discuss how Moscow transformed from tax collector for the Golden Horde – basically a vassal of a daughter state of the Mongol empire -- into Russia's capital through Ivan the Terrible's brutal consolidation of power. We also see why Moscow was the world's most flammable city with a thriving network of Home Depot-like rebuilding businesses, and how the city's French-speaking nineteenth-century nobility created the cultural duality Tolstoy critiqued in War and Peace. Russia's geographic determinism—vast open borders requiring an autocratic "iron hand"—means the nation has lurched from one tyranny to another, never achieving the civil society and free press Americans take for granted.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, more than ten thousand Americans living abroad became trapped in Japanese-controlled territories, and with rumors of ill treatment and torture, the U.S. State Department was desperate to bring home its citizens. Despite the intense acrimony between the warring governments, a tireless State Department official, James Keeley, helped hatch an extraordinary plan through diplomatic back channels: each country would send a ship filled with civilians through war-torn waters to a neutral port city where their passengers could be safely exchanged. Today’s guest is Evelyn Iritani, author of “Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II.” While the U.S. and Japanese governments both assumed their enemy non-combatants--including many in relocation camps and jail cells--would welcome their new "tickets to freedom," the reality proved more complicated. For those who had sunk deep roots in their adopted homelands, the exchanges offered an agonizing choice. And for some patriotic Americans of Japanese descent, there was no choice at all: as the State Department found itself in need of more bodies to trade, they were "repatriated" against their will to a country at war that had never been their home. Some of the stories of repatriates we discuss a Japanese Peruvian barber brought to the U.S. as a negotiating pawn; three American teachers accused of spying in the Japanese island of Hokkaido, and a young Japanese American boy fascinated with The Green Hornet and boy scouts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emanuel Leutze's iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware shows the general standing heroically at the bow of his boat, staring toward an unseen enemy across the icy river. But who were those enemies waiting on the other side? They were Hessian soldiers from a small German state called Hesse-Kassel, forced conscripts sent to fight in a war they didn't understand, against democratic principles they were simultaneously being taught to admire back home. These men weren't the drunken barbarians of American mythology, but rather disciplined soldiers—many influenced by Voltaire and Enlightenment ideals—who fought in major battles from Long Island to Fort Washington before their fateful encounter at Trenton. Today's guest is Dr. Steven Bier, author of Facing Washington's Crossing: The Hessians and the Battle of Trenton. Through newly translated German documents, Bier follows three Hessian soldiers through the chaos of December 26, 1776: 17-year-old Private Johannes Reuber, Lieutenant Jakob Piel who desperately tried to wake Colonel Rall as musket fire erupted, and Lieutenant Andreas Wiederhold, whose outpost was the first to spot Washington's approaching army through the snowstorm. Their accounts reveal a human story of confusion, courage, and surprising mercy—including George Washington personally reassuring shivering Hessian officers after their capture that they would be treated with kindness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nearly two thousand years, swords reigned as humanity's weapon of choice—the first tools designed exclusively to kill other humans rather than hunt animals. When archaeologist Paul Gething rediscovered a rusty blade forgotten in a suitcase for thirty years, he unknowingly held one of history's most sophisticated weapons: a seventh-century Northumbrian sword so complex and finely crafted that only a king could have commanded its creation. The Bamburgh Sword tells the story of Anglo-Saxon England from 450 to 1066 AD, when feuding warlords wielded these pattern-welded blades with razor-sharp steel edges and bendy iron cores—weapons so precious they were covered with jeweled handles and ornate scabbards. Today's guest is Edoardo Albert, author of The Perfect Sword: Forging the Dark Ages. We discuss how Bronze Age smiths in Minoan Crete around 1700 BC created the first definitive swords, how the introduction of iron around 1300 BC democratized warfare by putting blades in everyone's hands, and why the Bamburgh Sword represents the pinnacle of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship. We also explore what was lost when firearms replaced swords—as the Turkish folk hero Köroğlu reportedly lamented: "The rifle was invented, and bravery was ruined."