Explaining History

Drawing from the classic history of war reporting The First Casualty by Phillip Knightley, we explore the history of news, propaganda and misinformation from the Nanjing Massacre and the battle of Shanghai in 1937-8 to Pearl Harbour in 1941. This is part seven of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A l

This is part eight of the Explaining History study course based on the AQA A level history module Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-53. In this episode we explore the aftermath of the Russian Civil War and the challenges that the Bolshevik Regime faced from within the party, the peasantry and the Kronstadt sailo

Why do we remember the civil rights movement in the way that we do? Whilst there is rightly a focus on the post war struggle in the 1950s and 1960s, less is written about the darkest part of the 20th Century black American experience in the years between 1895 and 1915. This podcast explores the historiography of the pe

Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have a specific ideological fixation on dismantling the state. In America tech fuelled accelerationism has pushed catastrophic idea into the mainstream and it may now become a meaningful reality with predictably catastrophic results. In the UK, it remains a Tory idea and ther

In the late middle ages, the chronicling of history began to change and a more analytical way of thinking about the past emerged. Histories that were written became more than simple hagiographies to great men and were often guides to statecraft, war and diplomacy, the past was being used in order to navigate the presen

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 r