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PODCAST

Explaining History

How do we make sense of the modern world? We find the answers in the history of the 20th Century.For over a decade, The Explaining History Podcast has been the guide for curious minds. Host Nick Shepley and expert guests break down the world wars, the Cold War, and the rise and fall of ideologies into concise, 25-minute episodes.This isn"t a dry lecture. It"s a critical, narrative-driven conversation that connects the past to your present.Perfect for students, history buffs, and anyone who wants to

history courses

All Episodes

26:18

Economic Sanctions: Crimes against humanity.

Explaining History ·

2025/07/24

In this episode, we tear away the euphemisms and expose a grim reality: sanctions kill. Drawing on a 2025 study from The Lancet Global Health, we show how economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other powers are responsible for up to 777,000 deaths each year, with children and the elderly most at risk.We trace the history of sanctions from the League of Nations to Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, and beyond. We compare sanctions to siege warfare—and ask why a practice this deadly continues to be framed as

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26:08

From Powell Memo to Policy Powerhouse: How Right-Wing...

Explaining History ·

2025/07/21

How did neoliberalism go from fringe idea to ruling ideology in the United States? In this deep-dive episode of Explaining History, we trace the hidden rise of America’s most influential right-wing think tanks—Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute and more—from their birth in the 1970s oil-crisis chaos to their role in dismantling the New Deal order.You’ll discover:• The 1971 Powell Memo that sparked a billionaire-funded “war of ideas”.• How a handful of corporate dynasties (Koch,

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26:49

A Gaza coalition emerging

Explaining History ·

2025/07/14

The extent to which western soft power and legal and moral authority has been shredded by Gaza is lost upon British, American and European populations for the most part, but across the global south a new movement appears to be coalescing around South Africa and Columbia. In Europe, Ireland and Spain have joined with them and sixteen other global south countries to form the Hague Group, dedicated to upholding international law as it relates to Gaza. This, until quite recently, was inconceivable and

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29:41

Moral justifications for modern war

Explaining History ·

2025/07/12

Warfare had to be re-propagandised in the 20th Century, particularly in the western world, as a moral crusade. Mass democracy determined that leaders needed to present war as a manichean struggle between freedom and tyranny. The end of the Tsarist regime and the intervention of a liberal American president in the First World War was an ideal opportunity to re-invent conflict as moral crusade in the defence of freedom. The arguments that British, American and other NATO leaders present in the 21st

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23:51

Maoist struggle sessions and the Cultural Revolution

Explaining History ·

2025/07/10

This episode draws from the excellent book Red Memory by Tania Brannigan, an oral history of the Cultural Revolution. Here we examine the role of thought, how Mao sought to stimulate public thought during the Hundred Flowers Campaign of the late 1950s to seek out enemies and how struggle sessions were a form of thought torture, making ones own self unbearable. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if

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36:49

Folk music, modernity and revolutionary thought - The...

Explaining History ·

2025/07/09

***PLEASE LISTEN TO THE END***In this special episode of the podcast we here a personal update from our guest today Ericka Verba on the ongoing establishment of Trumpist fascism in LA, his use of ICE and the climate of fear.Join us as we welcome Ericka Verba, Director and Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, to delve into her landmark biography Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra. Drawing on decades of scholarship, personal encounters, and the

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33:47

Post war lesbian life in Britain

Explaining History ·

2025/07/09

Join us on The Explaining History Podcast as we welcome Dame Vikki Heywood, former Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre, to discuss her dazzling debut novel Miss Veal and Miss Ham. Set against the sleepy veneer of a 1951 Buckinghamshire village post office, this intimate tale reveals the hidden passions and unspoken resilience of two women whose lives span from the suffragette movement to the aftermath of World War II.In this episode, we explore:A Day of

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36:33

Edwardian Britain's most famous fraudster

Explaining History ·

2025/07/09

Join us on The Explaining History Podcast as we sit down with historian and author Mark Bridgeman to unravel the extraordinary life—and daring deceptions—of Violet Charlesworth, Britain’s first notorious female fraudster. In his landmark new book, Nothing for Something, Bridgeman spent three years mining court records, witness statements, private archives, and first-hand site visits to reconstruct a scandal that captivated Edwardian Britain.Violet Charlesworth, before her 25th birthday, bilked

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29:17

Oligarchy in America and Russia

Explaining History ·

2025/07/08

At the end of the 20th Century, the Cold War which had defined the struggle between various different iterations of capitalism in the western world and the USSR in the east was replaced by a slow oligarchic coup. An equivalent class has come to power in both countries and has similar imperatives, to occupy the state and cannibalise society. This podcast explores the material and ideological conditions that led to this takeover. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I

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23:23

Trump's ICE brownshirts, an historical analysis

Explaining History ·

2025/07/07

Nazism sought to bypass legal norms where it couldn't just sweep them aside. The German Weimar constitution took time to dismantle and new institutions, practices and laws needed to be created in order to subvert it. A similar process is underway in America at the moment and Trump's recent allocation of over $200 billion to ICE is a huge step towards cementing a police state that is answerable directly to him. Today we explore the comparisons between Trumpism and Nazism where they are most evident,

