History Unplugged Podcast

Were there any British women who fell in love with German POWs living in England in the mid-1940s? Despite the extreme cultural taboo, the answer is yes. Love always finds a way. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like it or not, far more millennials will learn about Renaissance and medieval history through Assassin's Creed than they ever will through a history book. That can be dispiriting on the one hand —the game, after all, seems like a completely ahistorical look on the Nizaris—or Assassin's as they are known in the West—and the knights Templar. Plenty of flipping and stabbing but little in the way of fact. But what if Ubisoft, the creators of Assassin's Creed, actually take their history very seriously? What if they are providing a truly mass-scale historical education? I figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So I talked to Maxime Durand, Ubisoft's in-house historian. Maxime helps to ensure the accuracy of the gameplay and story around the historical events and aspects of that time period. The games have taken in Renaissance Italy, Constantinople, Revolutionary America, Revolutionary France, the pirate-infested Caribbean, and Ancient Egypt. He tries to give cameos to real historical figures, such as the French Revolution's Babriel Riqueti, the comte de Birabeau (he was seen as the father of the revolution but at the end it was proven he was talking to the king and queen in secret). But the game also takes liberties with the past in order to tell a give story and give it license to include folk legends. An example is the The Scarlet Pimpernel or the Little Red Ghost—a paranormal inhabitant of a palace where Napoleon was based. It was said that the ghost told every king and monarch -- even Napoleon -- that they would die at a certain point. The ghost said to them he would protect them up until the point of their death. Find out how fact and fiction merge together in this interview with Maxime Durand. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Assassin's Creed Maxime Durand TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An inquisitor thirsty for a confession had plenty of medieval tools of torture at his disposal: the iron maiden, the judas cradle, the rack, or the brazen bull. Turns out many of these devices are fabrications from hundreds of years later made for museums that wanted to display the barbarism of the "Dark Ages." TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn about one of the most important events in modern Irish history. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a group of Irish nationalists proclaimed the establishment of the Irish Republic. They, along with some 1,600 followers, staged a rebellion against the British government in Ireland. It all started at a modest post office in Dublin and led to a direct clash with British troops. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thomas Jefferson once said you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. With those extremely true words in mind, let's look at other quotes that are widely believed to be authentic but totally false. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a remote forest clearing in Burgundy, France, a 13th-century castle is slowly being constructed using only the tools, techniques, and materials that would have been available to the builders of the day. It’s archaeology in reverse. What started out as an eccentric pipe dream is now an established enterprise, drawing in tens of thousands of visitors from around Europe every year. Learn what it took to build a castle in 13th-century France in this podcast episode. If you want to learn first-hand, go to Burgundy and check it out! TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Japanese military of World War Two has a nasty reputation—kamikaze pilots, baby killers, and brain-washed, honor-obsessed soldiers who threw away their lives for a lost cause. Parts of this reputation is earned but much of the stereotype has come out of World War Two films. Depicting WWII Japan fairly in film and television while humanizing its people isn't easy, but Dan King is up to the job. King is a WWII Pacific war historian who reads, writes and speaks Japanese. After returning to the US he worked on several dozen movies and historical documentaries as a technical advisor, historical & language consultant and re-enactment coordinator. He was the assistant military advisor for Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai (he had a cameo as a German officer), a researcher for Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima/Flags Of Our Fathers, and technical consultant for Nicolas Cage's Windtalkers. His passion for the subject of the war in the Pacific has also led him to seek out over 250 Japanese WWII veterans and personally interview 97 of them, in their own language. He has also been interviewed on several radio programs and has spoken to hundreds of people about Japanese aviation. Dan King was also employed by EA GAMES as the WWII Japanese technical consultant for the worldwide best selling "Medal of Honor" video game series. His basic task was to provide information to the game creators in order to make the game as accurate as possible. This included providing examples of Japanese WWII uniforms and gear; infantry weapons; tanks, large guns, ships and aircraft; Japanese language supervision during VO recording; and battle tactics and hand signals. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Dan's Site Historical Consulting A Tomb Called Iwo Jima The Last Zero Fighter: Firsthand Accounts from WWII Japanese Naval Pilots TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Teddy Roosevelt was not afraid to tempt death. He hiked the Matterhorn during his honeymoon. He arrested outlaws on the Dakota Frontier. He hunted rhinos in Africa. But his most dangerous journey came after his failure in 1912 to retake the presidency as a third-party candidate on the Bull Moose ticket. He choose to shake off the blues in an extremely dangerous journey to South America. Roosevelt did not merely want a repeat of his African safari: a well-provisioned hunt to a foreign land that was little more than an exotic form of sight seeing. Roosevelt wanted to join the ranks of explorers who were pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge: the arctic explorers discovering the Northwest passage or the African trekkers locating the source of the Nile River. His guide, the Brazilian explorer Col. Candido Rondon, suggested they survey the River of Doubt, an uncharted capillary of the Amazon that ran through treacherous terrain of the rainforest. Many told him the journey would end in his death. Ignoring the warnings of field naturalists with experience in the Amazon, Roosevelt said, “If it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so.” Learn in this episode how he almost did. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Theodore Roosevelt was hell bent on becoming president in 1912. He ran as a third-party candidate for the Progressive Party, a splinter group of Republicans dissatisfied with William Howard Taft. He was so committed to winning that he gave a 90-minute speech…immediately after being shot in the chest by a would-be assassin. How did he do it without passing out? What did his audience think as he bled out before their eyes? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Perhaps no president has as many unbelievable stories about his life than Teddy Roosevelt. He was an amateur boxer. He was the first American politician to learn judo. He summited the Matterhorn during his honeymoon. He joined an expedition to log data about an unchartered river in the Amazon. But perhaps no story matches his pursuit of three boat thieves in the Dakotas in the 1880s. Learn how Roosevelt travelled 300 miles in the bitter cold to arrest three thieves… all to prove to other ranches that he wasn’t a week Easterner who came out to to the frontier to play cowboy. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nothing supports the Prohibition movement like a hatchet-wielding radical ready to smash in a Midwestern saloon. Carrie Amelia Nation would know. She made a career out of physical assaulting the alcohol industry in the years before Prohibition (1920). TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shake a family tree long enough and something embarrassing secret is sure to drop out: a felon uncle here, an illegitimate nephew there, a grandfather arrested for indecent exposure there. Genealogy can reveal all sorts of unexpected surprises. But it can also help you find second and third cousins that you didn't know were famous. To talk about the wonders of genealogy and how to do it right is Crista Cowan. Crista is the corporate genealogist for Ancestry.com. She was the indexing manager for the company and helped them archive more than 17 billion records. She has found records in libraries, archives, and courthouses. Recently she has used DNA as a powerful tool to locate and connect biological family members. Crista has been involved in family history research for more than 25 years and has been a professional genealogist since 2002. She specializes in descendancy research, Jewish Immigration, and sharing family history with the genealogically challenged. Crista regularly teaches Family History classes at her local LDS Family History Center and at conferences and genealogy societies around the country. She has been employed at Ancestry.com since 2004 and is known as The Barefoot Genealogist. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Crista's Youtube Series: The Barefoot Genealogist TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anyone born on American soil gets automatic citizenship. This isn't true in the rest of the world. Few other nations in the world practice jus soli (right of the soil). Rather, your parents have to be citizens. Why is this the case? It has to do with New World senses of identity and belonging. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Pandidakterion (University of Constantinople) was the empire's imperial school. It can trace its origins to 425 AD to Emperor Theodosius II. Learn what it was like to be enrolled in the ancient world's premier "university." TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first death of the Cold War quickly became an anti-communist icon and symbol of the American far right from the 1950s onward. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

George Washington was the First President of the United States. This is the most basic fact that an American school child can learn. Only it isn't true. He wasn’t the first. Nor the second. He was actually the ninth president of the United States. How can that be? It all has to do with the ad hoc, make-it-up-as-you-go nature of the United States government between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the signing of the Constitution in 1789. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