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Science progresses through breakthrough discoveries, but behind many of the field's greatest advancements lies a darker history of scientific dysfunction—hostile competition, information hoarding, and criticism that has silenced revolutionary thinkers. From Alexander Gordon being forced to flee Aberdeen after proving doctors spread deadly infections, to Ignaz Semmelweis being fired and exiled for insisting doctors wash their hands between autopsies and deliveries, brilliant scientists have paid devastating personal prices for challenging medical orthodoxies. The pattern repeats across centuries: Pierre Louis was attacked for using statistics to prove bloodletting was useless, Joseph Lister faced ridicule for suggesting "invisible germs" caused infections, and Jean Toussaint suffered a nervous breakdown after Louis Pasteur appropriated his anthrax vaccine discovery. These cautionary tales reveal how the scientific community often becomes so attached to established paradigms that it rejects—or even destroys—those who dare to question consensus, no matter how strong their evidence. Today's guest is Matt Kaplan, author of “I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right.” He has spent two decades observing dysfunction across all scientific disciplines and now calls for fundamental reform in his book "I Told You So!" He argues that personality and social connections are weighted too heavily over actual ideas and skill, with good scientists losing grants and promotions simply because they lack charisma or fail to make the right political connections. Kaplan explores how even paleontology has its bullies, pointing to cases like Alison Moyer's discovery of organic material in dinosaur bones being met with hostility for challenging established orthodoxies. Through these stories of scientists who were ultimately vindicated—from Gordon's germ theory to Semmelweis's handwashing protocols—we see how science advances faster when contrarians are allowed to have their say and when the community prioritizes rigorous debate over comfortable consensus.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1976, nine French wine judges did the unthinkable: they blindly selected two California wines over France's most elite vintages in what became known as the Judgment of Paris. This shocking upset sent shockwaves through the wine world and forever changed the global industry. French wine had dominated for centuries, built on a rigid classification system and prestigious terroir, but California winemakers like Warren Winiarski of Stag's Leap and Mike Grgich of Chateau Montelena proved that world-class wines could be produced anywhere with the right combination of climate, soil, and expertise. The tasting was organized by British expat Steven Spurrier, who ran a Paris wine shop and saw the American Bicentennial as a perfect marketing opportunity—but neither he nor the lone reporter in attendance, George Taber of Time magazine, expected California to actually win. Today's guest is Kevin Ferguson, author and grandson of legendary winemaker Mario Gemello, who ran the Gemello Winery in Mountain View, California for nearly half a century. Ferguson shares the immigrant roots of California's wine industry, including how a $190 loan from the Beltramo family allowed his great-grandfather to bring his family from Piedmont, Italy to America. He discusses the legacy of working-class winemakers like his grandfather, whose 1970 Cabernet finished first in the 25th anniversary re-enactment of the Judgment of Paris, and explores how wineries like Ridge—founded by retired SRI engineers—brought scientific precision to the Santa Cruz Mountains. As we approach the 50th anniversary events in 2026, Ferguson reveals how this single tasting transformed California from an upstart curiosity into a world-class wine region that continues to rival the best of France.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Throughout the 16th century, one man stood between the Ottoman Empire and European domination, yet his name has been largely forgotten. Gabriele Tadino was an Italian military engineer whose genius transformed medieval warfare and saved Europe from one of history's greatest conquerors, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1522, Tadino defied his Venetian masters by sneaking away in the night to defend Rhodes, where 700 Knights Hospitaller faced an impossible siege against 100,000 Ottoman troops. His revolutionary innovations—from acoustic devices using stretched skins and bells to detect enemy tunnels, to star-shaped fortifications that could withstand cannon fire—turned him into a legend among Renaissance military minds. Despite losing an eye in combat, Tadino continued directing the defense, holding off Suleiman for six months and forcing the Sultan to negotiate a peaceful surrender rather than achieve outright victory. Today’s guest is Edoardo Albert, author of “The Man Who Stopped the Sultan.” We see how Tadino's expertise came at a crucial moment when gunpowder was rendering centuries-old walls obsolete and Europe's power-hungry rulers—Henry VIII, Francis I, and Charles V—were too divided to mount a unified defense against Ottoman expansion. He pioneered counter-mining techniques like "camouflets," controlled explosions that buried enemy sappers alive, and ventilation shafts that redirected the force of gunpowder blasts away from fortress walls. His genius extended from Crete's massive Martinengo Bastion, which still stands today, to the walls of Vienna in 1529, where his underground warfare tactics stopped Suleiman's advance into Central.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America's Founding Fathers feared a standing army would inevitably threaten civilian governance. Yet 250 years later, the U.S. military remains a strange outlier among nearly every nation that has ever existed—maintaining its strength and popularity while never attempting a coup. How did America get this right when so many other nations, from Turkey to Latin America, have seen their militaries seize power? The story begins with George Washington, who inspired mutinous soldiers to become the first army in a thousand years not to threaten democracy. But Washington's example alone doesn't explain America's success. Structural factors—dispersed urban centers, a benign international security environment, and urgent domestic threats from Native American conflicts—created a weak federal army and strong militia system that prevented military consolidation of power. Today's guest is Kori Schake, author of The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States. We see many counter-intuitivie things, like how the Founding Fathers had it backwards. The creation of a professional military actually reduced challenges to civilian control. We know this because key crises tested this system that the US military was able to overcome without seizing power. They include Alexander Hamilton's ambitions to raise an army for foreign conquest, Aaron Burr's plot to overthrow the United States, Andrew Jackson's unauthorized invasion of Florida, Ulysses S. Grant navigating feuds between president and Congress, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, Truman's firing of MacArthur during the Korean War, and confusion over nuclear launch authority during the Cold War. As the public increasingly pulls the military into partisan divisions, the question remains: can America's exceptional civil-military relations endure?