The Dangerous History Podcast

This DHP episode features the audio of the third episode of Brave the New World, a new weekly current events & media analysis show that CJ is cohosting with his friend Matt Carano.

Join CJ & Matt as they discuss some of the recent Epstein-related revelations & their implications for the past, present, & future of the US (& the world.)

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As CJ continues to struggle to navigate his family’s ongoing difficulties, he FINALLY managed to record a new DHP episode.

This is a follow-up to the previous DHP episode (#283 “We Are Ruled by Psychopaths”), in which he delves into some topics not covered much, if at all, in that episode, including but not limited to: the difficulty of defining ‘psychopath vs. sociopath,’ reasons that non-psychopathic people might in some situations behave very similarly to a psychopath, the ‘Lucifer effect,’ how institutions tend toward psychopathic behavior, and more.

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“We are ruled by psychopaths.”

CJ did not coin that phrase, but he repeats it often, and he means it both literally & emphatically. This may sound crazy to many, but that perception is often based on a very mistaken understanding of what the term ‘psychopath’ really means.

Join CJ on a deep dive into the true nature of psychopaths, how to spot them, how they operate, & why it’s a very reasonable hypothesis to suspect that psychopaths are very disproportionately represented among corporate oligarchs, politicians, & government officials.

Reminder: Now through the end of 2025, you can sa...

(This is a Christmas-season reissue of a vintage DHP episode made all the way back in 2015.)

In the cold, damp, muddy ditches of the Western Front in December, 1914, the rank-and-file of the Allied and German armies spontaneously set aside their hatreds to take a break from mass-murdering each other, much to the dismay of their so-called ‘leaders.’

Join CJ as he discusses:

Now through the end of the year, you can sign up to suppo...

Happy Armistice Day!

In this episode, CJ covers the first 13 songs on his list of 25 More Favorite Antiwar Songs. (The remaining dozen will be covered in a supporters-only bonus episode exclusively for those excellent individuals who support CJ’s work on Patreon at the Journeyman Scholar Warrior Level & Higher.)

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Way back in the long-ago before-times (2016), CJ put out an episode in which he listed & talked about 25 of his favorite antiwar songs. A lot of listeners at the time really liked it. CJ has been a musician even longer than he’s been a historian, so any chance he gets to combine his love of music & history is one he’s happy to take.

For this (2025) Armistice Day, he’s FINALLY going to be putting out a sequel – “25 More of CJ’s Favorite Antiwar Songs” – which will be exactly what it sounds like.

But before he puts that new...

In order to avoid cluttering up history episodes with this sort of stuff, CJ decided to make a stand-alone personal update episode to let anyone who cares know about all the continued Book-of-Job-ish stuff he’s been dealing with in recent months – including a major death in the family, deep depression shading off into suicidal ideation, & a horrific mystery illness that afflicted his household over the month of October – that have hobbled his content output, but how he made it through, is still alive & still sober, & how (fingers crossed, knock on wood, sacrifice a chicken to the chupacabra, etc, etc) i...

(Originally published Oct. 2016)

In 1066, the course of English history was dramatically altered, as the realm was conquered by Normans from across the Channel.

Join CJ as he discusses:

CJ has started to compile all episodes of his acclaimed 2016 History of American Slavery series into collected volumes, just like he’s already done with his American Revolution & Not-So-Civil War series (and as he will soon start doing with the Woodrow Wilson series), with the episodes curated together into volumes & all announcements, ads, etc, removed.

These will be available in CJ’s Patreon shop (and in fact, the first 2 volumes are already up as of now, with the rest to follow shortly.) They can be purchased a la carte whether you’re a Patreon supporter of CJ’s work o...

CJ is back with a beast of a DHP episode that he’s been brewing laboriously for over a month, if not two.

On June 8th, 1967, during the Six Day War, the USS Liberty, a virtually unarmed signals intelligence ship operating off the coast of Egypt, was attacked by Israeli planes & torpedo boats. 34 men were killed, 171 were wounded, & the ship was nearly sunk before the attack was finally called off. The Israelis claimed it was a tragic case of mistaken identity, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and LBJ, America’s first “Israel-First” President, let them get...

In this episode, CJ shares his thoughts on the meaning, significance, & fallout of the “debate” that took place a few weeks ago on the Joe Rogan Experience between Dave Smith & Douglas Murray, especially in regards to credentialism & the Cult of the “Expert,” as well as the phenomenon of the Neo-Neocons (next-generation Neoconservatives) such as Douglas Murray, James Lindsay, Konstantin Kisin, Jordan Peterson, & others who are currently on an ideological jihad to try to purge the current MAGA/Trumpian American Right of any libertarian & paleoconservative elements who might actually believe in the idea of “America First,” just as previous generations of Neocons d...

For this DHP episode, CJ was very happy to be joined by veteran independent researcher, journalist, & media producer James Corbett of CorbettReport.com to talk about James’ recently published book Reportage: Essays on the New World Order.

