History Unplugged Podcast

Of all the self-made millionaires of the Gilded Age (and there were many, such as John Rockefeller, son of a literal snake oil salesman who became the world’s first billionaire), nobody can rival bootstrapping tenacity of Cassie Chadwick. She was a drifter from Canada who set herself up as wife of a rich doctor in Cleveland before moving on to a much bigger con involving the richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie. With little education, no financial training, and at a time when women didn't even have the vote, Cassie Chadwick (Elizabeth Bigley) moved up the chain of bankers, getting each banker to loan her more than the one before telling each one a simple lie, she was none other than the illegitimate daughter of Carnegie and she was due to inherit his entire fortune. By the time the police caught up to her she had wrecked the banking system of Cleveland, sending one unfortunate banker to his grave and causing the collapse of a major bank. When the trial was held it was a media event that pushed the trial of Teddy Roosevelt off the front pages with a climactic moment when Andrew Carnegie appeared to face his accuser. Cassie was eventually convicted but not before taking others with her and leaving a legacy as the biggest con woman in the United States only to be eclipsed by Charles Ponzi.Today’s guest is William Hazelgrove, author of the book Greed in the Gilded Age: The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick. We explore the excesses of this age, and the very thin line between radical reinvention and outright deception.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. Today’s guest is Prof. Jing Tsu, author of “Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern.” She argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the Chinese language—with its many dialects and complex character-based script—accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. We discuss the connection between language and power, challenges China faced to ensure their language remained dominant/widespread, the innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world defined by the West and its alphabet, AND it was so important for China to preserve its ancient character set, even though it was seen as such a hindrance to their technological development.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the United States, questions of how we celebrate – or condemn – leaders in the past have never been more contentious. In 2017, a statue of Robert E. Lee was removed – leading to a race riot and terrorist attack. But in 2020, statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, and even Ulysses S. Grant were defaced or toppled. All of this comes to the question of how we judge the past. When are the morals and ethics of people born centuries earlier excusable for the conditions of their birth, and when are they universally condemnable? What separates a Thomas Jefferson from an Emperor Nero?To discuss this incredibly challenging topic is someone perhaps nobody better qualified: Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. He is an emeritus classics professor and author of books on the Peloponnesian War or assessing the ancient world’s best military leader. He was also awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 and was a presidential appointee in 2007–2008 on the American Battle Monuments Commission.We discuss the following:•Times when American’s feared the removal of Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt statues in 2021 (or their toppling in riots). But we have also celebrated statue removal, such as the removal of Saddam Hussein’s statues after the fall of his regime in 2003 or the removal of Marx/Lenin Statues in Eastern Europe in 1991. What is the difference?•The criteria for a community to remove a statue in a healthy way•How we judge those of the past and determine that some character flaws are due to their times of birth, while other character flaws are universally condemnable – Essentially, what makes a slave-owning Jefferson a product of his time while, say, a Nero, is universally understood as cruel•The dangers of canceling anyone who doesn’t meet our 21st century standards; conversely, the dangers of slavish worship of them•Who deserves more statues todaySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age.Following the outset of World War I in 1914, the views of these three titans splintered as they could not agree on how America should respond to what soon proved to be an unprecedented global catastrophe. To discuss their approaches is today’s guest Neil Lanctot, author of “THE APPROACHING STORM: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America’s Future by Neil Lanctot. We explore the story of three extraordinary leaders and how they debated, quarreled, and split over the role the United States should play in the world. By turns a colorful triptych of three American icons who changed history and the engrossing story of the roots of World War I, this episode explores a surprising and important story of how and why the United States emerged onto the world stage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s episode is a look at the life of Frances Peter, a Civil War-era Kentuckian who witnessed all the major events of the conflict, and watched her hometown switch hands from the Confederacy to the Union multiple times. She was one of the eleven children of Dr. Robert Peter, a surgeon for the Union army. The Peter family lived on Gratz Park near downtown Lexington, where