The Untold History of Earth: Hobbits Really Existed, Dinosaurs Had Feathers, and Yetis Roamed Our Planet

History Unplugged Podcast

#History #Scott Rank, PhD #Scott Rank #Society #World War

39:50

The truth is out West! We’re hopping on the ET Highway and venturing to the most notorious alien hot spots, including Roswell’s infamous crash site, Area 51’s eerie perimeter, and a mysterious desert watchtower. Join us as journalist Laura Krantz, host of the podcast Wild Thing , beams up to share stories from the front lines of UFO reporting—from strange sightings and quirky festivals to a mailbox where people leave letters to extraterrestrials. Maybe you’ll even decide for yourself: Is Earth a tourist stop for spaceships? UFO hot spots you’ll encounter in this episode: - UFO Watchtower (near Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado) - Roswell, New Mexico - Area 51, Nevada - Extraterrestrial Highway (aka State Route 375), Nevada - Little A’Le’Inn, ET Highway, Nevada - E.T. Fresh Jerky, ET Highway, Nevada - Alien Research Center, ET Highway, Nevada - The Black Mailbox, ET Highway, Nevada Via Podcast is a production of AAA Mountain West Group .…

about a year ago 1:08:48

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The Old English poem Beowulf is a vital source of information on history, language, story and belief from the darkest of the Dark Ages. Only one copy is known to exist (it’s in the British Library), and that was rescued from a fire that is known to have destroyed many other manuscripts. If Beowulf didn’t exist, how much would we know about that period? It’s a sobering thought that between 410 and 597, no scrap of writing survives from what is now England. This is an interval comparable in length between now… and the Napoleonic Wars. The same is true about fossils — what we know of the fossil record is an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot on what really happened. Almost everything that once existed on our planet has been lost. This means that anything new we find has the potential to change everything.

Today guest, Henry Gee, author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, zips through the last 4.6 billion years to tell a tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.

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997 episodes

History Unplugged Podcast

The Untold History of Earth: Hobbits Really Existed, Dinosaurs Had Feathers, and Yetis Roamed Our Planet

History Unplugged Podcast

1,405 subscribers

published about a year ago

MP3•Episode home

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

997 episodes

#History #Scott Rank, PhD #Scott Rank #Society #World War

All episodes

History Unplugged Podcast

1
How to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer 53:08

16 hours ago53:08

53:08

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.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
How American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship 46:06

6 days ago46:06

46:06

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.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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Did WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands? 47:51

8 days ago47:51

47:51

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.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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How a British Governor of Virginia Raised an Ex-Slave Regiment in 1776 to Fight Patriots and Triggered the Revolutionary War 55:09

13 days ago55:09

55:09

As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Virginia, the largest, wealthiest, and most populous province in British North America, was led by Lord Dunmore, who counted George Washington as his close friend. But the Scottish earl lacked troops, so when patriots imperiled the capital of Williamsburg, he threatened to free and arm enslaved Africans—two of every five Virginians—to fight for the Crown. Virginia’s tobacco elite was reluctant to go to war with Britain but outraged at this threat to their human property. Dunmore fled the capital to build a stronghold in the colony’s largest city, the port of Norfolk. As enslaved people flocked to his camp, skirmishes broke out. “Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. “It has raised our countrymen into a perfect frenzy.” With a patriot army marching on Norfolk, the royal governor freed those enslaved and sent them into battle against their former owners. In retribution, and with Jefferson’s encouragement, furious rebels burned Norfolk to the ground on January 1, 1776, blaming the crime on Dunmore. The port’s destruction and Dunmore’s emancipation prompted Virginia’s patriot leaders to urge the Continental Congress to split from Britain, breaking the deadlock among the colonies and leading to adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Days later, Dunmore and his Black allies withdrew from Virginia, but the legacy of their fight would lead, ultimately, to Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time is today’s guest, Andrew Lawler, author of A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution. He offers a new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader 55:46

15 days ago55:46

55:46

He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.” These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World War—and the Major Carlson they spoke of was Evans Carlson, a man of mythical status even before the war that would make him a military legend. By December of 1941, at the age of forty-five, Carlson had already faced off against Sandinistas in the jungles of Nicaragua and served multiple tours in China, where he embedded with Mao’s Communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War. Inspired by their guerilla tactics and their collaborative spirit—which he’d call “gung ho,” introducing the term to the English language—and driven by his own Emersonian ideals of self-reliance, Carlson would go on to form his renowned Marine Raiders, the progenitors of today’s special operations forces, who fought behind Japanese lines on Makin Island and Guadalcanal, showing Americans a new way to do battle. Today’s guest is Stephen R. Platt, author of “ “The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II.” Tracing the rise and fall of an unlikely American war hero, The Raider is a story of exploration, of cultural (mis)understanding, and of one man’s awakening to the sheer breadth of the world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
Microbes Were Discovered in the 1600s. Why It Take 200 Years For Doctors To Start Washing Their Hands? 54:16