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for those who point to the secular origins of America and the threat of funding any sort of religious activity. But this idea of America as a secular republic built on Enlightenment ideals misses a critical truth: Christianity has been at the center of American public life since European colonization began 500 years ago. The Constitution didn't create a wall between church and state—it inadvertently created a "free market" for religion that allowed Christian activists to expand their influence in unexpected ways. Today's guest is Matthew Avery Sutton, author of Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity. We see the different versions of Christianity imported during European colonization and how the absence of state control unleashed wildly eccentric religious movements that couldn't have happened in Europe. From revivalist preachers like Jonathan Edwards and Peter Cartwright to Billy Graham, and from liberal Congregationalists to twentieth-century mainline denominations, American Christianity constantly evolved. We see this in the story of Abraham Lincoln, whose skepticism toward traditional Christianity in his twenties nearly derailed his political career. In his 1846 race against Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, Lincoln faced accusations of being an infidel after openly rejecting his family's Christian faith. This episode reveals how, contrary to popular belief, America's founding generation allowed religious liberty not out of principle, but pragmatism—they needed to keep a fractious coalition together. To understand what makes America unique, we must account for how Christianity shaped—and was shaped by—every major historical development in U.S. history. From tent revivals to megachurches, from abolition to segregation, Christianity's "free-market" evolution in America created something unlike anywhere else in the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. In time, the development of rhyme, song, and other mnemonic devices allowed those spoken stories to be preserved for generations; pictures drawn on cave walls turned preservation into permanence, telling stories we still experience thousands of years later; writing enabled storytellers to spread tales to faraway places; the Chinese invented printing with moveable metal type around 700 AD; the Toltecs independently invented it at about the same time; 750 years later Gutenberg independently invented it again, adding a converted wine press to create the mass production of mass communication. Over time, printing presses increased the number of storytellers and the size of their audiences by many orders of magnitude, a trend which led us to great revolutions, and electric, then electronic, then digital storytelling and all our storytelling tools of today—and tomorrow’s. Today’s guest is Kevin Ashton, author of “The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art.” We see how humans alone possess the desire to share our hopes and beliefs, to understand and connect with others, to process events that have come before and anticipate events that will come next. That innate urge to communicate has impacted every aspect of human history, and it is so ingrained in the fabric of our existence that language did not come to being so that we could tell stories—stories gave us language. Human storytelling has led to innovations in astronomy, entertainment, technology, and beyond, and brought about revolutions, religions, political movements, and so much more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries conducted without anesthesia. Japan had its own program that is less known but equally brutal. In occupied China, the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 operated a vast complex where thousands were subjected to biological warfare tests and lethal physiological experiments to further military research. During the occupation of Japan after WWII, the US had an important decision to make. Should they hold those responsible for atrocities during the war accountable or should they take the information to advance the national interest? There was extremely valuable data on bioweapons and survival techniques in the face of extreme cold or low oxygen that could save the lives of thousands of soldiers. Here's what happened. The researchers who worked at Unit 731 were given immunity in exchange for their research data. Most of these scientists lived peacefully after WWII, with a few of them having to go through a 1949 Soviet Trial, which was deemed by the West as communist propaganda. They basically traded their knowledge for freedom and avoided prosecution, like the German scientists who came to America as part of Operation Paperclip.​Most of the horrors on Unit 731 had been hearsays and rumors until recently with the passing of the Freedom of Information Act. Today’s guest is Jenny Chan, and she’s published the book “Unit 731 Cover-up: The Operation Paperclip of the East.”  