History Unplugged Podcast

• A Utah Indian Chief Controlled the 1800s Mountain West Through Slave Trading, Building Pioneer Trails, Horse Stealing, and Becoming Mormon

  The American Indian leader Wakara was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West. He and his pan-tribal cavalry of horse thieves and slave traders dominated the Old Spanish Trail, the region’s most important overland route. They widened the trail and expanded its watering holes, reshaping the environmental and geographical boundaries of the region. They also exacted tribute from travelers passing along the trail and assisted the trail’s explorers with their mapmaking projects—projects that shaped the political and cultural boundaries of the West. What’s more, as the West’s greatest horse thief and horse trader as well as the region’s most prolific trader in enslaved Indians, Wakara supplied Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlers from Santa Fe to San Bernardino with the labor and horsepower that fueled empire and settler colonial expansion as well as fueled great changes to the West’s environmental landscape.Today’s guest is Max Mueller, author of of Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West. We look at his complex and sometimes paradoxical story, revealing a man who both helped build the settler American West and defended Native sovereignty. Wakara was baptized a Mormon and allied with Mormon settlers against other Indians to seize large parts of modern-day Utah. Yet a pan-tribal uprising against the Mormons that now bears Wakara’s name stalled and even temporarily reversed colonial expansion. Through diplomacy and through violence, Wakara oversaw the establishment of settlements, built new trade routes, and helped create the boundaries that still define the region. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Why Did Rome Fall? Wrong Question. How Did it Last 2,000 Years Despite Changing its Religion, Language, and Government?

  Rome began as a pagan, Latin-speaking city state in central Italy during the early Iron Age and ended as a Christian, Greek-speaking empire as the age of gunpowder dawned. Everything about it changed, except its Roman identity. This was due to a unique willingness among Romans to include new people as citizens, an openness to new ideas, and an unparalleled adaptability that enabled Romans to remake every aspect of their society in ways that made it stronger and more resilient. Romans, who believed that their city was originally settled by exiles and captives, found a balance between the embrace of new people and ideas and a conservative attachment to the core features that had traditionally defined Roman society. Roman history is a story of 80 generations of Romans who deftly challenged the rules governing their lives—and usually did so without overturning the institutions that made them safe and prosperous. In an age when people around the world are increasingly looking to charismatic leaders promising to scrap the rules governing modern states, Rome shows why states that want to endure should be repelled by the sudden, unpredictable jolts such characters provide. To explore this topic with us is today’s guest, Edward J. Watts, author of “The Romans: A 2000-Year History.” Rather than collapse, Watts shows how Rome endured, evolved, and redefined itself for two thousand years—from the Punic Wars to the Crusades, and from Augustus to Constantine to Charlemagne.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• The Real Deadwood: A Gold Rush Town Built in a War Zone but Obliterated in an Inferno

  Gunslinging, gold-panning, stagecoach robbing, whiskey guzzling – the myth and infamy of the American West is synonymous with its most famous town: Deadwood, South Dakota. The storied mining town sprang up in early 1876 and came raining down in ashes only three years later, destined to become food for the imagination and a nostalgic landmark that now brings in more than two and a half million visitors each year. Once described as “the most diabolical town on earth,” Deadwood was not merely a place where outlaws lurked, like Tombstone or Dodge City, but was itself an outlaw enterprise, not part of any U.S. territory or subject to U.S. laws or governance. This gave rise to the Western outlaw behavior Deadwood is known for, but it also bred a self-reliance and a spirit of cooperation unique on the frontier, and made it an exceptionally welcoming place for Americans traditionally excluded from mainstream society. Today’s guest is Peter Cozzens, author of “Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West. We look at the town’s complex story in full (including the stories of some of the most famous names of Deadwood — Calamity Jane, Hickok, Bullock, and Swearingen — who were made popular by David Milch’s HBO series). One frontier town came to embody the best and worst of the West—a relic of humanity’s eternal quest to create order from chaos, a greater good from individual greed, and security from violence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• America's Pacific Dawn: The Spanish-American War Ushered In Global Reach and Savage Conflict

  Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, was in Havana in 1898, investigating the terrible conditions endured by Cubans whom the Spanish government had forced into concentration camps, where an estimated 425,000 people died of disease and starvation. While she was there, the American warship USS Maine exploded in Havana's harbor, which served as the pretext for an American invasion, leading to the Spanish-American War. The United States swiftly invaded and won the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898 due to its superior naval power, the decisive charge led by Theodore Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" at San Juan Hill, and the crucial assistance from Cuban insurgents against the already exhausted Spanish forces. In the wake of the Spanish-American war, the United States freed Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish control and, in turn, became an empire. This created beliefs that America was a stern yet benevolent country tasked by Destiny to enforce peace and bring prosperity to the world. That comforting thought was soon disproven, especially in the Philippines, whose people discovered they had merely swapped one colonial power for another. They then endured a vicious war that saw an estimated 600,000 Filipino deaths. Whereas the Cuban campaign brought glory to Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, “the Philippine War would be America’s most quickly forgotten war, the one least celebrated in song or legend, the one least memorialized.” And for good reason, Jackson recounts: American soldiers committed countless atrocities while being felled right and left by disease and starvation themselves; many soldiers committed suicide, and others deserted to join Filipino rebels. Today’s guest is Joe Jackson, author of “Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of the American Empire.” We look at this decisive war that turned American into a global power, and how poor planning turned into a disaster in the Philippines, creating our first quagmire of a war, long before Iraq or Vietnam.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• The Unhealed Wounds of WW2 POWs and Combat Veterans

  Nearly 16.4 million Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II, and for millions of survivors, the fighting left many of them physically and mentally broken for life. There was a 25% death rate in Japanese POW camps like Bataan, where starvation and torture were rampant, and fierce battles against suicidal Imperial Japanese forces, like at Iwo Jima, where 6,800 Americans died. Additionally, the psychological toll of witnessing Holocaust atrocities and enduring up to three years away from home intensified the war’s brutality. This is why when they returned home, they had physical and psychological wounds that festered, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, and sometimes for the rest of their lives. Veterans suffering from recurring nightmares, uncontrollable rages, and social isolation were treated by doctors who had little understanding of PTSD, a term that didn’t enter the DSM until 1984. Returning veterans and their families were forced to double up with their parents or squeeze into overcrowded, substandard shelters as the country wrestled with a housing crisis. Divorce rates doubled, with more than 1 million GIs leaving or being left by their wives by 1950. Alcoholism was rampant, and an entire generation became addicted to smoking. To explore this dark shadow that hung over the WW2 generation, we’re joined by David Nasaw, author of The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II. Those affected include the period’s most influential political and cultural leaders, including John F. Kennedy, Robert Dole, and Henry Kissinger; J. D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut; Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Stewart. We look at the ways the horrors of World War 2 shaped their lives, but we also see incredible resilience and those who found ways to move past the horrors of their wartime experiences, and what we can learn from that today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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