An Admiral's List of the 10 Greatest Admirals in History

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today's episode features a special guest, James Stavridis, a four-star U.S. Navy Admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He joins us to discuss the ten greatest admirals in history and looks at their examples of leadership and resourcefulness. Case studies include Themistocles, English Sea Captain Francis Drake, Chinese explorer Zheng He, Horatio Nelson, WW2 Pacific Theatre Commander Chester Nimitz, and Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.

Most of all, we get at what it's like to look down on a carrier strike group (made up of 7,500 personnel, an aircraft carrier, at least one cruiser, a flotilla of six to 10 destroyers and/or frigates, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft) and know that you have absolute command over the fates of everyone and everything below you and how that feeling would affect the lives of these people.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:05.4	The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres
0:11.9	the forgotten stories that changed our world.
0:15.5	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
0:20.8	When it comes to holding power, there's something special about the position of Admiral compared
0:25.4	to being a President, a General, or CEO.
0:29.4	The word Admiral comes from the Arabic Amiyad al, which means commander of the phrase Amiyad al-Baha,
0:35.3	commander of the sea.
0:37.3	Think about what that looks like if you command an entire fleet.
0:40.3	You have millions of tons of destructive capability.
0:44.4	Controlling an aircraft carrier, destroyers, submarines, other things in your flotilla, tens
0:50.3	of thousands of sailors whose lives are directly under your control.
0:53.9	But as you're fighting, you're not just fighting an enemy navy, you're also fighting nature.
0:59.1	There could be a storm that's occurring.
1:00.6	There could just be simple inclement weather, but it would be as if you were a General fighting
1:04.9	a battle, but you're having to deal with a volcanic eruption and earthquake at the same
1:08.8	time.
1:09.9	So there's a special level of power and challenges that you face while you're leading
1:13.9	as an Admiral.
1:15.5	In this episode, I'm going to be looking at the 10 Greatest Admurals in history, with
1:19.6	an Admiral himself, four-star US Navy Admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO,
1:25.2	James Stavredis.
	...

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