History Unplugged Podcast

By: Scott Rank PhD
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  • Summary

  • For history lovers who listen to podcasts, History Unplugged is the most comprehensive show of its kind. It's the only show that dedicates episodes to both interviewing experts and answering questions from its audience. First, it features a call-in show where you can ask our resident historian (Scott Rank, PhD) absolutely anything (What was it like to be a Turkish sultan with four wives and twelve concubines? If you were sent back in time, how would you kill Hitler?). Second, it features long-form interviews with best-selling authors who have written about everything. Topics include gruff World War II generals who flew with airmen on bombing raids, a war horse who gained the rank of sergeant, and presidents who gave their best speeches while drunk.
    Scott Rank, PhD
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World Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • The Last Emperor of Mexico: How a Habsburg Archduke Set Up a Kingdom in the New World in the 1860s

    The Last Emperor of Mexico: How a Habsburg Archduke Set Up a Kingdom in the New World in the 1860s
    Sep 26 2024

    In 1864, a young Austrian archduke by the name of Maximilian crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been lured into the voyage by a duplicitous Napoleon III (the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte). Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor had promised Maximilian a hero's welcome. Instead, he walked into a bloody guerrilla war. With a head full of impractical ideals - and a penchant for pomp and butterflies - the new 'emperor' was singularly ill-equipped for what lay in store.

    In this episode we are looking at this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond. To discuss his life is today’s guest, Edward Shawcross, author of “The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    51 mins
  • First-Hand Account of Hiroshima: Before, During, and After the Atomic Bomb Drop

    First-Hand Account of Hiroshima: Before, During, and After the Atomic Bomb Drop
    Sep 24 2024
    Over the past few years, much has been written and created around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, but little attention is paid to those whose lives were ended or forever changed when the bombs dropped in Japan.

    In this episode, we delve into the experiences of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. On that day the Enola Gay released its devastating payload, ushering in the nuclear age. The survivors, now with an average age of over 90, provide some of the last living testimonies of the horrors that unfolded in the seconds, minutes, and hours following the explosion.

    Today’s guest is M.G. Sheftall, author of The Stories of Hibakusha. Sheftall has spent years interviewing those who were young adolescents at the time of the bombing, now elderly but still haunted by their memories.
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    40 mins
  • America’s Professional Sports Grew From Farm Teams to Multi-Billion Dollar Franches Thanks to the Harlem Globetrotters Founder

    America’s Professional Sports Grew From Farm Teams to Multi-Billion Dollar Franches Thanks to the Harlem Globetrotters Founder
    Sep 19 2024
    The original Harlem Globetrotters weren’t from Harlem, and they didn’t start out as globetrotters. The talented team, started by Jewish immigrant Abe Saperstein, was from Chicago’s South Side and toured the Midwest in Saperstein’s model-T. But with Saperstein’s savvy and the players’ skills, the Globetrotters would become a worldwide sensation

    At 5’3”, Saperstein is not who we might imagine would bring the sport of basketball to the entire world, pioneer the three-point shot, or to befriend the likes of Jesse Owens, Satchel Paige, and Wilt Chamberlain to name a few. Born in 1902 in London’s Whitechapel slum neighborhood to parents who had immigrated from Poland, Saperstein and his family then immigrated to America in 1906. He founded the team in the 1920s, steadily building a reputation for talent and comedy until their footprint covered the entire world.

    Abe Saperstein’s impact went well beyond the Harlem Globetrotters. He helped keep baseball’s Negro Leagues alive, was a force in getting pitching great Satchel Paige his shot at the majors, and befriended Olympic star Jesse Owens when he fell on hard times. When Saperstein started the American Basketball League, he pioneered the three-point shot, which has dramatically changed the sport. Today’s guests, Mark Jacob and Matthew Jacob, authors of “Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports” piece together the of his life.
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    38 mins

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