History Unplugged Podcast
History Unplugged
Outreach Signals
Publishing Details
Contact & Outreach
About This Podcast
Explore Statistics
Recent Episodes
How 10 Whalers Survived Three Years Shipwrecked in the South Pacific
In 1832, a New Bedford whaleship called the Mentor struck a reef in the remote Pacific archipelago of Palau. The tiny, 100-foot-long ship began sinking immediately, and the 22 men who made up its…
The Nobels Built Russia’s Oil Industry, Invented Dynamite and the Oil Tanker, But Were Still Crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution
The Nobel family (which are the namesake of the Nobel prize), had a rags-to-riches story bigger than the Rockefellers or Morgans. The Nobel patriarch Emanuel fled debtor’s prison in 1837. He then…
The American Revolution Went Way Outside of America, Pulling in Caribbean Colonies, African Forts, and Chinese Trading Houses
The thirteen colonies that became the United States were just half of the British colonies that existed in the 18th century. The empire stretched from New England, south to Georgia and Florida and…
Ford’s Auto Domination Came From a 1909 Race Across America Through Mud-Choked Roads
In June 1909, five automobiles lined up in front of New York's City Hall to attempt something no car had ever done: drive all the way to Seattle. The Ocean-to-Ocean Race was supposed to be a…
Al Capone’s Missing $100 Million, and the TV Journalist Who Embarrassed Himself to Find It
On the night of April 21, 1986, an estimated 30 million Americans sat in front of their televisions waiting for a moment that almost no one alive had ever seen: a live, prime-time excavation of a…
How the Dollar Created America (Part 2)
Part 2 of our exploration of how the U.S. dollar is older than the United States itself and has a level of power beyond the Federal Reserve and even beyond the U.S. government. We’re joined by guest…
How the Dollar Created America (Part 1)
The U.S. dollar's origin story begins not in Philadelphia or Washington, but in a half-frozen mining valley in 16th-century Bohemia, where Saxon miners accidentally named their town after a saint and…
From Patriot to Pirate: How Revolutionary War Hero Sam Mason Became a River Outlaw
One of the greatest threat to early America was piracy, but it wasn’t found in the Caribbean or Gulf Coast. It was pirates on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Samuel Mason fought bravely at the 1777…
Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs
When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar Nicholas II in 1868, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she…
The Revolutionary War’s Charlie Wilson: A Spanish Spy Chief Funded the Siege of Yorktown, Helping Washington Win
Everyone knows the American Revolution was won at Yorktown in 1781, when Cornwallis’s Army was trapped, but almost no one knows that victory depended on a Spanish intelligence operative who raised…
Europe Dominated Because It Never Stopped Fighting Itself
Why did the West dominate all rivals on Earth? How did a group of states that were nearly wiped out in the late Middle Ages by enemies to the south and east grow to conquer the globe by the 16th…
A Land Flowing with Pork and Beef: Colonial America’s Rise to the World’s Meat Consumption Capital
When European settlers arrived in North America, they enjoyed a level of meat consumption that was absolutely unimaginable in the Old World. An average European was lucky to see meat once a week…
Passenger Pigeons Once Numbered in the Billions and Blotted Out the Skies for Days. They Went Extinct in 30 Years.
In America’s first hundred years, the animal you were most likely to see was a passenger pigeon. And you saw a lot of them. Flocks were so numerous they literally blotted out the sun for days and…
Tooth Enamel Tells All: Genetic Testing and Why It’s Rewriting Our Understanding of Early Medieval Migration
Europe's borders in the Middle Ages were created by one man, and he wasn't even born in the Middle Ages, nor was he Christian. It was Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome from 284 to 305. His reforms…
95% of Ancient Greek Theater Is Gone. Here's How One Classicist Resurrected 500 Lost Playwrights
Of the estimated 1,500 plays written in ancient Greece, only 33 complete works survive today—the rest were lost because medieval scribes deemed low-brow comedies and mass entertainment unworthy of…
How Medieval Monks Used the 7 Deadly Sins to Map Human Behavior…and LinkedIn Weaponized them Against Us
When medieval historian Peter Jones found himself spiraling into depression while teaching at a frigid Siberian university with icicles sprouting from his eyelashes, he asked himself what a medieval…
1,000% Profit Per Voyage: The Economics of Civil War Smuggling and Blockade Running
In August 1863, as Lee's army retreated from Gettysburg and Vicksburg fell to Grant, the Union's Anaconda Plan deployed hundreds of ships to strangle 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline, triggering…
The Lost Voices of Pompeii: Lives Cut Short When Vesuvius Erupted, Including a Fish Sauce Tycoon and an Isis Priest
Pompeii's story is usually told through the lens of catastrophe—perfectly preserved bodies frozen in ash, a civilization erased in hours, sort of like a Roman version of the Chicxulub impactor that…
The Body Worth Stealing: Why Medieval Cities Fought Over Francis of Assisi’s Corpse
When St. Francis of Assisi was near death in 1226, he joked with companions that his corpse would be practically as valuable as gold. And he was right: In medieval Europe, relics, or the physical…
The Alphabet as Artifact: How Egyptian Pictograms Became Your ABCs
The alphabet you're reading right now is a 3,800-year-old archaeological artifact, preserving ancient decisions in plain sight—from the upside-down ox head that became the letter A to the demotion of…
Frequently Asked Questions
History Unplugged Podcast has published 1093 episodes since May 2017, covering topics in History, Society & Culture.
History Unplugged Podcast is currently highly active with new episodes every few days. Average episode length is 44m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for History Unplugged Podcast, including email and social media links.
Similar Podcasts
Sword and Scale
Sword and Scale
105 episodes
Revisionist History
Pushkin Industries
202 episodes
Radiolab
WNYC Studios
655 episodes
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
489 episodes
True Crime Garage
TRUE CRIME GARAGE
937 episodes
Stuff You Missed in History Class
iHeartPodcasts
2,709 episodes