‘Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them: there is no third’ —T.S Elliot The most towering epic poem in Western literature, save perhaps the works of Homer, is Dante's Divine Comedy. In this episode we are going to talk about the history of the poem, how it was understood across the centuries, and what it has to say to 21st man today. And our guest is perhaps the most qualified person on the planet to do so. Anthony Esolen is a literature professor and Dante scholar who released an acclaimed translation of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. He has been praised for marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem’s line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure. In our interview we discuss Esolen's translation decision to ditch systematic line-by-line rhyming in favor of blank verse to retain the poem's original “meaning and music,” why Dan Brown's Inferno is so transcendentally terrible a book, and what Dante has to say to a modern world that has exchanged an authentic culture for mindless mass entertainment. ABOUT ANTHONY ESOLEN Anthony Esolen is a professor of English Renaissance and classical literature, a writer, social commentator, and translator of classical poetry. He has taught at the university level for decades and joined Thomas More College of Liberal Arts this fall. Besides Dante, he has translated Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. Along with his academic work he has written more than 500 articles forThe Claremont Review of Books, First Things, and Touchstone magazine. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Anthony Esolen's translation of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise “Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture” “Dan Brown's Infernal Fiction” TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Depending on which account you hear, Columbus was either the bravest explorer of the early Renaissance or a mass murdered who subjected the indigenous population of the new world to death or slavery. Learn in this episode how Columbus was both and neither of these descriptions. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Knights Hospitaller were kicked out of Jerusalem following the Third Crusade, but they found a new home on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Their defense fortifications were so strong that nobody could invade, not even the might Ottoman navy in the late 16th century. Learn how this warrior order helped piracy thrive in the Eastern Mediterranean. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marco Polo is the most famous European explorer to the Far East, but he definitely wasn’t the first. His father and uncle came there years before. And they found a small colony of Europeans who lived permanently in China. Perhaps the most famous pre-Polo European in the Far East is William of Rubruck. This plucky monk did his best to convert the Great Khan to Christianity. He made his effort by debating Muslims and Buddhists as to which religion was the true one. See how that turns out in today's episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Damascus swords, which were generally made in the Middle East anywhere from 540 A.D. to 1800 A.D., were sharper, more flexible and harder/stronger than other contemporary blades. According to legend, the blades can cut a piece of silk in half as it falls to the ground and maintain their edge after cleaving through stone, metal, or even other swords. However nobody knew exactly how it had been produced, and the last Damascus Steel had been produced in the early 1800s. How was the technology lost? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He’s the subject of a hit Broadway musical, the face on the ten-dollar bill, and one of the most popular Founding Fathers. But what do you really know about Alexander Hamilton? In this interview with author and historian Brion McClanahan, he argues that Hamilton was no American hero. Brion says that America’s beloved Hamilton actually spent most of his life working to make sure citizens and states could not hold the federal government accountable. His policies set a path for presidents to launch secret and illegal wars, and he wanted to make sure American citizens couldn’t do a thing to stop the government’s overreach. Hamilton was a duplicitous man whose personality and ambition led to an America and a Constitution at odds with the one he publicly supported in 1788 and that the American public bought as a result. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America Brion's website TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the most chilling stories of revenge is Timur the Tatar's defeat of Ottoman Sultan Bayezit and literally making him his footstool. The humiliation likely led to his death. Learn about the clash of these two Middle East titans and what drove Timur to pursue revenge so ruthlessly. