Dan Carlin: Hardcore History

Bret44

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I'm a relative Hardcore History newb. I've listened to Wrath of the Khans, and maybe a few others a while back.

Can anyone give me a list of their favorites?

Prophets of Doom is my personal favorite, along with Thor's Angels. The one on the Nuclear War is a ******* eye opener. His series on The Fall of the Roman Republic is great. They are all good. I just payed $60 for his backlog and am going to work my way through them all. I love the description for one on the Apache Wars, "This is a long one!" It is and hour and eighteen minutes. ******* child's play compared to the Celtic Holocaust.
 

TykeClone

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Another history type podcast that is interesting but older is "the history of the world in 100 objects"

100 Episodes = 1.5 Hardcore history posdcasts
 
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Sigmapolis

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I think he doesn't want to talk about the mess that has become American politics. I'm sure he is saddened by that.

Something I appreciated about his "current events" podcasts (and I call them that rather than "politics" with intent) was he posted them relatively infrequently and tended not to talk about the sturm und drang of the daily news. He tended to try and talk about the deeper forces affecting the world, like technology, the structure of the economy and political economy, demographics, and the geopolitical interests of state and nonstate actors. That is, he looked at things from the perspective of a historian, one who understands the world is complex and things take time to play themselves out, not as a "modern" journalist, most of which have their brains so addicted to the news cycle, Twitter, and instant shots of dopamine they cannot bring themselves to see anything else.

There aren't a lot of public intellectuals out there who try and bring that kind of perspective anymore. Hence, I miss having his updates, even if his output of history podcasts have picked up in recent years.
 

CloneLawman

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Something I appreciated about his "current events" podcasts (and I call them that rather than "politics" with intent) was he posted them relatively infrequently and tended not to talk about the sturm und drang of the daily news. He tended to try and talk about the deeper forces affecting the world, like technology, the structure of the economy and political economy, demographics, and the geopolitical interests of state and nonstate actors. That is, he looked at things from the perspective of a historian, one who understands the world is complex and things take time to play themselves out, not as a "modern" journalist, most of which have their brains so addicted to the news cycle, Twitter, and instant shots of dopamine they cannot bring themselves to see anything else.

There aren't a lot of public intellectuals out there who try and bring that kind of perspective anymore. Hence, I miss having his updates, even if his output of history podcasts have picked up in recent years.
I miss them as well. I agree with your thoughts.
 

Sigmapolis

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Carlin has a metric ton of past content from ~15 years of history podcasting on his website you can buy for a few dollars an episode. But if looking for more, I highly recommend Martyrmade.

The host (Darryl Cooper) is like Carlin in that his takes on contemporary politics can be controversial, to say the least about him, but I've never detected him injecting the present day into the past (which is something a good historian never does and one of the easiest ways to spot a bad historian).

Two of his series in particular are excellent --

(1.) Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem

https://martyrmade.com/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem/

It is a longform history of Zionism, British and French colonialism in the Middle East, and the Israel/Palestine conflict up through the 1948 declaration of the State of Israel and the Palestine War. It is not for the faint of heart -- horrifying atrocities on both sides against the backdrop of certain terrible things that happened to Jewish people and many other people in the first half of the 20th Century -- but fascinating for telling the full version of a story few people know about from Theodor Herzl through roughly 1950.

(2.) God's Socialist

https://martyrmade.com/gods-socialist-the-rise-and-fall-of-peoples-temple/

Most people know the basics of this (weird guy in dark sunglasses leads cult to the jungles of Guyana, don't drink the Kool-Aid haha) but there is so much more to it. Firstly, it wasn't Kool-Aid, it was Flavor Aid, and secondly, Jones is a fascinating figure with so many contradictory aspects and mysteries. Cooper starts with his upbringing in small-town Indiana and follows him to Indianapolis to found Peoples Temple, to California, and then to the end in Guyana. He interweaves the story with the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s and the political upheavals and variant and violent radicalism of the 60s and early 70s.

Both are really long, so if you are looking for something to do on a cross-country drive, here you go.
 

Gunnerclone

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Hell yes. Love Hardcore History. I’m glad Dan is focusing on his history podcasts and I think he’s telling us something it’s the lack of Common Sense content.

Common Sense is dead, everyone better learn their history because it’s coming for us.
 

simply1

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Hell yes. Love Hardcore History. I’m glad Dan is focusing on his history podcasts and I think he’s telling us something it’s the lack of Common Sense content.

Common Sense is dead, everyone better learn their history because it’s coming for us.
I think it’s pretty clear what he’s thinking given the episodes he did put out.
 

Al_4_State

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Prophets of Doom is my personal favorite, along with Thor's Angels. The one on the Nuclear War is a ******* eye opener. His series on The Fall of the Roman Republic is great. They are all good. I just payed $60 for his backlog and am going to work my way through them all. I love the description for one on the Apache Wars, "This is a long one!" It is and hour and eighteen minutes. ******* child's play compared to the Celtic Holocaust.
I've tried to buy the backlog before but it seems like a weird interface or something. Does it sync up with the podcast apps?
 

NorthCyd

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I started to listen to his WW1 Hardcore History because I didn't know that much about the war and thought it would be great to learn. I actually posted about it a few pages back in this thread. I thought it was great until he really got bogged down into describing how horrible trench warfare was. I get it. It may have been the worst thing that human kind ever had to endure, but that doesn't mean I need to hear intricate details about how horrible it was for what seemed like over an hour. Eventually I started listening to something else and never went back. I should try to pick it up again and just fast forward through that part.
 
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Gunnerclone

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I've tried to buy the backlog before but it seems like a weird interface or something. Does it sync up with the podcast apps?

This is a problem. When I bought the backlog I had to listen to it like an audio recording in a text message and it wasn’t a clean experience at all.
 

Sigmapolis

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I started to listen to his WW1 Hardcore History because I didn't know that much about the war and thought it would be great to learn. I actually posted about it a few pages back in this thread. I thought it was great until he really got bogged down into describing how horrible trench warfare was. I get it. It may have been the worst thing that human kind ever had to endure, but that doesn't mean I need to hear intricate details about how horrible it was for what seemed like over an hour. Eventually I started listening to something else and never went back. I should try to pick it up again and just fast forward through that part.

I don't disagree with this -- much of that series was just describing the terror and the horrors experienced by the common fighting man on static fronts, especially in France and the Gallipoli campaign.

I thought his hammering of that served both a dramatic and a historical purpose, though. For most of the men involved, that was what the war was like. "Go out to your backyard, dig a hole, and live in it for four years while artillery rains down on you." We get it, yes, but the repetitive monotony of it is for effect.
 
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Al_4_State

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I started to listen to his WW1 Hardcore History because I didn't know that much about the war and thought it would be great to learn. I actually posted about it a few pages back in this thread. I thought it was great until he really got bogged down into describing how horrible trench warfare was. I get it. It may have been the worst thing that human kind ever had to endure, but that doesn't mean I need to hear intricate details about how horrible it was for what seemed like over an hour. Eventually I started listening to something else and never went back. I should try to pick it up again and just fast forward through that part.
Thing is, that's what WW1 actually was. You can't tell that story without nailing that over, and over, and over.

It's (bar none) the most horrific war in human history from a battlefield stand point and no generation of homo sapiens should ever forget what happened in it.
 

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