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This is part four in our weekly exploration of the practices of historians – Approaches to history. We now examine the empiricist approach, based on pure archival research and a faith that the facts in their purest form can bring us the truth. Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf 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, yo
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The fear of decline and the widespread belief in its inevitability is nothing new, but part of the explanation as to Trump’s recent success is an overall pessimism about the future after five decades of neoliberal economic crises. This podcast explores the relationship between crisis, declinism, neoliberalism and the rise of Trumpism.I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here, subscribe to the channel to get your reminder.https://youtube.co
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Today we explore an aspect of far right thought that connects libertarian and fascist thought and action. As we face the prospect of a rising far right across the western world (and beyond, though that is beyond the scope for this podcast), it becomes ever more important to understand the ideological underpinnings of contemporary fascist thought. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here, subscribe to the channel to get your reminder.https
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In today’s episode, as much of the world still pieces through the results of the election, we explore one of the many explanations for the rise of nativist populism and fascism across the world – the crisis of whiteness. You can read the featured thread from Professor Alan Lester here. I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here, subscribe to the channel to get your reminder.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you e
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What are we doing when we write or think about history? What is it that historians do and when did they start doing it? We’re taking a new direction on the podcast here and exploring the origins of historical thinking, a type of writing that the Greeks thought to be the inferior cousin to philosophy. Each Saturday we’ll explore the practices and theories of history, and approaches to understanding the past or exploring it from classical antiquity to postmodernism. Help the podcast to continue br
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An entire radical history of Los Angeles in the 1960s that rarely gets mentioned can be found in Mike Davis and Jon Wiener’s brilliant book Set The Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties. This episode explores in brief the emergence of an independent radical press in the city in the guise of the LA Free Press or ‘Freep’, and explores reactions of the Freep and the reactionary LA Times to the Watts Riots of 1965.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining Hist
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This week we hear from the eminent rock music author and biographer Patrick Humphries whose new book With The Beatles is a complete history of the group from childhood to the breaking up of the band in 1970. Patrick’s personal encounters with three of the band (George, Paul, Ringo) and his extensive research about their career and the long and often litigious after life of the group gives a new an unique perspective.If you would like to order a signed copy of the With The Beatles, you can purcha
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Hi everyone and welcome back after the Explaining History summer recess. In this extended episode I interview LBC presenter and author Iain Dale whose new anthology of essays, Dictators launches today. In this wide ranging conversation about the nature of dictatorial leaders from ancient times to modern we examine the relationship the democratic world has with them and how democratic, open societies can slide into tyrannies. Please join us for this fascinating journey.You can grab your copy of T
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The western world fought for its survival in the 20th Century and won the three great historical challenges it faced, the first and second world wars and the long ideological struggle of the Cold War. Now in the 21st Century, during a time of rapid global transitions of power the future of the western power is less certain in an increasingly multipolar world. In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I speak with Dr Samir Puri, author of a new book Westlessness, which explores the past
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Open up your Twitter feed or Facebook page and you’re one or two clicks away from a nostalgia meme, they grow like historically illiterate fungi, but nostalgia itself is a more complex and even sometimes problematic phenomenon. In this episode of the Explaining History podcast we hear from Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster, the author of a new history of Nostalgia itself. We explore the first recorded instances of nostalgia in the 17th Century through to its current usage and weaponisation in culture war