

Explaining History
Nick Shepley
How do we make sense of the modern world? We find the answers in the history of the 20th Century.For over a decade, The Explaining History Podcast has been the guide for curious minds. Host Nick Shepley and expert guests break down the world wars, the Cold War, and the rise and fall of ideologies into concise, 25-minute episodes.This isn't a dry lecture. It's a critical, narrative-driven conversation that connects the past to your present.Perfect for students, history buffs, and anyone who wants to understand how we got here. Hit subscribe and start exploring.Join us at Explaining History for daily modern history articles and news. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 13, 2025 • 30min
China's Neoliberal Turn 1978-89
How did China embrace its own hybrid form of market capitalism with state control after the death of Mao in 1976? How did China avoid the economic shock therapy that devastated the USSR and become a technological super power in the 21st Century? Today's podcast explores the writings of David Harvey on Chinese capitalism and communism.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 12, 2025 • 31min
Tariffs, Brexit and the great reorientation
Britain's political class have realised that the writing is on the wall for them in the past week as Trump's tariffs as imposed. This podcast explores the contemporary state of international affairs between Britain, America and the EU.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 11, 2025 • 29min
Changing interpretations on the Nation of Islam
Scholarship of the Black Power Movement in general and the Nation of Islam in particular has been harder to accumulate than that on the main Civil Rights Movement led by Dr Martin Luther King and the SCLC. This podcast explores reasons for this and the differing interpretations on the nation that were recorded by historians and sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s. 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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 8, 2025 • 29min
The decline of US Liberal Internationalism
Since the beginning of the 21st Century, American internationalism has been in crisis and Trump's recent verbal and economic threats towards allies has accelerated this trend. This podcast explores America's 20th and 21st Century internationalist moments and crises.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 7, 2025 • 22min
Hitler's resource war in Russia - 1941
In June 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the USSR, they saw the conquest of the country, the eradication of its leadership and the starvation of tens of millions of its people as part of a wider goal at creating a zone of resource extraction for the Nazi state in order to enable it to withstand an allied blockade and to stand up to the industrial and agricultural might of the USA and the British Empire.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 5, 2025 • 37min
Humans: A Monstrous History
In this episode of The Explaining History Podcast we were fortunate enough to speak with Dr Surekha Davies, historian of art, science and ideas, whose new book, Humans: A Monstrous History explores the darker aspects of human imagining and how we see ourselves through the filter of the monstrous.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 4, 2025 • 24min
Romania in 1918
Romania was, in territorial terms, one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the Paris Peace Conference. It acquired land from the disintegrated Austro Hungarian and Russian Empires and from new states like Hungary itself. the core Romanian lands, the Regat, found it challenging to absorb new territories, even when they were majority ethnically Romanian, and the strong desire for a more federalist state was resisted by those elites and power structures who had chiefly benefitted from a strong, centralised Romanian state to begin with.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 3, 2025 • 24min
Nazi economic plunder of western Europe PT2
When Europe was rapidly subjugated by the Nazi regime, unprecedented economic opportunities arose and these were exploited by Germany's great industrial conglomerates and cartels such as chemicals giant IG Farben. This podcast explores how the Nazi regime imposed a new economic order on conquered states in western Europe.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mar 1, 2025 • 28min
Zelenskyy and the US Empire
In the past 24 hours there has been further indication that an immense transition in international relations is under way, far more significant that the retreat into isolation at the end of the First World War. Trump and Vance have signalled their intent to shift the US away from its traditional post war role of being the centre of Pax Americana, the metropole of an unofficial empire, to the first amongst great power equals. The consequences for Europe in this realignment will be dire, but there is little indication that European Union heads of state have fully appreciated this yet. 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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Feb 21, 2025 • 31min
The end of the Anglo American 'special relationship'
Donald Trump has signalled a great strategic alignment away from the principles of Pax Americana, the post war unofficial imperium that America has operated since 1945 towards something that resembles the concert of great powers before the First World War. One of the powers thrown into diplomatic and strategic crisis as a result of this is Britain.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, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it hereExplaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


