History Unplugged Podcast

Victory gardens are perhaps the U.S. government’s most successful and long-lasting propaganda campaign. It began during World War One, when the War Garden Commission offered free handbooks for garden tips and published stories in newspapers to encourage citizens to plant food crops in any little piece of unused land so citizens could help provide food for America’s allies fighting in Europe. The idea caught on, and by the end of the war, over 5 million gardens were planted, producing nearly $10 billion (in today’s dollars) worth of food. By World War 2, nearly 60 percent of U.S. households had some kind of garden. Over 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce was grown in a local garden. Today’s guest is Maggie Stuckey, author of “The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries.” With a renewed interest in home gardening during the 2020 lockdowns, she realized the astonishing surge of gardening activity was a modern-day version of wartime Victory Gardens, when Americans planted a few vegetables in whatever little patch of ground they could find. And even more surprising was how eerily the tragedies mirrored each other through the decades: World War I with its gardens and its influenza pandemic, World War II with its gardens and its devastating loss of life, and 2020’s gardens in response to the coronavirus pandemic. We look at the surprising relevance of Victory Gardens today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their toughness, stoicism and martial prowess. They were feared for never surrendering and never running from a fight, always preferring death to dishonor. But was this reputation earned? How much of it was true versus an exaggeration that compounded over the centuries?That’s the question that today’s guest, Myke Cole, asked himself when he set out to investigate their military history, which became his book “The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy,Spartan history had its moments of glory, but it was also punctuated by frequent and heavy losses. It was a society dedicated to militarism not in service to Greek unity or to the Spartan state itself, but as a desperate measure intended to keep its massive population of helots (a near-slave underclass) in line. What successes there were, such as in the Peloponnesian Wars, gave Sparta only a brief period of hegemony over Greece. Today, there is no greater testament to this than the relative position of modern Sparta and its famous rival Athens.Nevertheless, there is still plenty to appreciate about the Spartans when we look at them as real people, not as mythological figures.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

King Arthur. The search for the historical figure behind what is arguably the most famous cycle of legends ever has been relentless over the centuries. Many think he was a Romano-British military commander in the 5th/6th centuries who fought the Anglo-Saxons and saved Britain in its infancy. But other historians put the real-life Arthur at a much earlier date, arguing that the man whose story started the traditions of Arthur was a soldier name Lucius Artorius Castus who lived at the end of the second century A.D. There are enough historical clues to reconstruct Castus’s extraordinary, which career took him from one end of the Roman Empire to the other, bringing him into contact with tribespeople amongst the Steppe nomads – in particular the Sarmatians. For several decades the Sarmatians have been thought to be the inspiration behind Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, among other British tales. Today’s guests are John Matthews and Linda Malcor, authors of “Artorius: The Real King Arthur.” We focus on Castus’s career, not only commenting on the parallels with the Arthurian tradition but also providing details about the Roman Empire of the second century A.D. along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 19th century America, no science was more important than botany. Understanding plants meant more productive plantations, more wealth extracted from cash crops, and more money flowing into the United States. The science of botany became weaponized, fueling ideas of Manifest Destiny and other programs of political expansion was used for political ends. But other authors and thinkers believed that nature could teach humanity different lessons. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s struggles in his garden inspired him to write stories in which plants defy human efforts to impose order. Radical scientific ideas about plant intelligence and sociality prompted Emily Dickinson to imagine a human polity that embraces kinship with the natural world. Frederick Douglass cautioned that the most prominent political context for plants remained plantation slavery. Today’s guest is Mary Kuhn, author of “The Garden Politic: Global Plants and Botanical Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America.” We explore how politicians of the 19th century used agriculture as a vehicle for power politics, but the same branch of science contained the seeds of alternative political visions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the late 1830s a young black man was born into a world of wealth and privilege in the powerful, thousand-year-old African kingdom of Borno. But instead of becoming a respected general like his fearsome father (who was known as The Lion), Nicolas Said’s fate was to fight a very different kind of battle. At the age of thirteen, Said was kidnapped and sold into slavery, beginning an epic journey that would take him across Africa, Asia, Europe, and eventually the United States, where he would join one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army. Nicholas Said would then spend the rest of his life fighting for equality. Along the way, Said encountered such luminaries as Queen Victoria and Czar Nicholas I, fought Civil War battles that would turn the war for the North, established schools to educate newly freed black children, and served as one of the first black voting registrars.Today’s guest is today’s guest Dean Calbreath, author of“The Sergeant, a biography of Said. Through the lens of Said’s continent-crossing life, Calbreath examines the parallels and differences in the ways slavery was practiced from a global and religious perspective, and he highlights how Said’s experiences echo the discrimination, segregation, and violence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do Italian unification, Pinocchio and pizza have in common? In this episode preview from History of the Papacy, host Steve Guerra dives in!The Risorgimento was a period of political and social upheaval in Italy that lasted from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century. The movement aimed to unite the various states and regions of Italy into one unified nation. Pinocchio, the beloved children's story written by Carlo Collodi, can be seen as a metaphor for Italian unification through the character's journey from a wooden puppet to a real boy. And last but not least, let's talk about pizza. Italy's most famous export, pizza, is a symbol of the country's rich cultural heritage and culinary traditions. Whether you're a fan of traditional Margherita or a more unconventional topping, there's a pizza for everyone. To continue listening to History of the Papacy, check out:Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3L4IzN9 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3ZtqsEd Parthenon: https://www.parthenonpodcast.com/history-of-the-papacy-podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

