12,000 years ago, human history changed forever when the egalitarian groups of hunter-gathering humans began to settle down and organize themselves into hierarchies. The few dominated the many, seizing control through violence. What emerged were “Goliaths”: large societies built on a collection of hierarchies that are also terrifyingly fragile, collapsing time after time across the world. Today, we live in a single, global Goliath—one that is precariously interdependent—under threat from nuclear war, climate change, and the existential risks of AI. The next collapse may be our last.

Today’s guest is Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse. He conducts a historical autopsy on our species, from the earliest cities to the collapse of modern states like Somalia. Drawing on historical databases and the latest discoveries in archaeology and anthropology, he uncovers groundbreaking revelations:

• More democratic societies tend to be more resilient.
• A modern collapse is likely to be global, long-lasting, and more dire than ever before
• Collapse may be invisible until after it has occurred. It’s possible we’re living through one now.
• Collapse has often had a more positive outcome for the general population than for the 1%.
• All Goliaths contain the seeds of their own demise.

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After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, enslaved people feared running away to the North, as their return was mandated, and they faced brutal punishment or even death upon return to deter others from escaping. But that changed during the Civil War. Black slaves in Confederate Virginia began hearing rumors that they could receive their freedom if they reached the Union’s Fort Monroe. Union General Benjamin Butler found a loophole in the Fugitive Slave Act that allowed slaves who fled to Northern lines to be treated as "contraband of war"—seized enemy property—under the Confiscation Act of 1861. This meant they would be set free instead of being returned to slaveholders. Butler did this to deplete the Confederacy's labor force and bolster Union morale by offering refuge to escaping enslaved people. Word spread across the state.

In a short time, nearly a thousand former slaves formed a camp outside the fort. Many worked to sustain the camps, growing crops like corn or cotton on nearby abandoned lands to feed themselves and generate resources. Men, women, and even children contributed to the war effort through various tasks, such as building fortifications, digging trenches, or serving as cooks, nurses, or laborers for Union troops. Freedpeople established schools, often with the help of Northern missionaries or organizations like the American Missionary Association, teaching literacy to adults and children. Other contraband camps sprang up, and by the end of the war, 800,000 former slaves had established over 200 of them.

Today’s guest is Tom Zoellner, author of “The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War.” We discuss how these camps fostered interracial interactions that shifted public opinion toward abolition, highlighting the agency of enslaved people in their own liberation. The Emancipation Proclamation was a delayed response to these grassroots movements, not a singular heroic act. The camps’ role in challenging slavery’s legal and social foundations helped reshape the trajectory of the Civil War.

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In 1864, the American Civil War reached a critical juncture with Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, including the brutal battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, which claimed over 60,000 casualties, surpassing Gettysburg as the Americas’ deadliest clash. Abraham Lincoln faced a contentious re-election against George B. McClellan, while Confederate General Jubal Early’s troops came within five miles of the White House. Abolitionists pushed for emancipation, and desperate Confederate plots, like the attempt to burn New York City’s hotels, marked the war’s final months, culminating in Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865.

Today’s guest is Scott Ellsworth, author of “Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America.” We explore how the staggering losses of 1864 shaped Lincoln’s strategy of attrition amid political uncertainty. These include lesser-known moments, like the Washington Arsenal explosion that killed 21 workers and Early’s near-invasion of Washington, D.C., which could have altered the war’s course. We also examines the November 1864 Confederate plot to destabilize New York and the conspiracy behind Lincoln’s assassination, including the unresolved question of Confederate government involvement. Reflecting on the war’s toll—over 620,000 dead and four million African-Americans freed but facing new struggles—Ellsworth illuminates how these events reshaped America’s identity.

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