Political/History podcasts - Recommendations

JB Shreve Presents the End of History is a pretty interesting podcast-- the guy picks a topic of contemporary interest--the Middle East crisis, Economic inequality--and goes in depth into the history of it over the course of 20 episodes or so.

That sounds good-- how's the person talking? (I strongly prefer super dry humorless commentary if it matters)

He's closer to a Dan Carlin style, though more subdued.

history of Rome guy is starting a new podcast in September:

Yes the next show is called Revolutions. I'm going to take 8-12 revolutions and cover them in 12-15 episode chunks. So if the History of Rome was a novel, this will be more like a collection of stories.

I'm still working on the final list, but I'm sure to cover: English, American, French, Haitian, 1848, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Cuban.

http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1fff0g/hello_i_am_mike_duncan_creator_of_the_history_of/

should be interesting

what's his story -- how does he have time to school podcast listeners about the history of rome and 8-12 revolutions in his downtime?

(i like him btw -- just wondering whether he is a professional historian/teacher/if he works at the apple store/what his deal is)

Def. an amateur historian

from what I read in that ask me anything, he is an amateur historian and stay at home dad

He is a really good lecture organizer, always repeating key takeaway points and breaking major events down into operations, followed by the significance of the operations/events.

He should be making some $$ for helping to make ancient history comprehensible and enjoyable without resorting to LCD tactics like splashy blood/boobz.

Yeah, after finishing History of Rome and trying out a bunch of other history podcasts, I've really come to appreciate how good he is.

yeah I just started digging into History of Rome finally, and am really impressed by the way he organizes his episodes and always does a very nice encapsulation of what's been covered

AND so genius to have them in short 10-15 minute chunks. Much less daunting, and he's not drowning you in how smart he is.

also he doesn't randomly SHOUT AT ME like Rush Limbaugh I mean Dan Carlin

the quiet/loud thing Dan Carlin does is actually really good at holding my attention. With something like the History of Rome I occasionally zone out and then have to rewind.

i love carlin - he reminds me a lot of our own michaelangelo matos - but he does this thing i CAN'T STAND --> whenever he quotes someone (which is lot; it's a history podcast) he suddenly adopts this weird stentorian loudspeaker voice, like he's announcing the starting lineup for the new york yankees ABSOLUTELY REGARDLESS of whatever the quoted material is, or what tone it has, or what it's about, or when it was written. it is TERRIBLE. you already are a stickler for saying "quote" and "endquote", dan, so the tone of voice change is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. GAH

that would drive me BANANAS
i like history of rome guy because he talks like a person under 50, naturally, slowly, and without editorializing. i have an idea that he's proooobably pretty good looking and i'd like to keep it that way.

yeah LL you would not like Carlin

and Tracer OTM, I even played a clip of him for Mr Veg because it was cracking me op the way he would 'perform' the quotes, it is so hilarious and distracting and weird.

I was actually listening to an early Hardcore History podcast a couple of weeks ago (I think it was the bubonic nukes episode) and they did this ridiculous voice of doom vocal effect whenever Dan Carlin quoted anything, which made his quoting 100x worse than usual.

Scare quotes

Mike Duncan of The History Of Rome podcast fame has a new one: Revolutions

Finally! Although I'm starting to feel dubious of the "guy effortlessly summarizes history books he has read" format. He's really good at it, so I'll give it a chance.

hey, beats actually reading history books

i like reading history books. if he weren't so good at keeping himself out of it, i would have bailed on the history of rome almost immediately, but he's really good at that. no filler, no fluff, minimal editorializing. i guess as far as summarizers go, he's at the top of the heap!

otm

I've been liking "The British History Podcast." It's crazy detailed though. He's been going for 4 years, 174 episodes so far, and hasn't even reached 1066 yet. It's very much in the Mike Duncan style.

Just finished the 12 part series on the Charles Manson murders on "You Must Remember This". Very highly recommended. The late 60s in L.A. seems like such a crazy time and place.

Otm. Her "voice work" is super facepalm but I really enjoyed it overall, she researched the hell out of it.

