Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
History lectures by Samuel Biagetti, a historian (and antique dealer) with a Phd in early American history; my dissertation was on Freemasonry in the 1700s. I focus on the historical myths and distortions, from "the Middle Ages" to "Race," that people use to rationalize the world in which we live. More info at www.historiansplaining.com Please see my Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5530632, if you want to keep the lectures coming, and to hear the patron-only materials.
Episodes
December 23, 2025 • 4 mins
Excerpt of a lecture for patrons only for 1 year:
We explore the tumultuous history of Central Africa, embracing the enormous Congo rainforest, the great rift valleys, the Indian Ocean coast, and the gold fields of the Zambezi basin, as formidable kingdoms—Kongo, the Swahili cities, and the mysterious Great Zimbabwe—emerged in the tropical landscape, adapted to the traumatic incursion of the Portuguese, and eventually struck back a...
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November 23, 2025 • 135 mins
We follow the rise of civilization and of powerful empires in West Africa before the slave tade, based upon iron-working and the traffic in gold and salt across the Sahara, followed by the spread of wealth and power southward, towards the gold fields and the tropical forests, and finally the reverberating impacts of the arrival of Portuguese traders on the coast, which paved the way for the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.
Sugges...
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October 31, 2025 • 12 mins
We read ghost-related poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lola Haskins, & Stanley Plumly, as a thank-you to patrons and a meditation on the field of history.
Please sign on as a patron in order to hear patron-only lectures, and to vote in the current poll on the next archaeological discovery for the series, "Doorways in Time": https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcement-in-142272603
Most of my recent apperance on the Katie Halpe...
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October 26, 2025 • 121 mins
Audio track from the new video, "Red, White & Royal Blue: A Historian's Analysis -- pt. 4: The Political Ideology of RWRB"--
Intro: Why the Politics of RWRB? – 0:00:30
Sec. 1: Idealism vs. Realism – 0:16:21
Sec. 2: The Hidden Agenda – what is left out of RWRB – 0:52:29
Sec. 3: The Trade Wars – 1:28:25
Sec. 4: The Elusive Democratic Majority – 1:40:09
Conclusions: Power & Pride – 1:47:45
We examine Red, White & Royal Blue as...
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October 23, 2025 • 175 mins
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only --
We examine the Epic of Gilgamesh as a piece of literature, for its strange dream-like style and form, its points of similarity to Biblical and ancient Greek and European mythology, and finally, its deep levels of psychological and political allegory, ultimately revealing the love between Enkidu and Gilgamesh as a parable of the fraught relationship between civilization and the wild.
Image:...
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October 15, 2025 • 114 mins
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only:
He is the earliest human being whose name and life story are known to history. We examine the origins and contents of the most ancient narrative ever found anywhere on Earth, and trace how it has been rediscovered, re-used, and re-translated in the modern world, becoming a living and evolving text in a time of anxiety over the fate of civilization.
Please sign on as a patron in order to ke...
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September 29, 2025 • 160 mins
We follow how a remote landmass on the far western fringe of Europe became the home of a lasting Gaelic civilization and a major center of classical and Christian knowledge, before coming under attack by Viking raiders and Anglo-Norman invaders. We examine the English Crown’s shifting and increasingly desperate strategies to control Ireland, and the long battle over control of land and religion before Ireland was finally subjected...
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August 31, 2025 • 160 mins
Nations: What are they? Are they defined by language, by “culture,” by blood, or something else? How do you know if you are part of one? —and is everyone in the world a member of one nation or another?
We follow how the rise of medieval kingdoms and universities and the print revolution made it possible for people in the West to imagine themselves as part of extended kinship groups united by a common language and ancestry, ho...
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August 7, 2025 • 134 mins
We follow how deportation policy has evolved, expanding massively in the aftermaths of World War One and World War Two, while shifting its main targets -- from political radicals and dissidents, to organized criminals, to "undesirable" racial and ethnic groups including Asians and Mexicans. We examine the changing laws and judicial rulings that have carved out an exception for deportation, allowing the government nearly unlimited a...
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August 1, 2025 • 161 mins
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only: The most massive and momentous manuscript discovery of modern times, the Dead Sea Scrolls blew the lid off of the long-mysterious world of messianic and apocalyptic ferment before the destruction of the Second Temple—yet it took decades of conflict and struggle to bring them to public light. We trace why the scrolls became the object of a long international struggle, what they actually say, ...
