October 27

Ep. 0147: The Sparring of the Amateur Boxer: The Not-So-Civil War Part 9

This episode fills in the gap between Gettysburg/Vicksburg in the summer of 1863 and the beginning of Ulysses Grant & William T. Sherman’s total war campaigns of 1864, including some lesser-known (but still important) campaigns and battles.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • William Rosecrans’ Tullahoma Campaign
  • The Battle of Chickamauga
  • The siege of Chattanooga
  • Grant’s breaking of the siege, including the storming of Lookout Mountain and the miraculous taking of Missionary Ridge
  • The resignation of Braxton Bragg (finally)
  • The Bristoe Station & Mine Run campaigns in northern Virginia
  • Lincoln’s Dec. 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
  • “Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • The appoint of Grant as overall Union commander, and Grant’s appointment of Sherman to command the Division of the Mississippi

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Category: American History, Military History, Podcasts | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 24

Ep. 0146: The Grunt’s-Eye Perspective: The Not-So-Civil War Part 8

We mostly get the view from the top when it comes to the American Civil War – that is, the view from the political leaders and generals. We usually get only scattered glimpses of what it was actually like to be an enlisted man or lower-level officer in a Civil War Army. In this episode, we’re zooming in on the perspective of the common soldier. (This episode has been a long time coming due to the massive amount of research and preparation required; hopefully the end result is worth my time & labors that I poured into it.)

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • Uniforms, footwear, discipline, vices, conscription, black soldiers in the Union Army
  • Food, water, sanitation, pests & vermin, illness
  • Battle — the horrors in hardship before & during it, as well as the grisly & painful aftermath, including what it was like to be wounded & to be taken prisoner
  • Why they fought — looking at motivations that caused men to join up, that kept them in the ranks, and that kept at least some of the soldiers repeatedly charging back into battle again and again

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Category: American History, Military History, Podcasts | 1 Comment on Ep. 0146: The Grunt’s-Eye Perspective: The Not-So-Civil War Part 8
September 2

Ep. 0145: Fool’s Errand: Scott Horton on America’s War in Afghanistan

In this episode, I’m happy to welcome Scott Horton back to the Dangerous History Podcast. Scott is managing director of the Libertarian Institute, host of Antiwar Radio and the Scott Horton Show, and opinion editor at Antiwar.com. He has conducted more than 4,500 interviews since 2003.

(BTW, My apologies for the audio quality of my conversation with Scott; we were having some noise issues, and I thought I got everything squared away, but apparently not; and on top of it I seem to have messed up a setting or two in the process of battling Skype noise. Mea culpa. But I still think it’s a great discussion worth listening to!)

Join CJ & Scott as they discuss:

  • Scott’s massive labors & achievement in writing the book
  • What’s wrong with the Establishment/Team America narrative of America’s involvement in Afghanistan
  • How & why the war has dragged on as long as it has
  • The economics of the Afghan War, including the ability of many interests to profit from it
  • The question of heroin

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Category: American History, Interviews, Military History, Modern World History, Podcasts | Comments Off on Ep. 0145: Fool’s Errand: Scott Horton on America’s War in Afghanistan
August 10

Ep. 0144: Rise of the Cane Kingdom, Part 2

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • An overview of American sugar politics since 1959.
  • A detailed look at the Fanjul family, who escaped Castro’s revolution, came to Florida, and (with a LOT of political entrepreneurship) built a sugar empire that eventually overtook even the U.S. Sugar Corporation
  • Big Sugar’s labor problems from the ’60s through the ’90s
  • Big Sugar & South Florida’s environment
  • The sugar industry’s impact on health & science
  • Big Sugar in recent years

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Category: American History, Economic History, Podcasts, Power Elite | Comments Off on Ep. 0144: Rise of the Cane Kingdom, Part 2
July 28

Ep. 0143: Rise of the Cane Kingdom, Part 1

Over the past century, large-scale sugar cane cultivation was developed in what became known as the Everglades Agricultural Area, the region just south of Lake Okeechobee, historically a part of the Everglades ecosystem which was drained in the early- to mid-twentieth century. However, making sugarcane cultivation in this area feasible & profitable has required massive amounts of government subsidization, including: draining the land in the first place & maintaining flood control infrastructure ever since; funding soil experiments; assisting sugar companies in finding cheap, controllable labor until the coming of mechanization in the 1990s; and keeping out foreign sugar & keeping the US sugar price artificially above the world price (usually 2-3x higher.) The sugar companies that receive all of this welfare often get to “profit” immensely, and up until a few decades ago were allowed to wreck havoc on South Florida’s ecosystem with impunity.

