"Things work out until they don't." Ain't life a bitch? Maybe we should celebrate it nonetheless. Friends With Deficits is a fun, honest, and sometimes brutal exploration into the human condition, often over drinks. Host Adam Sultan talks with old friends and friends-to-be who are dealing with unusual, rare, or strange predicaments that bring life into focus. After all, we're all gonna die--would you like that with a twist?
…
continue reading
Adam Sultan Podcasts
For history lovers who listen to podcasts, History Unplugged is the most comprehensive show of its kind. It's the only show that dedicates episodes to both interviewing experts and answering questions from its audience. First, it features a call-in show where you can ask our resident historian (Scott Rank, PhD) absolutely anything (What was it like to be a Turkish sultan with four wives and twelve concubines? If you were sent back in time, how would you kill Hitler?). Second, it features lon ...
…
continue reading

1
How British Scientists' Self-Experiments on Underwater Rebreathing Created D-Day Submarine Tech (And Nearly Killed Them in the Process)
53:29
53:29
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
53:29In August 1942, over 7,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in a largely forgotten landing, with only a small fraction surviving unscathed. The raid failed due to poor planning and lack of underwater reconnaissance, which left the Allies unaware of strong German coastal defenses and underwater obstacles. Inadequate submersible…
…
continue reading

1
Over 200,000 Allied Troops Tried and Failed to Crush the Soviet Revolution After World War One
41:20
41:20
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
41:20The Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War remains one of the most ambitious yet least talked about military ventures of the 20th century. Coinciding with the end of the first World War, some 180,000 troops from several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Romania, among others…
…
continue reading

1
How the U.S. Occupation of Japan After WW2 Forged the Most Durable Peace of the 20th Century
1:00:19
1:00:19
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:00:19During World War II, the U.S. and Japan were locked in bitter hatred, fueled by propaganda portraying each other as ruthless enemies, exemplified by dehumanizing "Tokyo Woe" posters in the U.S. and Japanese depictions of Americans as barbaric invaders. After the war, the feelings seemed to turn 180 degrees overnight. By the early 1950s, American se…
…
continue reading

1
Homer Couldn't Have Written the Iliad, But He Probably Dictated it Word for Word
52:53
52:53
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
52:53The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? To explore these questions is today’s guest, Robin Lane Fox, a scholar and teacher of Homer for over 40…
…
continue reading

1
Depression-Era Planners Thought They’d End Poverty with Public Housing. Instead, They Created the Projects
41:02
41:02
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
41:02In the 1930s, New Deal-era technocrats devised a solution to homelessness and poverty itself. They believed that providing free or low-cost urban housing projects could completely eliminate housing scarcity. Planners envisioned urban communities that would propel their residents into the middle class, creating a flywheel of abundance where poverty …
…
continue reading

1
The Alabaman Jacksonians Who Rejected the Confederacy and Marched with Sherman to the Sea
49:01
49:01
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
49:01As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union soldiers who played a decisive role in the Civil War, only to be scrubbed from the history books. One such group was the First Alabama Calvary, formed in …
…
continue reading

1
The “Taking Care Of” Business – A Conversation With Shannon Mouser of Viva Day Spa
1:21:38
1:21:38
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:21:38Shannon Mouser is the co-founder and visionary of Austin's acclaimed Viva Day Spa. In our conversation, she reflects on her humble and challenging beginnings, and shares some of the life-defining moments that ultimately shaped her journey to becoming a successful businesswoman. Viva Day Spa Support Friends with Deficits!…
…
continue reading

1
Frederick Douglass’s Private Writings on Abraham Lincoln, His Strong Critiques and Stronger Praise
49:05
49:05
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
49:05Frederick Douglass made the strongest arguments for abolition in antebellum America because he made the case that abolition was not a mutation of the Founding Father’s vision of America, but a fulfillment of their promises of liberty for all. He had a lot riding on this personally – Douglas was born into slavery in Maryland around 1818, escaped to …
…
continue reading

1
The Industrial Revolution Was Supposed to Lead to Unlimited Free Time But Only Gave Us Smartphones and Endless Dopamine
31:11
31:11
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
31:11Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social media for thirty minutes? Despite the promise of modern industrialization, many people experience both a scarcity of free time and a disappointment in it.…
…
continue reading

1
James Cook Mapped the Globe Before Dying At the Hands of Hawaiians Who Once Worshipped Him
56:56
56:56
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
56:56Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan are known for discoveries, but it was Captain James Cook who made global travel truly possible. Cook was an 18th-century British explorer who mapped vast regions of the Pacific, including New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coast, with unprecedented accuracy. He meticulously conducted soundings to measure…
…
continue reading

