In this newest conversation on History Impossible, I was super-happy to be joined by fellow historical podcaster Zack Twamley, host of the excellent and long-running podcast, When Diplomacy Fails. Zack and I have mostly crossed paths via our mutual podcasting pal Kristaps Andrejsons of the Eastern Border podcast, on which we have both been guests. Most recently, as many will recall, Zack and I were part of a larger panel discussion (that also included other podcasting great Jack Johansson of the Secret Police podcast) that Kristaps hosted to discuss the state of the new Trump administration vis-à-vis the ongoing war in Ukraine and the apparent attempt by the U.S. government to disentangle itself from European affairs while also bringing the war to a speedy conclusion (which, as we all know, did not happen). After that conversation, Zack and I decided we should deepen the part of the conversation that stuck with us and dive deep into the geopolitical school of thought that is typical of Ukraine’s loudest critics: so-called Realism.

As it turns out, there was a lot to say and for me to learn, which did not surprise me seeing as Zack is the closest thing to an expert on the field of international relations that I know, thanks to the focus of When Diplomacy Fails. This episode got deep into the weeds of Realism, its drawbacks, its benefits, its variations over time, and even its dangers. There was a lot of contemporary politics interwoven into the historical discussion as well, so Ukraine is certainly covered, but so is the historical application of realpolitik, and, fitting in with History Impossible’s recent episodes, its relationship with imperialism of both the soft and hard variety. It was a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation for us, and we thought that you all would like it too, so please enjoy this discussion of Realism between myself and Zack Twamley.

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Hello again everyone. We have a new, special episode of History Impossible for all of you in which we examine a less-known moment of American imperialism, as well as the downstream effects it seemed to have during the world’s authoritarian moment of the 1930s. This is adapted from an academic paper I wrote in graduate school that I previously put out for all of you to read, similar to my earlier piece, “A Revulsion of Feeling,” which focused on the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939.

We don’t often think of the positive downstream effects of imperialism, but that does not mean they do not exist. This is not some fringe position either; as I have come to understand while in graduate school, there is a growing set of ideas that demonstrate empire’s stabilizing effects and not necessarily coercive relationships that it establishes. Great examples of this include the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which promoted ethnic and even national pluralism, both before and after its decline, as well as the Ottoman Empire, during its less coercive moments (though it certainly had many, vis-à-vis religion). The United States, young as it is, has caused a lot of turmoil overseas in its own imperial adventures, but the imperial boomerang has come back around in protective ways as well, sometimes even preventing disaster from befalling it.

The story of Major General Smedley Butler and his role in those imperial adventures is one of those stories.
...
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Please note: This episode was made before I learned about the influence of Qatar in various parts of the United States (including, apparently, the Oval Office for the mere price of a plane), but honestly, it all just serves to help confirm my overall thesis all the more. World events have a funny way of rendering old analyses irrelevant, but I am sorry to say that imperialism in its many forms is likely eternal.

The last time we discussed imperialism on History Impossible, we looked at the form it appears to be taking under the second Trump administration, which, despite remaining based on trade deals and possibly empty threats of annexation, is a much “harder” form of imperialism than what the United States has employed in recent history (apart, of course, from our “state building” adventures in places like Iraq). This time, we will turn to the softer form of imperialism favored by places like the United States during the opening decade of the Cold War, as well as the French Empire in the mid-19th century and, as we will see from this episode, the attempts at spreading and more importantly, normalizing Islamism within the borders of Western, democratic, and decidedly non-theocratic or Islamic countries.

By examining the fringes, we can often reveal the realities of the center, and in this case, a deeper understanding imperialism can be gleaned by looking at what is largely a lost cause on paper and realizing that lost causes are often fueled by reinterpreted victories, which can be as simple as sociopolitical subversion. Will the West become Islamist? Almost certainly not. Will Islamists attempt to take advantage and make use of the cultural and political ruptures, as well as the social status symbols, that exist within the West, thus making their goals all the more likely to succeed? Almost certainly yes. We know this because this is what soft imperial power—whether wielded by United States Cold Warriors in the CIA in the 1950s or French aristocrats and business owners in the 1850s—has always attempted to do.

Imperialism is not always about coercive control of a smaller state. In fact, it often is not. The core goal of imperialism has always been one thing: influence. That is what we will explore today.

…

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The question of who President Donald Trump resembled in history is one that has become almost a cliche, mostly thanks to its ideological Rorschach quality, especially during his first term and in the years leading up to his second. This has become far less of a debate, thanks largely to the man himself actually citing his influences.

This was what I decided to tackle in an essay I wrote for my friend David Josef Volodsko in his publication, The Radicalist. A couple of weeks later, I am happy to bring to all of you the audio adaptation of that essay, with a couple of important expansions you won’t receive anywhere else.