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July 29, 2025 • 122 mins
We examine the roots of the American practice of "deportation" -- from colonial banishment of heretics, through the political upheaval over Alien & Sedition Acts, to the age of Chinese Exclusion -- which paved the way for the federal government to exercise virtually unlimited & absolute power over aliens, whom they placed outside the protection of the Constitution.
Suggested further reading: Kanstroom, "Deportation Nation: Outside...
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July 4, 2025 • 12 mins
For Patrons only for 1 year:
We follow the tribulations of the Papacy through the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, as the Pope's loyal soldiers in the Jesuit order are expelled from Catholic states and empires, the Church comes under attack in the French Reovlution, and Napoleon takes the Pope prisoner. We then follow the Papacy's gradual recovery of prestige -- through the reactionary rigorism of Pius IX and the 1st Vati...
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June 29, 2025 • 113 mins
We follow the paths by which the bishops of Rome – leaders of what had been a small church on the fringe of the Christian world – established themselves as the foremost spiritual leaders of Western Christendom and with time, as supreme heads of the global Catholic Church. We follow the dramatic turns in the Papacy’s fortunes, as Popes alternate between pinnacles of power and prestige, commanding lands and armies, launching Crusade...
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June 14, 2025 • 10 mins
Update for listeners, and happy Father's Day wishes; excerpt from latest patron-only lecture on Italy between unification and the entry into the First World War.
Please sign up on Patreon to hear the latest lecture and all patron-only materials! -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/italy-nation-war-131082248
Podcast website: www.historiansplaining.com
Image: The Paderno D'Adda hydroelectric power plant, Lombardy, 1895-8
Music: "Nel ...
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May 27, 2025 • 118 mins
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only: We review the diplomatic landscape of Europe on the eve of war in the summer of 1914—and then trace the dizzying cascade of events that followed after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. We get a handle on the ensuing crisis that ricocheted through embassies, banquet halls, and barracks all across Europe, and plunged all the great powers of the con...
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May 17, 2025 • 106 mins
We follow the convulsions of Italian society -- foreign invasion, popular revolution, peasant revolt, liberal reform, Romantic pageantry, diplomatic dirty dealings, and patriotic war -- through which the residents of a fragmented, poor, and backwards section of Europe overthrew the puppet regimes of foreign rulers and challenged the internal power of the Church, to seize control of their own destiny and create a new nation-state th...
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April 29, 2025 • 109 mins
We follow Korea's thousand-year struggle to maintain its integrity and independence, fending off cataclysmic invasions by the Mongols, the Manchus, and the samurai of Japan, and repeatedly transforming itself -- from a confederation of Buddhist warrior-nobles, to a strictly Confucian surveillance state, to a fledgling modern industrial nation -- before finally falling to Meiji Japan.
Suggested reading: Han Woo-Keun, “The History o...
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April 11, 2025 • 8 mins
I give an update on the progress of the podcast, and an important caution on how to sign up as a patron while avoiding Apple's new fees. I give an excerpt from my latest episode for patrons, "History of the United States in 100 Objects -- 24: Beaver-Fur Stovepipe Hat, ca. 1590-1670" --
On this episode: A tall “stovepipe” hat, which was made in the 1600s out of felt from beaver fur and likely belonged to a powerful member of the ...
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March 13, 2025 • 92 mins
We examine the origins of the Korean people and state – from prehistoric migrations and technological advances, through the formation of warrior confederations, the rise and fall of the Chinese colony, the tumult and intrigue of the “Three Kingdoms” era, and the arrival of Buddhism, and finally to the unification of most of Korea under the Silla kingdom.
Suggested reading: Han Woo-Keun, “The History of Korea”; Michael J. Seth, “A ...
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We journey through the different eras and incarnations of Troy as archaeologists have reconstructed them from the excavations at Hissarlik. We then explore the surviving evidence -- including linguistic theories, newly discovered tablets from the ancient Hittite capital, and the long-lost and rediscovered "Priam's Treasure" that Schliemann unearthed-- to form a picture of who the Trojans were and what sort of city they created in t...
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