Skipped History

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit skippedhistory.substack.com Today, historian Dylan Gottlieb explains how yuppies conquered New York, and why that conquest still shapes everything from your rent to our national politics. In Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York , Gottlieb traces how Wall Street went from employing 3% of Ivy League...

Today, Jamie Holmes explains how Andrew Jackson launched America’s longest war before Vietnam—with almost no understanding of what he was getting into. In The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America’s Forgotten War , Holmes traces the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). Jackson invaded Florida knowing Black Seminoles were free and armed. When...

Today, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi explains how great replacement theory is an update on Nazi ideology—and why the struggle today is between anti-racist democracy and racist dictatorship. In Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age , Dr. Kendi argues that what we call “neo-Nazism” isn’t new at all—it’s a renovation of Nazi theory with the same bones, just updated for 2026. Instead of Jews as re...

Today, Scott Anderson explains how Eisenhower got addicted to regime change—and why Trump is following the same pattern. In a recent New York Times Magazine piece , Anderson traces how two early Cold War coups created a dangerous template. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mosaddegh by basically renting a mob. The following year, a ragtag mercenary army and a fake radio broadcast to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit skippedhistory.substack.com Today, Jon Meacham explains why American history is a perennial struggle—and why that struggle is not the work of a day (though it’d be really nice if it were). In American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union , Meacham assembles what he calls “the Star Wars bar scene of Ameri...

Today, Professor Heather Ann Thompson explains how a subway shooting in 1984 became the blueprint for vigilante violence in America, from George Zimmerman to Kyle Rittenhouse to ICE. In Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage , Professor Thompson traces how Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a New York subway in late 1984—then became a h...

Today, Doug Gordon explains how America almost stopped cars in their tracks. In Life After Cars: A Guide to Getting Around Without Driving , Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear (along with Aaron Naparstek)—hosts of The War On Cars podcast—trace the automobile’s rise from the first car death in 1899 through the 1920s, when mothers built plaster reliefs of mangled children’s bodies to protest “murder mac...

Today, Professor Miguel Tinker Salas explains how oil transformed Venezuela from a fractured agricultural economy into a nation vulnerable to foreign manipulation—and how the U.S. just attempted regime change “on the cheap.” In our conversation, Professor Tinker Salas traces Venezuela’s history from 1922, when a gusher shot oil 200 feet into the air and American companies rushed in to write the co...

Today, Professor Benjamin Wilson reveals how “arms control” became a euphemism for endless weapons development—and how the scientists who claimed to oppose the arms race often profited from it. In Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended Up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex , Professor Wilson traces the origins of “strategic stability,” a term sec...

Today, Dr. Vanessa S. Williamson dismantles some myths about taxes—and reveals how they’ve been weaponized throughout U.S. history. In The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History , Dr. Williamson takes us from the Boston Tea Party (which wasn’t about high taxes) through Reconstruction (where tax rhetoric masked racial terror) to today’s anti-government movements...

Today, Jelani Cobb teases out the through lines of his celebrated commentary in The New Yorker —and warns us about some patterns we might’ve been ignoring. In his new essay collection, Dr. Cobb moves from a 1986 shooting at Jamaica High School to the Obama-era contradictions of Trayvon Martin’s death, from the architectural grandeur we once built for public education to the messaging of “defund th...

Today, Dr. Brian Jones reframes some stories we thought we knew—and reveals a few others we were never taught. In Black History Is for Everyone , Dr. Jones takes us through Bacon’s Rebellion, the Haitian Revolution, and Reconstruction, connecting centuries-old curricular bans to today’s battles over standardized testing. His argument? That students deserve complexity, not sanitized myths, and that...

Today, a dose of Malcolm X and a timeless critique of our troubling times. In Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X , Professor Kehinde Andrews pushes back on myths spread by The Autobiography of Malcolm X— which he calls “a great story, but a terrible book.” Those myths include that Malcolm thought white people were devils, that armed insurrection was the answer, and that h...

Another week, another late night show host gone: first Stephen Colbert, now Jimmy Kimmel. I think it’s fair to be shocked, but not surprised by Kimmel’s dismissal. As Professor Fara Dabhoiwala told me, there’s long been “blatant hypocrisy” on the part of powerful, “supposed free speech champions.” In fact, the very notion of free speech as we know it today was created by self-serving scoundrels. H...

For anyone in NYC, the encore of my live, comedic show about Robert Moses is Monday (9/8) at 7 PM at Caveat (on the Lower East Side). In today’s video, I talk about why I’m doing this project now . Would love to see you there! Tickets here: Skipped History is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public epis...

Y'all, this week we have a doozy. We're talking about "the I word"—insurance—and how insurance companies not only profited from, but actively spurred, the burning of American cities in the 1970s. My guest is Professor Bench Ansfield (Temple University), author of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City . I am obsessed with this book. It's an astounding exposé of...

As summer reaches its peak, I spoke with Aquinnah Wampanoag author Joseph Lee about tribal history on Martha’s Vineyard. We discussed the challenges of maintaining Indigenous identity amid tourism and displacement and what “green colonialism” looks like today. Joseph also shared how time abroad reshaped his understanding of sovereignty—and who gets to define what being Indigenous means. Joseph Lee...

With conspiracy theories (one in particular) dominating headlines, I spoke with Professor Philip Kadish about how conspiracies have evolved. We traced the history of racist hoaxes dating back to the mid-1800s and explored how shifts in the media landscape during the mid-1900s helped set the stage for today’s conspiratorial age. Through it all, Professor Kadish argues, one tool has remained essenti...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit skippedhistory.substack.com Evening, y’all! Before sending out an interview on conspiracy theories, I wanted to share a few thoughts on the Epstein files. I’ve been frustrated by the media coverage and by Democrats’ ongoing refusal to engage with the deeper roots of these kinds of conspiracy theories. The full video is for paying Skippi...

As we approach our nation’s 250th anniversary (our Semiquincentennial), I’m speaking with some of the country’s most prominent historians, all published by W. W. Norton , to ask them five questions about the founding and the sweep of American history since. Norton will publish video clips from the interviews, but with their blessing, I’m also posting the first full conversation here. Because, y’al...

A fight for equality with long odds. An entrenched, bigoted, and powerful right wing. Liberals resistant to critiques from the left. The year wasn’t 2025, but 1963. In Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution , Professor Peniel E. Joseph traces the ups and downs of that pivotal year through the eyes of James Baldwin and other key figures. Baldwin was on a mission to f...

This week, I spoke with one of my favorite authors, Professor Greg Grandin. In his new book, America, América: A New History of the New World , Professor Grandin dives into what ties the Americas together and drives us apart. We explored how radical opposition to conquest in Latin America guided independence leaders toward a pursuit of harmony, while denial and evasion pushed the U.S. toward conqu...

In The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Visionary of Weimar Berlin , Daniel Brook revives the life story of an influential German thinker far ahead of his time. More than a century ago, Magnus Hirschfeld argued that gender and sexuality are fluid—and later, that race is a social construct. As you might expect, the Nazis weren’t fans, but they didn’t write Hirschfeld out of history. That...

In Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies , Professor Michael Albertus (University of Chicago) explores how land has changed hands since the French Revolution. In places like the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, this “reshuffling” has shaped social hierarchies and the climate (spoiler: not in a good way). Today, signs point to us entering a new period of reshuf...

Today, my guest offers an account of Native boarding schools and justice long overdue. In Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools , Mary Annette Pember shares her mother’s experience at a Catholic boarding school in northern Wisconsin. The story offers a glimpse into what those schools were like and how their legacy continues to shape Native life today. As Mar...