nineteen-year-old Frances began recording her impressions of the Civil War. Because of illness, she did not often venture outside her home but was able to gather a remarkable amount of information from friends, neighbors, and newspapers. Peter's candid diary chronicles Kentucky's invasion by Confederates under Gen. Braxton Bragg in 1862, Lexington's month-long occupation by Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, and changes in attitude among the slave population following the Emancipation Proclamation. Today’s guest is Prof. John Smith, editor of Peter’s diary, which has been published under the name “A Union Woman in Civil War Kentucky.” As troops from both North and South took turns holding the city, she repeatedly emphasized the rightness of the Union cause and minced no words in expressing her disdain for the hated ""secesh."" Her writings articulate many concerns common to Kentucky Unionists. Though she was an ardent supporter of the war against the Confederacy, Peter also worried that Lincoln's use of authority exceeded his constitutional rights. Her own attitudes towards blacks were ambiguous, as was the case with many people in that time. Peter's descriptions of daily events in an occupied city provide valuable insights and a unique feminine perspective on an underappreciated aspect of the war. Until her death by epileptic seizure in August 1864, Peter conscientiously recorded the position and deportment of both Union and Confederate soldiers, incidents at the military hospitals, and stories from the countryside. Her account of a torn and divided region is a window to the war through the gaze of a young woman of intelligence and substance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a special episode, in which the microphone is turned around and Scott is interview. He was recently on Ray Harris’ History of World War Two Podcast. We discuss some of the biggest moral quandaries of the war. They include the Fire Bombing of Tokyo (in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died in a six-hour period), the justification for dropping the atomic bombs, and the likely casualties of an Allied invasion onto the main Japanese Islands. We also discuss the quantum leaps in technology, such as the B-29 campaign, which cost more money than the Manhattan Project, and was so complex that more crews in the early use of the plane died from mechanical failure than enemy fire.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s Guest is Ronald Gunger, author of “We the Presidents: How American Presidents Shaped the Last Century. We explore the successes and failures of 100 years of chief executives, from Warren G. Harding to Donald Trump.Every generation tends to believe they live in unique times, but immigration, healthcare, civil rights, tax policy, income distribution, globalization and the evolving role of government have all had their roots in earlier presidencies - and continue to affect every American today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen to this full episode by searching for "Key Battles of American History" on the podcast player of your choice or go to https://parthenonpodcast.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast. Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel.Today’s guest is Jared R. Hardesty, author of Mutiny on the Rising Sun. He recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun’s final smuggling voyage in vivid detail. Starting from that horrible night in June 1743, it becomes a story of smuggling, providing an incredible story of those caught in the webs spun by illicit commerce. The case generated a rich documentary record that illuminates an international chocolate smuggling ring, the lives of the crew and mutineers, and the harrowing experience of the enslaved people trafficked by the Rising Sun. Smuggling stood at the center of the lives of everyone involved with the business of the schooner. Larger forces, such as imperial trade restrictions, created the conditions for smuggling, but individual actors, often driven by raw ambition and with little regard for the consequences of their actions, designed, refined, and perpetuated this illicit commerce.At once startling and captivating, Mutiny on the Rising Sun shows how illegal trade created the demand for exotic products like chocolate, and how slavery and smuggling were integral to the development of American capitalism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a young man, Fyodor Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day that swept Europe during the Revolutions of the 1840s condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction and debt, the death of those closest to him, epilepsy, and literary banishment.The inspiration for Crime and Punishment came from the sensational true crime story of a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s--Pierre François Lacenaire—a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism. Dostoevsky wanted to create a Russian incarnation of the Lacenaire: a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov.Today’s guest is Kevin Birmingham, author of THE SINNER AND THE SAINT: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece. We discuss how Raskolnikov then began to merge with his creator. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer, Anna Grigorievna. She became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love.Dostoevsky’s great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky’s career.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.