The History Onion

Víctor Jara, sometimes referred to as the “Bob Dylan of South America,” was a Chilean folk singer who rose to prominence in the 1960s as part of the nueva canción movement. His songs were often deeply political in nature, providing a voice for the Chilean working class and peasantry. In 1970, his recording of “Venceremos” (We Will Win) became the anthem of the left-wing Popular Unity coalition led by Salvador Allende. After winning the presidency, Allende made his victory speech in front of a banner that read, ‘You can’t have a revolution without songs.’The story of Víctor Jara is a tragic one; his life was brutally cut short in the aftermath of the 1973 coup that left President Allende dead and installed General Augusto Pinochet as the head of a military junta. One among thousands of people who were arrested and detained in the succeeding days, Jara was tortured and murdered in Estadio Chile on September 16th, 1973. His legacy, however, lives on. On today’s episode, we discuss the political and musical maturation of Víctor Jara, his influences and contemporaries in the nueva canción movement, and his murder at the hands of the nascent Pinochet dictatorship.Show NotesFundación Víctor JaraBad Bunny tribute to Víctor JaraVictor Jara: The folk singer murdered for his musicBritannica article on nueva canciónBritannica bio of JaraThe Life and Death of Victor JaraCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

For our 50th episode (!!), we are excited to present our January interview with Marc Cooper.Marc Cooper is the former associate professor and director of Annenberg Digital News at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and the Washington Post. Currently, he is a contributing editor to The Nation.He has also produced or reported for CBS News, PBS Frontline, NBC, Pacifica Radio, and the CBC and BBC radio services. Among his books are the best-selling Pinochet and Me, a memoir that tells the story of his time in Chile serving as a translator for Salvador Allende’s government and the subsequent coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.Today, we’ll be discussing that memoir, Pinochet and Me, as well as broader topics relating to the politics and history of Chile.Show NotesPurchase a copy of Pinochet and Me by Marc CooperRead Marc Cooper’s contributions to Truthdig hereCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We are excited to share our interview with Juliana DeVaan, a PhD candidate in US history at Columbia University, where she studies 20th-century cultural and intellectual history.Her work has been supported by the New York State Archives, New York Public Library, Getty Research Institute, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, among other institutions. You can read Juliana’s writing in Public Books, Jacobin, and The Drift.We discuss two of her excellent pieces in Jacobin about New York City history and urban planning, linked below in the show notes. Juliana brings great insight into how to re-read the legacy of Robert Moses, one of New York’s many infamous characters, and reviews an important recent book: Daniel Wortel-London’s The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981. And we can’t discuss progressive politics in New York City without mentioning Zohran Mamdani, so be sure to listen for our perspectives on his tenure thus far.Show Notes“The City the Rich Built — and Broke,” Juliana DeVaan“An Urban Legend,” Juliana DeVaanCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We are excited today to share our interview with Ariel Dorfman, an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Professor Dorfman served as a cultural adviser to Chilean President Salvador Allende’s Chief of Staff during the last months of Allende’s presidency, and wrote a seminal critique of US cultural imperialism, How to Read Donald Duck, during this time. He was forced into exile, ending up in the United States in 1980 following the military coup led by General Pinochet in 1973.Often dealing with historical and political themes, his books have been published in over fifty languages and his plays performed in more than one hundred countries. Death and the Maiden, his 1990 play written as Chile transitioned shakily from dictatorship to democracy, is a powerful political and psychological thriller dealing with the traumas of a country dealing with the aftermath of repressive authoritarian rule. His writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and more.Professor Dorfman is considered one of Latin America’s greatest novelists, with historical novels such as Allegro and Konfidenz, and he is currently the Walter Hines Emeritus Professor of Literature at Duke University.We are honored to have him on the show to discuss his novel The Suicide Museum.Show NotesPurchase a copy of The Suicide Museum hereCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We are excited to be joined on today’s show by investigative reporter and writer John Dinges. John Dinges has decades of experience covering Latin America, including as a foreign correspondent in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. He has worked for such publications as The Washington Post and NPR. While living in Chile between 1972 and 1978, he helped create three Chilean media organizations, including one of the leading investigative news magazines exposing military abuses under General Augusto Pinochet. He is currently the Godfrey Lowell Cabot Professor Emeritus of Journalism at Columbia University. On today’s episode, we discuss his most recent book, Chile in Their Hearts, which tells the story of two young Americans murdered in the aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup. During our conversation, we unfold the murder mystery, challenge the narrative of the murders presented by the popular 1982 Costa-Gavras film Missing, and discuss possibilities for truth and reconciliation within the United States. Show NotesPurchase a copy of Chile in Their Hearts hereJohn Dinges’s websiteCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We are excited to be joined today by Alex Williams, the principal US economist at Common Wealth, a progressive think tank operating across the US and UK, as well as a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Editor-in-Chief of the Substack newsletter Continuous Variation. Previously, Alex worked at Employ America, where he advocated for full employment policies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation about progressive economics. The first part of the episode takes us from Alex’s background as an economist to the economic record of the Biden administration, whose economic program has come to be known as Bidenomics. Alex’s recent piece for Common Wealth titled “Beyond Bidenomics” serves as the jumping-off point for this part of our conversation.As the episode goes on, we turn to a discussion about a progressive economic program for the future, digging into the importance of active state management of the economy, whether in terms of provision of basic needs like healthcare and housing or the transition away from fossil fuels and towards a green economy.This discussion links nicely with a new project by Common Wealth called Forces of Production, which is geared precisely towards facilitating effective state management of the economy by providing detailed analysis of economic data from a progressive perspective. More specifically, the project is a macro data newsletter that will be published monthly on Substack, with