This book is based on documents found in the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Russian archival documents, and translations of the Khabarovsk Trial to paint a complete picture of the cover-up of the atrocious act of Unit 731. We look at the war crimes themselves, what happened to the scientists, and the question of whether war crimes should ever be covered up in the name of national interest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the era of Joseph Stalin, Moscow’s rulers have sent Russian athletes into the Summer and Winter Olympics with one command: you must win. These competitors operated under a "win-at-all-costs" doctrine most notably through the use of "shamateurism." By giving elite hockey stars nominal titles as military officers or factory workers, the USSR bypassed amateur requirements to field seasoned professionals against genuine Western students—a disparity that defined the Cold War sporting era.  But the deception went deeper than employment records; it extended into the very biology of the athletes, particularly in high-strength disciplines like weightlifting and powerlifting. Athletes such as Vasily Alekseyev, the super-heavyweight lifter who set 80 world records and weighed 360 pounds, were often the face of a system later revealed to be fueled by state-mandated anabolic steroids Today’s guest is Bruce Berglund, author of “The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Gold.” We look at the intersection of Russian sports and geopolitical power, from the dominant Soviet teams of past Olympics to recent doping scandals and international sanctions. With new research from Olympic archives, records of the Soviet bloc and current Russian media, Berglund shows how Moscow’s leaders have defied the rules of the game for decades as the world’s governing bodies turned a blind eye.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel Boone is considered one of the United States' first folk heroes for his exploration beyond the thirteen colonies into Kentucky. His exploits are rightfully legendary. He famously rescued his daughter and two other captives from Shawnee raiders by tracking them down on foot for three days. He survived a grueling ten-day siege at Boonesborough after escaping captivity by the Shawnee. Despite the frontier conflicts of the era between Indians and white settlers, he was so respected by his adversaries that he was formally adopted as the son of Chief Blackfish, cementing his status as a hero of the wilderness. He was the founder of Fort Boonesborough, a settler colony in Kentucky. The settlement itself was a large hollow rectangle measuring approximately 260 by 180 feet, with twenty-six one-story cabins whose outer log walls formed part of the defensive perimeter. To defend against Shawnee and British attacks, Fort Boonesborough featured thick log walls and two-story corner blockhouses that provided vantage points for shooting down at attackers. During the Great Siege of 1778, the settlers used diverse tactics such as digging counter-tunnels to stop an enemy mine and dressing women in men's clothing to trick the Shawnee into overestimating their military strength. Today’s guest is Nancy O’Malley, author of “Kentucky Frontier to Commonwealth: Historical Archaeology at Daniel Boone's and Hugh McGary's Stations.” She provides insight into Kentucky colonial life through research into station site remnants. We also discuss another settlement called McGary's Station—abandoned soon after the end of the Revolutionary War— and bears the markers of settlers who endured more primitive conditions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The most valuable shipwreck of all time is the San José galleon—an 18th century Spanish ship that carried 11 million gold coins, silver, and emeralds—and worth $20 billion in today's currency. It sunk in a battle with British ships during the War of Spanish Succession and remained completely lost for centuries. That is until a clue to its final resting place was found by the most unlikely  person: Roger Dooley, a Cuban-American underwater explorer who helped establish Cuba's national diving program and spent years scouring Caribbean waters for sunken shipwrecks at the behest of Fidel Castro. Dooley wasn’t looking for the San José. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime, the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San José. He had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding and excavating the ship powered him across four decades, even as he became a man in exile from the country of his birth. As Dooley jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, he slowly homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck—or nothing at all. Today’s guest is Julian Sancton, author of “Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire.” We look at the story of a legendary Spanish galleon that sunk off the coast of, one man’s obsessive quest to find it, and the ongoing fight over excavating this historic shipwreck.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America’s revolutionary war would have almost certainly been lost if not for the colony’s wealthiest merchant. Thomas Willing was a prominent Philadelphia merchant and financier who, in partnership with Robert Morris, operated one of the colonies' most successful importing and exporting firms, specializing in goods such as flour, lumber, tobacco, and sugar, while later using his wealth and mercantile connections to supply the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. After the War, he brought sanity to the unstable early American economy. America  was suffocating under a massive, unmanageable national debt owed to foreign lenders, domestic soldiers, and creditors, and lacking the power to tax effectively under the Articles of Confederation. The currency situation was disastrous, with various state-issued paper monies having depreciated drastically—leading to inflation and a widespread lack of confidence in the financial stability of the new republic. Thomas Willing stabilized the nascent American economy by serving as the first president of both the Bank of North America and the First Bank of the United States, where his conservative fiscal leadership established the nation’s credit and transformed the central bank into the "great regulating wheel" of the country's financial system. Today’s guest is Richard Vague, author of “The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and the Rise of the American Financial Aristocracy.” We discuss how Willing bankrolled–and in the process helped save–the American Revolution, and then shaped the financial architecture of our young Republic.  