History Shorts

Welcome back to THE HISTORIANS — the series here on History Shorts where I sit down with two leading historians for an unscripted conversation about the questions that have shaped how we understand our past.
We love turning history into a one-man show. One name on the cover. One figure on the horse. One genius who saw it all and did it alone.
But look two inches to the left and there is almost always a crowd.
In this episode of The Historians, H.W. Brands and Hampton Sides take up that tension. Brands has written the biographies we reach for when we want the man himself — Roosevelt, Grant, Franklin, Reagan. Sides has put us inside the moments that get remembered as one person's story — Kit Carson, Captain Cook, the Marines at Chosin. Both of them know how a cover gets made, and both of them know what the cover leaves out.
The conversation asks whether the lone-hero story still mostly holds, or whether we keep giving one person credit for a sergeant, a translator, a wife, a ship's crew, a supply line, a Native nation, a political machine. They talk about what is already waiting in the sources when you sit down to write, what you have to embrace or resist to make the story move, and why readers still buy the one-man version.
No script. No debate. No panel. Just two writers who have lived with these figures, talking about the myth and the crowd.
H.W. Brands is the author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, among many other books on American history.
Hampton Sides is the author of Blood and Thunder, Ghost Soldiers, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, On Desperate Ground, and The Wide Wide Sea.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
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From 1877 to 1881, the White House served no alcohol — not at state dinners, not at receptions. For more than a century, the credit and the blame went to First Lady Lucy Hayes, remembered as "Lemonade Lucy." But the decision belonged to her husband, Rutherford B. Hayes, fresh off one of the most disputed elections in American history and determined to hold on to temperance voters. In this episode, we explore the politics behind the dry White House, the rumor of rum-spiked punch at state dinners, and how Lucy Hayes ended up with a nickname nobody seems to have used while she was alive.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast

One name on the cover. One figure on the horse. One genius who saw it all and did it alone.
This Friday, H.W. Brands and Hampton Sides sit down for The Historians to ask whether that story still holds — or whether we keep giving one person credit for the crowd standing next to him.
A short preview of the full conversation, dropping November 6 on History Shorts.
Listen to the complete episode this Friday wherever you get your podcasts, or at historyshortspodcast.com.

We remember the Statue of Liberty as a gift from France. The reality was a decade-long scramble for money on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, ordinary citizens paid for the statue through banquets, concerts, and a national lottery. In America, nobody wanted to pay for the pedestal. Congress wouldn't help, New York's governor vetoed state funds, and the statue's arm spent years as a tourist attraction charging admission. In this episode, we tell the story of the 19th-century crowdfunding hustle — and how Joseph Pulitzer, his newspaper, and more than a hundred thousand small donors finally got Lady Liberty off the ground.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast
🔗 Website: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com

Violet Jessop was a stewardess for the White Star Line, and she was aboard for three of its worst days at sea. In 1911, the Olympic collided with a British warship. In 1912, she watched the Titanic go down from Lifeboat 16, holding a stranger's baby. In 1916, as a wartime nurse, she survived the sinking of the hospital ship Britannic by jumping from a lifeboat being dragged toward the propellers. In this episode, we meet the working woman behind the "Miss Unsinkable" legend — the toothbrush she refused to leave behind, a mysterious phone call years later, and the thirty more years she spent at sea.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian, author, and Smithsonian Magazine contributor Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast
🔗 Website: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com