This is the first installment of a small cluster of episodes I plan to put out for all of you that deal with the theme of imperialism, which will also hopefully include an interview or two about the subject as well.Thank you again for reading, listening, and for having incredible patience as I work on the next installment of “The Muslim Nazis” series.

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I was recently invited to join in a panel discussion with three podcasting greats and people I consider friends—that is, The Eastern Border’s Kristaps Andrejsons, the Secret Police podcast’s Jack Johannson, and When Diplomacy Fails podcast’s Zack Twamley. It originally went up on the Eastern Border feed, split into two parts, but Kristaps was kind enough to let all of us get our grubby paws on the masters to put on our own feeds, something that I felt would allow me to give all of you fine people another nice bonus while you wait for the next installments of History Impossible.The conversation went on for nearly three hours and was incredibly enlightening and fun, and yours truly was able to actually sound relatively informed for most of the run time. Some plans are in the works for some more dedicated one-on-one conversations with these guys, but in the meantime, we all weighed in on the post-Oval Office diplomatic reality TV/Twitter IRL brouhaha that involved Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump and, especially to my ire as many of you will hear, Vice President J.D. Vance.

The conversation also widened as our ranks narrowed (Zack and Jack both had previous engagements they needed to attend to), and Kristaps being who he is, was able to get me to spiral out some “worst case scenarios” for the changing global order as we know it. So please enjoy this panel discussion where a quartet of podcasters attempt to crack the nut of geopolitical strategy in 2025.
…
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Slavery is often known as the United States’ original sin, and for good reason. Much of our perceptions of it are informed both by the Civil War’s cause and outcome, and the contradictions—and even moral hypocrisy—that it created with our Founding Fathers’ professed beliefs. Contradiction is the theme not just of the United States’ values and history, but it also a major theme of this episode of the podcast.

In this newest installment of History Impossible, we’re looking at the extraordinary life of James Armistead Lafayette, the slave who would become the Colonies’ most vital spy during the Revolutionary War. I had never heard of this man before, but after reading fellow Keinrath Publishing writer Isaac Willour’s stirring and powerful portrait of the man—which everyone should check out here—I felt that it would be fitting for me and Isaac to chat about it. This conversation was the result of that, in which we discuss the circumstances of Armistead Lafayette’s life defined by action as well as the seemingly baffling contradiction that he shared with the Founding Fathers themselves: his owning of slaves after his own manumission.

Isaac’s writing has appeared not just in Keinrath, but also publications including National Review, The Daily Wire, and the American Institute for Economic Research. He has also appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Amid all of that, though, he has managed to carve out time to be fascinated in history and that led us to chatting about this story. It is a fascinating tale, and I hope you all enjoy.

…

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The American West (or the “Wild West” as it’s still sometimes known) is arguably one of the defining features of the United States’ history and culture, if not the most defining feature. After all, much of the world has the image of the American cowboy (or less often, the American settler) planted firmly in their heads when they think of “Americans.” And while certainly not consciously, many Americans think of themselves in this way. There is a lot to be critical of the reality of the “American West,” not least of which being the brutality that it unleashed at various times and in various places. But there is also something—many things really—that we are at risk of losing if we completely demonize the time period and setting. This can even be seen in much of the media that has been created around the American West lately, with few exceptions (the Red Dead Redemption series of video games being one of those few exceptions). In losing the aspirational aspects of the American West even in much of the media, something more seems to be lost, up to an including the kind of models many young American men can aspire to.

It may or may not surprise many of you that this is not exactly my wheelhouse, but it is not. I don’t know a lot about the American West beyond the more brutal stories I mentioned earlier and an awareness of it in the context of cinematic history. So that’s why with this special episode of History Impossible, I was joined by the prolific and talented writer David McGarry, who has had his work appear in esteemed publications including Reason and National Review, as well as his his own Substack, The Thoughtful Spot.

David and I actually connected through a new writing venture that both of us have taken part in, a start-up known as Keinrath Publishing. I recently told you all about Keinrath when I put out the piece linking you guys to my essay for them covering the 1876 election, and like me, David put out a piece there covering, you guessed it, the spirit of the American West. I recommend not just David’s essay, but everyone’s essays there (including long-time friend and collaborator Daniele Bolelli!) because Keinrath is doing something really cool: offering thoughtful analyses of history and current events in long form, in which just a dollar will let you read each. It’s a great way to support writers like us, but honestly, Keinrath is just a great organization run by good people, and I would love to see them get some love. So go check them out when you get the chance. And I’m really happy to say that this will actually be the first of two interviews I’m doing with fellow authors there. So stay tuned for the next one very soon.

In the meantime though, please enjoy this conversation I had with David McGarry about the spirit of the American West, where it went, and how we might get it back.