its first issue out next Monday, February 9th. We will link the newsletter’s launch post outlining what the project is all about in the show notes below, and definitely recommend you check it out.Show NotesForces of Production launch post: “Atop the Forces of Production” (1/20/26)CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today, we are joined once again by Jack Meyer (check out our previous episode with him here: “Abundance, with Jack Meyer”). Jack is an economics masters student at Oxford, as well as an aspiring political economist and economic historian. His current areas of study include innovation, development and inequality. You can find him on Twitter/X @jackbmeyer and on Substack, where he publishes the newsletter Public Works.On this episode, we discuss the employment impacts of artificial intelligence. This has become a hot topic of discourse over the last year or so, as AI progresses and many people’s anxiety increases about the potential for mass unemployment as a result of AI taking jobs that were once done by humans. So in this episode, we talk a bit about what AI might do to employment in the future, and we talk a lot about what it seems to be doing to the labor market right now. We take Jack’s recent Substack post “AI Might Not Be Taking Your Job Anytime Soon” as the jumping-off point for this conversation.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile was defined in large part by its brutally repressive nature. Its centralization of repression in the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional) and the centrality of repressive tactics even after the junta consolidated power made Pinochet’s Chile stick out in comparison to other contemporary Latin American dictatorships.In today’s episode, we discuss how to best define the Pinochet regime, then explain how Chile’s repression differed from that of its regional authoritarian contemporaries. We spend the bulk of the episode showing why brutal repression became synonymous with Pinochet’s government and outline the deadly existence of DINA. We conclude by drawing out important historical lessons we can glean from studying Pinochet’s authoritarianism as we are confronted with authoritarianism in the United States.We want to provide a content warning that this episode will deal with the intense violence perpetrated by agents of the Pinochet regime, including murder, torture, sexual violence, and more. These topics are both difficult to discuss and incredibly sensitive.Show NotesListen to The History Onion’s Modern Chile Series:* Revolutionary Road (Modern Chile Ep. 1)* Salvador Allende (Modern Chile Ep. 2)* The Economics of the Allende Years (Modern Chile Ep. 3)* The US in Chile: Part 1 (Modern Chile Ep. 4)* The US in Chile: Part 2 (Modern Chile Ep. 5)* The Pinochet Years (Modern Chile Ep. 6)CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

After a few months off, we are returning to our Modern Chile series with today’s episode. For our next episodes in this series, we will be covering the Pinochet years, defined primarily as the years between 1973 and 1990 in which General Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile as a brutal, bloody dictator. We will also investigate the efforts to bring Pinochet to justice following his ousting by a popular plebiscite in 1988 and the return to democracy in 1990. In this episode, we start by looking at an obituary written for General Pinochet in The New York Times, which provides us with insight into how Pinochet is remembered and the impact he had on Chile. We then discuss Pinochet’s background and how he came to lead the coup that would sound the death knell for President Salvador Allende and Chilean democracy. To close the episode, we describe a framework for studying Pinochet’s government proposed by scholar Carlos Huneeus in his book, The Pinochet Regime.There is a lot of history to dig into with this particular era in Chilean history, and we hope to shine a light on some of its most interesting and important aspects, all while drawing out the relevance of this period for our contemporary moment. Show NotesListen to The History Onion’s Modern Chile Series:* Revolutionary Road (Modern Chile Ep. 1)* Salvador Allende (Modern Chile Ep. 2)* The Economics of the Allende Years (Modern Chile Ep. 3)* The US in Chile: Part 1 (Modern Chile Ep. 4)* The US in Chile: Part 2 (Modern Chile Ep. 5)Real Dictators podcast - first Pinochet episode.NYT Obituary for Pinochet Seymour Hersch NYT article linking CIA to Chilean truckers’ strike 1974CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode is the second installation in our series on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Our first episode covered the very recent history of the conflict, looking at the round of violence that began in October of 2023 with a Hamas-led attack on Israel. The primary focus for that episode was the genocide that Israel has perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza since the fall of 2023.In this episode, we journey back to the early history of the conflict, looking at the linkages between Zionism and colonialism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As we investigate this early history, we introduce the overarching narrative put forward by Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian, in his popular book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, about the history of the conflict: that this has been “a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will” (pg. 9). Our discussion focuses on the ways in which the early history of the conflict fits into this narrative framework.Show NotesFalse Messiahs: How Zionism’s dreams of liberation became entangled with colonialism (Boston Review, Winter 2024 issue)Gaza in a Historical Perspective on Modern Genocide with Martin Shaw (ACMCU, 10/8/25)The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (Rashid Khalidi, 2020)CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today we are excited to release our excellent conversation with Professor Kristoffer Smemo, author of Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise. Professor Smemo is a historian of labor, politics, and popular culture in the United States at the University of California - Los Angeles. Both hosts of the show were incredibly lucky to have been taught by Professor Smemo at Washington University in St. Louis.Making Republicans Liberal details how a unique brand of liberalism developed within the Republican Party in response to mass movements of the mid-twentieth century. The book describes the contradictions and tension within this ideology, which we detail during our conversation. Importantly, we conclude the episode with a discussion of the lessons we can take away from the history of liberal Republicans as we try to regain control of our democracy today.Show NotesPurchase a copy of Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise here.Past episodes from The History Onion mentioned during the show:* Roosevelt’s Purge* The Republican EvolutionCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode marks the first installation of a new mini-series for the podcast. The series will cover the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and will take as a central text guiding us through this history a book titled The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, which was written by the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi.But before getting into the book, we wanted to start with an episode