Moshe Kasher's "Hound Tall" is fun, with an expert on a topic paired with some stand-ups

i love carlin - he reminds me a lot of our own michaelangelo matos - but he does this thing i CAN'T STAND --> whenever he quotes someone (which is lot; it's a history podcast) he suddenly adopts this weird stentorian loudspeaker voice, like he's announcing the starting lineup for the new york yankees ABSOLUTELY REGARDLESS of whatever the quoted material is, or what tone it has, or what it's about, or when it was written. it is TERRIBLE. you already are a stickler for saying "quote" and "endquote", dan, so the tone of voice change is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. GAH

completely OTM, Dan Carlin is unlistenable.

so much shouting

even when he's not shouting, he seems to think everything he says is going to BLOW your GODDAMNED mind.

the explosion sound clip he plays at the end of the shows are funny as hell

some of his theatrics are ridic but I like the show overall..

I'm only about halfway done with it, but the latest hardcore history episode about nuclear war is pretty the scariest thing ever when you keep in mind that Donald Trump is currently the president of the United States.

Oh it's one of those brisk 6 hour long episodes

Yeah, the length of these podcasts is a bit ridiculous, but whatever, I'm never bored when listening to them.

i just listened to my first of his podcasts - the american peril - which was a scant 4 hours long. it was p enjoyable but this is so otm:

whenever he quotes someone (which is lot; it's a history podcast) he suddenly adopts this weird stentorian loudspeaker voice, like he's announcing the starting lineup for the new york yankees ABSOLUTELY REGARDLESS of whatever the quoted material is, or what tone it has, or what it's about, or when it was written. it is TERRIBLE. you already are a stickler for saying "quote" and "endquote", dan, so the tone of voice change is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. GAH

I learned about Revolutions about a week ago, and jumped in with the French Revolution, since I knew nothing about it and it seemed appropriate for the times. He's fun to listen to! I think I'm learning something.

I had a hard time with the French revolution podcast. Such a complicated story with so many characters that it was hard to keep track of everything. If I had this in book form, it would be the kind of book where I constantly would be flipping back towards previous sections just to remember who this person was or what exactly happened then or whatever, but you can't really do that with audio. Then the next series is about the Haitian revolution which happens concurrently with the French one and what happened in France affects events in Haiti which means I have to go mentally keep track at what point things are in France as things are happening in Haiti (except that there is always a several week lag, since it takes a while for messages/people to travel between France to Haiti). Anyway about 6 or 7 episodes into the Haitian revolution I gave up. I would love to read a good book about this period though.

Killer Mike is going to do a podcast on Reconstruction.

I've tried Dan Carlin so many times and I just can't do it. The bombast and the voice thing is such a turn off compared to History of Rome/Revolutions

xp. the black jacobins is a very good read on the haitian revolution

The History Matters show from the guy who did the Fall of Rome podcast is pretty good so far. It's done by two academic historians who'd normally be talking about this stuff over beers anyway, so they decided to record it.

If you can't use bbc radio iplayer there are lots of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time episodes on youtube. It varies from pretty good to absolutely essential, depending on the quality of guest contributors, which are often very good tbh. JFC would rather drink the lager than listen to Dan Carlin though, he sounds Trump reading history from a junior school book.

"The French Revolution... was yknow.. when warfare got..at least in the minds of Europeans in this era.. y'know ..really serious"

yes, it is rather lunkheaded in many ways. in the american peril episode he posits this duality of the american psyche in which they are on the one hand "almost unrealistically good" - by this he means that the US has an idealized democratic republican self-image - and that this butts heads with their desire to be a great power and engage in imperialistic colonialization. he repeats the words "almost unrealistically good" many times. he also goes for some fairly radical and obtuse historical relativism when he points out that the slaughter of the moros in the philippines and the joy that the american soldiers take in it is more understandable when you remember that the US has just finished slaughtering the indigenous population of america like a decade before and nobody gave a fuck about that either

i should add - despite the fact that many people in america were disgusted by the accounts they heard of the slaughtering of the Moros and thus the fact that it was possible for turn of the 20th century americans not to be total white supremacist maniacs

sidebar - highly recommend Presidents are People Too by former daily show writer/Flophouse co-host Eliot Kalan

serious & delving but short and light in tone
i like it a lot.

new Abe Lincoln ep features Kalan's 2 1/2 yo son reciting (via Dad) the Gettysburg Address
cutest damn thing you'll ever hear

I just stumbled across a Dan Warren apocalyptic cutup of Dan Carlin. Hardcore Prophecy: The Trump of Doom.

