Explaining History

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we dive into Richard Overy's magnificent *Blood and Ruins* – a history that reframes the Second World War not simply as a struggle between democracy and fascism, but as the bloody climax of a centuries‑long competition between rival imperial powers.**

Drawing on Leonard Woolf's 1928 warning that imperialism would either be "buried peacefully or in blood and ruins", Overy t...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I explore the striking parallels between the British Labour Party's war on Jeremy Corbyn and the Democrat establishment's growing fear of Zohran Mamdani – a new kind of left politics that refuses to be bullied.

We begin with the uncomfortable truth that much of what passes for "liberalism" in American politics – and "moderation" in British politics – is a defen...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by award-winning French Canadian author Mireille Gagné to discuss her acclaimed novel, *Horsefly* – a powerful, genre-defying work inspired by a top‑secret biological warfare laboratory that operated on Québec's Grosse Île during the Second World War.

The novel draws on a forgotten chapter of shared Allied history. In 1942, British, American, and Canadian for...

Northern Ireland, the Far-Right, and the Battle for Democracy with Heidi Birick

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined again by Heidi Birick of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism to discuss the recent far-right violence in Northern Ireland – and the global networks that fuelled it.

In recent weeks, Northern Ireland was rocked by a series of violent attacks against migrant ...

The Toscanini Conspiracy – Arturo Toscanini, Fascism, and the Italian Resistance with Filippo Iannarone

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Italian author Filippo Iannarone to discuss his acclaimed crime novel, The Toscanini Conspiracy – a story that weaves together a real‑life cold case, the anti‑fascist resistance of conductor Arturo Toscanini, and the author's own family histor...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by investigative journalist Jasper Craven to discuss his new book, *God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: Inside the Violent, Hypermasculine World of America’s Military Schools*. The conversation ranges far beyond military academies to explore how the US military has become the defining institution of American manhood – and what that means for democracy, vio...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine the opening moves of the Ottoman Empire’s war against Britain – a desperate, audacious campaign to seize the Suez Canal that has been largely forgotten but which revealed the fragility of the British Empire and the resilience of the Ottoman army.

At the outbreak of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire saw itself surrounded by enemies: the British in Egy...

*The history that this podcast episode explores involves harm and neglect to children and some listeners may find the details disclosed distressing.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Paige Towers to discuss her new book, What They Stole – a deeply researched exploration of intercountry adoption from Korea to the United States, rooted in a family tragedy that shook her Iowa hometown.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by cultural historian Murray Pittock to discuss his new book, The Shortest History of Scotland – a concise but richly detailed journey through two millennia of Scottish history, from the Picts to the present day.

Scotland’s geography – the “land of the mountain and the flood”, in Walter Scott’s p...

In this episode of the Explaining History podcast, Nick sets the scene for an upcoming interview with historian Murray Pittock on The Shortest History of Scotland, reflecting on the current wave of nationalist politics across Scotland, Wales, and Ireland—and how these movements connect to wider shifts in British and English identity.

From there, Nick turns to global affairs, unpacking the stark contrast between Richard Nix...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by author Piers Blofeld to discuss his new book, Master of Lies: The Untold Story of Anthony Blunt, which re‑examines the most underestimated member of the Cambridge Spy Ring.

Anthony Blunt was exposed as a Soviet agent in 1979 – long after the defections of Burgess, Maclean and Philby. For decades, he has been treated as something of an afterthought, a cultu...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine a remarkable moment: the leading architect of the Project for a New American Century, Robert Kagan, admitting that the Iran crisis is a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions – and that America has effectively lost the war.**

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was the neoconservative think tank that shaped the foreign policy of the George W. Bush ad...

**In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we return to Eric Hobsbawm's magisterial overview of the 20th century, *Age of Extremes*, to explore the paradoxes that shaped our world – and the crisis that defines our present.**

Hobsbawm argued that the "short twentieth century" – from 1914 to 1991 – was defined by the confrontation between capitalism and communism. But the relationship between these...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore a little‑known but revealing corner of Russian history: the military press during the reign of Alexander II.

After the humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, it was clear that Russia's army – and the autocracy that sustained it – needed fundamental change. Alexander II, who came to power as the war dragged on, embarked on a series of "Great Reforms", most ...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine the enduring legacy of austerity – a policy that officially ran from 2010 to 2024, but whose cultural and political effects are still very much with us.

The Labour government has made token gestures toward rolling back austerity – ending the two‑child benefit cap, for example – but the structural damage done to British society is likely unfixable wit...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by author Douglas Brunt to discuss his fascinating new book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel – the story of the greatest oil magnate you've never heard of, and the turbulent Russian decades that swept him away.

Emmanuel Nobel, nephew of the more famous Alfred (inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prizes), built an oil empire that by 1900 had su...

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I examine the slow-motion collapse of the political order that has defined British politics for a century – and what is likely to replace it.

The term "political earthquake" gets overused. What is happening in Great Britain is more like a once‑in‑a‑century end of a political order. It began in 2024 with the death of the Conservative Party – a party that is unlikely t...

**In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Wendy Via of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism – a former Southern Poverty Law Center staffer – to discuss a new report on the transnational activities of far-right and anti-migrant groups around the world.**

We often think of hate and xenophobia as local phenomena, but just like organised violence, the far‑right has become increasingly...

There are roughly two camps. One argues that there is an overarching grand plan behind America's actions in Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, and against Russia's shadow fleet – a coherent strategy to choke off China's industries and make Europe energy-dependent on the United States. The other, more plausible camp sees imperial decline and the chaos that decline inevitably brings.

I explore both.

John Mearsheimer argues that ...