on the very recent history of the conflict—the round of violence that began on October 7th of 2023, when Hamas launched an attack against Israel that claimed the lives of roughly 1,200 people, and during which Hamas-led militants kidnapped about 250 people. As we discuss, what followed was an entirely disproportionate response by Israel, which, according to recent estimates, has left nearly 70,000 Palestinians dead. This response has risen to the level of genocide. That’s not just our opinion. This charge has been levied against Israel by a UN special committee, a UN commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, as well as human rights groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, and B’Tselem, among others.Throughout this episode, we cover the death toll in Gaza, as well as other grim statistics about the current situation. We then get into the need for strengthening international institutions that can enforce international law effectively. And we break down in greater detail why it’s accurate to label the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza since October of 2023 a genocide. The episode concludes with some discussion of the current ceasefire in Gaza.In the episodes following this one, we will return to the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict and trace the conflict from there up through the present. The plan is to use Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine to frame and inform these upcoming episodes to a substantial degree, but I’m sure we’ll end up incorporating plenty of other sources as well.Show NotesUNRWA Situation Report #195 on the Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem (UNRWA, 11/4/25)The Human Toll of the Gaza War: Direct and Indirect Death from 7 October 2023 to 3 October 2025 (Brown University, 10/7/25)For Cable News, a Palestinian Life Is Not the Same as an Israeli Life (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 11/17/23)Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, U.N. Inquiry Says (New York Times, 9/16/25)My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide (New York Times, 9/16/25)Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of GenocideWhere is the Gaza ‘peace process’ really going? (Guardian, 11/8/25)Israel resumes Gaza ceasefire after 104 Palestinians killed in airstrikes (Axios, 10/28/25)CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

For today’s episode, we spoke with Michael Foley, author of Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, for a wide-ranging discussion about Cash’s politics. We dissect Foley’s framework of a “politics of empathy” to describe how Cash navigated a complex political environment marked primarily by the various civil rights movements and the Vietnam War. Crucially, we consider the relevance of a politics of empathy in today’s climate, as well as the important role artists play in these increasingly troubling times.Show Notes* Find Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash here.* Michael Foley’s website* Learn more about Farm Aid here.* Johnny Cash sings “Man in Black” at Vanderbilt University CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we dig deep into the slop of AI discourse. We start by looking at the culture of hype that’s sprouted in Silicon Valley, then turn to the strange world that this hype has produced, and finally present a more sober view of AI, one that’s deeply historically grounded.Show NotesSilicon Valley Braces for Chaos — The Atlantic, 5/13/2025Sam Altman, Tim Cook, and other tech leaders lauded Trump at a White House AI dinner — Business Insider, 9/4/25AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event — The Atlantic, 8/18/25AI as Normal Technology — Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, 4/15/2025CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today we are thrilled to release our interview with Melat Kiros, a progressive candidate for Congress in Colorado’s 1st District. Kiros is running to unseat the longest-serving representative of Colorado’s current congressional delegation, Democrat Diana DeGette, and she is doing so with an unabashedly progressive platform. She has centered issues of affordable housing, healthcare, and money in politics throughout her campaign, and she has been outspoken against the genocide being perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians.Topics discussed include:* How to get money out of politics and fix corruption* Why Democratic resistance to Trump thus far has been largely ineffective* How the Democrats have failed on the genocide in Gaza and what to do about it * Why the free market isn’t what the right-wing says it isShow NotesMelat Kiros for ColoradoCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today we are joined by Jack Meyer, an economics masters student at Oxford, as well as an aspiring political economist and economic historian. His current areas of study include innovation, development and inequality. You can find him on Twitter/X @jackbmeyer and on Substack, where he publishes the newsletter Public Works.On this episode, we take on Abundance, a bestselling book published earlier this year by the liberal commentators Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Jack has written a great review of the book on his Substack, which you can check out here. We use his review as a jumping-off point for an expansive discussion of the book and contemporary American politics.Topics discussed include:* Abundance and state capacity* The policy program implied by Abundance, and its limits* The cross-ideological appeal of Abundance* Zohran Mamdani as an Abundance candidate* How Abundance could figure into the future trajectory of the Democratic PartyShow NotesA Note on Abundance (Jack Meyer, 9/15/25)The thesis statement of Abundance: “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.” (pg 3)The Meager Agenda of Abundance Liberals (Washington Monthly, 3/23/25)For a critique of the Abundance approach to state capacity: To Get Abundance, We Need to Discipline Capital (Jacobin, 6/17/25)CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today we are joined by Ross Barkan, an award-winning journalist, novelist, and essayist. Ross is the Editor-in-Chief of The Metropolitan Review, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, and a columnist for New York Magazine. He is also active on Substack, where he publishes his newsletter Political Currents. And he has a new novel, titled Glass Century, that is out now.On this episode, we discuss Ross’s recent book Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics. The book focuses on the decade or so of American politics leading up to the 2024 presidential election, and the first part of the title comes from a quote from the director of an influential Palestinian advocacy group, who is quoted in the front flap of the book as saying of the 2024 election: “It’s a choice between fascism or genocide.”CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We are happy to announce our first interview episode, featuring friend of show Spencer Hacker! Spencer is a social worker, an activist, and a political content creator. He is based out of Denver, Colorado, and he is making waves with his show Spencer on the Street, which you can find on Instagram and TikTok!On this episode, we talk with Spencer about his political journey and about the case for left-wing populism in America. We touch on the history of the populist movement, the failures of the Democratic establishment, and recent successes of left-wing populists such as Zohran Mamdani.Show NotesPrevious eps on populism: * The Pessimistic Style in American Politics* The Paranoid Style in American Politics* Listen, LiberalCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