…

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Hey everyone, happy to present to all of you fine people with a brief bonus, this time adapting my recent historiographical essay that I had written my first semester in graduate school on the study of infectious disease’s effects throughout history and how it was written about from around the 1970s until the 2010s. This should serve as a nice pairing with the recent “Mother’s Wrath, Mankind’s Cope” and demonstrate the sort of academic origins of my thinking on this particular subject. Please enjoy and stay tuned!

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History Impossible has been made possible by the following generous supporters on Patreon, Substack, and PayPal. Please consider donating today to help keep me free and this show alive:

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Sr. Powell
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Gleb Radutsky
Aleksandr Rakitin
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Phillip Rice
Terry Rosen
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Jake Scalia
Emily Schmidt
Julian Schmidt
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Cameron Smith
Jerry Spangler
timetosuccedd1995
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Athal Krishna Sundarrajan
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Ward Van Roy
Pierre Vorupuni
Robert VS
Jonny Wilkie
Michael Wroblewski
F. You
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In this episode of History Impossible inaugurating 2025 and the sixth anniversary of the show, we will be looking at the Los Angeles Fires of 2025 but from an extended, historical, and probably overly philosophical lens. Because as it turns out, natural disasters are a constant of the human experience and create some of the greatest extremes, and reflecting on what afflicts us now alongside what has afflicted us in the past can provide at least some clarity (or, in my case, closure).

The destruction faced by Los Angelenos in 2025 is not too dissimilar from many examples of destruction in relatively recent history. From the Krakatoa explosion in 1883, to the Galvestone hurriance in 1900, to the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, there are plenty of examples. We examine these and their after effects in detail in this episode of History Impossible. It was an emotional experience to go through all of this and I hope you all can appreciate why. I wrote the original essay upon which this episode was based over a month ago, but it still has some validity and weight that I didn't expect.

So please enjoy as much as one can enjoy such a heavy subject, in this newest episode of History Impossible 

...

History Impossible has been made possible by the following generous supporters on Patreon, Substack, and PayPal. Please consider donating today to help keep me free and this show alive:

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This is the first installment of something that doesn’t really have a name; the Grad School Files? That sounds a little like a bad Netflix show. I’ll take suggestions, but in the meantime, we can simply define this as it is: the first adaptation of one of my academic papers from graduate school into an honest-to-goodness episode of History Impossible. The first thing I want to say is that it was more difficult than I expected to adapt an academic paper into a podcast than I expected. The material is all there, but speaking in formal academic language manages to put me to sleep, so I did my best to spruce things up with this episode.

The second thing I want to say is that a lot of the material in this one will be familiar territory, just more focused on a single event (or grouping of events) in Israel-Palestine history: that is, the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. This was something I hadn’t planned to do until inspiration smacked me upside the head in my second semester, largely propelled by the lack of awareness I was seeing some of my cohort-mates possessed about the conflict in general, to say nothing of the minutiae of its long, long history. As has been covered at length by me and many others, this has very clearly become a political issue with no tether to history, when that history matters more than the politics.

In any event, what resulted was this, but in paper form (that has also been published in written form on Substack and Patreon, as some of you may remember): an investigation into the formation of group identity—that is, of the declining British Empire, the Zionist movement, and the Arab nationalist movement—via the conflict that came to be known as the Arab Revolt of the 1930s. Apart from a few folks—like the awesome Oren Kessler, much of whose work I incorporated into this episode—very few scholars have focused their attention on this event, sandwiched as it is between the punctuated chaos of the 1920s and the Second World War. I hope looking at the event this way—as a crucible, to use a word Kessler has used—adds to the conversation. 

…

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Joe6245
Russell Johnson
Lionel Joseph
Thomas Justesen
Mike Kalnins
Bryn Kaufman
Leah Kodner
Benjamin Lee
Constance Loucks
Maddy
Mounty of Madness
Jose Martinez
Mike Mayleben
Judy McCoid
Kyle Mohney
Kostas Moros
Ryan Mortenson
Cameron Needham
Skip Pacheco
Mel Padden
David Page
Molly Pan
Jeff Parrent
Sharon Peplinski
Sr. Powell
Brian Pritzl
AnaR737
PJ Rader
Gleb Radutsky
Aleksandr Rakitin
Reptilycus
Matthew M. Rice
Phillip Rice
Terry Rosen
Chris Rowe
Dan S
Jon Andre Saether
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Emily Schmidt
Julian Schmidt
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Cameron Smith
Jerry Spangler
timetosuccedd1995
Thomas Squeo
Pier-Luc St-Pierre
Athal Krishna Sundarrajan
Jared Cole Temple
Ward Van Roy
Robert VS
Jonny Wilkie
Michael Wroblewski
F. You
Greg Zink

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