Explaining History

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 yo...

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...

Britain, France, Canada and other western governments have today issued a statement decrying the blockade of Gaza after nearly two years of offering unconditional support to Israel. This follows weeks of increasingly critical headlines in newspapers and magazines that are traditionally staunch supporters of the Zionist state. What does this suggest? Some major transition in support for Israel and...

Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are often overlooked but pivotal figures in recent Chinese history whose role in steering China through its extraordinary economic transformation in the 1990s and 2000s is overshadowed by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. This is the first in a series of podcasts about these two figures and how they created the China now ruled by Xi Jinping. *****STOP PRESS***** I only ever t...

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...

In the decade before the First World War over ten thousand Russian Jews travelled across the Atlantic but instead of alighting in New York, where a large Jewish diaspora community was established, they came to Galveston, Texas. Galveston was not the final destination for most of the new arrivals, many travelled across the USA and settled in its rural and urban centres. In this episode of the Expla...

Margaret Thatcher sought to revive Britain's fortunes during the 1980s, she was a social conservative and a free market fundamentalist; a contradictory set of ideological positions. The liberation of market forces devastated the social structures that Thatcher claimed to uphold, principally the family, which underwent dramatic transformations throughout the decade as individualism, urbanisation, m...

In a hundred years time will China offshore its manufacturing to poorer countries? Not if it has any sense. Today Trump's great retreat from the tariff war began in earnest as some cold economic realities have begun to bite, but what is the historical long view here? This episode explores how offshoring and America's weakening dollar supremacy, combined with the ownership of nearly $2 trillion of...

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 abou...

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 aspiran...

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...

What did the good life look like in 1945? Or more to the point, what did the good life look like to white working and middle class inner city families? The answer for many was suburbia, new out-of-town developments accessed by America's millions of new car owners who longed for space and who could be assured that people of their social, racial and often religious backgrounds would be their neighbo...

In the first weeks of the outbreak of the First World War, the outdated Schlieffen Plan required the German Army to rapidly cross Belgium to attack northern France. Instead of the anticipated 6-8,000 troops, the Belgians fielded 32,000 men and defended the fortress town of Liege vigorously. German atrocities in Liege afterwards were the product of an imagined belief in guerrilla fighters amongst t...

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*...

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 on...

The period of the last 25 years in Britain has been one of continual crisis and disaster, from the Iraq War to the financial crisis to Brexit and covid. Britain has been transformed by these disasters and now is a smaller, poorer and more isolated country, perhaps permanently so. In his book Britain Alone, Liam Stanley explores the causes of this diminution, you can get a copy here. *****STOP PRES...

America's de-industrialisation, offshoring, its battle to maintain dollar supremacy whilst also restoring itself to being a net exporter have led to historic crises from which there appear to be no exit. President Trump's recent and clearly failing tariffs against China and the rest of the world are merely an indication of America's relative economic decline. This podcast explores the factors that...

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...

Fifty years ago, the longest imperial war of the 20th Century ended with the fall of Saigon and the victory of the North Vietnamese in the reunification of Vietnam. Miki Nguyen's account of his family's desperate flight from Saigon is covered in his father's story, Last Flight Out, and his father's bravery escaping the retribution of the communist forces. You can read his book here , based on his...

How did China embrace its own hybrid form of market capitalism with state control after the death of Mao in 1976? How did China avoid the economic shock therapy that devastated the USSR and become a technological super power in the 21st Century? Today's podcast explores the writings of David Harvey on Chinese capitalism and communism. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If...

Britain's political class have realised that the writing is on the wall for them in the past week as Trump's tariffs as imposed. This podcast explores the contemporary state of international affairs between Britain, America and the EU. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the sho...

Scholarship of the Black Power Movement in general and the Nation of Islam in particular has been harder to accumulate than that on the main Civil Rights Movement led by Dr Martin Luther King and the SCLC. This podcast explores reasons for this and the differing interpretations on the nation that were recorded by historians and sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s. Help the podcast to continue brin...

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 week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content...

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 B...

In this episode of The Explaining History Podcast we were fortunate enough to speak with Dr Surekha Davies, historian of art, science and ideas, whose new book, Humans: A Monstrous History explores the darker aspects of human imagining and how we see ourselves through the filter of the monstrous. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week If you enjoy the Explaining History podcas...