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If we were to have a battle royale with American soldiers from its different eras all duke it out, who would win? Would a Revolutionary-era soldier win due to his scrappy toughness, or would the modern soldier win with his superior training? Let's take a stab at this question (pun intended). TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve all done it in moments of anger. But why do we use our middle finger to express anger? And why do we call it “the bird.” Suggestions range from The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 to Ancient Rome. We find out the history everyone’s favorite one-finger salute in this episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you were to ask a scholar about one critical moment after which the history of the English-speaking world would never be the same again, it would undoubtedly be the year 1066. I know that because I asked Prof. Jennifer Paxton of the Catholic University of America this very question. She chose that year because during this pivotal time an event occurred that would have untold ramifications for the European continent: the Norman Conquest of England. This year matters deeply for two key reasons. It turned England away from a former Scandinavian orientation toward an orientation with mainland Europe, making the island nation a major player in Europe's political, social, cultural, and religious events. It created a rich hybrid between English and French culture that had a profound impact on everything from language and literature to architecture and law. In our discussion we talk about a world of fierce Viking warriors, powerful noble families, politically charged marriages, tense succession crises, epic military invasions, and much more. But it was the Battle of Hastings in 1066 that forever enshrined in the pages of history the name of William the Conqueror, whose military and political prowess made the Norman Conquest a success. After that England was never the same. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Jennifer Paxton's Great Courses history course:—1066: The Year That Changed Everything ABOUT JENNIFER PAXTON, PHD Dr. Jennifer Paxton is Director of the University Honors Program and Clinical Assistant Professor of History at The Catholic University of America. The holder of a doctorate in history from Harvard University, Professor Paxton is both a widely published award-winning writer and a highly regarded scholar. Professor Paxton's research focuses on England from the reign of King Alfred to the late 12th century, particularly the intersection between the authority of church and state and the representation of the past in historical texts, especially those produced by religious communities. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Samurai were the military nobility and officer cast of feudal Japan, serving an important role of social stability until their functions ceased in the 19th century. But what did a samurai exactly do every day? Did he roam the countryside, looking to engage in a duel? Or was his life much more mundane than that? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’ve seen the look in historical dramas. You laughed at the foppish dandies that appear on Masterpiece Theater. In grade school you sneered at pictures of King George with his powdered wig, adjusting it ever so slightly while drinking a cup of tea with his pinky finger extended, wondering how he further extort colonists with new taxes. You didn’t know that we call important people “bigwig” due to the aristocracy tradition of fancy wigs. But where does the powdered wig come from? Why was such a peculiar look the sign of nobility in England during the 1500s-1700s? It all has to do with syphilis, head lice, the shame of male-pattern baldness, and the fashion tastes of Louis XIV. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The goal of this podcast is to answer any question that you have about history... and I mean anything. To prove it, I am answering a question from a listener named Raj about who had the worst flatulence in history. I hope this episode is very educational. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are many contenders for the strongest fortress in history (Malumat in Iran or the island fortifications of Malta to name a few). But nothing can compare to the Theodosian City Walls of Constantinople. Built in 440 AD, they repelled over a dozen invasions, from Atilla the Hun to the Umayyad Caliphate to the Avars to the Russians. And they allowed Constantinople to develop into one of the richest cities of the ancient world. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our interview, Prof. Paul Rahe says that a liberal democracy that guarantees the rights of all citizens needs the guarantee that no one religion is established as the official state belief system. At the same time, if a society doesn't have some sort of transcendent belief system, then politics will rush to fill the void left by religion (or any sort of communal belief) and metastasize into fascism or totalitarianism. We start with the relationship between religion and the political community in the pagan world – Sumeria, Akkad, Babylonia, the Hittite Empire, ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome. Then, we discuss how Christianity changed everything. For three centuries, it was independent of the political community and, in a sense, in opposition. Then, it became entangled with the political community under Constantine and, instead of being persecuted, it did the persecution. To this one can add that as a religion of faith it quite naturally gave rise to quarrels over doctrine, that these were bitter in late Antiquity, and that there was a second round of bitterness in the wake of the Reformation. The modern separation of church and state is a response to the violence that erupted, and it is a remarkable experiment. Finally, Rahe discusses Islam – which is a religion of holy law different in its ambitions from (orthodox) Judaism which is also a religion of holy law. Put simply, insofar as it is center on shari’a, Islam is ineluctably political – which means that it cannot easily be privatized. