History Unplugged Podcast

• Hooves of History: How Horses Created Ancient Warfare, Built the Silk Road, and Became the Dividing Line Between Nobleman and Peasant

  In order to become rich, powerful, and prestigious in the pre-modern world, nothing mattered more than horses. They were the fundamental unit of warfare, enabling cavalry charges, and logistical support. They facilitated the creation of the Silk Road (which could arguably be called the “Horse Road”) since China largely built it to enable the purchase of millions of horses to fight its nomadic neighbors to the north. The term "caballero," meaning a gentleman or knight in Spanish, derived from the Latin "caballus" (horse), reflecting how wealth, status, and the skilled ability to ride a horse defined chivalric ideals in medieval society. From the windswept Eurasian steppe to the royal stables of Persia and the warpaths of Genghis Khan, today’s guest, David Chaffetz, author of Raiders, Rulers, and Traders traces the story of how horses changed the world—not just in warfare, but in statecraft, commerce, and culture. Chaffetz makes the case that the so-called “Silk Road” might more accurately be remembered as the Horse Road. Horse-driven mobility shaped empires from Assyria and the Achaemenids to the Mughals and the Soviets. Just as we rely on the Internet today, ancient societies depended on the horse as a transformative technology that shaped everything from warfare to governance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Moonshining Survived (and Thrived) At Least Two Decades After Prohibition Ended

  The Prohibition era (1920–1933), enacted by the 18th Amendment, birthed an overnight economy of moonshiners who distilled and distributed homemade liquor to meet America’s insatiable demand for alcohol, transforming rural farmers and opportunists into underground entrepreneurs who supplied speakeasies. But this new economy didn’t disappear after Prohibition was repealed. If anything, it became stronger, at least in the South. Moonshining persisted due to persistent poverty, high liquor taxes, and entrenched cultural traditions in the rural South, where Bible Belt traditions meant respectable folks didn’t want themselves to be seen at bars or liquor stores. It grew in the 1940s and only disappeared when industrial distillers were able to produce spirits that undercut moonshine prices. To explore this topic is Chris Skates, author of “Moonshine Over Georgia.” A historical fiction novel, it pulls from the harrowing, exciting, and very real stories Chris’ grandfather would tell him growing up, working as a revenue agent in Prohibition-era Georgia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• How to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer

  What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, hosting several million inhabitants and a corresponding variety of languages, cultures, and livelihoods. But beyond ready-made images of exoticism and squalor, we know surprisingly little about its history and the people who call it home. That’s not for a lack of trying. The Romans tried to cross the Sahara, going back as least as far as Cornelius Balbus (19 BC): Starting from Sabratha in Libya, Balbus led a force of 10,000 legionaries to conquer the Garamantes in the Fezzan region (modern Libya). He then sent a smaller group south across the Ahaggar Mountains, likely reaching the Niger River near modern Timbuktu in Mali, traveling over 1,000 miles inland. Ibn Battuta, the medieval explorer, experienced the wealth of West Africa’s vast gold mines long before the Portuguese made their way down the African coast. Today’s guest is Judith Scheele, author of “Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara.” We see how the desert is not the empty wasteland of the romantic imagination but the vast and highly differentiated space in which Saharan peoples and, increasingly, new arrivals from other parts of Africa live, work, and move. It takes us from the ancient Roman Empire through the colonial era, whose future holds implications for us all.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• How American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship

  As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of passageways across North America via the Underground Railroad. Yet many escapes took place not by land but by sea. William Grimes escaped slavery in 1815 by stowing away in a cotton bale on a ship from Savannah to New York, enduring days without food or water before settling in Connecticut. Frederick Douglass disguised himself as a free black sailor, using borrowed papers to board a train and then a steamboat from Baltimore to New York, reaching freedom in less than 24 hours. Thomas Jones, a formerly enslaved man from North Carolina, escaped in 1849 by hiding on a ship bound for New York, relying on his maritime knowledge as a steward to evade detection and later reuniting with his family in the North.This was a secret world of stowaways and the vessels that carried them to freedom across the North and into Canada. It sprawled through the intricate riverways of the Carolinas to the banks of the Chesapeake Bay to Boston’s harbors. Today’s guest is Marcus Rediker, author of “Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea.” We see the Atlantic waterfront as a place of conspiracy, mutiny, and liberation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Did WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands?

  2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of Germany’s surrender and the fall of the Third Reich. Likewise, World War II is the single most studied conflict in human history. But most Western accounts offer a one-dimensional interpretation: the war was a noble crusade against fascism, creating a convenient parable about good and evil. But this depiction ignores a far messier reality. But what went through the minds of the actual heads of state that led their nations through the war? Did they fight according to our understanding, or did they want to defend their nations’ global empires and ancient legacy? A case can be argued that World War II was not a battle in which democracy triumphed over totalitarianism but rather a massive colonial war waged by rival empires. The war formally ended the era of British and Japanese colonialism but established in their places the highly militarized Soviet and American states, whose access to nuclear weapons threatened the possibility of annihilation. As we grapple with the legacy of the war and its influence on geopolitics today, historian and today’s guest Paul Thomas Chamberlin urges us to reconsider the conflict from a new perspective in his book “Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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