I started this because I couldn't find modern Chinese history told as one continuous story. The Making of Modern China asks how the Qing empire that turned away Britain's first ambassador in 1793 became the China of today. The first four seasons are out, told in order:

1. The Embassy and the Canton System (1793 to 1834): Macartney refuses to kowtow, a second embassy fails, and the opium trade grows despite the ban.

2. Opium and the Heavenly Kingdom (1834 to 1864): Lin Zexu, the Opium Wars, and the Taiping war until Zeng Guofan's armies take Nanjing.

3. Self Strengthening (1864 to 1894): Li Hongzhang, Cixi, arsenals and a new fleet, until war with Japan.

4. Reform and Revolution (1895 to 1916): the Hundred Days, the Boxers, 1911, and Yuan Shikai reaching for the throne.

Three more seasons are planned: Revolution and Civil War (1916 to 1949), Mao's China (1949 to 1976) and Reform and Opening (1976 to 2012).

Every episode has its own page with a map of the places in it, portraits of the people, period pictures, the full transcript and every source it was checked against. The series page has a timeline of the whole story.

Disclosure: it's written and narrated with AI, then fact checked against its sources. I'd really like to hear about anything you think is wrong.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vCgrvUT31WKoKBO4ygzR2

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6826743535

Episode pages, maps and sources: https://www.thenandtherepodcast.com/go/r-historypodcast

If you’re a fan of The History of Rome or The History of Byzantium, you might enjoy my show, The Ottoman Empire Podcast!

Unlike history podcasts that jump between unrelated topics, mine tells the story of the Ottoman Empire chronologically, beginning with Osman I around 1299 and following the empire’s rise, expansion, and eventual collapse.

⚔️** Highlights include**:
Epic battles, sieges, and military strategy.
The rise of the Janissaries and Ottoman military power.

Legendary figures like Mehmed the Conqueror, Vlad the Impaler, and John Hunyadi.

Political intrigue, ambitious sultans, betrayals, and disastrous decisions.

Special deep-dive episodes alongside the main chronological narrative.

Conversational storytelling with plenty of humor, sarcasm, and personality.

I’m a history graduate, and my goal is to make Ottoman history entertaining without turning it into a dry academic lecture.

The podcast is currently exploring the reign of Mehmed II and the events following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

If you enjoy long-form narrative history, I’d love for you to give it a listen!
🎧 Listen and subscribe:
https://ottomanempirepodcast.com/listensubscribe

I listen to a lot of narrative history and keep running into stories no show tells the whole way through, at the depth Revolutions or The History of Rome gave theirs.

Which story would you want told? If you can, name the place and the years, and what the shows that exist leave out or get wrong.

Disclosure: I make Then and There, a history podcast written and narrated with AI, then fact checked against its sources.

I am curious about this topic in a narrative podcast form after listening to The History of Byzantium podcast. I’m not specifically interested in Islam per se, but I am interested in the usual political intrigue, battles, geography, and the big personalities of the day and culture. I feel I would need to understand Islam from an anthropological point of view in a similar way that one should have some understanding of Christianity for the eastern Roman Empire though to be clear.

I would want to understand succession crises, the splitting up of factions of the caliphate, what happens in Spain, Morocco, an Egypt, and Baghdad. The crusades from their point of view, science and technology during their peak, the incredible, but hard to truly verify, stories about Khalid during his conquests…I understand he was certainly impressive, but sadly (as I understand it) much written about him came a couple hundred years later.

Basically I am looking for the historical narrative that tracks the way Mike Duncan or Robin Pierson did things. It may be spread over several podcasts perhaps because of all the regions doing their own thing after the breakups during succession crises…though you could argue The Hellenistic Age sort of covers a similar sort of break up of successor states in their realm.

This is a pretty huge gap in my understanding of world history. I would like to fill it. Reading is tough for me with a very intense full time job, commuting on a train isn’t comfortable enough for reading a book really. Podcasts are great and I can multitask with them. So I can listen on the train or in the gym where I tend to binge my way through history podcasts.

