How to Recover Family Treasure The Nazis Plundered in the 1940s
Today's guest recently went on a quest to reclaim his family’s property in Poland and found himself entangled with Nazi treasure hunters. He is Menachem Kaiser, author of "Plunder: A Memoir of Family ...
2 Mar 202140min
How 9 Former Slaves Started a Proto University in Alabama in 1867
Alabama State University is well known as a historically black university and for the involvement of its faculty and students in the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the school's...
25 Feb 202152min
The Pen or the Sword? How Lincoln and John Brown Disagreed on Achieving Emancipation
John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slav...
23 Feb 20211h 11min
How States Got Their Shapes
Why do Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states share a boxy, sharp-edged shape while East Coast state borders look like the fever dream of an impressionist painter? Much of it has to do with when these s...
18 Feb 202129min
Great News! Frequent Guest James Early Has Launched His Own Podcast - Key Battles of American History.
Frequent History Unplugged guest James Early (co-host of Key Battles of the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW1, and Presidential Fight Club) now has his own podcast! It's called Key Battles of American...
17 Feb 202122min
When to Let the Past Die: The Case of Obersalzberg and Denazification
In this episode, we’ll look at Obersalzberg--a region that became a secret headquarters for the Nazi Party in WW2 that was later completely destroyed by the Allies and Germany to denazify it--and what...
16 Feb 202127min
The Mountain Man Was Once Considered To Be The Purest Distillation of the American Spirit
For a 100-year period, from the 1880s to 1980s, if you asked an American which profession was the purest expression of the nation's spirit, they wouldn't answer with soldier, baseball player, or astro...
11 Feb 202130min
Sally Rand Was America's Sex Symbol, From the Roaring 20s to the Apollo Era
She would be arrested six times in one day for indecency. She would be immortalized in the final scene of The Right Stuff, cartoons, popular culture, and live on as the iconic symbol of the Chicago Wo...
9 Feb 202145min
