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Current List of Patron-Only Episodes:
The complete Historiansplaining catalogue, starting with the most recent episodes on top. Click through to the Full-Episode Detail pages for links to the specific recordings on Apple, SoundCloud, Patreon, YouTube, Spotify and several other major podcast platforms…
 | Origins of the First World War pt. 6 – Germany
We consider the turbulent history and politics of the country most often blamed for the outbreak of the First World War – Germany. The youngest of all the combatant nations in World War I, The German Reich’s deep class, regional, and religious divides drove Kaiser Wilhelm and his inner circle to seek national aggrandizement abroad as a source of unity at home – which inadvertently led them to unite their rivals against them and dragged them into a war not of their making. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Origins of the First World War pt. 4 – Bosnia & the Assassination
We examine the unique and complex history of Bosnia, at once a borderland and a world unto itself, and the only Slavic country in which Islam has ever been the majority faith. With the help of readings from the classic novel, “The Bridge on the Drina,” we trace how Bosnians’ confused search for a national identity and a national destiny led ultimately to the fateful assassination that triggered a world war. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Myth of the Month 22: Culture
What is “culture”? And how did a metaphor from gardening invade social-science discourse in 19th-century Germany and America and then take the world by storm? Am I doing “podcast culture” right now? Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Becoming Modern: Making The Modern State – Spain, Portugal, and the Inquisition
We explore European monarchs’ early quest to consolidate royal power and establish their subjects’ direct loyalty to the crown. In particular, we trace the early triumphs and slow declines of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, driven by the pioneering ambitions of Isabella of Castile, Philip II of Spain, John II of Portugal, and the formidable Marques de Pombal. We also examine the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, which served as a crucial cornerstone of the modern bureaucratic state, with its systems of mass surveillance, ideological propaganda, and obsession with extracting confessions from the accused. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see:
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 | Becoming Modern: The Life of the Commoners – Adaptation and Rebellion, 1400-1600
We examine how Europe’s peasant majority worked, played, and survived in the late Middle Ages and the early modern era, including the elaborate customs governing land tenure, marriage, and inheritance. We consider how, during the recovery following the Black Death, steadily growing population and rising prices put the squeeze on commoners as well as the nobility, forcing peasants to seek out more marginal lands and toil for more meager rewards, while encouraging landlords to raise rents and evict tenants. At the same time, growing armies and governments laid a heavy burden of taxes and conscription on the third estate. Finally, we examine the wave of peasant rebellions that roiled Europe in the late 1400s and early 1500s, as commoners fought back against impoverishment, rising rents, taxes, and the enclosure and sale of common lands. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | History of the United States in 100 Objects # 1: Panther Effigy Pipe, 200-500 AD
Panther Effigy Pipe -Found in Posey County, Indiana-Carved from Steatite-dated to the Middle Woodland Period, 200-500 AD. In the first of the series on American objects and artifacts, we examine a tobacco pipe in the form of a wildcat — specifically a puma, whose name comes from the Quechua word for “powerful.” It was most likely used in rituals by shamans or priests of the Hopewell civilization, which built enormous, mysterious ceremonial complexes resembling Stonehenge — only lacking a source of stone, did so out of wood and earth. The effigy pipe reflects the artistic range and sophistication of the Hopewell as well as their fascination with the mythic power of animals. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Becoming Modern: The Century of Splintering – The Reformation in its Swiss and Radical Phases, 1519-1619
We explore the new, contending forms of Protestant Christianity that sprang up in the wake of Luther, including the strict, austere Swiss Reform embodied in John Calvin’s Geneva, and the radical anabaptism that burst onto the scene in the failed millennial kingdom at Munster. We consider how the new Reformed movement hammered out a shared orthodoxy emphasizing original sin and predestination, which we now (somewhat inaccurately) call “Calvinism,” and we trace the roots of some of the more extreme ascetic pacifist sects that have persisted down to our own time. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Becoming Modern: Martin Luther – Shout at the Devil
Exactly five centuries ago this month, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg, thus sparking the Protestant Reformation. He was concerned not with freedom of thought nor with abuse of power by the Pope, as moderns might like to think, but with exposing the false doctrine that a person’s good actions can earn them a place in Heaven. Wracked by guilt and fear of going to hell, Luther had found relief only in the idea of a free, unmerited salvation. We consider Luther’s tactics in his war to reform the church, from his obsession with excrement to his attacks on Jews, all of which stemmed from his fundamental belief that he was engaged in a war for the soul of the Church against Satan and the Anti-Christ. [Contains adult language] Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see:
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 | Myth of the Month 3: Race