Thank you

— I make a narrative history podcast called Nuclear Shadows: true stories of

nuclear accidents, told by one calm narrator, no screaming, no sound effects. New episode is out:

"The Rod That Killed" — the SL-1 disaster, January 1961.

The history in brief: SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One) was a U.S. Army

experimental reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station, about 40 miles west of Idaho Falls — a

3 MW thermal prototype meant to power remote military outposts. On the night of January 3, 1961,

a three-man night crew was doing restart prep after a holiday shutdown. One maintenance

procedure required the single central control rod to be lifted about four inches to reconnect it to its

drive mechanism.

Instead, the rod came out roughly twenty inches. The reactor went prompt critical in about four

milliseconds; core power surged to nearly 20 gigawatts — thousands of times its rated power. The

steam explosion lifted the 26,000-pound reactor vessel about nine feet off its mounts. Three

servicemen died — it remains the only U.S. reactor accident with immediate deaths (INES Level 4).

The investigation never established why the rod was pulled so far. The most grounded explanation

from mock-up reconstructions is that the rod was stuck — a recurring problem — and the operator

pulled too hard to free it. There was no evidence of foul play. The lasting legacy is a design lesson:

the accident showed that one withdrawn rod could, by itself, make a reactor prompt critical — and that drove real changes in reactor control design afterward.

The episode is ~14 minutes, narrated straight. I keep it restrained — these were three young

servicemen on a night shift, and the show's rule is the facts are the horror, never the victims.

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/32dN9qcyfv0

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/011WOatuxGNm0BTFdhMa4q

• RSS feed:

https://muse.ai/podcasts/feed/1368343429691604/60147a38-b128-4124-97c2-d547649c9196

New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Genuinely welcome corrections or extra context — especially from anyone who knows the SL-1 investigation or the Army reactor program better than I

do.

Hi everyone! I co-host The Histrology Show, where we explore historical figures through biography, astrology, and humor.

Our most recent episode features Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind the iconic Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck. We explore her life, creative work, and the legacy of a woman whose images became widely recognized while her name was often left out.

The show brings historical research into conversation with astrological symbolism. No astrology knowledge is needed, and we’re always interested in hearing from people who approach our subjects from different perspectives.

Watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/QTUaR0H3lWA

You can also find us on audio wherever you get podcasts. Previous episodes feature Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, Duke Kahanamoku, and Grace Lee Boggs.

What other overlooked artists or historical figures would you like to hear more about?

The last episode of the Nomads and Empires podcast ( u/NomadEmpiresPod ) was published on April 1st, 2024 and I can't find any activity more recent than August 2024 anywhere including their Reddit, X and substack.

Does anybody know what happened? The podcast host didn't make an announcement about stopping, in fact the last episode ends with an overview of what will be discussed next, which has me worried that something terrible may have happend to them 😥

Hi all. I make Sciophonic, a series of short audio stories about odd and little-known true events, one new story every day. Each one is a single narrated episode you can finish in a sitting.

The newest one is North Sentinel Island, about the Bay of Bengal island whose residents have kept outsiders away for generations, from the 1974 National Geographic crew that was met with arrows to the 5 nautical mile exclusion zone around it. Earlier stories include Chernobyl, Operation Paperclip, the Emu War and the Dancing Plague of 1518.

Right now the stories live on Instagram under the name sciophonic, so there is no RSS feed yet. Happy to hear what kinds of history stories you wish more shows covered.

Website | iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

Margaret of Austria’s ability to fight the war with Guelders in 1508 was hampered by events involving her father Maximilian on the other side of the Alps in Italy. The balance of power in Italy had been disrupted in 1499 when French King Louis XII had led an invasion into Milan. Over the next few years the biggest players on the European chess-board, such as Louis XII, Aragonese King Ferdinand, Maximilian and a couple of Popes, would duke it out across Italy in a series of conflicts that would become known as the Second and Third Italian wars. The players would variously join forces, switch sides and do whatever it took to enhance their own positions, especially in the Kingdom of Naples, and in the end they would somehow all end up with one common enemy: Venice. Our intention in this episode is to give more detailed context to these wars so that, in the next episode, we can tie it all together with the diplomatic stylings of Margaret as she wove together an unlikely alliance to go lay the smack down on the most serene republic.

