Hello: Autumn, 1949. Fortune editor Bill Furth, flinty-eyed gatekeeper, scans a manuscript from 30-year-old whiz kid Daniel Bell. Spots the word “charisma.” Snorts. Blue pencil meets page. Word dies swiftly, without much appeal. Fast forward ten years: charisma is everywhere. Eggheads bandy it, pundits quote it, preachers peddle it. Bell—vindicated.

Since the 1950s, Americans have grown used to the word “charisma” being applied to everyone, often as a synonym for “charm”.. But what if charisma is more than charm or personal magnetism—what if it’s a key to understanding the moral and spiritual crises of American life itself? That’s the argument of Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump, a sweeping new book by my guest historian Molly Worthen. In it, she traces the tangled story of charisma across four centuries of American history—from the Puritans through Andrew Jackson, to Malcolm X and Donald Trump.

Charismatic leaders, Worthen argues, don’t simply stir emotions or win votes. They offer something deeper: a sense of cosmic meaning, spiritual clarity, and moral urgency in moments when traditional institutions seem hollow or adrift. In times of upheaval, we look for figures who promise to reveal hidden truths and restore a broken order.

Molly Worthen is a scholar of American religious and intellectual history. She is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes regularly on religion and politics for the New York Times and other national outlets. Spellbound is her third book; she has previously authored Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, a biography of the diplomat, Yale professor, and Bridgeton, NJ native Charles Hill. (That last for my five listeners in South Jersey.)

Shipwrecks as events are probably humanity’s most common form of disaster”, writes my guest James Delgado

“As such, shipwrecks–aside from epidemics, warfare on land, or great natural disasters—have been the cause of the greatest number of human deaths throughout history. Thanks to ships and other watercraft, humanity did not just walk across the globe from its ancestral home in Africa. We made use of the ocean as a source of food and as a means of travel on our global journey. Humanity’s relationship with the water has also been shaped by the reality that for as much as is taken from the sea, something is lost. Those losses are ships, the goods on them, and people. Shipwrecks as events therefore ­have ­inspired ­one­ of ­the­ oldest­ genres­ of ­human ­reflection ­on­ the nature of life; [they] have been and remain a muse for religious thought, literature, music, and art.”

These are some of Delgado’s introductory observations in his new book The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks, a deep dive into the surprisingly rich history of human disaster at sea, and what those wrecks can tell us, both about the past, and about ourselves. From the cause of shipwreck to the beginnings of maritime archaeology, Delgado offers a history, a meditation, and pieces of a maritime archaeologist’s autobiography.

James Delgado is Senior Vice President of SEARCH, Inc., the leading cultural resources firm in the United States. Previously he has been Director of Maritime Heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; President and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA); and host of the National Geographic international television series "The Sea Hunters". He was last on the podcast in Episode 292 to discuss his book The Curse of the Somers, in the course of which conversation he became the only guest in the over four hundred episodes of this podcast to break into song. He has a very pleasant baritone.

For Further Investigation



• "The Blake Ridge Wreck: A Deepwater Antebellum Fishing Craft"
• Cynthia Kierner on disasters, including shipwrecks, in antebellum America

There is a U-boat in the middle of Chicago. It’s attached to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. Generations of Chicagolanders, and their cousins from far away, have walked through U-505, but they don’t always ask how in the world it got to Chicago.

A crucial moment in the journey of U-505 to its permanent berth was on June 4, 1944. On that day for the first time in the history of the US Navy since, perhaps, October 7, 1864, the command “Away all boarders!” was given on the USS Pillsbury, part of the task force that had been searching for U-505 off the northwestern coast of Africa. Their challenge was to capture an underwater boat from the surface, and then keep it from sinking.

How they got to that point, and what happened afterwards, is the subject of Alexander Rose’s new book Phantom Fleet: The Hunt for U-505 and World War II’s Most Daring Heist. In the course of describing one of the most audacious naval actions of the Second World War, Rose also reveals the secret war against German U-Boats.

Alexander Rose is the bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, as well as American Rifle, Men of War, The Lion and the Fox, and Empires of the Sky. Born in the United States, he grew up in Australia, was semi-educated in England, worked in Canada, and now lives in New York. He also claims to be a committed listener to Historically Thinking.

For Further Investigation

• “U-505. The Captured U‑Boat”: A museum-led walkthrough of the sub at the Museum of Science and Industry
• Official exhibit page: Learn how U‑505, the only German U-boat in the U.S., made its way to a bunker in Hyde Park and what visitors can experience on the on-board tour
• U.S. Naval History (History.Navy.Mil): Overview of the capture operation and the submarine’s eventual transfer to the Museum of Science and Industry