We ended our last episode with the United States contemplating its next move against the Chilean left. The socialist Salvador Allende had just won the Chilean presidency in the 1970 election in spite of the US’s covert actions throughout the decade prior and its “Spoiling Operation” in the 1970 election.In today’s Part 2 of “The US in Chile,” we discuss how the US maneuvered to try to prevent Allende from being confirmed by the Chilean Congress, including their involvement in the assassination of General Rene Schneider. We then turn to the US’s posture towards Allende once he is confirmed by the Congress and remind our listeners of the US’s attempts to make the Chilean economy “scream.” Finally, we consider the US’s role in the 1973 coup that ousted Allende and installed General Augusto Pinochet as the head of a brutally repressive military dictatorship.Show NotesNational Security Archive on the Schneider Assassination60 Minutes Segment on KissingerInterview with Peter Kornbluh of the National Security ArchiveCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In the first of two episodes on the subject, we investigate the United States’s role in undermining the left wing in Chilean politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing extensively from the Senate Church Committee’s 1975 report, “Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973,” we show just how much money, time, and effort the United States spent on Chile in order to not just incapacitate the country’s left but to bolster its right wing. While the US’s covert actions were not enough to prevent socialist Salvador Allende’s ascension to the presidency in 1970, their work over the previous decade was not all for naught. We dig into the US’s involvement in the 1964 and 1970 presidential elections and begin to make links between US action in that time period and how it set up their role in the 1973 coup, which we will discuss at length in our next episode. Show NotesAllende’s final address to the people of Chile:* Audio/video* English transcript The Church Committee’s report: “Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973”CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode continues our coverage of modern Chile, focusing on the economics of the period of 1970-1973, during which Salvador Allende governed as president and his administration attempted to transition Chile towards a socialist economic system. We begin with a discussion of sources — who has written about the economics of the Allende years, and whose work will we be drawing upon. We then describe the economic performance of Chile before and during the Allende years, giving a sense of how Chile arrived to a state of economic chaos in 1973. Our next section breaks down the plausible reasons for poor economic performance in Chile under the Allende government, including some factors that were outside of the government’s control. Most of the rest of the episode centers on an analysis of the economic program of the Allende government, and why its attempt at a transition to socialism failed.We think there’s plenty for modern leftists to learn from this remarkable attempt at a socialist transition under a democratic political system. Though a poor selection of policies contributed to the collapse of the Allende government, which ultimately fell in a coup in the fall of 1973, future democratic socialist governments are not inevitably doomed to a similar fate.Show NotesFrom Bloomberg: “Chile Has Its Own Milei, and the Libertarian Is Just as Radical”From Tim Barker: “The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On”Alec Nove Wikipedia“Macroeconomic Populism” by Dornbusch and EdwardsFrom the NYT: “C.I.A. Is Linked to Strikes In Chile That Beset Allende”From the Zinn Project: “The Overthrow of Democracy in Chile — A Timeline”From Paul Rosenstein-Rodan: “"Why Allende Failed”From Alec Nove: “The Political Economy of the Allende Regime”From Victor Espinosa: “The political economy of fiscal dominance: Evidence from the Chilean government of Salvador Allende”From Sebastian Edwards: “The Debauchery of Currency and Inflation: Chile, 1970-1973”From MIT: “Project Cybersyn: Chile's Radical Experiment in Cybernetic Socialism”From PlasticPills (via YouTube): “Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile (Full Documentary by Plastic Pills)”From Sebastian Edwards: “The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism”CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

On our last episode, we gave an introduction to the history of Chile and a preview of the issues and themes we will be exploring throughout this series. Episode 2 will focus on the political life and evolution of Salvador Allende, perhaps the single most important person to this story.Allende’s legacy in Chilean politics and society is difficult to overstate, and he didn’t come out of nowhere; in fact, Allende had spent decades in Chilean politics prior to his victory in the 1970 presidential election. He learned from other left-wing movements that saw varying levels of success in Chile and developed his own theory of una vía chilena al socialismo — a Chilean road to socialism. Studying Allende, demystifying his legacy, and acknowledging his commitment to democracy is critical to understanding Chile and to digesting the key lessons this story has for any leftist political project.Show NotesSalvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat by Victor Figueroa ClarkMarian Schlotterbeck interview in Jacobin MagazineCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Chile is a country whose history cannot be disentangled from our own; one of history’s great coincidences reminds us of this. On September 11th, 1973, 28 years before the terror attack on the United States, the democratically elected government of socialist leader Salvador Allende was overthrown in a violent coup that left Allende himself dead. The ensuing 17 years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship led to at least 40,000 people being killed, tortured, or imprisoned. To say that the United States’s hands are not clean in these matters is an understatement.Join us as we explore the fascinating history and politics of Chile in a multi-episode series that will span from before Allende’s election to the recent political debates and struggles of modern Chile. In this first episode, we provide some necessary background about the country’s political system and its history of democracy. We leave off with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.Show NotesSalvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat by Victor Figueroa ClarkSalvador Allende quote on moving Chile towards socialism:We are moving towards socialism, not from an academic love for a doctrinaire system, but encouraged by the strength of our people, who know that it is an inescapable demand if we are to overcome backwardness and who feel that a socialist regime is the only way available to modern nations who want to build rationally in freedom, independence and dignity. We are moving towards socialism because the people, through their vote, have freely rejected capitalism as a system which has resulted in a crudely unequal society, a society deformed by social injustice and degraded by the deterioration of the very foundations of human solidarity.