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25:20

Bowie and the 1960s

Explaining History ·

2025/07/04

In this episode of Explaining History, we dive into the fascinating world of David Bowie’s 1960s—a decade of shifting cultural currents, personal reinvention, and the search for identity that would shape one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century.Drawing on Neil Stephenson’s insightful book David Bowie, we explore how the social upheavals of the 60s—from Swinging London and Mod culture to the countercultural movements and sexual liberation—created a crucible in which Bowie experimented with

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31:15

British spies in Mesopotamia - 1915

Explaining History ·

2025/07/03

This episode explores part of the story of St John Philby, father to Kim and eventually advisor to King Ibn Saud. Philby was one of the few administrators that the British government and its colonial government in India could find who understood Arabia and Mesopotamia. In 1915 as British fortunes against the Ottoman Empire took a turn for the worst, Philby was sent to Basra to reorganise the city's finances after the retreat of the Turks. He would eventually help to organise the financial

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32:16

Literary tastes, readers and book clubs in the inter...

Explaining History ·

2025/07/02

In the first decades of the 20th Century, a growth in literacy and the availability of paperback and hardback books created a culture of mass participation on literary reading that was unprecedented. Nicola Wilson's new book Recommended, a history of the Book Society, tells the story of Hugh Walpole, JB Priestley and Cecil Day Lewis amongst others and how they created the first mass book club which sent monthly recommendations to lower middle class and working class readers. Here we hear from Nicola

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33:19

Austerity Britain 2010 - 2025

Explaining History ·

2025/07/02

The project to permanently shrink the British state and to inflict mass hardship on the most vulnerable which was commenced after 2010 has cost untold numbers of lives. The last calculations put the dead at around 338,000 people but it is likely now to be far higher and Britain has exchanged one austerity government for another. Now the Labour Party continues the brutal economic assault on the poor, the unwell and the disabled that the previous Conservative administrations had commenced. Today I am

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26:08

France: Collaboration and Occupation 1940-45

Explaining History ·

2025/07/01

When France was defeated in 1940, across its empire it underwent a period of civil war as Vichy and Free French forces faced one another. Until at least 1943 there were widespread sympathies across France for the Vichy regime and antipathy towards the British and the Americans. This podcast episode explores the complexities of identity, loyalty and a nation divided. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author

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28:12

America, oil shocks and the crisis of the 1970s

Explaining History ·

2025/06/30

In this episode, we dive into the turbulent decade of the 1970s, exploring how the oil shocks and economic crises of the era shattered the postwar order in America. Drawing from historian Gary Gerstle’s influential work The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Era, we examine how stagflation, energy insecurity, and geopolitical tensions fueled public disillusionment with Keynesian economics and paved the way for a neoliberal revolution.In This Episode:The 1973 and 1979 oil shocks and their devastating

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25:38

The Battle of the Ebro: Part Two

Explaining History ·

2025/06/25

Continued from yesterday's episode, we read again from Adam Hochschild's brilliant book Spain in Our Hearts, about the overwhelming odds faced by the International Brigades in Spain as they crossed the Ebro River in the Republic's last attempt to hold off the fascist generals and attract the support of the British and the French. The agreement at Munich over the fate of Czechoslovakia signalled that the British and French had no interest in fighting to save Spain from Hitler's proxies. *****STOP

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30:24

The demise of Britain's post war foreign policy

Explaining History ·

2025/06/19

In the aftermath of the Second World War, as Britain's Empire faded away, British Prime Ministers had few choices than to take their lead from America. Following the disaster of the Suez invasion, Britain abandoned any pretence that it might have an independent foreign policy and operated as an arm of American power in the world until the present day. As we face the possibility of a war with Iran that almost 80 per cent of the population oppose but British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has

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27:53

Argentina's mothers of the disappeared

Explaining History ·

2025/06/18

On October 6, 1978, Patricia Roisinblit — a young Jewish medical student and leftist activist — was abducted by Argentina’s military junta while eight months pregnant. She was never seen again. But her mother, Rosa, refused to let her story end there.In this deeply moving episode, we speak with journalist and author Haley Cohen Gilliland about her extraordinary new book, A Flower Traveled in My Blood — a powerful narrative of dictatorship, resistance, and the decades-long search for justice led by

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34:20

African Americans and the Oscars, from Gone with the...

Explaining History ·

2025/06/18

In this episode, we hear from with award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster Ben Arogundade about his latest book, Hollywood Blackout.Drawing on a century of film history, Hollywood Blackout explores how the Academy Awards have both resisted and reflected changing social forces — from the Nazi invasion of Europe to the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, #OscarsSoWhite, and #BlackLivesMatter. Arogundade reveals how external political and cultural shocks shaped who was celebrated at the Oscars and

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129 results

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