Something strange happened in Upstate New York during the 1830s. This area was called the "Burned-Over District" because so many fiery religious revivals swept through that it was metaphorically burned over. This region became a key source of the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant revival movement marked by emotional preaching and mass conversions, as preachers like Charles Finney inspired thousands to seek personal salvation and social reform. The revival spirit also birthed new movements: Mormonism emerged with Joseph Smith's founding of the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830, the Jehovah’s Witnesses trace their roots to the Bible Student movement that gained traction later in the century, and Spiritualism took hold in the 1840s with the Fox sisters’ claims of communicating with spirits in Hydesville, New York.

This episode, however, isn’t just about the Burned-Over District. It’s about how these revivalists tapped into a distinctly American form of power, one not built on title or lineage, but on pure, raw charisma. From Puritan prophets and prophetesses in the 1600s to big-tent revivalists in the 1800s, and even to modern self-help gurus like Tony Robbins and Oprah Winfrey, charisma has shaped influence across time. It empowers figures like presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama to amass followings, sustain authority, and shape the national narrative through sheer personal appeal.

Today’s guest is Molly Worthen, author of Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump. We explore the roots of charisma and power in American democracy, whether it’s necessarily bad or can be used for good, and how to avoid falling under the spell of a charismatic demagogue.

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To understand American history and its deep-seated relationship with violence, we must look to the last three decades of the 1800s in the American West, which had the highest murder rate per capita in American history. And it all boils down to one place: Texas. Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north, and the invention of the Colt revolver only made the area wilder and less orderly. Across the nineteenth-century frontier defending one’s honor and reputation often resulted in duels and bitter feuds. After the cattle business boom, this sensation spilled into the greater West from Arizona to Wyoming to Kansas. The trigger-happy assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen, and their desire to defend their honor caught the eye of newspapers, igniting a firestorm of mythmaking. The word “gun-man” first appears in a newspaper in 1874, followed by an explosion of Western biographies and memoirs in the 1920s. 1940s-1950s Hollywood reimagined these gunfighters as leading men, introducing Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp to a new generation.

Today’s guest is Bryan Burrough, author of “The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.” We explore how only in the American West could gunfighters exist, and what led to the death of this unique period in time.

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The battle of Cynoscephalae represents a key moment in the history of the Greco-Roman world. In this one battle the Macedonian hold over mainland Greece was broken, with the Roman Republic rising in its place as the pre-eminent power in the Greek East. At Cynoscephalae, the proud Macedonian kingdom of Antigonid monarch Philip V was humbled, its army shattered. Yet the battle, and campaign leading up to it, was hard fought and protracted. Philip V had defied Rome and its allies in the First Macedonian War and was poised to do so again, with the pike phalanx continuing to be a daunting opponent for the Roman legionaries.

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The RMS Titanic is history’s most famous shipwreck, but it wasn’t the only ship of its kind. The White Star Line built two other nearly identical vessels: The RMS Olympic and Britannic. The Olympic carried passengers until 1935 and can be visited today. The Brittanic sank only four years after her sister ship the Titanic off the Greek island of Kea in the Aegean Sea like due to striking a German mine while serving as a hospital ship during World War One. It sank in only 55 minutes (compared to 160 minutes for the Titanic) but only 30 of the 1066 passengers due to better lifeboat procedures, warmer waters, and being closer to land.

What

While the wreck of the Titanic is 2 miles below the surface and rapidly deteriorating, the Britannic is much more accessible (only 400ft down) and remains largely intact. It’s in “shallow” enough waters that divers can reach it, although submersibles do most of the investigation work. What can the ship tell us about the sinking of the Titanic, the lives of its passengers in the early 20th century, and whether something nefarious happened that caused it to sink, as some claim (like German sabotage).

These are the questions that today’s guest, Simon Mills, tried to answer when bought the wreck of the Britannic in 1996. He is a maritime historian who has coordinated multiple expeditions into the underwater wreckage and most recently finished extensive internal surveys in 2021 and 2023. He’s also the author of the new book Inside the Britannic which is the sum of decades of work covering every inch of the ship. We discuss exactly how this ship sunk, what happened during the frantic 50 minutes of its sinking, what happened to the survivors, and other unanswered mysteries.

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At a time when debates over tariffs, regulation, and the scope of government are back at center stage. Is this time in American history unprecedented, or can we find parallels in the past? For example, has trade “hollowed out” U.S. manufacturing—or have fact tariffs like the Corn Laws in Britain hurt working-class families the most? Was the Great Depression a failure of capitalism—rather than a policy crisis worsened by poor monetary responses and overreach?

Today’s guest is Phil Gramm, a former U.S. Senator and author of “The Triumph of Economic Freedom.” We look at five periods of American history—the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America’s postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession—along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, leads many to believe in expanding government in American life. Gramm argues that the evidence points to a contrary verdict: government interference and failed policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.

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Alan Pinkerton is perhaps the most over-achieving barrel-maker who ever lived. After practicing his trade in rural Illinois for a few years in the 1850s, the Scottish immigrant busted up a counterfeiting ring, which got the attention of Chicago’s police department, offering him a job as a detective. From here he worked as an intelligence agent in the Civil War (preventing an assassination attempt on Lincoln’s life), then pursued high-profile outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and protected scabs in the Homestead lockout, for which his private detective agency became notorious.

Pinkerton has been an enduring source of fascination since the nineteenth century. But the details of his impact, business empire, and private life have been incomplete. Today’s guest is Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, author of “Allan Pinkerton: America's Legendary Detective and the Birth of Private Security.” We discuss the accomplishments, contradictions, controversies, and legacies of the founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

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The Korean War came dangerously close to going nuclear, and if would have if Gen. Douglas MacArthur had gotten his way. He proposed using 30 to 50 nuclear primarily to targeting air bases, depots, and supply lines across the neck of Manchuria to create a radioactive barrier and halt Chinese and North Korean advances. This would have killed millions and almost definitely brought the Soviet Union into full-scale war against the United States.

In this episode, we explore the Korean War’s pivotal role in shaping the Cold War, diving into the tense standoff between East and West. The conflict erupted with North Korea’s 1950 invasion, prompting a daring counteroffensive by MacArthur, whose strategic overreach drew Communist China into the fray. The rapid escalation pushed the U.S. to contemplate using nuclear weapons, a decision that could have reshaped the 20th century.

To explore this is today’s guest, Robert Lyman, author of “Korea: War Without End.” The Korean War was not planned as a Communist offensive against the West. In turn, the East did not understand the principle at the core of the Western response to Kim Il-sung’s aggression, namely a refusal to appease an aggressor, the key mistake the West considered to be at the heart of the rise of Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan in the 1930s.

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