Not as good as his Obama cutup for obvious reasons, but perhaps of interest to Hardcore History fans.

Citations Needed is a great show. This ep gets into local TV/news reporting, how that often revolves into police stenography, and how gentrification brings about more cops:

http://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-54-local-crime-reporting-as-police-stenography

Revolutions is rocking my world. Dude is so good at streamlining a huge amount of complicated information and communicating it both clearly and with an overarching clarity of intent. Very rare and underrated skill ime.

yeah, there are quite a very very good history podcasts these days, but they almost all follow the model Mike Duncan set down

quite a few

oh i love Revolutions

when I needed to nerd out on the French Rev it was a godsend

Only the dude from History of Rome does it better imo. But coming close is an achievement!!

just started "Know Your Enemy" -- two chill very smart lefties (one a former conservative intellectual-in-training) discuss the history and provide a sort of field guide to movement conservatism. digging it so far.

Listened to the first few Revolutions eps on the Russian Revolution. Good counterpart to the WWI series in a way, and nice to listen to something a little headier than Hardcore History. I didn't find any of it hard to understand except for the fact that he covers so much ground so quickly that I frequently had to hit the 15 secs back button. He'd make a good intro course lecturer but it can be hard to follow while doing something else like driving, which is when I'm usually listening.

Carlin also has a real talent for imagery and story that I don't think Duncan quite has to the same extent. But Duncan's style is much better for something like trying to explain the foundations of Marxist thought, which I don't think Carlin could even do, let alone succinctly.

And I bet you've never had a closer shave since you started using Harry's razors, eh man alive?

Carlin also has a real talent for imagery and story that I don't think Duncan quite has to the same extent. But Duncan's style is much better for something like trying to explain the foundations of Marxist thought, which I don't think Carlin could even do, let alone succinctly.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, December 19, 2019 12:19 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i listened to a few episodes of hardcore history before calling it a day but in one of them he touches upon the frankfurt school and it was like the scene in the 40 year old virgin with steve carrell talking about boobs

lool, didn't catch that one but sounds very otm of his style!

I've really taken to the revolutions podcast, the episode about Bakunin is excellent.

Started this last week and just got to the Bakunin one

just started "Know Your Enemy" -- two chill very smart lefties (one a former conservative intellectual-in-training) discuss the history and provide a sort of field guide to movement conservatism. digging it so far.

I'm a little wary of this type of material as its rarely done well but I may give this one a shot too

That one started out well but has gotten a bit scattered now that they mostly focus on whatever guest they have on—Ross Douthat for instance.

^agreed. but I still really enjoy it.

it’s the only ep i’ve listened to but Marshall Steinbaum ep of know yr enemy goes extremely deep into intellectual history of chicago econ

ketchup re-posting from the brainworms thread:

i'm up to the massacre of champ de mars in the mike duncan revolutions pod (since it's mentioned just upthread for some reason)

i think it's p good but i have to make some kind of comment and/or protest re duncan's french pronunciation, which is in my opinion PECULIAR lol

― mark s, Monday, 27 September 2021 19:08 (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the radical parisian district of cor-dell-YEE!

― mark s, Monday, 27 September 2021 19:15 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

in parallel i'm reading a place of greater safety: a book which loves robespierre much more than duncan seems to

he's best when he just sticks to a detailed narrative history which is what he's good at and doesn't bring in any "as an American" type content, he did that in one of English revolution eps + it was cringe.

actually it was an American Revolution ep he did that in

do people like Blowback? The Iraq material was a little too familiar for me but I'm really enjoying the 2nd season about the Cuban revolution

I thought Blowback was great. The episodes on the missile crisis were riveting.

Looking for politics more than history (although I welcome recommendations for both). I love Know Your Enemy and am almost all caught up on it, what else should I listen to for thoughtful/well-read lefty political takes? Can be historical, for that matter, but especially interested in people doing good things in talking about contemporary Western politics. Not opposed to current events type shows, but something more substantive than drive-by punditry.

“Will Be Wild” about the Jan 6th insurrection was really good?

OK! My first reaction is "do I need to hear more about Jan. 6," but then I just finished listening to two hours on Whittaker Chambers so I shouldn't rule anything out.

i had zero interest going in before it was recommended to me & was impressed by how engaging it was