1
American Anarchists: The Original Domestic Extremists
39:37
39:37
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
39:37In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, gover…
…
continue reading

1
100 Years Before Ford v. Ferrari, a Horse Breeder Revolutionized Thoroughbred Racing Through a Similar Obsession With Progress
1:14:41
1:14:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:14:41Horse racing was the most popular sport in early America, drawing massive crowds and fueling a cultural obsession with horses’ speed and pedigree. In the early 1800s, every town in America with a few thousand people had a horse racing track, with major cities drawing crowds of up to 50,000. In the midst of this was Alexander Keene Richards (1827–18…
…
continue reading

1
Western Rome Fell Due to Germanic Immigration, Mass Inflation, and a Bloated Bureaucracy
39:05
39:05
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
39:05It took little more than a single generation for the centuries-old Roman Empire to fall. In those critical decades, while Christians and pagans, legions and barbarians, generals and politicians squabbled over dwindling scraps of power, two men – former comrades on the battlefield – rose to prominence on opposite sides of the great game of empire. R…
…
continue reading

1
Why the Atomic Bombing of Japan is as Justified in 2025 as it was in 1945
52:29
52:29
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
52:29It's been 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the question of whether or not those bombings were justified has never been more contentious. That wasn't the case in the immediate aftermath: 85% of the American public approved the decision to bomb the cities in 1945, but this has dropped to 56% in more recent years, particularl…
…
continue reading

1
Surviving the Siege of Leningrad with Sawdust Bread and Iron Determination
46:54
46:54
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
46:54The first year of the siege of Leningrad that began in September 1941 marked the opening stage of a 900-day-long struggle for survival that left over a million dead. The capture of the city came tantalizingly close late that year, but Hitler paused to avoid costly urban fighting. Determined to starve Leningrad into submission, what followed was a w…
…
continue reading

1
Depression-Era Governor Huey Long Wanted to Confiscate Individual Fortunes Over $1 Million, Possibly Leading to His 1935 Assassination
1:05:41
1:05:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:05:41The most radical piece of legislation in the 20th century was Louisiana Governor Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Plan,” a bold proposal to confiscate individual fortunes exceeding $1 million to fund healthcare, free college education, and a guaranteed minimum income for families struggling through the Great Depression—a plan so radical it sparked the…
…
continue reading

1
Rope Equals Fire as Humanity’s Most Important Invention: It Allowed Hunting Mammoths and Building Pyramids
55:36
55:36
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
55:36“‘Rope!’ muttered Sam[wise Gamgee]. ‘I knew I’d want it, if I hadn’t got it!’” Sam knew in the Lord of the Rings that the quest would fail without rope, but he was inadvertently commenting on how civilization owes its existence to this three-strand tool. Humans first made rope 50,000 years ago and one of its earliest contributions to the rise of ci…
…
continue reading

1
The Scopes Trial Was Entirely Orchestrated But Became an Unintended 1920s Culture War Touchpoint
56:43
56:43
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
56:43July 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial – a trial that exposed profound divisions in America over religion, education, and public morality. This was a legal case in Dayton, Tennessee, where high school teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution, violating the state's Butler Act. The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee l…
…
continue reading

1
The Panda Was First Discovered By Theodore Roosevelt’s Sons During a 9-Month Expedition in Himalayan China
42:05
42:05
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
42:05In the late 1920s, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his younger brother Kermit, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, wanted fame and glory apart from the family spotlight. They were seeking the “empty spots” on the maps, the areas that had yet to be explored and described by Westerners. From these remote places, they hoped to bring back exotic animals t…
…
continue reading

1
How Do We Really Know What Happened in the Past When Many Historians Were Propagandists and AI is Fabricating Everything Else?
48:46
48:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
48:46“History is written by the winners.” This aphorism is catchy and it makes an important point that a lot of what we know about history was written with an agenda, not for the purposes of informing us. Unfortunately, it isn’t true. There are many times that the so-called “losers” wrote the histories remembered today. After the American Civil War, Sou…
…
continue reading

1
Eugénie de Montijo: The Spanish Empress Who Built Modern Paris and is Blamed For Imperial France’s Downfall
45:45
45:45
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
45:45Thirty-three years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Empire, his nephew (known as Napoleon III) became the first president of France before becoming emperor himself. Although he was a capable ruler and reformer, Napoleon III’s failed military campaigns, especially France’s loss to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, led to his defeat, capture,…
…
continue reading