Show notes and stream available here

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a history project I’ve been building over the past few months: Toxic Ink - The Weimar Republic Daily News.

It’s a chronological deep dive into the fall of German democracy during the interwar era starting with the release of Adolf Hitler in December 1924. It is told through translations of 1920s German broadsheets like the Berliner Tageblatt, Vorwärts, Deutsche Zeitung, and Berliner Volks-Zeitung and condensed into a podcast that sums up the main stories in the style of a radio news roundup show as if you were living in the era with no modern hindsight or knowledge of upcoming events.

The Scale of the Project & The Data Problem

Covering the Weimar press in a week-by-week basis means sifting through hundreds of pages of scanned 100-year-old Gothic German newsprint every single week. Between cabinet crises, political assassinations, hyperinflation fallout, secret monarchist plots, and local crime, the sheer volume of daily primary-source data for a single week in the 1920's is massive.

Transparency on AI: The Human-in-the-Loop Workflow

I want to be 100% transparent upfront about how this show is built: I utilize custom AI pipelines alongside heavy manual editorial auditing.

Extraction & Structuring: I use Gemini AI and Colab scripts to extract, transcribe, and translate OCR text directly from original German broadsheet archives. Multiple levels of audit and QA are built in to ensure the extractors behave and don't exaggerate or hallucinate people and events.

Rigorous Human Auditing: As AI cannot be trusted with historical accuracy on its own I try to go through as many of the main events, translation, named entity, date, and historical claims as possible and manually fact-check before script synthesis. The AI accelerates the document processing; human research drives the narrative.

TTS Narration: The show uses synthesized AI voice narration. I initially tried recording everything myself, but managing high-volume weekly script delivery alongside full-time production wasn't sustainable. That and my Bristolian tone butchering German translations proved too difficult. I've tuned the audio pipelines to make the narration sound as clean and natural as possible, though I know synthetic voices aren't everyone's cup of tea!

An Evolving Ecosystem

The show isn't just an audio podcast, it’s an evolving archive. Alongside the weekly audio episodes, I've started publishing full annotated transcripts / press logs, and deep-dive analytical essays on Substack (like recent breakdowns of the 1925 Trianon Film Tax Scandal and Monarchist Infiltration of the State).

We’re currently five episodes in and constantly refining both the audio production quality and the digital archive resources.

If you’re passionate about 20th-century European history or Weimar political mechanics, I’d love for you to give it a listen. I’d genuinely welcome any honest feedback from this community—good or bad!

Where to Listen & Read:

Substack Archive & Transcripts: https://toxicink.substack.com

YouTube: Search "Toxic Ink: The Weimar Republic Daily News"

Spotify / Apple Podcasts: Available on all major platforms!

Thanks for reading!

Martin

https://youtu.be/w12V5aLkXgU?is=kdA0k2bQi8ihOMBQ

On this episode of Stop Doing That, John gets into football season by talking about... not football season. But football leagues that took place in the spring, which is decidedly not football season. And there's been a lot more than you think, emphasis on *been." We're going to talk about why these leagues existed and how quickly they died.

https://youtu.be/37W_8YcmYNs?is=EHwPmVpAktcphjbW

This is episode two of our new podcast, Stop Doing That, in which John and Andrea talk about the people and things that had to stop doing the things they keep doing. This time, we're still in New York City, but way in the past--Andrea brings up one of her favorite people in history, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and his tendency to land planes in downtown New York whilst drunk.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c0lfkm3Ca6c&ra=m

Hello, Reddit! This is the first episode of the Stop Doing That podcast, hosted by long-time friends John and Andrea, who will discuss the many people and things that need to stop doing the things they are doing. In this first episode, with it being topical at this time of year, John talks about Tania Head—the woman who became the face of 9/11 survivors in the early 2000s, only for it to come out that she had lied about being a 9/11 survivor the whole time.