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we delve into John Maynard Keynes’s seminal essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” Published in 1930, the essay envisioned a future of prosperity and leisure for all. We explore his predictions, his optimism for the future, and the challenges that have prevented his utopian vision from becoming reality.Show NotesThe New Yorker: “No Time”Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)A favorite quote from the essay: “I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow… We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.”The golden age (2012)Keynes Predicted We Would Be Working 15-Hour Weeks. Why Was He So Wrong? (2015)Economic Possibilities for Our Overworked Grandchildren (2024)The Leisure Agenda (2019)Howard Zinn quote: “An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.”How have Keynes’s predictions fared?* Growth in GDP per capita from 1930 through 2022:* US: ~5.5x* Western Europe: ~6.5x* World: ~6x* Had to average the 1920 and 1940 values since 1930 was not available* Hours worked per week from 1929 through 2017:* US: declined from ~45 to ~34 hrs* UK: declined from ~43 to ~32 hrsCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

What would a world without work look like? How would we achieve that?Legendary activist James Boggs, writing in 1963, thought that the United States already had the means to create a post-work society: “Many people in the United States are aware that, with automation, enough could be easily produced in this country so that there would be no need for the majority of Americans to work.” But that hasn’t exactly panned out the way that Boggs envisioned it would. Why not? What can we take away from Boggs’s insights in what feels like an increasingly volatile labor market? Building on our last episode about technological progress, AI, and job displacement, we investigate Boggs’s vision for a post-work world.Show NotesThe American Revolution by James Boggs“James Boggs, the ‘Outsiders,’ and the Challenge of Postindustrial Society,” by Cedric JohnsonAlyssa Battistoni writing in The Nation about Aaron Benanav’s book, Automation and the Future of Work.Article critiquing the “long downturn” theoryAltman on AIAltman changes mind on TrumpElon Musk’s Dystopian AI FutureCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Will AI take all of our jobs? We don’t know. What we do know is that smart people have repeatedly claimed throughout history that technological progress will create long-run mass unemployment, and yet that has never become become reality. In this episode, we dig into the debate over technological unemployment and the history of this concept. We conclude by providing users with a toolkit for better assessing claims about whether technological progress will cause mass unemployment.Show NotesCNN clip: “AI company's CEO issues warning about mass unemployment”Dario Amodei fearmongering in Axios article: “Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath”Other Media:* The Majority Report is warning about an AI Job Crisis* The New York Times is discussing a possible AI Job Apocalypse* Meanwhile, the Economist is saying “any jobs-pocalypse seems a long way off” and the WSJ just ran an op-ed titled “No, AI Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs”NYT: “Job Market Is Getting Tougher for College Graduates”NY Fed: The Labor Market for Recent College GraduatesBLS Projections"A world without work: technology, automation and how we should respond" with Daniel SusskindWikipedia entry on “technological unemployment”Paul Krugman on Technological UnemploymentA graph of the unemployment rate over time:“The fear of technology-driven unemployment and its empirical base,” from the Centre for Economic Policy ResearchChange in Occupational Structure, 1860 to 2015The Rise of Services“Hours of Work in U.S. History”, from the Economic History AssociationHow many workers are there in the US?* 163 millionNumber of unemployed workers?* 7 millionHow many layoffs and discharges were there in April?* 1.8 million layoffs and dischargesAlso:* 5.6 million hires* 3.2 million quitsMass LayoffsCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss the neoliberal order, its rise and whether it has fallen. Our discussion is geared towards understanding the present moment and whether it represents a break with neoliberalism. However, to ground our analysis, we take a long detour through the history of neoliberalism, with a focus on a seminal neoliberal figure: Milton Friedman.Show Notes“The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism,” by Louis Menand“The Levels and Trends in Deep and Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1993-2016,” by David Brady and Zachary Parolin“Has Neoliberalism Really Come to an End?” — an interview with Gary Gerstle in The NationThe Chile Project, by Sebastian EdwardsCapitalism and Freedom, by Milton FriedmanEconlib blogpost about Friedman’s views on segregationAbundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek ThompsonCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Is Trump the new FDR? Rich Lowry, in his recent article for the National Review, certainly thinks so. In this episode, we discuss whether Lowry’s arguments hold any water (spoiler alert: they don’t) and consider whether the Democrats need to embrace the legacy of FDR more strongly (spoiler alert: they do).Show NotesNathan Robinson’s article about FDR is titled “Do We Need a Second New Deal?” in the online edition; the print edition title is “Do We Need a New FDR?” as referenced in the show.For our discussion on Roosevelt’s Purge, click here.Click here to visit the Living New Deal website and explore their resources about the New Deal. This link will take you directly to the national map of New Deal sites.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the leading public intellectuals in America, found himself in a media firestorm after the release of his book, The Message, in the fall of 2024. Once a darling of the liberal elite—though perhaps more because of who they wanted him to be than because of who he really was—Coates received scorn from many in the media for daring to question, in particular, America’s perception of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle.Coates has gifted us an incredible piece of writing and scholarship as he bears witness to some of the most prevalent myths plaguing our world today. We break down what makes this book controversial—and why its controversies are, in reality, its greatest strengths.Show NotesWatch Coates’s full interview with Tony Dokoupil here.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer.Audio production by Nate Nakshian Ward. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we cover the history and return of the economic ideology known as mercantilism, an ideology that is once again taking center stage in American and global politics. We begin with a discussion of the resurgence of mercantilism, embodied prominently in Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Then we look back to the origins of mercantilism in the 16th and 17th centuries, at the same time that capitalism began its rise to dominance. We trace the development of mercantilist thought following the Smithian challenge/critique and end back in the present to wrap up the episode.Show NotesThe core book for this episode is A History of Economic Thought by Isaac Rubin.