1
John Adams: The Most Influential Yet Overlooked Founding Father?
38:38
38:38
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
38:38John Adams is arguably America’s most underrated Founding Father. He has no currency that bears his image. No national holidays celebrate his birth. He’s nearly never named as anyone’s favorite president. And he has no dedicated memorial in Washington, D.C. Despite this, he was perhaps the most influential early American, rivaling Washington, Jeffe…
…
continue reading

1
Why Thomas More -- Henry VIII’s Hatchet Man and Heretic Hunter -- Was Himself Executed For Heresy After the English Reformation
49:11
49:11
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
49:11Thomas More was one of the most famous—and notorious—figures in English history. Born into the era of the Wars of the Roses, educated during the European Renaissance, rising to become Chancellor of England, and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, he hunted Protestants for heresy and had them burnt at the stake in the final years of Catholic England…
…
continue reading

1
Don’t Look to 1903s Germany to Understand American Populism. Look to 1830s New York Revivals Instead.
1:03:45
1:03:45
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:03:45Something 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 conversion…
…
continue reading

1
Operation Barbarossa Saw Millions of POW Executions, Civilian Murders, and Starvation Deaths
52:35
52:35
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
52:35Operation Barbarossa, launched by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941, aimed to swiftly conquer the Soviet Union, targeting key cities like Moscow, Leningrad, and Kyiv. Hitler reportedly said a meeting with his generals before the campaign began "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down," With German forces …
…
continue reading

1
Pistol Duels Existed Across the 19th-Century World, But Only the Chaos of the American West Produced Gunfighters
51:30
51:30
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
51:30To 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 …
…
continue reading

1
Rome Definitively Eclipsed Greece in 197 BC By Making the Alexandrian Phalanx/Cavalry Obsolete
46:35
46:35
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
46:35The 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 arm…
…
continue reading

1
Exploring the Wreckage of the Britannic (the Titanic’s Sister Ship) and Discovering Why It Sunk in 50 Minutes
48:25
48:25
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
48:25The 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…
…
continue reading

1
Did Tariffs Make America a Manufacturing Powerhouse Or Trigger Economic Misery and Stifle Global Trade?
44:55
44:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
44:55At 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 D…
…
continue reading

1
Alan Pinkerton: The Private Detective Who Saved Lincoln’s Life and Built America’s Contract Security State
50:07
50:07
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
50:07Alan 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 t…
…
continue reading

1
MacArthur’s Plans to Drop 50 Nuclear Bombs During the Korean War
50:45
50:45
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
50:45The 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…
…
continue reading

1
The Many Ways That Rome Never Fell and Lives On Today
37:16
37:16
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
37:16Rome’s Western Empire may have fallen 1,600 years ago, but its cultural impact has a radioactive half-life that would make xenon jealous. Over a billion people speak Latin (or at least a Latin-derived language). Governments around the world self-consciously copy Roman buildings and create governments that copy the imperial senate. Every self-aggran…
…
continue reading

1
Hooves of History: How Horses Created Ancient Warfare, Built the Silk Road, and Became the Dividing Line Between Nobleman and Peasant
44:28
44:28
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
44:28In order to become rich, powerful, and prestigious in the pre-modern world, nothing mattered more than horses. They were the fundamental unit of warfare, enabling cavalry charges, and logistical support. They facilitated the creation of the Silk Road (which could arguably be called the “Horse Road”) since China largely built it to enable the purcha…
…
continue reading

1
Moonshining Survived (and Thrived) At Least Two Decades After Prohibition Ended
45:47
45:47
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
45:47The Prohibition era (1920–1933), enacted by the 18th Amendment, birthed an overnight economy of moonshiners who distilled and distributed homemade liquor to meet America’s insatiable demand for alcohol, transforming rural farmers and opportunists into underground entrepreneurs who supplied speakeasies. But this new economy didn’t disappear after Pr…
…
continue reading

1
How to Cross the Sahara as a Tenth-Century Cameleer
53:08
53:08
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
53:08What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, hosting several million inhabitants and a corresponding variety of lang…
…
continue reading

1
Big Brains: Chris Nine’s Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension and Chiari Malformation
38:39
38:39
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
38:39Pseudotumor Cerebrai? Chiari Malformation? No, these aren’t Austin indie bands, but in-demand multi-instrumentalist Chris Nine would be the person to front them if they were. In this episode, we discuss her journey from growing up in a toxic town in Texas to becoming a full-time musician, with a host of maladies (and melodies) along the way! Here’s…
…
continue reading

1
How American Slaves Fled By Sea, Whether as Stowaways or Commandeering a Confederate Ship
46:06
46:06
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
46:06As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellum South, finding safe harbor along a network of passageways across North America via the Underground Railroad. Yet many escapes took place not by land but by sea. William Grimes escaped slavery in 1815 by stowing away in a cotton bale on a ship from Sav…
…
continue reading

