Sure,us sex video big breast we're all living history right now — the catastrophic pandemic, mass protests, creeping global fascism — but that doesn't mean we should stop learning about other moments in history.
Podcasts are especially effective at telling historical stories. The medium allows people to listen to archival audio and offers practically unlimited time and space — a pod can be as long as you like and you can do as many episodes as needed — which makes for some super-immersive experiences. Podcasts do a wonderful job of uncovering lost tales, or telling familiar stories from an angle that's gone overlooked. And they make passing the time in a pandemic just a little bit easier.
Read on for 11 of our picks for the best history podcasts.
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1. Bowery Boys
The pod from friends Tom Meyers and Greg Young describes itself as a "romp down the back alleys of New York City." You might learn about random stuff — like a short-lived Bronx theme park shaped like America — or big things, like how New York streets were shaped into a grid. NYC is a city rich with forgotten history. Meyers and Young do a great job sharing it.
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2. Behind the Bastards
Let's face it: Bad people are fascinating. Behind the Bastardsis a podcast focused on telling the stories of history's villains, many of whom you might not even know about. Along the way, the pod details plenty of strange things that helped make awful people so damn awful.
3. History Becomes Her
OK, we're biased, but Mashable's podcast History Becomes Her absolutely rules. Each episode, host Rachel Thompson speaks with contemporary history-making women about women of the past. It's a good way to learn about the subject with women at the center of the story, which is rarely how it's been presented.
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4. Backstory
Backstory, a program from theVirginia Foundation for the Humanities, is a history podcast made by actualhistorians, so you can count on it to be thorough and accurate.The hosts tell you the history your school might've missed, for instance, about the long, deep history of fake news in America. In many cases, that story is way more interesting than the ones you've been told. Backstoryended in June, but there remains a huge backlog of episodes available.
5. The Sneak
The Sneak, a USA Todaypodcast hosted and reported by For the Win editor Nate Scott, is billed a true crime and sports mash-up. But the second season definitely overdelivers on that logline. It's a tale that feels like it must become a motion picture. It tells the story of the man at the center of the largest jewel heist in history — a group of surfers who stole literally priceless jewels (they were too valuable to be appraised) from NYC's Museum of Natural History in 1964. But the story of Jack Murphy is far more dark and complicated than a simple heist, and along the way, you'll learn about forgotten versions of Miami and New York City.
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6. Making Gay History
History isn't often told through a gay lens and Making Gay History looks to change that, telling the stories of the people who fought for decades for LGBTQ civil rights. Many of them have largely gone uncelebrated — until now. The podcast will debut its eighth season in October, drawing material from the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.
7. The History of American Slavery
This podcast is exactly what it sounds like. In nine episodes, journalists Rebecca Onion and Jamelle Bouie walk through the story of slavery in America and explain how it has shaped our country to this day. The series completed in 2015, so you can binge it all the way through.
8. You Must Remember This
You Must Remember Thistells the strange and forgotten history of old Hollywood. Host and producer Karina Longworth researches the stories deeply and weaves interesting, narrative-driven tales. If you want an amazing intro to the series, you should listen to Longworth's series on Charles Manson. It walks through Manson's surprisingly deep connections in Hollywood — forgotten bits of history lost to time and sensationalism — and how the murders helped shape the end of the '60s.
9. Blowback
OK, first a disclaimer: Blowbackis an unapologetically left-wing podcast. Like very left-wing. If that's not cool with you, then it's not the podcast for you. It tells the story of the Iraq War from that leftist point of view, and it's both fascinating and necessary. Much of the Iraq War, as the American public knew it, was laundered through a right-wing government, and it was some time before anyone was open to admitting the disastrous war was just that. Blowbackdetails how horrific and wrongheaded the Iraq War was, how its tentacles still shape America today, and how few consequences befell the people who sold it to the public.
Season 2 of Blowback, which will focus on the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro, is due to premiere on April 19, 2021.
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10. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Dan Carlin, also the host of the popular show Common Sense, is one of the better-known voices in podcasting. Hardcore History dives deep into historical events — chiefly wars and military history— with super-detailed episodes being released only a few times a year. But the hours-long episodes are always informative and entertaining, and they should last you a while. There's also a deep backlog if you're not already a listener. I'm currently making my way through a massive five-part series on the war in the Pacific during World War II and likely won't be finished with it for weeks.
11. Slow Burn
Slate's Slow Burnoffers a rotating cast of hosts and a new story each season. Basically, each one takes a historical event you might thinkyou know about, and then dives in to reveal way more about it than you ever knew.
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I've listened to the seasons covering the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, as well as the most recent season on the rise of David Duke. Both were fantastic.
12. The Age of Napoleon
The Age of Napoleon became one of my (many) quarantine obsessions. Host E.M. Rummage has churned out more than 80 impossibly detailed episodes about Napoleon Bonaparte. Well, not really just about Napoleon, although he is the sun around which the show orbits. Rummage embraces tangents and context, and is slowly working his way through the history surrounding Napoleon's era. The show might seem a little dry at first, but with time you too will become fascinated. I blew through the whole backlog and now eagerly await new episodes.
13. Uncivil
With just a dozen episodes, Uncivil is like a limited series on TV. In that short run of episodes, hosts Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika work to retell the story of the Civil War and dispel false notions that have become accepted truths.
14. Throughline
There is, of course, that famous idiom about how those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Throughline looks to correct any gaps in folks' knowledge. The NPR show seeks to connect the past with the present. It takes current headlines and parses how we got there by revisiting historical events.
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