“We Are All Mercantilists Now,” by Greg JensenPre-election interview with Trump on tariffsEric Helleiner talk on neomercantilismThe Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History, by Eric HelleinerRadical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder, by Christian ParentiFrom Le Monde: 'Trump's return to the White House consecrates the rebirth of the original form of capitalism'Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, by Ha-Joon ChangCreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Nationalism is a dirty word, but maybe it doesn’t have to be—at least, that’s what acclaimed historian Jill Lepore argues in This America (2019). In this episode, we break down Lepore’s passionate “case for the nation” and her argument that we can, in fact, create a liberal nationalism.If you liked our discussion of Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, we build on that conversation and consider which perspective holds more value for progressive activists, historians, and thinkers.Show NotesRead Daniel Immerwahr’s critique of Lepore in The Nation here.Read Mary Church Terrell’s speech,“What It Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States,” here.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer.Audio production by Nate Nakshian Ward. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss the philosopher G.A. Cohen’s book Why Not Socialism?, published in 2009. We talk about his case for socialism, the arguments for and against market socialism, and what we think socialism could look like.CreditsTheme music by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.Editing by Martin Fischer.Audio production by Nate Nakshian Ward. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we take a look back at the Biden administration and what its economic legacy will be. The administration got off to a remarkable and surprisingly progressive start with a nearly $2 trillion stimulus package in early 2021 that sent the US economy rocketing towards full employment and a strong recovery from the Covid downturn. It then turned its attention towards expanding social spending and tackling climate change, doing a sort of mini Green New Deal, with legislation that came to be known as Build Back Better. This was killed in late 2021 by conservative Democrat Joe Manchin. What emerged from the ashes was a nationalistic industrial policy that has both re-shored manufacturing jobs and ratcheted up tensions with China. It promises to fight climate change through tax incentives for green industry and tariffs on Chinese goods. We have some concerns about this change in the Democrats’ policy orientation, and we dive into them on the pod.Show NotesBiden walking off into the Amazon rainforestKate Aronoff: “Why Bidenomics Failed to Win the White Working Class”Adam Tooze: “Great Power Politics”Andrew Elrod: “What Was Bidenomics?”Conor’s 2023 piece for Current Affairs about the progressive side of BidenomicsJake Sullivan: “The New Old Democrats”David Brooks: “Maybe Bernie Sanders Is Right”New Yorker piece on Bidenomics: “Bidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed?”CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss Susan Dunn’s book Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party. The book details the fascinating historical episode of the 1938 midterms, during which FDR decided to intervene directly in Democratic primaries against conservative Democrats. Roosevelt’s express goal was to tranform the Democratic Party into a solidly liberal party, leaving the Republican Party as the conservative party. In other words, he aimed for the sort of realignment and polarization that would only truly occur decades later. Through this under-reported bit of New Deal era history, we see the lengths to which Roosevelt was willing to go in his fight for liberalism, a marked contrast with the Democratic leaders of recent decades.Show NotesNote: This episode was recorded several months back, before Biden had dropped out of the presidential race.From UVA’s Miller Center: “June 24, 1938: Fireside Chat 13: On Purging the Democratic Party”Southern culture of honor paperClips of Bill Burr on Bill Maher’s podcastCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Well, the election results are out. Kamala Harris has lost. Donald Trump will return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States. In this episode, we break down the results and give our initial reaction, with a focus on the strategic takeaways for Democrats.Show NotesNYT: Election ResultsData analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times:* What is the point of polling?* Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbentsNYT: * See the Voting Groups That Swung to the Right in the 2024 Vote* Harris Had a Wall Street-Approved Economic Pitch. It Fell Flat.Jacobin: If Harris Loses Today, This Is Why  Gabriel Winant’s excellent essay: Exit RightMatt Karp election reaction in Jacobin: It’s Happening AgainWashington Post: Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it. Take our quiz.Polling showing swing state voters care above all about inflation and immigrationClass dealignment:Voter insanity about inflation:Detachment from reality on the right:Autor, Dube, and McGrew on gains for low-wage workers in recent years: The Unexpected Compression: Competition at Work in the Low Wage Labor MarketCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In honor of the upcoming election on Tuesday, November 5th, we’ve decided to record an election special, breaking down the historical importance of this election, what’s at stake, and how the candidates are approaching the battle for votes. We end with a discussion of the left’s concern about Kamala Harris on the issue of Gaza.Note: Unfortunately, my (Conor’s) microphone got disconnected about two-thirds of the way into the ep, so there’s a weird shift in the sound at that point. Doesn’t make it difficult to listen but the quality of the sound is a bit worse.Show NotesFrom the New York Times: Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election, but Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine538 Election ForecastPolymarket Presidential Election ForecastBloomberg with some notes of caution regarding the Polymarket forecastFrom Gallup: Economy Most Important Issue to 2024 Presidential VoteFrom the Financial Times: The data says the US economy is strong. Swing-state voters disagreeFrom FT: Donald Trump takes lead over Kamala Harris on US economy in final FT pollJamelle Bouie on Trump’s deportation proposal: Trump’s Taste for Tyranny Finds a TargetInformation on what could happen to reproductive rights if Trump wins: How the Country’s Understanding of Abortion Could Change if Trump WinsFrom the Peterson Institute for International Economics: How much would Trump's plans for deportations, tariffs, and the Fed damage the US economy?From the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy: A Distributional Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax PlanPaul Krugman on Trump’s tariff proposals: How Trump’s Radical Tariff Plan Could Wreck Our EconomyFrom the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: The Fiscal Impact of the Harris and Trump Campaign PlansPaul Krugman on Trump creating economic shocks and more inflation: Why Trumponomics Could Lead to TrumpflationThe Financial Times on Harris’s shift right on economics: Who Would Run Kamala Harris’s Economy?CNBC on Tim Walz’s success as governor of Minnesota: How Tim Walz made