Episodios

  • Gaza Update
    May 20 2025

    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 its crimes is clearly happening and here we explore why this might be.






    *****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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


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    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    29 m
  • China after Deng (Part One)
    May 19 2025

    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 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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    25 m
  • Discussing Mark Twain's 'Jim'
    May 16 2025

    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 podcast episode, we hear from academic Shelley Fisher Fishkin whose new book Jim: The Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade explores the legacy of the character from the late 19th Century through to the Civil Rights era and the Black Lives Matter moment





    *****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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    35 m
  • Melting Point: Russian Jews and the journey to Texas
    May 15 2025

    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 Explaining History podcast we speak with author Rachel Cockerell, who traces the story of the Galveston Jews and the activities of her Great Grandfather David Jochelmann, who was the driving force behind the Galveston Movement.




    *****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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    31 m
  • The Contradictions of Thatcherism
    May 13 2025

    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, mobility, rising expectations and declining ideas of deference transformed it.


    *****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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    25 m
  • Trump's tariff capitulation
    May 12 2025

    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 debt by China and Japan place America in an economic position it has never experienced in its nearly 250 year existence. The Chinese Century arrived and it started this year.


    *****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 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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    27 m
  • Britain, Germany and the Blitz
    May 9 2025

    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 your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here:







    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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    27 m
  • VE Day : London 1945
    May 8 2025

    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 here:






    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 show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:


    If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership here


    Or


    You can support the podcast via Patreon here


    Or you can just say some nice things about it here

    Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Más Menos
    24 m
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