For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
This page introduces new listeners to the podcast, explains what makes it different from other history shows, and offers curated paths into more than a thousand episodes.
If you’re searching for a history podcast that goes deeper than anecdotes or trivia, this is where to begin.
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The effect of the collapse of Germany in 1918 and the armistice was to bewilder a nation that believed in ultimate victory. As the German Army marched back to the Reich, appearing undefeated, many ordinary Germans looked to more radical voices for explanations. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read…
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Why did Russia explode into violence and anarchy in 1905? How the the Czar react? Russia’s experience in 1905 set the stage for the revolution in 1917 and showed to all sides, the Czar, workers, peasants and nobles, who could trust who, and how high the stakes were. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group:…
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Before the revolution, Russia’s aristocrats played a key role in Russian society, and presented themselves in 1917 as an alternative to the Czar. They were utterly destroyed as a social class by the Bolsheviks from 1918 onwards. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org…
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How did the February Revolution happen? Why did it escalate from a series of protests over food shortages to the abdication of the Czar and the establishment of the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast.…
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When President Harry Truman announced a huge military aid package to Greece in 1947 it signalled a sea-change in America’s stance in the growing Cold War, and showed a willingness to commit fully to the fight. This podcast explores the wider context of that decision, and challenges students to consider: What does this all really show us? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸…
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Why did Roosevelt agree to help arm Britain and France before America joined the war? How did his Arsenals of Democracy Speech affect the nation?What effect did Lend Lease have on America’s future enemies? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast.…
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Both Britain and Germany had tried to starve each other into submission on the high seas in the First World War. The British were slow to adopt new tactics in the Second World War against the renewed threat of U-Boats, but by 1944, the British and Americans had devastated the German U-Boat fleet. How had these changes come about? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron:…
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How did Germany’s defeat in World War One lead to a revolution that swept away the Kaiser and result in the rise of a liberal socialist government? What compromises and deals did the new administration make to prevent the spread of communism and how did that affect the development of the republic?Answers to all this and more are here in this Explaining History Podcast. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get…
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By the late 19th Century Russia was a rapid increase in acts of terrorism against the state, the assassination of government ministers, bombings of state buildings and attempts (eventually successful) on the lives of the Tsars. The terrorists were well educated members of Russia’s middle classes, waging their own war against the state on behalf of Russia’s peasants. Why? This Explaining History podcast attempts to address this question. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support…
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One of the more overlooked aspects of the history of Soviet Communism is the last years of Trotsky’s life at Coyoacan in Mexico. This podcast explores the man and his feuds within his own movement, the plot to assassinate him and his relationships with his patron and eventual enemy Diego Rivera. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the…
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How did the fall of France, the invasion of the Soviet Union and Pearl Harbour have bearing on the fate of Vietnam? This podcast explores not only the actions of the great powers towards Vietnam during the Second World War, but also the actions of the Vietnamese themselves and their resistance to both French and Japanese occupation. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸…
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A general overview of the development of the trade union movement from the 1830s to the eve of the First World War. What factors led to the radicalisation of the movement and how did the two main parties, Liberal and Tory adapt to the ‘threat’ of mass democracy and the working class vote? Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community &…
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How did Benito Mussolini manage to be appointed Prime Minister in 1922? This podcast explores the details of his rise to power from relative obscurity and his March on Rome. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcast Substack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com ▸ Read Articles & Go Deeper Website: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more…
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In 1933 Hitler established a state run mass leisure organisation in Germany to help develop his vision of a socially unified, racially homogenous society. The extent to which it was successful has been an area of debate by historians of Nazi Germany and is explored in this podcast. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Content Become a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory ▸ Join the Community & Continue the Conversation Facebook Group:…
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Why did West Germany suffer a decade of terrorism from 1967-77? During the height of Vietnam War protests, a generation of radical West German students saw a relationship between the West German Government’s support for America’s war and their own unresolved Nazi past. Their decision to wage an urban war against what they saw as a barely concealed Nazism would culminate in the bloody summer of 1977. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share. ▸ Support the…
