Recommend me a good history podcast or three?

Very SPECIFIC history, but The Seattle Files is a fun listen:

Sawbones! A marital tour of misguided medicine…and thus some of the funniest and most horrific history ever!

http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones

Guys, History on Fire is really good, if you can put up with the accent (I obviously don’t mind, mine is worse!).

Not exactly Dan Carlin cut similar enough (although this tells more of a straight story).

I enjoyed the show for a little while, but the overall condescending tone (in the vain of “boy, were people stupid back then” - sort of an anti-Dan Carlin approach, to bounce back on the previous posts) got the best of me.
Even if it’s meant to be for comedy, I think adressing our still very actual own lack of understanding of the human body would not hurt that show.

Radiolab played their new podcast’s second season premier this week. The podcast is “A More Perfect Union” I believe, and it’s all about Supreme Court decisions. This was a great episode that took place mostly in the 40s when Japanese were interned in concentration camps during World War 2.

I’m going to check out the podcast’s first season too. A podcast that focuses on Supreme Court cases sounds like a great topic for a history podcast.

Try Our Fake History, a very solid podcast that tackles well know historical myths (did Nero actually play the fiddle while Rome burned, was there a real Robin Hood) and finds their origin and degree of truth.

Thanks for the recommendation. I started by picking a topic I knew a lot about, the story of Theseus. A lot of mythology has been built up around the Minoans even in the last couple hundred years, but he did a great job of picking out which parts of it have some basis in history. He’s even honest about admitting how little we can know now about events back then. Now that I know I can trust him, it looks like I’ve got about 50 episodes to catch up on.

More Perfect had their season 2 finale (it was also played on Radiolab this week), and it’s a big one. It’s all about the history of the Commerce Clause. The music in the episode is fantastic, and the whole thing is really well produced. It’s funny that in most of the episodes on this show, I not only end up understanding the conservative position on a number of these cases, I usually end up finding myself agreeing with the conservative position.

It was kind of frustrating though. Partly because of the usual faux naivete of the Radiolab presentation style (really, you’re making a Supreme Court podcast in the aftermath of Obamacare and you’re not familiar with the Commerce Clause at all?), and partly because of the unrepentance of that Olly’s (sp?) guy. Damn these agitators coming into our business and expecting us to comply with the law!

I also think it glossed over quite an important point. My previous understanding of the wheat case was that the farmer in question wasn’t selling any of it, at least not inter-state. But what they said on the podcast, as I recall, is that he claimed only not to be selling the bushels that were over the production quota, while selling the rest. That’s a pretty big difference. He’s definitely engaged in commerce while producing wheat, and the over-quota stuff is part of that, because otherwise he’d be using his quota wheat for himself and selling less than the full quota (unless the argument is a lie - in which case we don’t have a constitutional issue, but he would have lost the case anyway).

Of course, later jurisprudence seems to also have glossed over this point, so maybe they were right to on the podcast.

I should check out Perfect Union, sounds like. I have been listening to and enjoying what I think is a similarly themed “What Trump Can Teach Us About Constitutional Law”. One of the hosts does 99% Invisible, which is another podcast I haven’t heard much of (though my wife likes it). The format of Trump & Con Law is usually based on some outrage the president did or threatened to do, and a law professor talks about where that concept he is violating came from and why it is important, or what other interesting loopholes there are about it.

The biggest downside to the podcast is each episode is only about 20 minutes long and they squeeze two commercial breaks into it.

It’s not my favorite podcast, which is still “You Must Remember This”, but I listen to each episode as they come in.

Also, Hardcore History just updated with a new one, a long standalone about the public watching and getting off on executions. I’m about halfway through it and am fascinated and repulsed…just like those ancient audiences!

For me the most frustrating part is that they were using the commerce clause in the first place to settle civil rights matters. That the supreme court had already decided that the 14th amendment only applied to States, not to individuals. And then the Olly guy was unrepentant saying that the 10th amendment granting States rights should supersede the 14th Amendment anyway. The whole circular logic of this made me want to pull my hair out. So the 14th amendment should only apply to States, because of its wording, and yet, individuals in States should be allowed to discriminate against black people if their State laws allow it. And then the solution to the whole thing was to use the commerce clause? Arrrrgh. That just doesn’t seem like the right legal underpinnings to me at all.

By the way, in case people are having difficulty finding it, the podcast’s actual name is More Perfect.

99% Invisible is superb.See my recommendation above.It is also short.

Wickard v. Filburn is one of the worst SC decisions ever, and it’s still good law. Frustrating indeed.

Seconded. The recent episode interviewing Scott McCloud about comics (and visual design more generally) was just a delight.

Not sure how I missed this earlier but damn is this an awesome thread! I’ve never gotten into podcasts but this thread has me all giddy.

Got the Revolutions series on the American Rev and History of Rome. Tried Rome first but it felt really dry even with some of the humor. Maybe it was just the Latin names. Anyway, after the first one of those I jumped over to the beginning of the US Revolution and really liked it. To the point I’m almost ready to go back and start at the beginning of the Revolutions series rather than start with Am Rev.

I’m currently just using the Apple podcast doodad. Is there a better one?

Literally every other one is better.

Lol. That’s kind of what I remeber hearing and why I asked. I’ll check for a better one when I get to work

I’ve been listening to the Hardcore History episodes regarding World War 1. They’ve been pretty appropriately harrowing so far. But I recently got to the section on Russia’s Czar and Czarina, and their “friend” Rasputin. I can’t believe this is a real figure from history. Dan Carlin on the podcast compares him to Nick Nolte’s character on Down and Out in Beverly Hills. I hated that movie because of how unrealistic that whole scenario was. But it seems they stole that whole story from this Rasputin character. It’s crazy. It’s so unbelievable, that today instead of going forward with the podcast, I rewound and am listening to the whole Rasputin section again.

New recommendations anyone?

I’ve just started The WW2 Podcast which has a companion site and seems interesting, but haven’t yet listened to enough to make it a recommendation. I’m also trying WW2Nation.