1
Did WW2 Heads of State Want to Preserve Their Empires As Much as Defend Their Homelands?
47:51
47:51
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
47:512025 marks the eightieth anniversary of Germany’s surrender and the fall of the Third Reich. Likewise, World War II is the single most studied conflict in human history. But most Western accounts offer a one-dimensional interpretation: the war was a noble crusade against fascism, creating a convenient parable about good and evil. But this depiction…
…
continue reading

1
How a British Governor of Virginia Raised an Ex-Slave Regiment in 1776 to Fight Patriots and Triggered the Revolutionary War
55:09
55:09
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
55:09As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Virginia, the largest, wealthiest, and most populous province in British North America, was led by Lord Dun…
…
continue reading

1
How a Marine Embedded with Mao Zedong’s Guerrillas in the 30s Became WW2’s Most Celebrated Special Forces Leader
55:46
55:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
55:46He was a gutsy old man.” “A corker,” said another. “You couldn’t find anyone better.” They talked about him in hushed tones. “This Major Carlson,” wrote one of the officers in a letter home, “is one of the finest men I have ever known.” These were the words of the young Marines training to be among the first U.S. troops to enter the Second World Wa…
…
continue reading

1
Microbes Were Discovered in the 1600s. Why It Take 200 Years For Doctors To Start Washing Their Hands?
54:16
54:16
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
54:16Scientists and enthusiastic amateurs first confirmed the existence of living things invisible to the human eye in the late sixteenth century. So why did it take two centuries to connect microbes to disease? As late as the Civil War in the 1860s, most soldiers who perished died not on the battlefield but of infected wounds, typhoid, and other diseas…
…
continue reading

1
From Einstein’s Chalkboard to Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Test: The 50-Year Path to the Atomic Bomb
48:14
48:14
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
48:14The story of the atomic age began decades before Robert Oppenheimer watched a mushroom cloud form over the New Mexico desert at the Trinity nuclear test in mid 1945. It begins in 1895, with Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity, setting in motion a series of remarkable and horrifying events. By the early 20th century, a brilliant …
…
continue reading

1
Japan’s Desperate Air Battles Against the US in the Final Months of WW2
37:15
37:15
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
37:15The B-29 Bomber led the Allied strategic bombing offensive against Japan, succeeding when US Bomber Command switched from high-level daytime precision bombing to low-level nighttime area bombing. The latter tactic required Superfortresses to attack their targets individually, without a formation or escorting fighters for protection. Despite this, J…
…
continue reading

1
D-Day From the East: The Soviet Operation Bagration Crippled the Wehrmacht in Late 1944
42:08
42:08
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
42:08Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a …
…
continue reading

1
Pilgrimages Involved Penitent Marches, Visiting Holy Places, and Watching Drunken Emperors Go on Chariot Rides
44:53
44:53
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
44:53Pilgrimages are a universal phenomenon, from China’s bustling Tai Shan to the ancient Jewish treks to Jerusalem. But why? What is it about a grueling penitent march to an isolated temple that has become a prerequisite for a civilization of any size, whether Chicen Itza in the Mayan Empire or the holy sites of Mecca? To explore this is today’s guest…
…
continue reading

1
Britain Learned How to Set Up Its Global Empire on a Tiny Bermudan Island
44:02
44:02
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
44:02Years before Jamestown planters made New World farming profitable by growing tobacco, and years before their countrymen up north in Plymouth Colony managed to overcome their starvation conditions and acclimate to New England’s growing conditions, there was an English settlement in Bermuda that was wealthier, larger, and more prosperous. It was esta…
…
continue reading

1
The Hatfield-McCoy Feud Started Over a Pig and Nearly Escalated Into a Regional War
45:20
45:20
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
45:20The origins of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict (between the Hatfield family of West Virginia, led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield, and the McCoy family of Kentucky, led by Randolph "Old Randall" McCoy) begins with a dispute over a pig. From here, it escalated from minor disagreements to violent encounters that spanned decades, nearly sparking…
…
continue reading

1
The 1845 Potato Blight Struck Across Northern Europe. Why Did Only Ireland Starve?
48:41
48:41
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
48:41In 1845, a novel pathogen attacked potato fields across Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia—but only in Ireland were the effects apocalyptic. At least one million Irish people died, and millions more scattered across the globe, emigrating to new countries and continents. Less than fifty years after the union of Ireland with the rest of Great Britain,…
…
continue reading