So it was a bit of a while ago that I listened so some of my criticism might not be applicable to them now but I just to listen to a podcast called “Lions By Donkeys” and while I thought that the host (Joe Kassabian) was clearly smart and highly educated, he did come across as one of those amateur historians who seem a bit too focused on western imperialism and so kinda infantilises a lot of countries and makes world history seem a bit to much like “non-western country has it good, then western influence or imperialism causes every problem said country faces today”. Like i remember in the Pol Pot series he did a while back he claimed the us bombing campaign in Cambodia is what helped Pol Pot get into power, even though I’ve heard that a lot of historians disagree with that assessment and that there was no correlation between said bombing campaign and Pol Pot coming into power. It also seems that he’s a bit obsessed with historical episodes of western military expeditions/invasions more then non western ones (like he had series on the Pancho Villa expedition, Us-Philippine war and so on, yet that not any on say the Sino Indian war, Mongol invasions etc). Also there’s the one time he (imo) grossly lightly praised Ayatollah Khomeini because he claimed the us-supported shah was so much worse then him in his Iran-Iraq war series, which makes me feel he overall has an annoying pre-determined aggressive attitude towards the us and the west in general. Was I wrong in thinking that though? I came here to ask if there any historians here who have listened or are at the very least aware of the podcast and if so what do they think about it?
In general you should never fully trust weekly history podcasts that cover a vast range of topics across cultures and time. People who specialize in, say, Roman history will study it for years at school. Same goes for any other topic. So a podcaster who talks about Rome, WWII, the Crusades, the age of imperialism, WWI, the Indian wars, etc on a week by week basis is almost certainly not an expert on the majority of said topics, nor do they likely have the time to do thorough research on them. In my experience most history podcasters of this variety will simply rely on one or two books or articles to write a script. I like some of these podcasts, but they should be treated as entertainment. As a note, I’m not talking about podcasters who focus on a single topic or set of related topics (ie “History of Japan” or whatnot).
In the case of Lions Led By Donkeys, Kassabian does have a masters degree in genocide studies so it is not as if he has no academic background. However, the extent of his understanding of many of the topics that he covers varies greatly. I would think that he is fairly trustworthy when talking about something like the Holocaust or Armenian Genocide, but less so when talking about WWI or the Roman Empire. It’s fine to listen to these episodes and enjoy them (I have listened to a fair bit of the show myself) but I wouldn’t take anything he says on such disparate topics as a fact without verifying it elsewhere.