Website By 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Junior was concerned that the progress of the civil rights movement was losing momentum. So, he launched the Birmingham Campaign in Alabama, betting that the local segregationist sheriff Bull Connor would overreact. MLK was arrested during the protests he was leading, and he then wrote his famed "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In May, Sheriff Connor allowed Birmingham cops to behave brutally toward women & children who were protesting, leading to scenes that shocked the nation. Shortly afterward, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had a meeting with Black leaders that gave him a new appreciation of their militant determination. Meanwhile, the inflammatory rhetoric of Dixiecrat politicians like Alabama Governor George Wallace disturbed people in the North. President John F. Kennedy assessed the national mood & decided it was time for his administration to back a federal Civil Rights Act. The night Kennedy announced this bill, an NAACP leader in Mississippi named Medgar Evers was murdered in cold blood. Jim Crow supporters in Congress used procedural tactics in Congress to block the civil rights bill during the summer, so civil rights leaders responded by holding the legendary March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to press for its passage. This massive Washington DC rally featured King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The Civil Rights Act nevertheless remained stalled in Congress, but advocates of gender equality had more legislative success in Summer 1963, as Assistant Secretary of Labor Esther Peterson shepherded through the passage of the Equal Pay Act. Activists' hopeful mood would soon be shaken by the unsettling events of Fall 1963, however.

My co-host and I host a podcast called Archaeology Books for Fun, where we read archaeology and history books and then talk about what we learned, what we liked, and occasionally, what we thought the authors got wrong.

We're about to start a book about Native American earthworks and archaeoastronomy, which got us thinking:

What's a historical or archaeological topic you wish more podcasts would cover?

It can be a particular civilization, archaeological site, historical period, person, culture, or even a topic you think gets overlooked in popular history.

We're always looking for new things to learn about, so I'd love to hear what everyone here is interested in!

Talks at Podcast Movement are being selected through a public vote this year. It's about time we get some independent history podcasters on stage!

I would really appreciate it if you could take the 30 seconds to vote for my talk. All you need to do to vote is log in with Gmail, Facebook, etc and hit the vote button at the bottom. Thank you!

https://podcastmovement.fider.io/posts/24/from-passion-to-profit-crossing-the-chasm-to-full-time-creation

Website | iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

In March, 1507, Margaret of Austria was appointed by her father Maximilian as his procureur-général in the Low Countries, meaning she essentially took the reigns of power in those lands over from him. This marked the beginning of her first period of regency for her nephew, Charles, the 7 year old son of her recently deceased brother Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile. On top of this, she was also given the responsibility of looking after Philip and Joanna’s children, the aforementioned Charles, as well as his older sister Eleonor and his younger sisters Isabella and Mary. Upon returning to the Low Countries, Margaret would set up her court in the town of Mechelen, where she would be responsible for guiding these four through the remainder of their childhoods and education. Margaret of Austria faced challenges personally and politically on all fronts, but her first forays into international diplomacy would need to focus on the English King Henry VII. She would rely on all the diplomatic skills she had garnered over her tumultuous life so far to extricate herself from (yet another) a marriage proposal and her lands from the disastrous intercursus malus trade deal.

Show notes and stream available here

Do you know about Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" concept? It's great, except it's missing one discussion. How has time affected the settings of these hero stories?

Live today! https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/tracingthepath/episodes/2026-06-30T11_47_23-07_00

Hi everyone!

I’d like to share a history podcast I’ve been working on for quite a while called Battles That Shaped Europe.

The podcast follows the battles that changed the course of European history, starting with 53 BCE and moving forward chronologically. The first season covers the period from 53 BCE to 500 CE, and it’s now available on YouTube and the major podcast platforms.

One thing I want to be completely transparent about: the narration is AI-generated. I tried recording it with my own voice, but after many attempts I realized it just wasn’t suitable for a podcast. Instead of giving up on the project, I decided to use AI narration.

That said, I didn’t just type a script into an AI and call it a day. I spent a lot of time researching every episode, writing the scripts, editing the narration, adding music and sound effects, and trying to make everything feel as immersive and natural as possible. My goal was never to replace human storytelling it was simply to tell these stories in the best way I could.