We examine the origins of racism, or the notion that the human species can be subdivided into distinct and observable biological categories. The notion of human “races” began as a strategy for dividing and controlling workers in European colonies, particularly 17th-century Virginia. We consider the basic logical incoherence of belief in race, and compare it against the new information that we are gaining from genetics, which shows a fairly closely interrelated human species, with all people living today sharing the same set of ancestors as of about 3,400 years ago. Finally we consider the recent flare-up of controversy over the difference in average IQ between “racial” groups in the US, which neuroscientist Sam Harris helped to spark on his podcast earlier this year. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Becoming Modern: The Catholic Reformation
We examine the long movement for reform stretching from the Middle Ages through the 1600s, in which Catholic leaders strove to centralize and standardize church teachings. Mystics like Teresa of Avila and artists like Bernini inspired a physically and emotionally compelling form of worship centering on the sufferings of Christ and the Virgin Mary, while the elite special forces of the new piety were the Jesuits, whose schools and missions spread the new Catholicism within Europe and around the world, as far away as China. The Catholic Reformation, much more than just a negative response to the Protestant Reformation, served to further many of the same ideas and aspirations as its Protestant counterpart. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | History of the United States in 100 Objects # 3: Scarlet Macaw Feather Sash, ca. 1150 AD
A sash made of yucca rope, leather, squirrel pelt, and scarlet macaw feathers – Found in Lavender Canyon, Utah, and dated to Ancestral Pueblo Civilization, ca. 1150 AD. Made with more than 2000 tiny macaw feathers, this sash is unique in the archeological record, probably the most complex and the most personal artifact ever found from the ancestral Pueblo civilization. Also informally called “Anasazi” and known for its cliff palaces, this civilization flourished for several centuries before collapsing in the 1100s, around the time when this complex and mysterious object was left behind in a cave. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Land of Vital Blood: Pre-Columbian America
The Americas before Columbus were not an idyll frozen in time. They were a world of struggle and ambition, with a history just as complex and tumultuous as Europe’s. We trace how hunting-gathering peoples invented agriculture and built cities and empires that rose and fell across the centuries, all depending on human power, without the benefit of pack animals. We consider the shared norms and practices that seem to unite the diverse and far-flung peoples of the Americas, such as intensive multi-crop agriculture, fascination with astronomy and the calendar, and a highly formalized diplomatic language governing war and peace. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see:
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 | Myth of the Month 1: The Enlightenment
There was no Enlightenment. Steven Pinker’s new book, “Enlightenment Now,” is a classic re-statement of the myth of the Enlightenment which holds that in the 1600s and 1700s, Europeans threw off the tired dogmas of the Middle Ages and embraced a new philosophy of Reason, Progress, Science, and Humanism. In fact, the 1700s were a period of confusion, with no clear unifying ideas or trends: occultism, mysticism, and absolute monarchy flourished alongside experiments in democracy and chemistry. “The Enlightenment” forms one of the central pillars of Whig history, serving to re-affirm the notion that our present-day beliefs and values are rational and coherent. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | From the Cotswolds to Cool Britannia – observations on a trip through England
I recently returned from a family trip through Great Britain, and want to share with my patrons the sights that we saw in England, arranged chronologically, from Stonehenge to the “Crystal Phallus.” The layered remains of Britain’s past ages – Roman, Gothic, Georgian, Victorian – encode their builders’ vastly different hopes and visions for the island kingdom. The country is full of extraordinary scenery, but the attempt to “see England,” even in such a simple act as boarding a train, entangles us in the unending struggles over who defines such a complicated nation. Next installment: Scotland. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Becoming Modern: Islam 2 – From the “Golden Age” to the Fundamentalist Reaction
We trace the tortured path of Islam over the past 1,000 years, from the “Golden Age” of art, philosophy, and interreligious tolerance under the Abbasid empire to the rise of oppositional movements like sufi mysticism and finally, the Mongols’ sudden rain of destruction. We follow the return to power of new Muslim empires, the deepening of the Shiah-Sunni split, and finally, the emergence of an intolerant modern fundamentalism in reaction to the insidious and seductive influence of “the great Satan.” We trace the tortured path of Islam over the past 1,000 years, from the “Golden Age” of art, philosophy, and interreligious tolerance under the Abbasid empire to the rise of oppositional movements like sufi mysticism and finally, the Mongols’ sudden rain of destruction. We follow the return to power of new Muslim empires, the deepening of the Shiah-Sunni split, and finally, the emergence of an intolerant modern fundamentalism in reaction to the insidious and seductive influence of “the great Satan.” Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Doorways in Time: The Great Archaeological Discoveries #6: Early Audio Recordings
In the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the most brilliant and ambitious minds in both Europe and America were bent upon solving the problem of capturing sound waves from the air and playing them back. Most of their efforts, including the earliest “phonautograms” from more than a decade before Edison’s invention of the phonograph, were either forgotten or lost to decay and degradation. In the past fifteen years, however, scientists and engineers, including the First Sounds collective, have located the surviving remnants of early sound recordings and devised ways to optically scan them and reproduce the sounds that they captured, revealing much of the auditory world of the nineteenth century and the pathways by which the now-ubiquitous technology of audio recording came into being. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Jim Crow’s America, 1880-1960
