Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are interrogating the past, and attempting to de-tangle the present.
They question the nature of Greatness, why the West no longer has civil wars and whether Richard Nixon was more like Caligula or Claudius.
They’re distilling the entirety of human history, or, as much as they can fit into about fifty minutes.
Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Here are some of our favourite episodes to get you started:
WATERGATE/NIXON apple.co/3JrVl5h
ALEXANDER THE GREAT apple.co/3Q4FaNk
HARDCORE HISTORY’S DAN CARLIN apple.co/3vqkGa3
PUTIN & RUSSIA apple.co/3zMtLfX
“We can’t accept very comfortably that two nobodies, two nothings – Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby – were able to change the course of world history.”
The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s apparent assassin, by the night club owner Jack Ruby on 24th November 1963 changed everything. Right from the start, rumours had circulated that Oswald had not been acting alone, building on the deep anxieties of American society in the 1950s and 1960s. Some blamed Communist states such as Cuba or the Soviet Union; others anti-Castro exiles, or the Ku Klux Klan. As the years passed, the CIA and FBI came under suspicion. Did Lyndon Johnson know more about the conspiracy than he pretended? Just what was Richard Nixon doing on that fateful day? And how did Frank Sinatra’s drummer fit in?
Join Tom and Dominic as they explore the background to the Kennedy conspiracy theories, from umbrella men to grassy knolls, discussing the wider context and investigating every last clue in their tireless search for the truth.
*Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK – the perfect Christmas present!*
Twitter:
@TheRestHistory
@holland_tom
@dcsandbrook
Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor
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As Hitler ramps up the German war machine, he remains obsessed with one idea: uprooting Jews from the Reich. The Nazis embark on a campaign of totalitarian oppression against them, persecuting Jewish people in every aspect of life. They are excluded from most professions, forbidden from intermarrying, Jewish children are bullied and excluded from schools, all Jews have a “J” stamped in their passport, to name but a few measures. Worst of all, the brainwashing of the German people has become apparent, and many are willing participants in the various forms of persecution; plenty of German towns have put up signs by this point saying “Jews not wanted here”. Hitler may tone down the oppression to whitewash the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but this does not last. One terrifying truth is clear: he is fully set on the destruction of European Jewry.
Join Tom and Dominic in the fifth part of our series on the Nazis in power, as they look at how the persecution of Jewish people in the Reich increased in the lead-up to the Second World War.
*The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024*
Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London!
Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com
Twitter:
@TheRestHistory
@holland_tom
@dcsandbrook
Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett
Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor
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