I’m so bored at work
Guerrilla History - Excellent leftist history podcast co-hosted by Breht from Rev Left Radio.
Silk & Steel Podcast - Excellent left-friendly (best way to describe it) podcast hosted by Carl Zha that covers a lot of Chinese history.
Revolutions - Not leftist, but still a great history podcast covering various revolutions. Latest season covers the Russian Revolution.
Blowback - A great podcast covering the brutal history of US foreign policy, with each season covering a different topic.
Ghost Stories For The End Of The World - Leftist podcast that covers cold war history, including CIA activities and a lot of incidents and individuals not commonly known.
Mike Duncan (revolutions) goes more left and Marxian as the podcast progresses. He said as much on this other podcast episode. https://jewishcurrents.org/the-age-of-no-revolutions
It's a good listen.
radio war nerd is pretty good, although it is a mix of current events and history. The recent american civil war series is very good.
Blowback is great, S1 covers the Iraq war, S2 covers Cuba, and the upcoming S3's going to be about the Korean War
Rev Left Radio isn't a dedicated history podcast, but there's occasional history episodes, like the Vietnam War, the Red Army Faction and the IRA :ira:
Radio War Nerd. I don't know if they're leftist or have just been browbeaten by history until they assumed the position that the left is the least bad option, but they're not chuds and they don't buy in to liberal bullshit, and they go in to a lot of detail about all kinds of modern and historical conflicts.
Definitely seconding revolutions. Mike is kind of a lib but you can hear him being radicalized throughout.
is he the one that did the Hattian revolution and stopped being a lib?
Justin Podur’s Anti-Empire project. They’re covering the scramble for Africa, most recent episodes were German colonization. Absolutely horrific, but it helps you unlearn all that bullshit about how exceptional fascism is.
Fuck Europe, all my homies want to leave Europe behind (that goes double for all European settler colonies)
It sounds like he’s Justin’s old high school history teacher? Which is quite unexpected. I haven’t heard enough to be annoyed by him, but I can see it
Yeah and I think his co-host is just a progressive, not a Marxist. I binged a bunch of episodes a few months ago and I just kind of didn’t like the vibe the high school history teacher gave off. To his credit Justin pushed back now and then. I could be completely wrong about all of this though. The first episode of the Africa series in particular just didn’t work for me—it was too much of the trees and not enough of the forest, although it’s an absolutely massive undertaking to even attempt to describe Europe’s destruction of Africa.
Lions led by donkeys, an explicitly leftist military history podcast. Seconding Revolutions, listen to his Russian Revolution series, very good. Starts from Marx and Engels 1840s and is ending right now with Stalin collectivization in 1930s, a hundred episodes, like 90% great episodes.
It's a pretty niche subject but Reimagining Soviet Georgia is a podcast all about the history of the Georgian SSR and how liberalization perverted the nation's history to make younger generations think poorly of the USSR.
Historic.ly is also a good firmly anti-imperialist podcast, but some of its guests are hit or miss. Also idk whats up but some of their episodes have minor audio issues that I could get over but if that's a big issue for you keep it in mind.
We're not so different is about medieval mostly Europe but I'm listening to an episode about China right now. The one host is a communistic snd the other might also be
Just listened to the abortion episode and they seem good, thanks for the rec!
I've been making my way through it, they have like a 10 episode block specifically on China.
I always recommend Byzantium and Friends. The host might not be a Marxist but he’s as close as you can get (an entire episode explicitly condemns the neoliberal influence on academia), and there’s just so many fascinating episodes about aspects of Byzantine life I had never known about before. It’s really good if you want a break from the usual doom-and-gloom, since Byzantium was destroyed 600 years ago and most people have accepted that.
Hardcore History with Dan Carlin is not leftist and is specifically military history, but I've poured over hours of the stuff and I don't see him saying much objectionable or reactionary shit. He just doesn't hate America in my estimation.
I love Dan Carlin. He has a show, Common Sense where he talks about current events (though, in typical Carlin fashion, he only does an episode every year or so). I haven't listened to it since like 2017 (frankly, I thought he discontinued the show after Trump was elected), which is before I was really a leftist in any meaningful sense, but based on my memory of that Dan Carlin has absolutely bizarre politics with no ideology that just so happen to roughly align with the lib consensus on some stuff, but he seems like a decent guy.
You're totally right, he has no guiding ideology and because of his bourgeois upbringing, he's too in the club to take his conclusions to their natural end point. He did a pro M4A episode that was pretty on the ball for a
liberalWarren stan (because he jerked her off for an ep) but then there's another episode where he goes off about how everyone in the country should be given a stipend to donate money to political campaigns instead of eliminating those campaigns' ability to collect money, or eliminating money. And then whenever he covers anything relating to the AES/USSR, it's dogshit except for when he can gush about specific elements of their military because for some reason that I guess he never bothered to interrogate even though both of these world powers were apparently historic monstrosities, it's ok to praise Zhukov and not Rommel (not that the later has anything to praise).Dan Carlin's pitch is that he's a "political outsider" but in reality his political worldview is as nonsensical, broadly left leaning yet singed by propaganda as most Americans that don't define their identity by their relationship to one of the two major political parties. He's just more articulate than most.
His podcast episode American Peril was a big step in my radicalization. Everyone here should listen to it. It's basically the origin story for America's international imperialism. Good background for understanding Cuban history as well.
(Dan's not a leftist but he's pretty solidly anti-imperialist).
...I haven't actually gotten 'round to any of it, but
Tides of History may be good
tentative recommendation
I have only listened to the pre history stuff for Tides, but I like it a lot. It is very interesting to me personally, but also I think learning about how humans lived in the distant past is quite useful as you can see how adaptable we are and just the sheer variety of social organizations we have had over time. I feel like it can be easy for people living now to feel like ‘there is no alternative’ to capitalism. Even if we as socialists know that isn’t true I think learning about different societies and cultures in the past makes it more concrete.
Tides of history is pretty good. Just that you have to deal with the ads for other wondery shows.
He tends to go down a rabbit hole at the time. Right now he is on a pre-history kick after having an early modern period while he was researching for The Verge.