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Free Hillsdale Online Course—Public Policy from a Constitutional Viewpoint American Heritage—From Colonial Settlement to the Current Day TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The humble potato has done more for Old World peasants than any other food. Famine plagued the lower class from time immemorial. But once the potato was introduced to Europe in the 1500s and widely planted in the 1700s, it nearly wiped out malnutrition. Learn why this tuber is the hero of the modern age. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Winston Churchill is consistently ranked as the greatest leader in British History. But like any complex historical figure, he has his dark side. Most notoriously, but least well known, is his interest in chemical weapons. “If it is fair war for an Afghan to shoot down a British soldier behind a rock and cut him in pieces as he lies wounded on the ground, why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze? It is really too silly.” —WSC, 1919 Churchill favored and/or used “poison gas” from World War I through World War II, notably on the Indians and Bolsheviks in 1919, and the Iraqis in the 1920s. What’s more, he wanted to “drench” German cities with gas in 1943. To discuss this issue in greater depth with us is Giles Milton. He is the host of the History Unknown Podcast and author of “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”: a book about a secret inner circle within the British government that planned all of the most audacious sabotage attacks of the Second World War. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE www.gilesmilton.com Unknown History Podcast ABOUT GILES Giles Milton is the internationally best-selling author of nine works of popular history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have been serialized on both the BBC and in British newspapers. The Times described Milton as being able ‘to take an event from history and make it come alive’, while The New York Times said that Milton’s ‘prodigious research yields an entertaining, richly informative look at the past. Giles Milton's latest book, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, became a Sunday Times bestseller in the first week of publication. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I was honored on this episode to interview Dan Carlin, whose podcast Hardcore History is the biggest history podcast in existence. It regularly features shows of 5-6 hours in length covering everything from the Mongol invasions to doomsday prophets of the Reformation. I met up with Dan at the Podcast Movement conference in August 2017. Since he had a six-part series on World War 1 (Blueprint for Armageddon), I wanted to ask Dan about a comment he made in the podcast, that Germany's army in World War 1 was superior to its army in World War 2. He elaborated in this episode, and as always, brings the goods. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone's favorite code (it's not a language) has quite a storied history. Learn how Pig Latin became the fastest, most convenient way to sound intelligent when you didn't know any ancient languages. It goes back to Shakespeare, like much does, but Pig Latin as a concept can be found in languages across the world. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Richard Nixon left the White House over 40 years ago, yet he remains embedded in American pop culture like no other ex-president. He was the body-less leader of Earth in Futurama, the five-time president in Alan Moore's Watchmen, and arguably the most awkward guest star in Laugh-In's history. Part of the reason is that he is thought to represent America's political id: the dark, paranoid side of politics that keeps an enemies list and never forgives. After all, Watergate was the biggest political scandal of the 20th century, leading to the only presidential resignation in American history. But what if Nixon was innocent? That's exactly the point that today's guest, Geoff Shepard, argues. He was not an outsider to Watergate: Shepard joined John Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council staff at the Nixon White House, where he served for five years, first as a staff assistant and ultimately as associate director. He also worked on President Nixon’s Watergate defense team, where he was principal deputy to the President’s lead lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt. In that capacity, he helped transcribe the White House tapes —which run 3,400 hours—ran the document rooms holding the seized files of H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean, and staffed White House counselors Bryce Harlow and Dean Birch. Working from internal documents he recently uncovered at the National Archives, Shepard exposes what he calls judicial and prosecutorial misconduct that has remained hidden for four decades with his book, “The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down.” He describes it as the following: an aging judge about to step down. Aggressive prosecutors friendly with the judge. A disgraced president. A nation that had already made up its mind. The Watergate trials were a legal mess—and now, with the discovery of new documents that reveal what he calls shocking misconduct by prosecutors and judges alike, Shepard says the wrongdoing of these history-making trials was actually a bigger scandal than the Watergate scandal itself. