x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The History Onion

Peeling back the layers of history and learning lessons for creating positive change in the present historyonion.substack.com

history politics

All Episodes

117:26

Pinochet and Me, with Marc Cooper (Modern Chile...

The History Onion ·

2026/04/13

For our 50th episode (!!), we are excited to present our January interview with Marc Cooper.Marc Cooper is the former associate professor and director of Annenberg Digital News at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and the Washington Post. Currently, he is a contributing editor to The Nation.He has also produced or reported for CBS News, PBS Frontline, NBC,

en

52:34

Understanding New York City History w/ Juliana DeVaan

The History Onion ·

2026/03/18

We are excited to share our interview with Juliana DeVaan, a PhD candidate in US history at Columbia University, where she studies 20th-century cultural and intellectual history.Her work has been supported by the New York State Archives, New York Public Library, Getty Research Institute, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, among other institutions. You can read Juliana’s writing in Public Books, Jacobin, and The Drift.We discuss two of her excellent pieces in Jacobin about

en

54:10

The Suicide Museum, with Ariel Dorfman (Modern Chile...

The History Onion ·

2026/03/04

We are excited today to share our interview with Ariel Dorfman, an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Professor Dorfman served as a cultural adviser to Chilean President Salvador Allende’s Chief of Staff during the last months of Allende’s presidency, and wrote a seminal critique of US cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, during this time. He was forced into exile, ending up in the United States in 1980 following the military

en

54:30

Chile in Their Hearts, with John Dinges (Modern Chile...

The History Onion ·

2026/02/23

We are excited to be joined on today’s show by investigative reporter and writer John Dinges. John Dinges has decades of experience covering Latin America, including as a foreign correspondent in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. He has worked for such publications as The Washington Post and NPR. While living in Chile between 1972 and 1978, he helped create three Chilean media organizations, including one of the leading investigative news magazines exposing

en

52:39

A Progressive Economic Program for the Future

The History Onion ·

2026/02/06

We are excited to be joined today by Alex Williams, the principal US economist at Common Wealth, a progressive think tank operating across the US and UK, as well as a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Editor-in-Chief of the Substack newsletter Continuous Variation. Previously, Alex worked at Employ America, where he advocated for full employment policies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation about

en

65:40

Is AI Causing Heightened Unemployment?, with Jack Meyer

The History Onion ·

2026/01/26

Today, we are joined once again by Jack Meyer (check out our previous episode with him here: “Abundance, with Jack Meyer”). Jack is an economics masters student at Oxford, as well as an aspiring political economist and economic historian. His current areas of study include innovation, development and inequality. You can find him on Twitter/X @jackbmeyer and on Substack, where he publishes the newsletter Public Works.On this episode, we discuss the employment impacts of artificial intelligence. This

en

61:48

Regime of Repression (Modern Chile Ep. 7)

The History Onion ·

2026/01/19

The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile was defined in large part by its brutally repressive nature. Its centralization of repression in the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional) and the centrality of repressive tactics even after the junta consolidated power made Pinochet’s Chile stick out in comparison to other contemporary Latin American dictatorships.In today’s episode, we discuss how to best define the Pinochet regime, then explain how Chile’s repression differed from that of its regional

en

39:26

The Pinochet Years (Modern Chile Ep. 6)

The History Onion ·

2026/01/06

After a few months off, we are returning to our Modern Chile series with today’s episode. For our next episodes in this series, we will be covering the Pinochet years, defined primarily as the years between 1973 and 1990 in which General Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile as a brutal, bloody dictator. We will also investigate the efforts to bring Pinochet to justice following his ousting by a popular plebiscite in 1988 and the return to democracy in 1990. In this episode, we start by looking at an

en

44:59

Zionism and Colonialism (The War on Palestine Ep. 2)

The History Onion ·

2025/12/15

This episode is the second installation in our series on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Our first episode covered the very recent history of the conflict, looking at the round of violence that began in October of 2023 with a Hamas-led attack on Israel. The primary focus for that episode was the genocide that Israel has perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza since the fall of 2023.In this episode, we journey back to the early history of the conflict, looking at the linkages between

en

77:17

Making Republicans Liberal w/ Kristoffer Smemo

The History Onion ·

2025/12/01

Today we are excited to release our excellent conversation with Professor Kristoffer Smemo, author of Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise. Professor Smemo is a historian of labor, politics, and popular culture in the United States at the University of California - Los Angeles. Both hosts of the show were incredibly lucky to have been taught by Professor Smemo at Washington University in St. Louis.Making Republicans Liberal details how a unique brand of

en

75:57

Genocide in Gaza (The War on Palestine Ep. 1)