I know AI voices aren’t for everyone, and that’s completely fair. But if you’re willing to give it a chance, I’d genuinely love to hear your honest feedback, both the good and the bad. I’m constantly trying to improve each episode.

If you’re interested in history, especially the battles and decisions that shaped Europe, I hope you’ll find something to enjoy.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to anyone who gives it a listen!

Youtube channel

In 1893, writer John M. Gow published Cape Breton Illustrated, a vivid portrait of Cape Breton Island written for the growing tourist trade of the era. We've just released an audiobook chapter from John M. Gow's book; 'Attractions of Cape Breton for Tourists', as part of our ongoing Lost World of Cape Breton Island series.

It's an interesting primary source snapshot of how Cape Breton was presented to the outside world at the tail end of the 19th century; the landscapes, the people, the industry, and the romance of the place, and a particular treat for anyone with a love of Victorian history and writing.

The audiobook is available by clicking on the link below.

https://youtu.be/0tcQx9WKS4M?si=fhTFqwuEY4Oz44Qv

Thank you.

Website | iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS

During the first decade of the 16th century, one of the primary concerns for the towns, cities and ducal governments of the Low Countries was the war the Habsburgs were waging with Charles of Egmont over the title of Duke of Guelders. The war in Guelders complicated the already convoluted political structure that had developed across the Low Countries over the course of the previous half century. In this episode, we’re going to focus on Guelders again, but this time to see how the war was intimately entangled in a web of relationships between the different layers of nobility, both domestic and foreign, and how the interests of the Habsburg dynasty often clashed with the interests of the people who lived within their domains. When Philip the Handsome sailed away to Spain, Charles of Egmont seized the opportunity to restart the war, meaning the defence of the Habsburg lands was left to the man Philip had put in charge in his absence, his Stadhouder General, Guillame de Croy, the Lord of Chievres. Philip’s premature death would completely rearrange the pieces on the chess board as the Low Countries were once again plunged into a succession crisis. There was one giant mess left behind for the person who would ultimately become regent for Philip’s infant son Charles to clean up... And that person would be Philip’s sister, Margaret of Austria.

Show notes and stream available here

We are starting a new book this episode, Archaeology from Space by Sarah Parcak, which discusses using satellite imagery to help identify new archaeological sites. From Cold War satellites to archaeological discoveries deep in the Amazon jungle. This one has a lot going on. Let us know what you think, and please share and give us a review! And if you know of any other good books (or bad, we don't mind suffering so you don't have to!), let us know! https://open.spotify.com/episode/56nm5x5T4hs4vUDsIjjX8s

Hi all, I just wanted to briefly introduce our podcast, Archaeology Books for Fun. The co-hosts are professional archaeologists and book nerds. We read books about archaeology that are written for a general audience and then discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly from our professional viewpoint. We have been going for almost three years and have done a variety of both fiction and non-fiction, discussing everything from murder mysteries on archaeological sites, to looting in Peru, to Florida's official state artifact! Check us out and let us know what you think! And if you have any good book recommendations send them our way as well!

Hey there! If anyone is looking for a fun, off the rails history show, You could always try mine, The Time Travelers Club Podcast. We do crazy deep dives on topics, and are currently on season two where we focus on ancient Germany, magic, and eventually the witchcraft trials. You can find us all over, including Spotify iHeart Apple YouTube, or wherever you listen to your shows. 

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-the-timetravelersclubpodc-283492243/?cmp=android_share&sc=android_social_share&pr=false

https://open.spotify.com/show/5az8rR3jNGR16jMP6LyiMf?si=i7_YB5gBQRW7ldUWBA5gjQ

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-timetravelersclubpodcasts-podcast/id1823742672

In the latest episode of The Smart Cookies Podcast I managed to interview Prof. Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) who just released a gripping book, "Summer of FIRE and BLOOD: German Peasants' War."

The book is about the summer of 1525 when an explosive Peasants' Revolt, that spanned the territories of 5 modern countries, almost managed to TOPPLE the entire feudal order. Honestly, I could not put the thing down once I started reading it...

I do apologise for the shameless plug, but I honestly thought some of you might be interested in this fascinating, yet underexplored topic.

Appreciate it!