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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

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All Episodes

24:08

Colonial wealth transfers: A New Analysis

Explaining History ·

2025/06/10

Question:What would have happened to Europe in the past two and a half centuries if it hadn't plundered the global south? What would have happened if Europeans had paid for the labour of Africans instead of stealing it? What would have happened if they had purchased cotton, tea, spices and other commodities at a price that reflected the labour used to produce it? Answer: Europe would be one of the poorer regions of the worldThomas Piketty, the world renowned economist and author of Capital in the

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25:28

Neoliberalism and the European Economic Community

Explaining History ·

2025/06/09

The post war neoliberals were divided over the European Economic Community, some viewing it as a protected enclave of the world economy that would hold back the global economic integration they hoped for. Others saw it as the beginnings of a borderless economic zone that would spread around the world, eventually subsuming all questions of politics and ideology to the logic of the market. It turned out to be neither of those things completely and instead became the target of those inheritors of

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33:45

Suffrage, Medicine and Murder

Explaining History ·

2025/06/04

In the 1850s a medical revolution was beginning with the discovery of anaesthesia and a political and social revolution was still in its infancy in the guise of the embryonic suffrage movement that would emerge in earnest over a half a century later. In their latest novel together under the pen name Ambrose Parry, Christopher Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman explore the world of prostitution, blackmail from the perspective of their medical heroes Sarah Fisher and Will Raven in the fifth Fisher and

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24:12

Conflicted Loyalties: Minority voices in wartime...

Explaining History ·

2025/06/03

What did Irish Americans make of Roosevelt's wartime pact with Churchill? What did Polish Americans make of his alliance with Stalin? In this podcast we explore the many complex, conflicted and often divided loyalties as a vast multi ethnic and global anti fascist coalition fought to defeat Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese Imperialism. *****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 that's your thing you

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26:40

The political right and 'anti wokeness'

Explaining History ·

2025/06/02

Wokeness and anti wokeness are inventions of the political right on both sides of the Atlantic. They are confected ideas that are pushed by elite think tank, media and political groups and have been used in different ways since the era of the counter culture in the late 1960s. Their prime advocates claim that 'woke' is some manner of threat to either freedom or common sense, but the reality is far more mundane. The well resourced, organised and funded political right in the US and UK seeks wedge

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27:04

Carter, Reagan, Bush and China

Explaining History ·

2025/05/25

From the late 1970s onwards China and the USSR were on two very different historical paths and three US presidents, Carter, Reagan and Bush sought to harness the potential of the world's most populous country as it rapidly became wealthier. China, often cited as having embraced capitalism after Mao, abandoned inward looking autarchy and opened its economy up in the 1980s to foreign trade and investment. In the 1990s and 2000s there would be an explosion of offshoring that has partially created the

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24:35

Maoism and Anti Imperialism

Explaining History ·

2025/05/23

Mao's ideas presented a clear challenge to western imperialism throughout the 20th Century and became a rallying cry to national liberation movements and anti imperialist groups wiithin western countries from the Baader Meinhof Gang to the Yippees. *****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 that's your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here:Help the podcast to

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36:28

Britain's Broken Media

Explaining History ·

2025/05/21

In the past two decades successive scandals have revealed that Britain has some of the worst media institutions in the developed world. The ability of ordinary people to interpret the news, use accurate information to hold politicians to account or to gain a coherent sense of the world has arguably never been weaker. In his new book Breaking: Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn't and Why it Matters, Mic Wright sets out a coherent explanation of this key democratic failing in the UK (as well

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35:11

Discussing Mark Twain's 'Jim'

Explaining History ·

2025/05/16

The character of Jim in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was written as a condemnation of the Jim Crow regimes that were springing up across the South as the Reconstruction Era slowly came to an end. Twain's Jim was the first Black character in popular American literature that can be thought of as being written in depth and without becoming another racist caricature. The story, set before the civil war, has been the subject of ongoing scholarship and contestation ever since. In this

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27:02

Britain, Germany and the Blitz

Explaining History ·

2025/05/09

By the start of the blitz Britain didn't have enough anti aircraft guns, despite half a decade anticipating mass bombing as a means of war. Germany was ill prepared for the bombing of British cities as well, with its slow, light bomber lacking the speed or the payload to be able to devastate Britain in the way allied airforces would later destroy Germany.*****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 that's