The History Onion ·

2025/11/24

This episode marks the first installation of a new mini-series for the podcast. The series will cover the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and will take as a central text guiding us through this history a book titled The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, which was written by the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi.But before getting into the book, we wanted to start with an episode on the very recent history of the conflict—the round of violence that began on October 7th of 2023,

en

62:34

Johnny Cash and the Politics of Empathy w/ Michael Foley

The History Onion ·

2025/11/10

For today’s episode, we spoke with Michael Foley, author of Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, for a wide-ranging discussion about Cash’s politics. We dissect Foley’s framework of a “politics of empathy” to describe how Cash navigated a complex political environment marked primarily by the various civil rights movements and the Vietnam War. Crucially, we consider the relevance of a politics of empathy in today’s climate, as well as the important role artists play in these

en

78:37

The AI Age

The History Onion ·

2025/11/03

In this episode, we dig deep into the slop of AI discourse. We start by looking at the culture of hype that’s sprouted in Silicon Valley, then turn to the strange world that this hype has produced, and finally present a more sober view of AI, one that’s deeply historically grounded.Show NotesSilicon Valley Braces for Chaos — The Atlantic, 5/13/2025Sam Altman, Tim Cook, and other tech leaders lauded Trump at a White House AI dinner — Business Insider, 9/4/25AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event — The Atlantic,

en

38:49

Building Progressive Power w/ Melat Kiros

The History Onion ·

2025/10/27

Today we are thrilled to release our interview with Melat Kiros, a progressive candidate for Congress in Colorado’s 1st District. Kiros is running to unseat the longest-serving representative of Colorado’s current congressional delegation, Democrat Diana DeGette, and she is doing so with an unabashedly progressive platform. She has centered issues of affordable housing, healthcare, and money in politics throughout her campaign, and she has been outspoken against the genocide being perpetrated by

en

83:37

Abundance, with Jack Meyer

The History Onion ·

2025/10/13

Today we are joined by Jack Meyer, an economics masters student at Oxford, as well as an aspiring political economist and economic historian. His current areas of study include innovation, development and inequality. You can find him on Twitter/X @jackbmeyer and on Substack, where he publishes the newsletter Public Works.On this episode, we take on Abundance, a bestselling book published earlier this year by the liberal commentators Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Jack has written a great review of

en

50:30

Fascism or Genocide, with Ross Barkan

The History Onion ·

2025/10/06

Today we are joined by Ross Barkan, an award-winning journalist, novelist, and essayist. Ross is the Editor-in-Chief of The Metropolitan Review, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, and a columnist for New York Magazine. He is also active on Substack, where he publishes his newsletter Political Currents. And he has a new novel, titled Glass Century, that is out now.On this episode, we discuss Ross’s recent book Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American

en

75:01

American Populism, with Spencer Hacker

The History Onion ·

2025/09/30

We are happy to announce our first interview episode, featuring friend of show Spencer Hacker! Spencer is a social worker, an activist, and a political content creator. He is based out of Denver, Colorado, and he is making waves with his show Spencer on the Street, which you can find on Instagram and TikTok!On this episode, we talk with Spencer about his political journey and about the case for left-wing populism in America. We touch on the history of the populist movement, the failures of the

en

61:52

The US in Chile: Part 2 (Modern Chile Ep. 5)

The History Onion ·

2025/09/15

We ended our last episode with the United States contemplating its next move against the Chilean left. The socialist Salvador Allende had just won the Chilean presidency in the 1970 election in spite of the US’s covert actions throughout the decade prior and its “Spoiling Operation” in the 1970 election.In today’s Part 2 of “The US in Chile,” we discuss how the US maneuvered to try to prevent Allende from being confirmed by the Chilean Congress, including their involvement in the assassination of

en

43:10

The US in Chile: Part 1 (Modern Chile Ep. 4)

The History Onion ·

2025/09/08

In the first of two episodes on the subject, we investigate the United States’s role in undermining the left wing in Chilean politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing extensively from the Senate Church Committee’s 1975 report, “Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973,” we show just how much money, time, and effort the United States spent on Chile in order to not just incapacitate the country’s left but to bolster its right wing. While the US’s covert actions were not enough to prevent socialist

en

63:32

The Economics of the Allende Years (Modern Chile ep. 3)

The History Onion ·

2025/08/25

This episode continues our coverage of modern Chile, focusing on the economics of the period of 1970-1973, during which Salvador Allende governed as president and his administration attempted to transition Chile towards a socialist economic system. We begin with a discussion of sources — who has written about the economics of the Allende years, and whose work will we be drawing upon. We then describe the economic performance of Chile before and during the Allende years, giving a sense of how Chile

en

50 results

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Biography Flash

Inception Point Ai