So powerful was Willing that President John Adams complained that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were governed by him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of us only know Thomas Paine for one thing: writing Common Sense in 1776, which helped kickstart the Revolution by selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But he was far more than a writer. Paine actively served with George Washington's army during its darkest days and then used his pen to advocate for global freedom in both the French Revolution and against organized religion. His revolutionary fervor spanned the globe, leading him to champion the French Revolution with Rights of Man and challenge religious orthodoxy in The Age of Reason/ Paine's later involvement with the French Revolution, his Enlightenment opinions, and his unorthodox view of religion plunged his reputation into a controversy that continues to this day. Today’s guest is Jack Kelly, author of “Tom Paine's War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time.” We look at how Paine shaped the war. He convinced the colonies that war should grow from a reform movement to a full revolution: The entire British system of hereditary monarchy and aristocratic rule was a form of tyranny, making the case that separation from Great Britain the only logical course for America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed showmen were the first global fitness influencers. They hauled trunks of weights onto steamships, toured the world, then sold exercise equipment through the mail. The most famous was Eugene Sandow, who broke chains, and created with his own body a "manned cavalry bridge" where he would lie down while men, horses, and a carriage were driven over his body. He even fought a lion in front of an auditorium and won, although the lion was almost definitely sedated. Today’s guest is Connor Heffernan, author of “When Fitness Went Global: The Rise of Physical Culture in the Nineteenth Century.” In this episode, we discuss: Ancient Egyptians were basically doing CrossFit thousands of years ago. They trained with swinging sandbags that look exactly like modern kettlebell flows. One of the first exercise practices to experience globalization was Indian club-swinging. Indian club-swinging, originating from the heavy training clubs used by Indian wrestlers and soldiers for centuries, was observed and adopted by British military officers stationed in India during the early 1800s. Early diet culture was a carnival of quack science. Victorian fitness magazines were filled with miracle tonics, starvation cures and pseudoscientific meal plans. Many of our “new” diet trends are rebranded versions of schemes first marketed with sepia portraits and dubious testimonials. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the eight decades since the United States deployed the most destructive weapon ever used, conventional wisdom has held that American leaders were faced with a difficult choice: Invade Japan, which would have cost millions of Japanese and Allied lives in bloody combat or use the fearsome atom bomb in the hopes of convincing the Japanese emperor to surrender. President Truman—in what many have come to regard as an immoral decision—ordered the military to drop the bomb. Today’s guest is Alex Wellerstein, author of The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age. Wellerstein offers a more complex and nuanced portrayal of Truman, showing a president entangled in secrecy, rushing against time, and operating with limited information. Contrary to the long-held belief that Truman was the decisive force behind the bombings, this book reveals how he was largely unacquainted with the specifics of Hiroshima and Nagasaki's targeting until after the fact. Wellerstein explains how there was no formal decision to use the bomb, nor did President Truman likely know that Hiroshima or Nagasaki were heavily populated cities. Once the bombs were dropped, Truman began a years-long struggle for control of the awesome power of atomic weapons, the ramifications of which are still felt today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