Minnesota a 'roadmap' for progressive economic policyRyan Cooper on Tim Walz’s success as governor: The New Minnesota VikingsTim Walz on Twitter: “Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don't win elections to bank political capital – you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”From Axios: The Harris-Walz media strategy: Hide from the pressFrom the Guardian: To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about TrumpFrom Twitter: Problem with how the Democrats view public opinionFrom Haaretz: Harris Says Gaza Death Toll 'Unconscionable' as Trump Vows to 'Do a Lot for Israel'CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we cover the history and development of the Republican Party, drawing on the story told in the book The Republican Evolution: From Governing Party to Antigovernment Party, 1860–2020, by the political scientist Kenneth Janda. In essence, we shine light on the reverse Zuko arc of the party: from a party fighting valiantly for justice at its founding to a reactionary party trying to turn back the clock. How did this happen? Give the ep a listen.Show NotesPer the New York Times: “How Joe Biden Became the Democrats’ Anti-Busing Crusader”Chart and maps from book:Note: We mention an ep that is as of yet unpublished on the book Roosevelt’s Purge, by Susan Dunn. That episode will probably be published in late November.CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we talk about a recent book by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, both professors of political science at Harvard, titled Tyranny of the Minority. Ziblatt and Levitsky make a strong argument that the US Constitution has excessively constrained American democracy, and that its counter-majoritarian measures now make the US an outlier in how anti-democratic it is compared to other rich democracies. As they discuss, the threat posed by the Constitution has become much more evident in recent decades as Republicans have radicalized and repeatedly ridden to power as a result of a prominent counter-majoritarian aspect of the Constitution: the Electoral College. Now, they argue, the counter-majoritarianism of the Constitution has become a boon to far right extremists, helping maintain the power of an ethnonationalist Republican party even as that party fails to appeal to a majority of the US population. The time, therefore, is ripe for constitutional reform.Show NotesJamelle Bouie on Trump’s tyrannical deportation proposal: “Trump’s Taste for Tyranny Finds a Target”Charlie Kirk video: “Liberal College Student ATTEMPTS to Outsmart Charlie Kirk 👀”Note: We mention an ep that is as of yet unpublished on the book Roosevelt’s Purge, by Susan Dunn. That episode will probably be published in late November.CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we cover a popular book from a few years back about the transformation of the modern Democratic Party from a party of the working class to one of the professional class. It’s called Listen, Liberal, and its author is Thomas Frank, a progressive journalist we’ve discussed previously on the podcast in our episodes on the paranoid style and the pessimistic style in American politics. Both of us (Aidan and Conor) read this book during college, and it had a significant impact on how we viewed the Democratic party. We now revisit it with fresh eyes and more knowledge.Show NotesCBS quoting Obama in 2013: “Income inequality ‘the defining challenge of our time’”Death of the Liberal Class, by Chris Hedges2019 Dissent piece on the origins of the term “professional-managerial class”Original 1977 essay by the Ehrenreichs where they coined the term “professional-managerial class”Wikipedia entry on the McGovern-Fraser CommissionNew Republic piece “What Democrats Still Don’t Get About George McGovern”Changing Sources of Power, by Frederick DuttonWalter Mondale the deficit hawkInteresting data showing significant support for progressives among tech workersJohn Halle’s review of Listen, LiberalBeverly Gage’s review of Listen, LiberalUseful piece from the Nation: “The Past and Future of the Left in the Democratic Party”Joe Biden calling Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”Chris Hedges on Intercepted in 2018: “That whole ‘Law and Order’ issue was seized by Biden and Clinton as they transformed the Democratic Party into the Republican Party and pushed the Republican Party so far to the right it became insane.”Ryan Cooper on Tim Walz’s recordTim Walz: “Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don't win elections to bank political capital – you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss the recent book American Whitelash by Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery. He frames American history as a never ending tug of war between mutually opposed forces: supporters and opponents of racial progress. We dig into his approach to history and the ways in which it can illuminate our understanding of the American past. Show NotesLowery summer 2023 book talkCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss the American philosopher Richard Rorty’s book Achieving Our Country, which provides a critique of the left from within. Rorty divides the 20th century into two distinct phases for the left, the first being dominated by the reformist left, and the second, starting in the mid-1960s, being dominated by the cultural left. Rorty’s sympathies lie clearly with the reformist left, but he is nonetheless highly appreciative of the successes of the cultural left, specifically as they relate to the fight against the Vietnam war. In the book, Rorty proposes a sort of alliance between the reformist left and the cultural left that can re-empower the left in politics and allow it to achieve the traditional leftist vision of America as a classless society and model to the rest of the world.Show NotesRichard Rorty 1997 interviewRyan Grim on how internal culture wars caused a meltdown within progressive organizations during the critical early stage of the Biden presidencyMLK quote from Where Do We Go From Here: “A people who began a national life inspired by a vision of a society of brotherhood can redeem itself. But redemption can only come through a humble acknowledgment of guilt and an honest knowledge of self.”Note: This episode was recorded before Biden dropped out of the presidential race.CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we do a deep dive on populism, its true history, and why liberal intellectuals like Richard Hofstadter are wrong to issue blanket condemnations against it. We argue that there is a very scary form of populism, that embodied in politicians such as Donald Trump, but that this is not the only form of populism, and not at all what populism originally meant when the term was coined in the late 19th century. The original populism actually represented an American version of a social democratic movement, and it had much to recommend it. Show NotesThomas Frank’s Harper’s piece “The Pessimistic Style in American Politics”Charles Postel’s article “Populism as a Concept and the Challenge of US History”Talk featuring Michael Kazin and others on populism in American historyMichael Kazin article on Trump vs. Bernie style populismCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss liberal historian Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1964. We break down what the paranoid style is, its long history in American politics, and its evolution since Hofstadter’s essay first surfaced. In particular, we