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24:04

VE Day : London 1945

Explaining History ·

2025/05/08

What was it like to experience the end of the Second World War in London, 80 years ago today? We read David Kynaston's Austerity Britain to find out how housewives, politicians, writers and diarists experienced the end of six years of terrible conflict and what this meant to them.*****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 that's your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right

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25:49

Nazi wartime labour shortages

Explaining History ·

2025/05/07

At the height of the Third Reich's war production there were nearly five million additional German and foreign workers in the war economy. Despite the efforts made by Albert Speer to rationalise the war economy and make it more efficient, there was still too few workers to compete with the combined military production of the allied powers. Workers from Germany, from occupied western countries and from allied countries like Italy and Hungary were recruited though non German workers were paid less and

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25:21

The historiography of Malcolm X

Explaining History ·

2025/05/01

The way in which Malcolm X and the Black Power movement has been interpreted and understood over time has changed as academics grappled with his legacy and interrogated his autobiography, published posthumously. This podcast explores how the way we have come to understand him has changed over time. You can buy Kevern Verney's book - The debate on Black Civil Rights in America here*****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant

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31:42

America's post war rise and fall

Explaining History ·

2025/04/30

In the aftermath of the Second World War, America had half the world's wealth and a quarter of its GDP. By the 1970s its position as an economic powerhouse without competitor had slipped away and it faced stronger challenges from Europe and Japan. A decade of crisis in America saw the forces of neoliberal thinking take centre stage to eviscerate the New Deal in the 1980s.*****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy

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35:52

Hollywood, witch hunts and class struggle in LA

Explaining History ·

2025/04/23

In this episode of the Explaining History podcast we speak with the writer Dennis Broe whose new book The Dark Ages, explores the second Hollywood anti communist purge of 1951. We talk about Hollywood and Los Angeles as a site of ongoing class struggle, the role of the media and the LAPD in the development of modern Los Angeles and the role of dissenting writers and film makers in challenging the power of the studios.You can join Dennis for a zoom class on Darkest LA: Film Noir, Greed and Corporate

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29:03

The decline of US Liberal Internationalism

Explaining History ·

2025/03/08

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, American internationalism has been in crisis and Trump's recent verbal and economic threats towards allies has accelerated this trend. This podcast explores America's 20th and 21st Century internationalist moments and crises.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want

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22:18

Hitler's resource war in Russia - 1941

Explaining History ·

2025/03/07

In June 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the USSR, they saw the conquest of the country, the eradication of its leadership and the starvation of tens of millions of its people as part of a wider goal at creating a zone of resource extraction for the Nazi state in order to enable it to withstand an allied blockade and to stand up to the industrial and agricultural might of the USA and the British Empire.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining

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24:01

Romania in 1918

Explaining History ·

2025/03/04

Romania was, in territorial terms, one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the Paris Peace Conference. It acquired land from the disintegrated Austro Hungarian and Russian Empires and from new states like Hungary itself. the core Romanian lands, the Regat, found it challenging to absorb new territories, even when they were majority ethnically Romanian, and the strong desire for a more federalist state was resisted by those elites and power structures who had chiefly benefitted from a strong,

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24:26

Nazi economic plunder of western Europe PT2

Explaining History ·

2025/03/03

When Europe was rapidly subjugated by the Nazi regime, unprecedented economic opportunities arose and these were exploited by Germany's great industrial conglomerates and cartels such as chemicals giant IG Farben. This podcast explores how the Nazi regime imposed a new economic order on conquered states in western Europe.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please

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28:05

Zelenskyy and the US Empire

Explaining History ·

2025/03/01

In the past 24 hours there has been further indication that an immense transition in international relations is under way, far more significant that the retreat into isolation at the end of the First World War. Trump and Vance have signalled their intent to shift the US away from its traditional post war role of being the centre of Pax Americana, the metropole of an unofficial empire, to the first amongst great power equals. The consequences for Europe in this realignment will be dire, but there is

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