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down Geoff Shepard's website TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's one thing to conquer the known world and beyond without the benefit of modern communications like Alexander the Great did. It's another thing to supply tens of thousands of soldiers deep into hostile territory when home is half a world away. How did Alexander manage to provision his army, and how did he do so for over a decade? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More soldiers died in the Civil War than any other American conflict. But how did non-combatants fare? It depends on where you were and your life station. A northerner may barely know a war was going on at all if he did not read the newspaper or supply the foodstuffs to the Union army. But he definitely would if he lived in Missouri—claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy—and was subject to frequent guerilla attacks. A southerner would face impoverishment, the collapse of the regional economy, a flood of refugees, and see whole cotton crops rot. And it only got worse as the war got underway. Learn about everyday life for civilians during the Civil War in this episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press was the prime mover of the Renaissance. From his machine came millions of books, leading to the democratization of knowledge, the fall of the papacy, and the rise of reason. But what if this wasn’t Gutenberg’s goal? What if he was a happy client of the papacy? What if he worked directly with the medieval church to sell indulgences? Turns out he did. Learn more in this episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Allied Forces hoped the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would finally convince Imperial Japan to end the war. If not, they were prepared to launch Operation Downfall—the proposed plan for the invasion of Japan in November of 1945 and the spring of 1946. If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in history. It also would have meant millions of Japanese and Allied casualties from gunfire, bombings, and suicide attacks. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan loom large in Western popular consciousness as two of history’s most fearsome warrior-leaders. Chroniclers referred to them as “The Scourge of God” and “Universal Lord” both fascinate and repel. But few people today are aware of their place in a succession of nomadic warriors who used campaigns of terror to sweep across the Eurasian steppes. They toppled empires and seizing control of civilizations. Today Professor Kenneth Harl joins us to talk about the effects of these steppe empires on world civilization. From antiquity through the Middle Ages, nomadic warriors repeatedly emerged from the steppes, exerting direct and indirect pressure on sedentary populations and causing a domino effect of displacement and cultural exchange. Dr. Harl and I discuss these turning points in history set into motion by steppe nomads: The fall of the Roman Empire can be blamed at least in part on the Huns. Christians of Asia Minor converted to Islam after the clergy fled the nomadic Turks. The Mongol sack of Baghdad destroyed the city and its role in the Muslim world. China’s modern-day Great Wall was constructed in response to the humiliation of Mongol rule. The spread of Buddhism and trade followed the Silk Road, which allowed cultural exchange between nomads and settled zones across Eurasia. Russia’s preemptive expansion into the northern regions was a reaction to the horror of being conquered by Mongols. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Kenneth's course “The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes” ABOUT KENNETH HARL Dr. Kenneth W. Harl is Professor of Classical and Byzantine History at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he teaches courses in Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader history. He earned his B.A. from Trinity College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. An expert on classical Anatolia, he has taken students with him into the field on excursions and to assist in excavations of Hellenistic and Roman sites in Turkey. Professor Harl has also published a wide variety of articles and books, including his current work on coins unearthed in an excavation of Gordion, Turkey, and a new book on Rome and her Iranian foes. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are few episodes in history that are so misunderstood as the condemnation of Galileo. His trial has become a stock argument to show the fundamental clash between science and dogmatism. Turns out the whole affair was actually a giant clash of egos, with churchmen and scientists on both sides of the argument. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to legends of the Middle Ages, knights used the chastity belt on their wives as an anti-temptation device before embarking on the Crusades. When the knight left for the Holy Lands, his Lady would wear a chastity belt to preserve her faithfulness to him. The metal teeth that surrounded her "credentials" would also tear to shreds the member of any would-be seducer. However, there is no reliable evidence that chastity belts existed before the 15th century. Any reference to them is likely symbolic or a satirical drawing. No actual medieval chastity belt survives, and those that appear in museums are forgeries. Were they ever in use at all? If not, how did the legend appear? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you want to be a French king who is also named Louis, then you have to slap enough Roman numerals at the end of your name to look like an encrypted message. Why are so many French kings named Louis? What significance does the name have for the French people? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Doctors love to say that eight hours of nightly rest is vital to good health. But did people in the past get this much sleep, more, or less? And how did the lack of a lightbulb affect their sleep cycles. Turns out quite a bit. People actually hit the hay very early and woke up a few hours each night—sort of a reverse midnight siesta. Important cultural activity took place during this time, including scheduled prayers, visits to neighbors, and doctors orders that children be conceived at this time. Learn more about how your ancestors slept, or didn't sleep. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pirates are popular these days: they adorn our favorite brands of bargain-basement rum and populate beloved Disneyland rides and multibillion-dollar film franchises. But who were these men and women who actually inhabited the Caribbean of the 1700s and made a living preying off trade vessels? How much of the myth of piracy is based on fact? And how much high seas adventure, myth and magic, voodoo, and treachery were there? Joining us to discuss these topics is Matt Albers, host of the Pirate History Podcast. We will talk about the golden age of piracy and the real men and women that threatened the trade and stability of the Old World empires, the forces that led them to piracy and the myths and stories they inspired. Famous names that come up include Captain Henry Morgan, Henry Avery, Charles Vane, Mary Reed, Anne Bonny, Black Bart Roberts, Ned Low, and Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach. They rub elbows with Queens, Kings, Popes, rebellious monks, Caribbean Natives, African Slaves and notorious governors like Woodes Rogers. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The Pirate History Podcast Matt on Twitter (@blackflagcast) TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's good to be as rich as a Rockefeller. John—the patriarch of the family—rose from a lowly Ohioan bookkeeper to the leader of Standard Oil, which owned 90 percent of America's petroleum until it was broken up by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1911. He was the world's first billionaire, owning mansions in New York, Florida, and Ohio, along with several golf golf courses. But was all that money really all that great without modern conveniences? Let's look in to the conveniences of an ultra-wealthy man 100 years ago and see how they compare to an average person today. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scientific progress has moved steadily forward across much of the world for centuries, with few examples of abatement. The Scientific Revolution is often considered to have begun at Copernicus's 1543 publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Here moderns challenged the ideas of ancient scholars, rather than accepting them at face value. Most fault the so-called Dark Ages for this millenium-long lull in human intellectual progress lasting from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. But why didn't Rome kick off the age of scientific discovery? What did they lack that the early modern world had? TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is fifth in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. The Man in the High Castle is Phillip K. Dick's most chilling book and the most famous example of alternate history. It's set in 1962, fifteen years after the Axis Powers emerge triumphant in World War Two and rule over the former United States. Germany and Japan were victors in the war and divide the world between themselves. The book is fantastic, but I don't see any scenario in which Germany and Japan could control a post-war world. In fact, I don't see how the Axis had any chances of winning the war, short of an alien invasion. I explain why in this episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is fourth in our Alternate History Week series, where I look at famous books of alternate history and discuss why I think their alternate timelines aren't plausible. Lest Darkness Fall, written in 1939 by L. Sprague de Camp, is one of the classics of the alternate history genre. American archeologist Martin Padway gets sent back to Rome in 535 AD. He introduces new technology to the Italo-Ostrogothic kingdom, such as the telegraph, printing press, and brandy; wards off a Byzantine attack; introduces a constitution; and emancipates the serfs. Great story. It would never work. In this episode I explain why. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.