History Unplugged Podcast

In this discussion, Mir Bahmanyar, author of "Second Punic War in Iberia: 220-206 BC", dives deep into the Second Punic War's pivotal battles. He examines Hannibal's ambitious siege of Saguntum that sparked the conflict, and the subsequent Roman victories led by Scipio Africanus. Bahmanyar highlights Hasdrubal's struggles in Iberia, strategic failures, and the significant consequences of the Roman triumph at Baecula, which shifted the war's momentum toward Carthage's defeat.

Peter Staveley, author of "Robin Unhooded, And the Death of a King," presents a bold theory that redefines Robin Hood as an Anglo-Saxon hitman linked to the assassination of King William II. He challenges the traditional Merry Man narrative, proposing that Robin operated in the backdrop of the Norman Conquest and particularly in South Yorkshire. The discussion dives into the intriguing connections between Robin's actions and the political dynamics of the time, as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding King Rufus's death.

Timothy Winegard, author of "The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity," sheds light on the pivotal role horses have played in shaping civilization since their domestication over 5,500 years ago. He reveals how horses were integral to transportation, trade, and warfare, and compares their historical significance to modern perceptions. Winegard also discusses their dual role in public health, as both disease carriers and contributors to medical advancements, as well as the transition from horse reliance to the age of cars.

Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” He was a chameleon in a world of strangers, and scholars have overlooked him due to his elusive nature. Reconstruction offered additional opportunities for Cowlam to repackage his identity. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal and persuaded Republicans in Florida to allow him to run for Congress. After losing the election, Cowlam moved to New York, where he became a serial bigamist and started a fake secret society inspired by the burgeoning Granger movement. When the newspapers exposed his lies, he disappeared and spent the next decade living under an assumed name. He resurfaced in Dayton, Ohio, claiming to be a Union colonel suffering from dementia to gain admittance into the National Soldiers’ Home.  Today’s guest, Frank Garmom, author of A Wonderful Career in Crime, Cowlam’s stunning machinationsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Soviet espionage existed in the United States since the U.S.S.R.’s founding and continued until its dissolution in the 1990s. It reached its height in World War 2 and the early Cold War, especially to steam atomic weapon’s technology (revealed to the public with the trials and executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Americans who fed intelligence back to the Soviets).The funnel for Americans into Soviet espionage was the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Throughout its history, the American Communist Party attracted a variety of seemingly contradictory people. Democratic, reform-minded individuals who wanted to end inequality worked alongside authoritarians and ideologues who espoused Soviet propaganda. These factions reached loggerheads following Nikita Khrushchev’s revelation of Joseph Stalin’s crimes, leading to the organization’s decline into political irrelevance.   To look at this history is today’s guest, Maurice Isserman, author of “Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth?In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (nearly $300 million today) had passed through her Lower East Side shop. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime,” she planned robberies of cash, gold and diamonds throughout the country.But Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of the finest bank robbers, housebreakers and shoplifters, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.To discuss this story is today’s guest, Margalit Fox, author of The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum. We look at a colorful fixture of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with nefarious rogues, capitalist power brokers and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all straddling the line between underworld enterprise and “legitimate” commerce.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beneath the trench warfare of World War One existed an entirely separate war underground: battles in the mines and dugouts between the Great Powers. In 1914–17, the underground war was a product of static trench warfare, essential to survive it and part of both sides' attempts to overcome it.In the stagnant, troglodyte existence of trench warfare, military mining was a hidden world of heroism and terror in which hours of suspenseful listening were spent monitoring the steady picking of unseen opponents, edging quietly towards the enemy, and judging when to fire a charge. Break-ins to enemy mine galleries resulted in hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness.  We are joined by Simon Jones to discuss the ingenuity, claustrophobia and tactical importance of the underground war. He is the author of “The War Underground, 1914-1918: Tactics and Equipment.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the months leading up to D-Day, Eisenhower’s attention was in relentless demand, whether he was negotiating, rallying troops, or solving crises from his headquarters in Bushy Park, London. He projected optimism outwardly but resisted it inwardly. The day of the invasion, he gave the most rousing speech of his life, exhorting the tens of thousands of young men of the “Great Crusade” ahead of them. Then in a fleeting moment of quiet, he wrote out a draft of a resignation letter in case the invasion failed.Outwardly, Eisenhower was a genial cypher. He was liked by all and seemed to make success inevitable. Inwardly, he was near constantly abuzz with brilliance, exhaustion, will, frustration, and the acute awareness that failure was always a possibility. The D-Day landing  sees him at this unique, extraordinarily consequential moment, for D-Day would not only go down as one of the most important military successes in history but would also forge a modern George Washington.To explore this story, we are joined with today’s guest, Michel Paradis, author of “The Light of Battle.” We see how Ike masterminded D-Day, wielding his unique leadership skills to save Europe and shape the course of history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine dive-bombers and nineteen Marine fighters landed at Guadalcanal. Their mission: defeat the Japanese navy and prevent it from sending more men and supplies to "Starvation Island," as Guadalcanal was nicknamed. The Japanese were turning the remote, jungle-covered mountain in the south Solomon Islands into an air base from which they could attack the supply lines between the U.S. and Australia. The night after the Marines landed and captured the partially completed airfield, the Imperial Navy launched a surprise night attack on the Allied fleet offshore, resulting in the worst defeat the U.S. Navy suffered in the 20th century, which prompted the abandonment of the Marines on Guadalcanal.The Marines dug in, and waited for help, as those thirty-one pilots and twelve gunners flew against the Japanese, shooting down eighty-three planes in less than two months, while the dive bombers, carried out over thirty attacks on the Japanese fleet. The attacks were led by such figures as Major John L. Smith, a magnetic leader who became America’s top fighter ace for the time; Captain Marion Carl, the Marine Corps’ first ace, and one of the few survivors of his squadron at the Battle of Midway (he would be shot down and forced to make his way back to base through twenty-five miles of Japanese-held jungle; and Major Richard Mangrum, the lawyer-turned-dive-bomber commander whose inexperienced men wrought havoc on the Japanese Navy.To discuss these stories is today’s guest, John Bruning, author of Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Explore Taiwan's rise as a microchip powerhouse, US-China tension over Taiwan, and the island's complex history from Japanese rule to democracy. Dive into geopolitics, historical flashpoints, and the significance of Taiwan in the global supply chain.