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From the 1840s onwards China endured over half a century of an unprecedented onslaught from Britain and other western powers. She was defeated, humiliated and forced to sign treaties that drained her of her wealth, Japan quickly reformed her economy and military to prevent the same process from occurring. This podcast explores the relationship between the west’s ‘Scramble For China’ and the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. You can also download the companion ebook here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sun-Yat-birth-modern-China-ebook/dp/B00DJE8ANI Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy…
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By the early 1970s a perfect storm of inflation and mounting industrial unrest brought the government of Edward Heath to its knees. His plans to introduce free market economics and politics to Britain were abandoned and he was outmanoeuvred by the National Union of Mineworkers, resulting in the 1974 three day week.This podcast explores the crises that beset Heath and their origins in the Wilson years of the late 1960s. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.…
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Key History Topics
Global History: Key Topics
- The Permanent Crisis: America in the Age of Trump
- The 2008 World Financial Crisis
- The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism
- The Partition of India
- The Great Depression and the Collapse of Global Trade
- The Cultural Revolution in China
- The Mexican Revolution
- The Creation of the United Nations
- The Iranian Revolution
- 20th Century Syria: From Mandate to Civil War
- The Marshall Plan and the Reconstruction of Europe
- The First Indochina War
- The Global Anti Apartheid Movement
- The Holocaust: Bureacracy and Genocide
- Korea: War, Division, Development
- Operation Condor
- The Bandung Conference
- The Rwandan Genocide
- Stalin and the transformation of the USSR 1924-41
- Pakistan from Independence to Belt and Road
- The Civil Rights Movement
- The 1911 Revolution and the fall of the Qing dynasty
- Watergate and Nixon’s Legacy
- The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and Its Aftermath
- Ghana’s Independence and the ‘Year of Africa’
- The West German Republic: From Ruins to Reunification
- The Space Race and the Cold War
- Bangladesh war of Liberation
- The Sykes Picot Agreement and the conquest of the Middle East
- The Collapse of Yugoslavia
- Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China
- The Fall of France, 1940
- The Spanish Civil War: A Global Struggle
- Post War Australia 1945-75
- The Sri Lankan Civil War
- Global Migration and Refugees in the 20th Century
- 20th Century Australia
Cultural History: Key Topics
- The Birth of Consumerism and Mass Culture
- Modernism and the shock of the new
- The Jazz Age
- The Birth of Cinema and the Hollywood Studio System
- The Culture of Weimar Germany
- Interwar Britain: Media, Modernism, and the Invention of a National Culture
- Culture and Imperialism in European colonies between the wars
Listen by Topic
Browse curated collections of Explaining History podcast episodes by topic — each page brings together the essential episodes on a key historical subject.
Fascism & the Far Right
The Spanish Civil War, Vichy France, Nazi genocide, and the post-war far right.
Stalin & Soviet Terror
The Great PurgeThe Great Purge Full Description:A campaign of political repression and persecution that targeted the Communist Party itself, the military leadership, and the intelligentsia. It was a mechanism to consolidate absolute power by eliminating all potential rivals, real or imagined. The Great Purge (or the Great Terror) was characterized by widespread police surveillance, show trials, and arbitrary executions. It specifically targeted the “Old Bolsheviks”—the original revolutionaries who had served with Lenin—replacing them with a new generation of bureaucrats who owed their loyalty and positions solely to the supreme leader.
Critical Perspective:This event marked the final betrayal of the revolution’s democratic potential. It created a society paralyzed by fear, where denunciation became a survival strategy and trust between citizens evaporated. By decimating the experienced military command and the intellectual elite, the purge severely weakened the state’s capacity, leaving it vulnerable on the eve of foreign invasion.
Read more, the GulagGulag Full Description:The government agency that administered the vast network of forced labor camps. Far more than just a prison system, it was a central component of the Soviet economy, using slave labor to extract resources from the most inhospitable regions of the country. The Gulag system institutionalized political repression. Millions of “enemies of the people”—ranging from political dissidents and intellectuals to petty criminals—were arrested and transported to camps to work in mining, timber, and construction.
Critical Perspective:Critically, the Gulag was an economic necessity for the Stalinist system. The “Economic Miracle” of the Soviet Union relied heavily on this reservoir of unpaid, coerced labor to complete dangerous infrastructure projects that free labor would not undertake. It signifies the ultimate reduction of the human being to a unit of production, to be worked until exhaustion and then replaced.
Read more, Stalingrad, and the Soviet state’s war on its own people.
The Iranian Revolution
The White RevolutionWhite Revolution Full Description:The White Revolution was a project of authoritarian modernization. It sought to break the power of traditional landlords through land redistribution and to rapidly industrialize the economy. It was billed as a bloodless (“white”) revolution to prevent a communist (“red”) one. Critical Perspective:Despite lofty goals, the reforms destabilized the social order. The land reforms often failed to provide peasants with enough resources to farm effectively, driving millions into urban slums where they became foot soldiers for the revolution. Furthermore, the rapid secularization alienated the powerful merchant class (Bazaaris) and the clergy, creating a united front of opposition against the Shah., the Neocons, the 2025 Israeli strikes, and the full arc of US–Iran confrontation.
Neoliberalism & Thatcherism
From the post-war welfare state to the Thatcher revolution and its legacy.