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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

26:13

India, America and Nehru 1940-41

Explaining History ·

2026/09/22

**In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore Srinath Raghavan's brilliant *India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939–1945* – a book that places India at the centre of the Second World War, rather than at its margins.**India is frequently overlooked in histories of the Second World War. When it appears at all, it is as a source of manpower for the British Empire – a vast reservoir of soldiers and labourers to be deployed in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. But as

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31:20

Stalin's Statues – Monuments, Memory, and the Theme...

Explaining History ·

2026/09/17

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore Keith Lowe's *Prisoners of History* and the contested world of memorialisation – focusing on one of the strangest and most controversial memorial sites in Europe.Monuments occupy public space, and they impose meaning on it. Walk through any city and you'll find statues placed with particular agendas – to memorialise the past in certain ways, to place a particular interpretation on history. As a result, they are almost always contested

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34:08

Macmillan's Britain – Suez, Decline, and the Winds of...

Explaining History ·

2026/09/16

In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the Macmillan years – that remarkable, contradictory period of post-war British history when the country was forced to confront its diminished place in the world, even as it sought to cling to the vestiges of imperial power.When Anthony Eden led Britain into the Suez Crisis in 1956, he did so believing that Britain could still act unilaterally on the world stage. The rebuke from Eisenhower told a different story. The crisis exposed

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26:47

MI6 in 1914

Explaining History ·

2026/09/11

MI6 and the First World War – The Birth of the Secret StateIn this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the origins of MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service – during the First World War, drawing on Keith Jeffery's official history of the organisation.Intelligence history matters, not because of the romantic glamour of espionage, but because of the place secret organisations occupy in the social and political history of the twentieth century. Britain's secret state did not emerge

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28:14

The AFD's advances– Neoliberalism, the Extreme...

Explaining History ·

2026/09/09

In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine the recent electoral victory of the Alternative for Germany (AFD) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt – and what it tells us about the global resurgence of the far right.The AFD's crushing victory has alarmed commentators around the world. An openly fascist party emerging in Germany has a special and terrifying significance. But as veteran left intellectual Tariq Ali argues in a powerful Substack essay, this is not an isolated phenomenon

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35:13

Civil Rights After 1980 – The Unfinished Revolution

Explaining History ·

2026/09/08

# Episode DescriptionIn this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we tackle one of the most persistent problems in how we teach and understand the civil rights movement: the "happy ever after" narrative.For many years, students have been taught that the struggles of the 1950s and 60s culminated in victory – that the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act somehow "solved" racism in America. This is, of course, nonsense. History doesn't work like that. The civil rights movement achieved

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24:57

The Fall of Baghdad 1917

Explaining History ·

2026/09/03

The Fall of Baghdad In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we continue our exploration of Eugene Rogan's masterful The Fall of the Ottomans, examining the British campaign to capture Baghdad in 1917 – a victory that helped redeem the catastrophic humiliation of Kut.The surrender at Kut in April 1916 had been one of the worst disasters in British military history. Thousands of British and Indian soldiers, starved into submission, were marched into captivity and then worked to death

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28:06

Britain Alone – The Hostile Environment and the...

Explaining History ·

2026/09/02

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the transformation of British society since Brexit – a story of the weaponisation of immigration, the erosion of the NHS, and the narrowing of who counts as "British."Drawing on Liam Stanley's excellent book, Britain Alone, we examine how the anxieties that gave rise to the 2016 referendum have been magnified and entrenched in the years since. The referendum did not create the forces that produced it – it gave them permission to speak

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25:35

Reforming the Tsar's Army – From Serfdom to Universal...

Explaining History ·

2026/09/01

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore one of the most significant transformations of 19th-century Russia: the introduction of universal military service in 1874.The Crimean War had exposed the profound weaknesses of the Russian Empire. Its army, composed largely of serfs serving 25-year terms, was backward, poorly equipped, and utterly demoralised. The British and French had demonstrated the power of industrialised warfare – railroads, telegraphs, modern rifles – and Russia

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26:52

Hegseth's War Crimes

Explaining History ·

2026/08/31

Hegseth's War – The Catastrophic Consequences of Maximum LethalityIn this week's solo episode, I examine a ProPublica investigation into Pete Hegseth's tenure as US Defence Secretary – and the catastrophic consequences of his "maximum lethality" doctrine. Here, I want to expand on some of the key themes we discussed.The Civilian Protection ProgrammeThe story begins with a programme called Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR). It was a relatively new initiative, adopted after years of heavy

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27:33

Harold Wilson, Corporatism, and the Paranoia of the...