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(To celebrate 4/20, please enjoy this reissue of a DHP Episode from 2019.)

At the 2019 Midwest Peace & Liberty Fest in Delton, Mich., CJ took the occasion of Michigan’s recent legalization of marijuana to do a DHP Villains feature on the man who is arguably the most important of the Founding Fathers of the US government’s war on drugs.

Join CJ as he discusses the career of Harry J. Anslinger, from his early life to working for the State Department, then the Treasury Department, culminating in his tenure as first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narc...

April 19th, 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the REAL American Declaration of Independence, when thousands of average, non-elite Americans declared their independence by deed over a year before the “leaders” in Philadelphia decided to declare it with ink & parchment.

Because of this, and because I’ve recently published the collection of the entire Dangerous History American Revolution series in my Patreon shop, I decided to temporarily reissue DHP episode 59 (originally published in April 2015 & no longer available on the public DHP feed), which centers on the crucial year of 1775.

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In this installment of the Woodrow Wilson series, he gets us into war.

Join CJ as he discusses Woodrow Wilson’s presidency from late-1916 through early April of 1917, when he gives one of the most famous and (tragically) influential speeches in American history, asking Congress to pass a war resolution against Germany in order to make the world safe for democracy & create the League of Nations, a resolution passed by huge margins in both Houses, despite strong public opinion to the contrary.

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Subtitle: “Daylight Savings as a Rebellion Against Nature.”

This is a reissue of DHP episode 198, which was originally published back in early March 2020, only about a week before the covid crap hit the fan.

Join CJ as he discusses:

For this DHP episode, CJ was joined by Alex Von Sternberg of History Impossible, who lives in the LA area & recently put out an episode about natural disasters & their significant-but-oft-overlooked social & political effects.

Join CJ & Alex as they discuss natural disasters in general, the California wildfires in particular, California’s oligarchical corruption, Hollywood’s continuing problems, & more!

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This DHP episode features an interesting conversation CJ had with a listener named Frank (who’s a physicist currently working in academia) in the aftermath of the 4th & final session of CJ’s recently-concluded DHP Live-ceum course “The Decline & Fall of the Soviet Empire,” in which, following some discussion of details about the end of the USSR, they discuss some of the ways in which US institutions (especially – though not exclusively – academia) have been ideologically captured & thoroughly corrupted & degraded in ways that are reminiscent of Soviet institutions.

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CJ has had a particularly difficult last 5 years or so, including battling alcoholism & depression, only to have his wife become disabled just as he was starting to come out of those struggles, which gave him & his family a bunch of new stresses, including severe financial ones that he’s still trying to battle at the moment.

In this episode of Archetopical, he shares some of that story, followed by a discussion of the things that he has found most helpful to him in getting through these struggles with his life, health, & marriage still intact, in the hopes th...

CJ has recently started making his highly acclaimed series on the US Civil War available as collected volumes of approximately 4-5 hours apiece, with all the ads & announcements/housekeeping stuff from the original episodes cut out.

These can be purchased a la carte from CJ’s Patreon Shop, or you can get access to them at no extra charge if you sign up to support CJ via Patreon for $25/month or more.

For your listening pleasure, here’s the very first episode of that series, first published 8 years ago, in Dec. 2016.

Join CJ as h...

This episode was originally recorded & released in Dec. 2014, the first Christmas after I started doing the Dangerous History Podcast. Here it is, reissued with a new intro, 10 years later.

One-hundred-and-one Christmases ago, in the cold, damp, muddy ditches of the Western Front, the rank-and-file of the Allied and German armies spontaneously set aside their hatreds to take a break from mass-murdering each other, much to the dismay of their so-called ‘leaders.’

Join CJ as he discusses:

Join CJ as he continues his coverage of the life & career of Woodrow Wilson through 1916, culminating in Wilson’s successful-but-close reelection campaign that November.

(Apologies for the not-pristine audio — there’s some clipping I didn’t notice during recording. I did my best to clean it up in post, but it’s still a little distorted here & there. I’m using some new hardware — acquired thanks to the generosity of listeners — and am still figuring out how to use it.)

Wanna Take CJ’s “Decline & Fall of the Soviet Empire” Course, which starts Tues 12/3?

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Join CJ as he shares some thoughts & analysis about how the 2024 election played out, its significance in the context of American political history, and some historical parallels.

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Unfortunately, CJ did not have time to do both an election episode & a Halloween episode this year, so he opted for the latter. (Next October, assuming the DHP is still around & CJ isn’t a homeless beggar, and assuming World War 3 and/or Civil War 2 aren’t disrupting everything, CJ will do Halloween DHP episodes again!)

In this off-the-cuff episode, CJ shares some thoughts and historical perspective on the imminent presidential election, viewed primarily through the lens of two important concepts in American political history that he’s covered multiple times on the DHP over the years; namely...

A few weeks ago, CJ FINALLY won the War of Art when it came to starting a second podcast, something he’s been seriously thinking about & planning for over 5 years.

