History Shorts

In this episode of History Shorts, I sit down with John Monsky, the creator, writer, and narrator of the American History Unbound series.
Monsky has developed a distinctive way of telling American history. Rather than focusing on debate, his productions immerse audiences in the lives of the people who lived through major moments. He combines live orchestras, Broadway performers, archival film and photography, historic flags and artifacts, and personal stories into large-scale performances that have filled Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center, and even the White House.
On November 10, PBS premieres his latest production, We Chose to Go to the Moon. Filmed live at Carnegie Hall, the special retells the Apollo era through the perspectives of the astronauts, engineers, and families who experienced it—set to the music of the 1960s and '70s and featuring flags that actually traveled to the Moon. It includes a special introduction by Ron Howard and appears on the eve of Veterans Day.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian, author, and Smithsonian Magazine contributor Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
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🔗 Website: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com

July 15, 1410. Before one of the largest battles of medieval Europe, the Teutonic Knights sent two naked swords to the King of Poland as an insult. By nightfall, their Grand Master was dead and their army destroyed. But the borders barely moved. In this episode, we tell the story of the Battle of Grunwald — and of the six-hundred-year fight over what it meant, from Matejko's canvas to a German victory named for revenge in 1914, to a postage stamp Nazi Germany refused to tolerate.
🎙️ 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

In 1545, the Spanish found a mountain in the Andes that seemed to be made of silver. For the next century, Spain pulled more precious metal out of the Americas than anyone in history. And yet its king went bankrupt four times. In this episode, we follow the silver from the mines of Potosí — where Indigenous workers paid the true price — through Seville, to the bankers of Genoa and the markets of China, and ask how the richest nation on earth ended up so poor.
🎙️ 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

Ulysses S. Grant is remembered as the general who saved the Union, and a growing number of historians rank him among the better presidents for what he tried to do during Reconstruction. John Reeves is here to complicate that picture.
Reeves is the author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee, A Fire in the Wilderness, and Soldier of Destiny, his account of Grant's rise and his break with slavery. His new book is Grant's Betrayal: Power, Corruption, and the Theft of the Black Hills (Pegasus Books). It argues that inside Grant's White House there was a secret plan to take the Black Hills from the Lakota, land the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty had set aside as theirs, and land the Lakota called Paha Sapa, the heart of everything that is.
We get into the Peace Policy and whether it was ever real, the 1874 Custer expedition and the gold strike, the claim that the treaty was being subverted from the start, the roles of Orvil Grant, Philip Sheridan, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Eagle Woman, the Great Sioux War and the 1877 seizure, and how this story sits next to the recent rehabilitation of Grant's presidency. A century later a U.S. Court of Claims looked back at Grant's course and the pressure put on the starving Sioux and said a more rank case of dishonorable dealing would probably never be found in our history.
Grant's Betrayal is out November 3, 2026.
John Reeves: https://john-reeves.com
🎙️ 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

When Cleopatra died in 30 BC, she left behind a ten-year-old daughter named for the moon. Cleopatra Selene was marched through Rome as a prisoner, raised by the woman her father had abandoned, and watched her brothers disappear from history. Then she became a queen. In this episode, we tell the story of the forgotten daughter who survived — and who, in a kingdom created by Rome, quietly kept her mother's Egypt alive on her coins, in her court, and in the name of her son.
🎙️ 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