Explaining History ·

2026/08/25

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the life and legacy of Harold Wilson – the most successful Labour Prime Minister of the 20th century, and the man who attracted the most fevered paranoia from the British right.Wilson is often misunderstood. To the right, he was a crypto-communist, a threat to the British way of life. To some on the left, he was a betrayer of socialist ideals. The truth is more complex: Wilson was a corporatist, a believer in a managed mixed economy where

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27:12

Trump, Canada and the defence of sovereignty

Explaining History ·

2026/08/24

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I examine the extraordinary diplomatic demands the United States has placed on Canada – demands that echo the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914 and raise profound questions about American intentions.The Trump administration's trade demands on Canada are not mere negotiations. They include provisions that would restrict Canada's ability to make trade agreements with other countries, effectively preventing it from diversifying its

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37:38

Voter suppression and stolen US elections

Explaining History ·

2026/08/19

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by David F. Walbert, a veteran voting rights attorney whose new book, Stealing Elections American Style, traces the long, sordid history of contested and corrupted elections from the mid‑19th century to the present day.David's career spans decades of litigation on voting rights cases, beginning in the early 1970s when he moved to Georgia and discovered that despite the Voting Rights Act, African American representation in elected

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27:05

From Empire to Neoliberalism – The Long Arc of...

Explaining History ·

2026/08/18

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we step back from the specific history of Congo to examine the broader theoretical framework of neocolonialism – and how the decline of formal empire prepared the ground for the neoliberal revolution.Drawing on thinkers from Marx and Lenin to J.A. Hobson and Rosa Luxemburg, we explore the purpose of empire from the perspective of capital: the pursuit of cheap resources, cheap labour, and captive markets. Britain's transformation from a middling

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31:17

Belgium, America and Congo 1884-1960

Explaining History ·

2026/08/17

Inthis episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we begin a journey into one of the darkest and most overlooked chapters of the 20th century: the establishment of neocolonialism in Africa after the formal end of European empires.After the Second World War, the dreams of a genuinely independent Africa – of nations free from exploitation, able to chart their own futures – were mercilessly snuffed out by Western powers. Drawing on Susan Williams's brilliant White Malice: The CIA and the

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37:13

The International Brigades and the fight for Spain

Explaining History ·

2026/07/22

The International Brigades and the Fight for Spain**In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Tony Fox, organiser of the Northeast Volunteers for Liberty and the International Brigades Memorial Organisation, to discuss the newly published collection, *Remember Me to My Comrades: Letters from Spain to Britain*.**The book emerged from a remarkable collaboration with the families of volunteers from the North East of England – one of the industrial heartlands hit hardest by the

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30:43

Between Two Empires – The Arab Revolts Against the...

Explaining History ·

2026/07/15

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore the complex dynamics of the Mesopotamian campaign during the First World War – where subject peoples, caught between the collapsing Ottoman Empire and the advancing British, navigated their loyalties with survival in mind.**Drawing on Eugene Rogan's masterful *The Fall of the Ottomans*, we examine the Arab rebellions that erupted in the Middle Euphrates region in 1915. The Ottomans, desperate to hold their empire together, attempted to

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49:24

Russia's post communist shock therapy 1991-3

Explaining History ·

2026/07/08

False Dawn – Russia's Two Utopian Experiments and the Legacy of Shock Therapyhttps://explaininghistory.org/historiography/russian-revolution/In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore John Gray's False Dawn and the remarkable parallels between two failed attempts to remake Russia on a Western model – Bolshevism and the "shock therapy" of the post‑Soviet 1990s.After the First World War, John Maynard Keynes warned that the Carthaginian peace imposed on Germany would lead to

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32:33

War and Empire in the 20th Century

Explaining History ·

2026/07/06

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we dive into Richard Overy's magnificent *Blood and Ruins* – a history that reframes the Second World War not simply as a struggle between democracy and fascism, but as the bloody climax of a centuries‑long competition between rival imperial powers.**Drawing on Leonard Woolf's 1928 warning that imperialism would either be "buried peacefully or in blood and ruins", Overy traces the roots of global conflict to the late 19th century, when newly

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33:28

Mamdani, Corbyn and the War Within the Centre-Left

Explaining History ·

2026/07/01

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I explore the striking parallels between the British Labour Party's war on Jeremy Corbyn and the Democrat establishment's growing fear of Zohran Mamdani – a new kind of left politics that refuses to be bullied.We begin with the uncomfortable truth that much of what passes for "liberalism" in American politics – and "moderation" in British politics – is a defence of wealthy interests dressed up in progressive language. The Democrats and the

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