National pride often comes from shared heritage—like a common language or ethnic background. Religious Nationalism can be seen in historical Russia, where being part of the Orthodox Church was considered key to being Russian, even if you spoke a different language, whereas Ethnic Nationalism is like modern Mongolia, where having the same Mongol background is what counts as national identity, even if people follow different faiths.—but for the small nation of Uruguay, that feeling of unity was forged not in a parliament, but on a soccer pitch. When the Uruguayan national team, La Celeste, stunned the world by winning the 1924 Paris Olympics, it was more than just a sports victory. That triumph created a profound, shared, and globally recognized national identity, transforming the soccer team into a powerful symbol that helped bond the country together in a way politics had struggled to achieve. Soccer’s ability to literally bring nations into existence has only grown with the growth and spread of the World Cup. Since 1930, the World Cup has become a truly global obsession. It is the most watched sporting event on the planet, and 211 teams competed to make it into the 2022 tournament. From its inception, it has also been a vehicle for far more than soccer. A tool for self-mythologizing and influence-peddling, The World Cup has played a crucial role in nation-building, and continues to, as countries negotiate their positions in a globalized world. Today’s guest is Jonathan Wilson, author of “The Power and the Glory: A History of the World Cup.”  We look at history of the matches and goals, the tales of scandal and triumph, the haggling and skulduggery of the bidding process, and the political and cultural tides behind every tournament. Jonathan Wilson details not merely what happened but why, based on fresh interviews and meticulous research. The book is as much about the legends of the sport, from Pelé to Messi, as it is about the nations that made them, from Mussolini’s Italy to partitioned Germany to controversy-ridden Qatar.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The wind-powered sawmill was invented around 1592 in the Netherlands, immediately transforming the nature of labor and industry. This mechanical marvel replaced slow, muscle-powered sawyers, allowing timber to be cut for shipbuilding and construction up to 30 times faster than manual labor, radically lowering the cost of wood products. It used a crankshaft to convert the windmill's rotating motion into the linear, up-and-down movement required for sawing wood, essentially creating an early, powerful assembly line factory. This mechanization allowed for unprecedented, rapid timber production, which quickly made the Dutch rich and enabled the massive expansion of their global fleet and construction projects. This invention, whose significance has been overlooked, has been researched by today’s guest, Jaime Davila, author of “Forgotten: How One Man Unlocked the Modern World.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have paper money today because it functioned as an IOU, certifying that the holder could redeem it for an equivalent amount of physical gold or silver from the bank's vault. That’s where the English pound got its name as it matched a specific weight of gold (or silver). This was the gold standard, and this is how banks operated for centuries. But it was largely abandoned after World War I, when governments prevented the withdrawal of gold by suspending the convertibility of their paper money into gold to conserve national gold reserves for purchasing vital war supplies and to allow central banks to print money for financing massive military expenditures. Governments abandoned linking their money to anything at all, giving central banks full control over the money supply. Printing money has led to inflation, national debt, and financial instability, which ultimately fueled the creation of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin as a decentralized, mathematically-scarce alternative. What if things hadn’t happened this way? What if the gold standard survived the Great War? Today’s guest, Saifedean Ammous , imagines this scenario in his new book The Gold Standard: An Alternate Economic History of the 20th Century.” The story begins with a fictional divergence in 1911: French aviation pioneer Louis Blériot partners with the Wright brothers to create the Blériot Transport Corporation (BTC), an airplane-based, peer-to-peer gold-settlement network. This innovative system quickly becomes a secure alternative to central banks. When World War I starts, the BTC offers Europeans a way to export their wealth to neutral countries, escaping central bank war inflation. This triggers a global financial panic in September 1915, bankrupting the world's central banks, abruptly ending the war, and strangling fiat money in its cradle. With the collapse of central banking and the establishment of a free-market, decentralized gold standard, a radically different 20th century unfolds. Hard-money savings become plentiful and cheap, accelerating technological progress, increasing energy production, and fostering a world of appreciating money and declining prices. Without the ability to print money to fund expansive projects, governments become more accountable, transforming into mere service providers whose citizens expect better service at a lower cost. This thought-provoking narrative suggests that the absence of central bank financing could have prevented major 20th-century conflicts, eliminated chronic inflation, and ushered in a "Century of Affluence" based on lower time preference, long-term investment, and voluntary governance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nearly a century of Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia hide the incredibly close friendship that the two nations enjoyed before this period. From America’s colonial founding in the 1600s to the eve of World War One, the two distant nations relied on each other in a surprising number of ways. Each country was searching for allies on the world stage, and this culminated in a "blueprint for friendship" during the 1860s and 1870s, spurred by mutual conversations around the abolition of slavery and serfdom. However, this amicable distance dissolved following the Russo-Japanese War, which introduced cycles of mutual stereotyping and a damaging "war of images," where Americans saw Russian authoritarianism and Russians saw US imperialism and racism. Despite these emerging tensions, the relationship continued its characteristic oscillation, with both countries drawing inspiration from one another, leading to a brief "wartime honeymoon" at the start of World War I. To discuss this forgotten chapter in Russian-American history is today’s guest, Victoria Zhuravleva, one of the authors of “Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of American-Russian Relations.