20 days ago54:16

54:16

Scientists and enthusiastic amateurs first confirmed the existence of living things invisible to the human eye in the late sixteenth century. So why did it take two centuries to connect microbes to disease? As late as the Civil War in the 1860s, most soldiers who perished died not on the battlefield but of infected wounds, typhoid, and other diseases. Twenty years later, the outcome might have been different, following one of the most radical intellectual transformations in history: germ theory, the recognition that the tiniest forms of life have been humankind’s greatest killers. It was a discovery centuries in the making, and it transformed modern life and public health. As today’s guest, Thomas Levenson (author of “So Very Small : How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs—and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease”) reveals in this globe-spanning history, it has everything to do with how we see ourselves. For centuries, people in the West, believing themselves to hold dominion over nature, thought too much of humanity and too little of microbes to believe they could take us down. When nineteenth-century scientists finally made the connection, life-saving methods to control infections and contain outbreaks soon followed. The next big break came with the birth of the antibiotic era in the 1930s. And yet, less than a century later, the promise of the antibiotic revolution is already receding due to years of overuse. Is our self-confidence getting the better of us again? So Very Small follows the thread of human ingenuity and hubris across centuries—along the way peering into microscopes, spelunking down sewers, visiting army hospitals, traipsing across sheep fields, and more—to show how we came to understand the microbial environment and how little we understand ourselves. Levenson traces how and why ideas are pursued, accepted, or ignored—and hence how human habits of mind can, so often, make it terribly hard to ask the right questions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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From Einstein’s Chalkboard to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Test: The 50-Year Path to the Atomic Bomb 48:14

22 days ago48:14

48:14

The story of the atomic age began decades before Robert Oppenheimer watched a mushroom cloud form over the New Mexico desert at the Trinity nuclear test in mid 1945. It begins in 1895, with Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity, setting in motion a series of remarkable and horrifying events. By the early 20th century, a brilliant group of scientists—including Ernest Rutherford, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, and others—were pushing the boundaries of knowledge, seeking to answer fundamental questions about this source of energy that had 2 million times the energy density of oil: What is this mysterious radiation? Could it provide an infinite energy source, where a basketball of it was equal to an oil field? And, ominously, could it be weaponized? Today’s guest is nuclear physicist Frank Close, author of “Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age.” We look at the complete history of the atomic age, from the initial curiosity about radioactivity to the creation of the hydrogen bomb—a weapon of almost unimaginable destructive potential, capable of eradicating life on Earth. This is an account of the scientific discoveries that unlocked the atom’s power, the ethical dilemmas faced by scientists, and the horrifying realization that this newfound energy could lead to humanity’s undoing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
Japan’s Desperate Air Battles Against the US in the Final Months of WW2 37:15

27 days ago37:15

37:15

The B-29 Bomber led the Allied strategic bombing offensive against Japan, succeeding when US Bomber Command switched from high-level daytime precision bombing to low-level nighttime area bombing. The latter tactic required Superfortresses to attack their targets individually, without a formation or escorting fighters for protection. Despite this, Japanese night fighters proved unable to stop the B-29s. This success was a testament to the B-29’s incredible capabilities, including its ability to carry up to 20,000 pounds of bombs over vast distances exceeding 3,000 miles, and its advanced pressurized cabin, which allowed crews to operate effectively at altitudes above 30,000 feet—far beyond the reach of most enemy interceptors. Coupled with its sophisticated remote-controlled gun turrets and a top speed of 350 mph, the B-29’s design showcased an unmatched blend of range, payload, and defensive prowess that overwhelmed Japanese defenses. Today’s guest, Mark Lardas, author of “B-29 Superfortress vs Japanese Nightfighter.” He examines the capabilities of the aircraft involved, and reveals the conditions under which both sides fought. He evaluates the cutting-edge technology of both sides and how it affected the outcome of the battle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
D-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944 42:08

29 days ago42:08

42:08

Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field, which had been crucial to earlier success. The long years of fighting had also taken a heavy toll. Thousands of irreplaceable junior officers and NCOs were dead, wounded or prisoners. Today’s guest is Prit Buttar, author of “Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive.” We look at these trends, which culminated in the huge battles of Bagration. In 1944, the Red Army finally put together a campaign that utterly destroyed the German Army Group Centre. The Wehrmacht suffered the loss of over 300,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner and the Red Army rolled forward across Belarus to the outskirts of Warsaw. The end of the war was still many months away, and the Germans managed to reconstruct their line on the Eastern Front, but final victory for the Soviet Union was now only a matter of time as a direct consequence of Bagration. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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Pilgrimages Involved Penitent Marches, Visiting Holy Places, and Watching Drunken Emperors Go on Chariot Rides 44:53

