When Spain was the Richest Empire in Europe
History Shorts
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....
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President Grant's Betrayal, w/ John Reeves
History Shorts
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...
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Cleopatra’s Forgotten Daughter
History Shorts
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....
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WWII Operation Caesar
History Shorts
In February 1945, a brand-new German submarine slipped out of Norway bound for Japan, carrying jet engine parts, missile technology, two Japanese engineers, and about sixty-five tons of mercury. British codebreakers were reading its messages. Waiting off the coast was a small British submarine whose captain was about to attempt something no one had ever done in combat. In this episode: the only known battle in which one submerged submarine sank another — and the toxic cargo Norway is still trying to deal with eighty years later. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by...
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The Julius Caesar Health Debate
History Shorts
In ancient Rome, a seizure during a public assembly could shut down the government — it was read as an omen from the gods. So what happens when the most powerful man in Rome is the one who keeps falling? In this episode, we look at what Plutarch and Suetonius actually said about Julius Caesar's "falling sickness," why modern doctors now suspect something else entirely, and why, in Caesar's Rome, an illness was never just an illness. 🎙️ 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...
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Incident on Hill 192
History Shorts
In November 1966, five American soldiers set out on patrol in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Four of them kidnapped and murdered a young Vietnamese woman named Phan Thi Mao. The fifth refused to take part — and then refused to stay quiet. In this episode, we follow Private Robert Storeby as he reported the crime to commanders who looked away, stood up to defense lawyers who called him a liar, and watched the sentences shrink. A story about what courage looks like when the enemy is the silence around you. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight...
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The House of Medici
History Shorts
Easter Mass, 1478. Assassins strike inside Florence's cathedral, and their targets are two brothers from a family of bankers. The plot has the backing of the Pope himself. In this episode, we tell the story of the Medici — the moneylenders who ran a republic without a crown, bankrolled Botticelli and Michelangelo, and watched their bank collapse in 1494. Most families would have been finished. The Medici went on to produce popes, queens of France, and grand dukes. Their secret: turning money into something that lasts longer than money. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted...
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Athens vs. Sparta: The Original Superpower Rivalry
History Shorts
At Thermopylae and Salamis, Sparta and Athens fought side by side and beat the largest empire on earth. Fifty years later, they spent twenty-seven years trying to destroy each other. One was a seafaring democracy that built the Parthenon partly with other Greeks' money. The other was a warrior state built on fear of its own enslaved population. In this episode, we explore the original superpower rivalry — how Sparta finally won with Persian gold, and why the real winners were the powers watching from the sidelines. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian,...
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Who Was the Real William Howard Taft? w/ Walter Stahr
History Shorts
William Howard Taft is the only person who has been both president and chief justice, and he is still usually filed under mediocre. He called his own administration humdrum. Theodore Roosevelt made him president, then ran against him and helped drive him from office. Walter Stahr thinks that verdict is too small. The New York Times bestselling biographer of Seward, Stanton, and John Jay joins the show to talk about William Howard Taft: A Great American Life (Simon & Schuster). Five decades of public service: judge, governor of the Philippines, Roosevelt’s secretary of war, president from...
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When FDR Wanted Hoover to be President
History Shorts
In January 1920, Franklin Roosevelt wrote that Herbert Hoover was "certainly a wonder" — and that he wished "we could make him President." Before the Depression, Hoover was a global hero: the man who fed occupied Belgium and whose name became a verb. Nobody even knew his party. In this episode, we follow how two friends became the most bitter rivals in twentieth-century American politics, why the qualities that made Hoover a hero later sank him, and what happened after their icy ride to the 1933 inauguration. 🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian, author, and...
info_outlineWhen 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.
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