emphasize the prominent place the paranoid style has occupied in the Republican party throughout American history, and the ways in which it has increasingly dominated Republican politics in recent decades.Show NotesThomas Frank’s 2014 retrospective on Hofstadter’s essay2013 CAP study titled “Inside the GOP: Report on Focus Groups with Evangelical, Tea Party, and Moderate Republicans”Sean Wilentz’s 2021 talk: “The Paranoid Style, Past and Present”2020 study: “The Paranoid Style in American Politics Revisited: An Ideological Asymmetry in Conspiratorial Thinking”Paul Krugman: “The Paranoid Style in G.O.P. Politics”CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.The History Onion is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode continues our conversation about poverty that we started with our episode “Poverty, by America,” a discussion and critique of the book of the same title by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond. We now turn to the work of another sociologist, David Brady, who we believe has a much more compelling approach to poverty.Show NotesDavid Brady paper “Poverty, not the poor”Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty, David BradyCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s episode, we tackle Poverty, by America, a recent bestseller written by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond. Though we found this book compelling in some ways, it fell short of the providing the sort of serious analysis of poverty, and solutions to poverty, that we think is needed. Show NotesRoad to Wigan Pier, by George OrwellDesmond’s New York Times articleDesmond’s 2018 paperEPI study on poverty and wagesExplainer from the Census on the two main US poverty measuresThe argument for using a relative poverty measure for the USCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode continues our discussion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final book Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community. We cover King’s views on history, on past American heroes, and his prescriptions for a better future.CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode is about the most influential democratic socialist in American history: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We start the episode by looking at how King is portrayed in American media and in high school history textbooks. We then move on to how King is portrayed by historians, who view him very differently and more in his totality. Finally, we begin a discussion about King’s last book, Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community. Part two of this episode, which will come out next Monday, will continue this discussion.Show NotesNote: This episode was recorded before Biden dropped out of the presidential race.The Limits of Master Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Derrick AlridgeKing: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, by Harvard SitkoffKing and the Other America: The Poor People's Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality, by Sylvie LaurentWhy Socialism?, by Albert Einstein (note: accidentally flubbed the name of this article during the episode)Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community, by Martin Luther King, Jr.CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

This episode continues our discussion of James Loewen’s bestselling book Lies My Teacher Told Me. We look at the reason he gives for why high school history textbooks are so bad, and we spend much of the episode talking about how high school history classes could be improved. Show NotesLink to the Popular Info piece cited at the top of the episode.Great quote from the book: “But only about history and social studies do writers actually ask, ‘Can textbooks have scholarly integrity?’ Only in history is accuracy so political.” (pg. 333)CreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.The History Onion is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we discuss James Loewen’s bestselling book Lies My Teacher Told Me. We begin the episode by talking about our own experiences with high school history, both as students and, in Aidan’s case, as a teacher. We then get into the material of the book, outlining Loewen’s main thesis and the examples he provides of the failures of American high school history textbooks. Show NotesGood interview with James Loewen if you want to hear the author in his own wordsSummarizing Loewen’s major critiques of American high school history textbooks:* They misrepresent the past* e.g. The history of Reconstruction, the history of Indian assimilation* They make the past just a bunch of unconnected factoids rather than a causal and contingent chain of events* Little analysis of counterfactuals; history presented basically as inevitable, without alternatives* They evacuate the past of ideas/ideology* They tell a boring moral story of progress while obscuring villainy* Something like slavery is portrayed as something like a natural disaster; people only do good things, not bad thingsCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate.Cover art by Arthur Santoro.The History Onion is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe

Our second episode extends our conversation that we began in episode one. Having discussed history’s importance, we now turn to how to approach history. We consult another clip of Eric Foner to make the point that strong beliefs about present matters do not detract from your ability to understand the past. If anything, they enhance it. We then cover the benefits of interdisciplinarity and the drawbacks of narrow expertise.After that, we talk about the various popular narratives of history, which we break down into the categories of old and new liberal versus old and new conservative history. We introduce an objective-subjective schema to help with understanding the differences between how these narratives operate. A discussion of Howard Zinn follows, and we conclude by giving some book and movie recommendations, which we’ve also included below. Hope you enjoy the episode, and remember to subscribe to stay in the loop! Part one of our next episode, which will be a breakdown of James Loewen’s bestselling book Lies My Teacher Told Me, will be out on Monday, July 29th. The second part will come out on Thursday, August 1st.Show NotesEric Foner interviewKeynes quote: “The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts… He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.”Matt Karp, History As EndHoward Zinn interviewClarification: Apparently the police officer who died on January 6th was not killed with a fire extinguisher, despite initial reporting saying he was.RecommendationsBooks* The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes* Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class* All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror* Declarations of Independence* Death of the Liberal Class* The New Urban Question* The Broken Heart of America* The Responsibility of Intellectuals* George Orwell’s nonfiction booksMovies* Oppenheimer* Killers of the Flower Moon* Zone of Interest* Various Woodstock ‘99 documentaries* The Post* Milk* Cinderella Man* The Great Debaters* The Big Short* Malcolm X* Best of EnemiesCreditsThe podcast’s theme music was made by our youngest brother Tate. Cover art by Arthur Santoro.The History Onion is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The History Onion at historyonion.substack.com/subscribe