Sidequests

Uncovering the strange, overlooked stories hidden in history’s odd corners. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sidequests is a education podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 59 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Sidequests, a education show with 59 episodes published.

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  Sidequests

  Fifteen Days to Leave a War

  Sep 29, 202618 min

  The United States spent twenty years in Afghanistan and about fifteen days leaving. Documentary filmmaker Michael Pack joins Keith Conrad to discuss his new Wall Street Journal film, The Path to Zero , which traces the decisions that turned a planned withdrawal into the chaos of August 2021. Those decisions include a Doha agreement the Taliban had already broken, military advice that went unheeded, the abandonment of Bagram Air Base, and an evacuation announced far too late. Pack explains why the blame belongs to more than one administration, what "moral injury" means for the Marines who worked the Kabul airport gates, and why the belief in a reformed "Taliban 2.0" may be repeating itself in the war with Iran. Enemies usually tell you who they are. The hard part is believing them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Sidequests

  The Man Who Single-Handedly Stopped World War III

  Sep 24, 20269 min

  Just after midnight on September 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning system reported that nuclear war had begun. One officer had minutes to decide whether to believe it. What he chose — and why — may be the most consequential individual decision of the Cold War. This episode of Sidequests tells the full story of that night: what was actually happening in the world that made the moment so dangerous, what the officer saw and how he reasoned through it, what had actually gone wrong with the system, and why the version of this story that made him famous gets the most important detail wrong — in a way that makes the truth considerably more interesting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Sidequests

  That Time Gene Roddenberry Survived a Plane Crash and Saved the Day

  Sep 22, 202611 min

  On June 19, 1947, a Pan American flight went down in the Syrian Desert in the middle of the night. Engines failing, fuselage on fire, fifteen people killed on impact — including everyone in the cockpit. Among the survivors was an off-duty 25-year-old pilot named Gene Roddenberry, riding as a passenger. With broken ribs, he pulled people out of the burning wreckage, organized the survivors, improvised shelter from a life raft, and walked four miles across open desert to find help. Almost twenty years later, he created Star Trek. This is the story you've probably never heard about the man who imagined humanity's future in the stars — and what he did the night the sky fell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Sidequests

  Antietam: The Bloodiest Day in American History

  Sep 17, 202610 min

  On September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam produced nearly 23,000 casualties in a single day — the bloodiest in American military history — and ended in a military stalemate. Lee retreated. McClellan didn't pursue. But Lincoln interpreted the Confederate withdrawal as a Union victory and used it to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days later, transforming the Civil War from a fight to preserve the Union into a fight to end slavery. This episode of Sidequests covers Antietam: the lost Confederate orders that should have given McClellan a decisive advantage, the brutal fighting at the Cornfield and Bloody Lane, and how a bloody draw on the battlefield became one of the most consequential political moments in American history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  Sidequests

  The Mold That Changed Medicine Forever

  Sep 15, 20269 min

  In September 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find a contaminated culture plate — a mold had grown on it, and in a ring around the mold, all the bacteria were dead. Most scientists would have thrown it away. Fleming looked more closely, recognized what he was seeing, and named the substance penicillin. This episode of Sidequests covers the discovery, the decade-long stall before anyone could make it work, how World War II created the urgency that finally drove Florey and Chain to solve the stability problem, and why the story of the first antibiotic is really a story about accident, observation, and the gap between scientific discovery and practical medicine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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