The podcast is called Archetopical, and has its own separate podcast feed from the DHP. You can find it here, or search for it wherever you consume your audio podcasts. (And if you can’t find it on your favorite podcatcher, shoot CJ an email to let him know where you can’t find it & he’ll try to rectify that.)

CJ’s first Archetopical episode (n...

Join CJ as he discusses the real political origin story of Kamala Harris, which is Establishment-approved Corporatist Progressivism (NOT communism!)

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In this episode, CJ revisits DHP Episode 34, “The Iron Law of Oligarchy,” from 2014, in preparation for an upcoming mini-series on oligarchy & CJ’s argument that modern democracy is just oligarchy with extra steps.

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Yesterday CJ turned 43. Unfortunately, he was sick on his birthday (and still is today), but he decided to look into the vault of vintage DHP episodes to see what DHP Ep. 43 was, and lo & behold, it was a Fun-Size Silver Bullet episode from 2014 that’s quite evergreen & may be even more […]

In 1919, the Supreme Court of the United States voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Socialist Party activists whose only crime was distributing a pamphlet critical of conscription during American participation in the First World War, even though the pamphlet did not advocate any lawbreaking — not even civil disobedience.

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In this dozenth episode in the Wilson series, join CJ as he discusses the ways in which the Wilson administration & Corporate America (especially the House of Morgan) was decidedly un-neutral in regard to the First World War over the course of 1915.

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What if I told you that we can connect Woodrow Wilson to the Nazis in a single degree of separation?

No, this is not the zillionth illustration of Godwin’s Law that you’ve seen this week; it is simply little-known historical fact.

In this dose of Dangerous History, we’ll talk about the little-known eugenicist psychiatrist who drafted the eugenics sterilization bill that Woodrow Wilson signed into law in 1911 (during his brief tenure as Governor of New Jersey), and who later collaborated with the Nazis who ran the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp three decades later...

(Originally published Aug., 2024)

Join CJ on 2 work commutes in Silver Bullet v.3.0 as he discusses his provisional thoughts on the near-assassination of Donald Trump that took place in July of 2024, as well as some historical precedents and context for it.

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(Originally published Feb., 2024)

No, you’re NOT hallucinating — after the longest hiatus between episodes since I started the Dangerous History Podcast back in 2014, I FINALLY managed to record & publish a new DHP episode.

Join CJ as he shares reads excerpts from & discusses a very interesting CIA manual on assassinations from the 1950s.

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(Originally published Oct., 2023)

This installment in the Woodrow Wilson series covers the period of the Wilson presidency from the summer of 1914 through the end of that year, when he said he wanted to keep the US neutral & out of the war, & still seemed to at least kinda mean it.

(*Apologies for the lackluster audio quality in some of the middle segments – I accidentally used my laptop’s crummy integral mic instead of my usual podcasting mic for those.)

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(Originally published June, 2023)

We’ve all heard of the famous ‘butterfly effect.’ But is there a plausible, realistic, alternative historical scenario in which the US & the world could’ve been spared the worst aspects of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency merely by altering one seemingly minor detail of the 1912 election?

Yes there is. Join CJ in this super-concise DHP episode as he discusses just such a scenario, whereby changing only one seemingly humble variable in 1912 would probably have given the US a POTUS who would’ve kept the country out of WWI & thereby avoided the worst aspects of W...

(Originally published May, 2023)

Join CJ as he discusses the life & death of the Seminole leader Osceola, who was a key resistance leader in the early stages of the Second Seminole War (1835-42), the longest & costliest Indian war in US history, in which the US government was using force to ethnically cleanse the Seminole people out of Florida.

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(Originally published May, 2023)

This DHP episode features CJ’s talk from the March, 2023 Self Reliance Festival in Tennessee, in which he discusses some of the most common unfortunate historical phenomena that tend to occur when empires are declining & falling.

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(Originally published Feb., 2023)

CJ returns to the story of the man he loves to hate!

This time, we’re going to take a detour from the chrono-narrative of Wilson’s presidency; this one is going to focus on Wilson’s beliefs, statements & actions on race throughout his career as an academic & politician.

Was Woodrow Wilson a racist? The short answer is yes, without a doubt. But as is so often the case with history, the details are more complicated & more interesting than most people realize!

Join CJ as he does a deep-d...

(Originally published Oct., 2022)

In part 1 of 2, join CJ as he discusses the Motion Picture Association of America’s so-called “Hays Code” (officially: “A Code to Govern the Making of Motion Pictures”), which rigidly controlled the content of most American movies from the early-1930s to the late-1960s.

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(Originally published July, 2022)

Finally! Here it is – the longest and, I believe, the most important Dangerous History Podcast episode I’ve done to date! (I recorded the first of many segments for this episode all the way back in April, and had been researching & composing notes for it for many months before that!)

Join CJ as he discusses the massive British propaganda operation in the US that ran from 1914-1917 (during the period of American “neutrality”), which was a crucial factor in eventually bringing the US into World War I.

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