This is a fascinating story, and it’s also a very vivid real-world historical case study that illustrates a lot of concepts we’ve talked about on the DHP in the past, such as public choice economics, rent-seeking, the power elite, political entrepreneurship, etc.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • Increasing US government policies designed to foster domestic sugar production (at the expense of consumers & taxpayers at large) in the late-nineteenth & early-twentieth century
  • Efforts by various people to create a ‘sugar bowl’ in South Florida during this time
  • The effects of the First World War on ‘the sugar question’
  • Renewed efforts to cultivate cane in South Florida in the 1920s & 30s, with increasing success
  • The creation of the United States Sugar Corporation (USSC) in the 1930s
  • The impact of World War II on sugar
  • Big Sugar’s shady labor practices, and their eventual turn towards highly controllable & exploitable foreign “H-2” laborers
  • The impact of the Cold War on Florida sugar, including the crucial impact of Fidel Castro’s 1959 Cuban Revolution

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June 23

Ep. 0142: History, Naked & Dangerous: A conversation with Bryce Blankenagel

In this episode, CJ talks to Bryce Blankenagel of the Naked Mormonism Podcast. 

(Note: This episode contains the majority — but not all — of the conservation, but Patreon supporters of either the Dangerous History Podcast or the Naked Mormonism Podcast will have access to the entire thing via the respective Patreon supporters’ feed.)

Join CJ & Bryce as they discuss:

  • The idea of ‘dangerous history’
  • Revisionism, the bad & the good
  • Why history is so interesting
  • The importance of backstory & context (and how this increases the workload for history podcasters)
  • Why Bryce began seriously studying Mormon history & doing his podcast
  • The historical context of early-to-mid-nineteenth century America, including the Second Great Awakening, the so-called ‘Burned Over District’ of upstate NY, Andrew Jackson & Jacksonian politics

(Additional topics discussed in the full conversation.)

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June 10

Ep. 0141: Draining the Swamp: The War on the Everglades

Have you been sad that there hasn’t been a Dangerous History Podcast episode in a while? Well, here’s a gigantic plus-sized one that’s about 3x the size of the average DHP episode!

(Sorry about republishing this one multiple times, dealing with some tech issues…)

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • An overview of the original greater Everglades ecosystem as it existed up into the late-nineteenth century
  • Early American desires and plans to try to drain the Glades
  • The railroad and resort construction activities of Henry Flagler along Florida’s Atlantic coast, which led to significant development in South Florida for the first time
  • The (mostly unsuccessful) attempt by private businessman Hamilton Disston to begin draining significant portions of Florida’s wetlands
  • The renewed efforts by progressive/conservationist Floridians (such as governor Napoleon B. Broward) in the early 20th century to get the state government directly involved in ‘reclamation’ (ie, drainage) of the Glades
  • Increasing state and federal actions on controlling Lake Okeechobee & draining the Everglades in the 1920s and 30s
  • The full-on conquest of what remained of the Everglades by the US federal government, beginning in the late-1940s (ironically, at the exact time that the same government created the Everglades National Park)
  • The damaging impact of this project on the South Florida ecosystem

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  • Current map of South Florida, including the Everglades Agricultural Area, Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve, etc.
  • Waters of Destiny (a 1950s Army Corps of Engineers propaganda film)
  • “Middle of the Road Policies Lead to Socialism” by Ludwig Von Mises (A great piece about how the problems caused by each government intervention in an economy tends to lead to ever greater interventions in an economy. CJ thinks an analogous logic is at work in increasing human interference with the Everglades — each intervention into the system’s functioning created additional problems that in turn led to more interventions, until finally you end up with the central planning of a vast ecosystem.)

Category: American History, Podcasts | Comments Off on Ep. 0141: Draining the Swamp: The War on the Everglades
May 22

Ep. 0140: Thoughts on Cyclical History & Generations

If you read widely enough in history, sooner or later you start to think there are some clearly repeating themes and problems and trends, and that there are pendulums in society that swing back and forth every few generations. You might get the sense that history might be more about cycles than about continuous progression in a straight line. Is there anything to this impression? Today we explore the concept of cyclical history and what role different generations might play in such a cycle through the lens of Strauss-Howe generational theory.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • Ancient conceptions of cyclical time
  • The concept of linear time
  • Some modern conceptions of cyclical time
  • The generational theory of William Strauss & Neil Howe, authors of (among other things) the famous book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy
  • What the Strauss-Howe theory says about recent American history as well as about its present & future
  • CJ’s thoughts on Strauss & Howe’s theory

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April 21

Ep. 0139: Gettysburg: The Not-So-Civil War Part 7

It was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, and the high tide for Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • A little bit about Generals James Longstreet, George Pickett, and George Gordon Meade
  • Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania, culminating in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863
  • The New York City draft/race riots that occurred less than 2 weeks later
  • Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered Nov. 19th, 1863, including its impact & legacy

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March 19

Ep. 0138: Free State of Jones: A Dangerous History Movie Review

In this episode of the Dangerous History Podcast, we take a look at another film set in the American Civil War:  the 2016 film Free State of Jones, directed by Gary Ross and starring Matthew McConaughey. This film tells the story of Confederate deserter Newton Knight, who led an insurgent force composed of escaped slaves and Confederate deserters against the Confederacy in his area of Mississippi.

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • A synopsis of the film
  • Some discussion of its themes and historicity
  • CJ’s take on the film, compared and contrasted with the professional critics’ take

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Category: American History, Movie Reviews, Podcasts | LEAVE A COMMENT