We examine the three pillars of Jim Crow civilization — segregation, disfranchisement, and terroristic violence — and their roots in the corrupt bargain of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and the climate of racial pseudoscience that pervaded the late 1800s. We consider the different ways that Jim Crow was enforced in different parts of the country — in the South, with state action and paramilitary repression, and in the North, through exclusion from the labor movement. Finally, we consider how World War II and the integration of unions helped to bring about the collapse of Jim Crow society. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | The Middle Ages: The Jews of Europe, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution
We trace the winding paths by which Jews, after the diaspora, sought out social and economic niches in which they were able to survive within European Christian society. We uncover the origins of the two main Jewish groups in Europe — the Sephardic and Ashkenazi — and consider how they adapted to changing conditions, including the increasing assimilation of German Jews in the 1700s, which led on the one hand to the beginnings of Jewish reform and on the other to the appearance of Hasidism, a mystical renewal movement. Most importantly, we consider the deep and long-denied influence of the messianic fervor that swept over Europe in the 1660s surrounding the mercurial and mischievous Greek rabbi, Sabbatai Zvi. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see all 7 episodes On Judaism and Jewish History |
 | Roots of Religion: Who Wrote the Bible? – New Testament
We consider the long ideological struggles in the early church that led to the gradual collection of a canon of Christian writings that we now call the New Testament. We trace when, where, and why the various gospels and letters in the New Testament were written (hint: Matthew was not the first, not even close) and how they present different theological views. All in all, though, the New Testament writings were created to respond to the dilemma that as the years dragged on and Jesus’ disciples died off, the Second Coming that early Christians anticipated simply wasn’t happening. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Middle Ages 10: Sex and Sexuality in the Middle Ages
We examine the ways that medieval people described, displayed, and generally failed to control their sexual appetites. While theologians sermonized on the dangers of carnal lust, parishioners surreptitiously met in churches and stables, kept themselves amused with dildoes, or luxuriated in brothels all over Europe. We also trace how medievals categorized one another’s sexual “orientations” using the complex concept of sodomy, and briefly consider the intense scholarly debate over the nature of same-sex bonding ceremonies in the Middle Ages. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Middle Ages 8: The Knights Templar
We examine the true history of the first brotherhood of warrior-monks, who rose to extraordinary power in the High Middle Ages, functioned as a shadow empire reaching from Jerusalem to the far corners of Europe, and then fell to their ruin amidst lurid accusations of religious and sexual crimes. Apart from the endless myths and conspiracy theories, the Templars left a lasting mark on Western society through their militarization of Christianity. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Middle Ages 6: The First Crusade
We follow the bloody deeds and improbable victories of the first crusading army, as it slogs its way through Syria toward the ultimate prize. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Middle Ages 4: The Late Middle Ages
We discuss how the civilization of the High Middle Ages broke down under the onslaught of the Black Death, peasant uprisings, and the gunpowder revolution. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | Middle Ages 2: The Dark Age — The Beginning of the Medieval World
How Europeans picked up the pieces in the wake of the breakup of the Roman Empire, created a new society that briefly flourished in the spectacular reign of Charlemagne, and then were plunged back into chaos at the hands of the Vikings. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see:
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 | Book Review: “The Strange Death of Europe” — Part 2
In the second part of our discussion of Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe,” we examine the history of social cohesion and identity in Europe. We point out Murray’s failure to mention Brexit as a sign of the inherent weakness in European identity, and consider the complicated and challenging roots of modern-day terrorism in Europe. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
 | History of the Roma (“Gypsies”), part 2 — A Stateless People in Modern Europe
We follow how the Roma or Gypsies rose to a period of toleration and even renown as the quintessential musical masters of the Romantic era, only to fall under renewed persecution and suppression the twentieth century, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust — called the “Devouring” in Romani. We consider the lives of remarkable Roma of the modern age, such as the boxer Johann Trollmann and jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, the birth of a pan-Roma identity movement in the 1970s, the anti-Roma backlash of the 2010s, and finally the possibility that the Roma may be drawn into the geopolitical maneuverings of modern India. Quick Sample: Currently available to Patrons only, on the Patreon App and website: What do I get as a supporter? I’m already a supporter Full Episode Details Also see: |
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Things You Don’t Know
