History Unplugged Podcast

The most radical piece of legislation in the 20th century was Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Plan,” a bold proposal to confiscate individual fortunes exceeding $1 million to fund healthcare, free college education, and a guaranteed minimum income for families struggling through the Great Depression—a plan so radical it sparked theories that his 1935 assassination was orchestrated to silence his challenge to the economic elite. From his early days as a plain-speaking lawyer to his transformative tenure as governor and U.S. senator, Long’s media mastery, colorful antics—like coaching LSU football from the sidelines and delivering drunken speeches—and relentless fight against oligarchies cemented his reputation as the greatest politician of the 20th century. His influence on Roosevelt’s New Deal and parallels to modern figures like Donal Trump and Bernike Sanders reveal a recurring pattern of populist fervor in American politics. Join Scott as he discusses these themes with Thomas E. Patterson, author of “American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana, to uncover how Long’s vision continues to resonate today.” See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

“‘Rope!’ muttered Sam[wise Gamgee]. ‘I knew I’d want  it, if I hadn’t got it!’” Sam knew in the Lord of the Rings that the quest would fail without rope, but he was inadvertently commenting on how civilization owes its existence to this three-strand tool. Humans first made rope 50,000 years ago and one of its earliest contributions to the rise of civilization was as a tool for domesticating animals for milk, meat, and work. ncient Egyptians were experts at making strong, three-strand rope from the halfa grass along the banks of the Nile. Rope allowed them to haul two-and-a-half ton limestone blocks to build the pyramids. They also used rope to tie together the planks of their graceful vessels that sailed without the need of a single nail. The Austronesian peoples spread across the islands of the Pacific in the most impressive and daring series of oceanic voyages in human history. And they did it using fast catamaran and outrigger boats held together with coconut fiber rope. Today’s guest is Tim Queeny, author of Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization. We look at the past, present, and future of this critical piece of technology. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

July 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial – a trial that exposed profound divisions in America over religion, education, and public morality.  This was a legal case in Dayton, Tennessee, where high school teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution, violating the state's Butler Act. The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law that prohibited public school teachers from teaching any theory that denied the biblical account of human creation, specifically targeting the teaching of evolution. But believe it or not, this entire trial was orchestrated. Local leaders had the teacher volunteer to be charged as a publicity stunt to boost the town's economy and gain national attention. But it soon gained far more attention than anyone expected, as it touch a nerve on the national clash between an increasingly secular scientific establishment and religious fundamentalists. Battle lines were drawn in the courtroom. Clarence Darrow, a renowned agnostic lawyer and advocate for civil liberties, defended Scopes, while William Jennings Bryan, a prominent Christian populist, three-time presidential candidate, and anti-evolution crusader, prosecuted, highlighting their contrasting worldviews. The trial became a media sensation due to its clash of science versus religion, drawing hundreds of reporters, radio broadcasts, and public fascination with the dramatic courtroom exchanges, particularly Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan. To discuss the legacy of the case is today’s guest, Brenda Wineapple, author of “Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted America.” See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

In the late 1920s, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his younger brother Kermit, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, wanted fame and glory apart from the family spotlight. They were seeking the “empty spots” on the maps, the areas that had yet to be explored and described by Westerners. From these remote places, they hoped to bring back exotic animals to aid the scientific community’s understanding of taxonomy, biological diversity, and its relatively recent theories of evolution. The animal they most wanted was an elusive black and white bear that, at the time, was more legend than scientific fact. Today’s guest is Nathalia Holit, author of “The Beast in the Clouds.” She tells the full story of this expedition into China’s Himalayan wilderness. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

“History is written by the winners.” This aphorism is catchy and it makes an important point that a lot of what we know about history was written with an agenda, not for the purposes of informing us. Unfortunately, it isn’t true. There are many times that the so-called “losers” wrote the histories remembered today. After the American Civil War, Southern historians like Edward Pollard crafted "Lost Cause" narratives, romanticizing the Confederacy despite their defeat. Similarly, Chinese and Persian accounts of the Mongol invasions, such as those by Zhao Hong and Ata-Malik Juvayni, detailed Mongol brutality and cultural impacts from the perspective of the subjugated, challenging the victors' dominance. But this statement still gets to a fundament question: What if the history you learned was deliberately shaped by people with their own agendas? This question drives today’s guest, Richard Cohen, in his book “Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped The Past.”  We explore how historians and storytellers, from ancient Greece to the modern era, shape our understanding of history through their biases and agendas, featuring figures like Herodotus, who blended fact and fable, Edward Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire reflected his personal perspective, and William Randolph Hearst, whose yellow journalism distorted historical narratives. No history is truly objective, as personal, cultural, and political influences inevitably color the accounts of chroniclers like Thucydides, Tacitus, Voltaire, but we can still construct an understanding of the past that brings us closer to the truth. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.