November 4, 1791, was a black day in American history. General Arthur St. Clair’s army had been ambushed by Native Americans in what is now western Ohio. In just three hours, St. Clair’s force sustained the greatest loss ever inflicted on the United States Army by American Indians—a total nearly three times larger than what incurred in the more famous Custer fight of 1876. It was the greatest proportional loss by any American army in the nation’s history. By the time this fighting ended, over six hundred corpses littered an area of about three and one half football fields laid end to end. Still more bodies were strewn along the primitive road used by hundreds of survivors as they ran for their lives with Native Americans in hot pursuit. It was a disaster of cataclysmic proportions for George Washington’s first administration, which had been in office for only two years. Today’s guest is Alan Gaff, author of Field of Corpses: Arthur St. Clair and the Death of the American Army. We look at the first great challenge of Washington’s presidency, a humiliating defeat that the United States needed to strengthen its military or die. It’s a war story that emphasizes individuals and small units rather than grandiose armies and famous generals, making St. Clair’s defeat all the more immersive and personable.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel was one of the most integral agents of the KBG, the Soviet Union’s most renowned spy network during the Cold War of the 1950s. He may have infiltrated Los Alamos labs and fed critical intelligence back to Moscow through the use of cloak-and-dagger techniques like sneaking microfilm in hollowed- out coins and dropping bundles of cash at lamppost hideaways. He kept it up until his cover was blown by an incompetent colleague who wanted to defect to the United States. This lead resulted in a frenzied search by the FBI to discover the identity and whereabouts of the spymaster. The month long stake out of his hotel in Manhattan leading to his eventual arrest and transfer to a Texas deportation facility where he was put under extensive interrogation. His three-month trial and guilty verdict for violating U.S. espionage laws resulted in 30 years in prison rather than the electric chair. The exchange for his freedom several years later involved the American Spy Francis Gary Powers. To discuss this story is today’s guest Cecil Kuhne, a prominent litigator, who has long been interested in the world of Cold War. He is the author of KGB Man: The Cold War’s Most Notorious Soviet Agent and the First to be Exchanged at the Bridge of Spies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. They escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as “his” slave. They made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles crisscrossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line, and the stakes never higher. Today’s guest is Ilyon Woo, author of “Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom.” We look at this story of escape, emancipation, and the challenges of Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction America.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor thrust theUnited States into World War II. Just six months later in May 1942,flying new C-47 transport aircraft, the 60th Troop Carrier Group ledthe way as the first U.S. TCG to deploy to England and the EuropeanTheater of Operations in World War II. Leading the way to victory,the 60th TCG’s first mission—dropping U. S. paratroopers outside ofOran, North Africa—was not only the first combat airborne missionin U.S. Army history, but also the longest airborne mission of theentire war. This drop spearheaded Operation TORCH, also known asthe Invasion of North Africa, by taking key Axis airfields just inlandfrom the amphibious landing zones. The 60th TCG went on to fly some of the first combat aeromedical evacuation missions and the first combat mission towing CG-4A “Waco” gliders during Operation HUSKY—the Invasion of Sicily. As the new airborne, air land,aeromedical evacuation, and glider missions matured in World WarII, the 60th TCG continued to play a major role, paying in blood forvaluable lessons learned in the school of hard knocks. The group laterflew dramatic missions into Yugoslavia, supporting Partisans as partof the secret war in the Balkans, an episode of World War II historystill all but unknown today and dropped British paratroops in theairborne invasion of Greece. The Group was inactivated at the end ofthe war. Today’s guest is Col. Mark C. Vlahos, author of “Leading the Way to Victory: A History of the 60th Troop Carrier Group 1940-1945.” We look at the group’s battles, adversity, hardships, and triumphs from inception through the Allied victory in Europe.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.