5 weeks ago44:53

44:53

Pilgrimages are a universal phenomenon, from China’s bustling Tai Shan to the ancient Jewish treks to Jerusalem. But why? What is it about a grueling penitent march to an isolated temple that has become a prerequisite for a civilization of any size, whether Chicen Itza in the Mayan Empire or the holy sites of Mecca? To explore this is today’s guest, Kathryn Hurlock, author of “Holy Places: How Pilgrimages Changed the World.” We also look at whether pilgrimages have become too easy in the 21st century. Has jetting off to Mecca or Rome for a quick indulgence turned them into spiritual tourism, a la Disneyland? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

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Britain Learned How to Set Up Its Global Empire on a Tiny Bermudan Island 44:02

5 weeks ago44:02

44:02

Years before Jamestown planters made New World farming profitable by growing tobacco, and years before their countrymen up north in Plymouth Colony managed to overcome their starvation conditions and acclimate to New England’s growing conditions, there was an English settlement in Bermuda that was wealthier, larger, and more prosperous. It was established in 1612 on an island less than one square mile but grew to the heart of the Atlantic economy. Bermuda, once home to more settlers than Virginia or Massachusetts, became England’s first profitable plantation, pioneering tobacco cultivation and the use of enslaved Africans—practices that later spread to the mainland. In this episode, historian and archaeologist Michael Jarvis joins us to uncover the hidden history of Bermuda and its pivotal role in reshaping our understanding of colonial America. Jarvis, dubbed "Chainsaw Mike" by his students, has spent 14 years excavating Smith’s Island, clearing away endless brush, and unearthing one of the first English settlements in the New World. From supplying Jamestown with food to influencing early colonial economics, Jarvis argues Bermuda is a missing cornerstone of America’s origin story, far more than the historical footnote it’s often been relegated to. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
The Hatfield-McCoy Feud Started Over a Pig and Nearly Escalated Into a Regional War 45:20

6 weeks ago45:20

45:20

The origins of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict (between the Hatfield family of West Virginia, led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield, and the McCoy family of Kentucky, led by Randolph "Old Randall" McCoy) begins with a dispute over a pig. From here, it escalated from minor disagreements to violent encounters that spanned decades, nearly sparking a war between the two states. Today’s guest is Jennifer Bennie, host of the Walk With History podcast. We look at the historical context of the feud, its escalation from minor disputes to violent encounters, and its significance in American folklore. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
The 1845 Potato Blight Struck Across Northern Europe. Why Did Only Ireland Starve? 48:41

6 weeks ago48:41

48:41

In 1845, a novel pathogen attacked potato fields across Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia—but only in Ireland were the effects apocalyptic. At least one million Irish people died, and millions more scattered across the globe, emigrating to new countries and continents. Less than fifty years after the union of Ireland with the rest of Great Britain, the newly formed United Kingdom—the most powerful country in the nineteenth-century world—failed millions of its own citizens, leading to decades of poverty, ecological ruin, and collective trauma. How did this happen? Today’s guest Padraic Scanlan recontextualizes the disaster’s origins, events, and consequences in his new book “Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine.” We situate the Irish Great Famine in a larger history of economic consolidation and exploitation caused by British policies toward Ireland. The blight that decimated the potato plants was biological, but the Famine itself was manmade, caused by the British government’s structures of land ownership, labor, and rent collection. The real tragedy of the Famine wasn’t that the British maliciously intended and propagated starvation, but that their efforts to address the “Irish Question” only exacerbated the problem. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
A Simple Tennessee Preacher Transformed Abolitionism from a Deeply Unpopular Radical Movement to a Centrist Cause 51:18

7 weeks ago51:18

51:18

Sitting high above the small community of Ripley, Ohio, a lantern shone in the front window of a small, red brick home at night. It was a signal to slaves just across the Ohio River. Anyone fleeing bondage could look to Reverend John Rankin’s home for hope. To the slaveholders they fled from, Rankin’s activities as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad invoked rage. Mobs often pelted Rankin with eggs and rocks, bounties were placed on his head, and midnight assassins lurked in the darkness, waiting for the right opportunity to take out the “Father of Abolitionism.” Despite frequent threats, he remained committed to the freedom of his fellow man. Today’s guest is Caleb Franz, author of The Conductor: The Story of Rev. John Rankin, Abolitionism's Essential Founding Father, we look at the story of the man who served as a George Washington–type figure to the antislavery movement. Rankin’s leadership brought unity and clarity to the often factious abolitionists of the nineteenth century. William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and countless others found inspiration in his teachings. He also presented abolitionism as a moderate movement, helping to make it palpable to Southern centrists who considered most abolitionists Yankee radicals who wanted to watch America descend into a Haitian-style race war. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

History Unplugged Podcast

1
How Benjamin Franklin’s Stove Invention Kept Early America From Freezing 41:53

7 weeks ago41:53