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the worst nautical disasters in recent American history is the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 10, 1975, the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior. The ship found itself at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time. When she sank, she took all 29 men onboard down with her, leaving the tragedy shrouded in mystery for a half century. The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is so strange because the ship was exceptionally large and strong, and would normally be able to shrug off storms like this. At 75 feet wide and 729 feet long, the Fitzgerald was at the time of her launch the largest ship on the lakes, and she repeatedly broke her own records for the largest loads, the fastest runs, and the biggest season hauls throughout her career. She was a champion heavyweight, sprinter, and workhorse, all in one. To make the sinking stranger, she suddenly disappeared in a bad storm on Lake Superior without sending any distress calls despite having a massive modern radio system. The most widely accepted theories for the disaster include the ship hitting a shoal, suffering a structural failure like a broken back, or being overwhelmed by massive "three sisters" rogue waves. However, some less common and conspiracy-like theories suggest the crew did not properly close the hatch covers, the ship was actually split by a UFO, or that it was the victim of a secret Coast Guard experiment gone wrong. Todays’ guest is John Bacon, author of “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” We explore the vital role Great Lakes shipping played in America’s economic boom, the uncommon lives the sailors led, the sinking’s most likely causes, and the aftermath for those left behind.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the course of World War II, Germany’s submariners sank over three thousand Allied ships, nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. Winston Churchill famously declared the only thing that truly frightened him during World War II was the U-boat threat. But the treat was more imagined than real. The actual capability of the German Navy was somewhat limited. Some historians think that the Germans would have been better off in WWII if they had built no navy at all and devoted those resources to the army and the Luftwaffe. In the process the submariners endured horrific conditions and suffered a 75 percent death rate, the highest of any arm of service in the conflict. The campaign began with daring, high-profile successes that fostered a dangerous overconfidence, most notably the sinking of the HMS Royal Oak in 1939 by U-47, which killed 835 British crewmen. Yet, despite these early victories—when the U-boat wolfpacks inflicted devastating losses on weakly defended Allied convoys—the force was never able to maintain the scale needed for a knock-out blow. By the time Germany had sufficient numbers, the industrial and military might of the United States, coupled with increasingly effective Allied countermeasures, had already passed the U-boat's moment of maximum threat. As the war progressed, the elite, superbly trained pre-war crews were wiped out and replaced by those with less training, leading to a steady deterioration in effectiveness. Today’s guest is Roger Moorhouse, author of “Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-Boat War.” We look at how Germany’s U-boat campaign challenged British naval supremacy and brought international trade to its knees. We follow the story of these U-Boat crews from the enthusiasm of the war’s early days, buoyed with optimism about their cause, through the challenges of the Allied counterthreat, to the final horrors of enemy capture and death in the depths.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America’s growth from a rugged frontier nation to the globe’s industrial superpower in the space of 100 years can be explained by one word: coal. Before coal dominance, American buildings were defined by height limits imposed by stonework. The tallest building in the 1830s was Baltimore’s 235-foot tall Phoenix Shot Tower. Transportation also worked poorly without coal. The early wood-fired 4-4-0 locomotives struggled with top freight speeds around 15 mph and pulling trains of approximately 450 tons. The transition to coal and cheap steel enabled the steel-supported 555-foot Washington Monument and allowed massive coal-fired trains to achieve express passenger speeds up to 100+ mph and haul loads over 4,000 tons.  For a century the entire world was dependent on coal. It powered railroads, built urban skylines, and provided warmth, light, and power for families rich and poor. Although the American economy soared, society unknowingly suffered from coal’s debilitating health and environmental impacts.  Skies were so dirty that on some days, visibility was limited to a few feet. Coal miners frequently died from cave-ins, explosions, or contracting black lung. Towns like Centralia in Illinois were fundamentally destroyed by an underground fire started in 1962 that continues to burn. Today’s guest is Bob Wyss, author of “Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal.” We look at a range of figures that were part of coal’s story, from a largely unknown and unrecognized Pennsylvanian inventor who helped spark the Industrial Revolution to a prominent society clubwoman who clashed with the powerful coal forces in Utah that were fouling the air and sickening residents.  It also includes clashes between powerful tycoons, coal miners, and the American public.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.