Urgent History

How war-ravaged eastern Europe struggled to recover

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How do societies respond to war’s devastation? In this episode, co-host Carolyn Strange asks Filip Slaveski to answer that question, tapping his expertise in the history of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, especially Russia and Ukriane. Revolution and famine preceded the waves of violence and destruction of the Second World War. What strategies and resources allowed ordinary people to survive, to cope, to retain hope and rebuild their lives once the guns fell silent, or at least were muted? How can we better understand Ukraine’s response to Russia’s recent attacks through that past?

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The privileges and perils of queenship in late Antiquity

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What was it like to be a queen in the Roman, Byzantine and Medieval period? In this episode we discuss how elite women experienced peril alongside privilege. Historian of late Antiquity, Dr. Meaghan McEvoy, recounts tales of women entangled in political jockeying, unhappy marriages and risky reproduction. Did the rise of Christianity provide queens and their daughters preferable alternatives? How can we reconceive contemporary notions of female leadership through its longer history?

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The collision of worlds in Australian exploration

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How can studying expeditions recast the history of colonisation? In this episode, historian Professor Martin Thomas recounts the dynamics of mutual discovery in the last gasp of imperial exploration in Australia’s Arnhem Land in the 1940s. The American expeditioners considered themselves the clever men, but how did Aboriginal leaders express their expertise, artistry and spirituality? After the blows of dispossession and the theft of human remains, how can we think more deeply about the obligations and meanings of reconciliation?

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Presenting the news, from balladiers to influencers

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Can we understand the demise of legacy media and the rise of social media as the primary source of news without knowledge of news media in the past? In this episode, historian Associate Professor Una McIlvenna highlights the use of song in conveying news – of crime, of disasters, of political events in European, British and Australian history. How was the news sung and how can historians recover evidence of those customs? When and why did singing the news give way to different genres and media? Is the hyper-emotional, dramatic world of online news really new?

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Grandparenting’s transformations in the twentieth century

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Although most of us have or had grandparents in our lives, where do our generational connections fit within broader social, cultural, economic and political frames? In this episode, Dr. Liz Allen puts her historical demographer’s lens on grandparenting in Australia since the mid-twentieth century. How have migration, housing design, longer lifespans and the rising cost of living shaped the pleasures and demands of grandparenting? Have parent -grandparent-relations changed in an increasingly multicultural Australia? As funding for childcare erodes, is the state expecting grandparents and ‘grand friends’ to pick up the slack?

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War criminals and culpability after World War Two

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How do war crimes differ from the horrors of war? In this episode emeritus Professor of History, Robert Cribb, focuses on thirteen people prosecuted for war crimes following Japan’s defeat in World War Two. How can we explain what led certain combatants and civilians to commit war crimes? Considering the mass casualties of civilians perpetrated by Allied forces, were these trials victors’ justice? How did prosecutors determine individual culpability, and how did the accused defend their actions? Have we entered a period when the will to identify war crimes and to hold war criminals has withered?

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Who needs History anyway?

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

In this podcast, we try to make sense of some universities’ attempts to do away with face-to-face lectures – the most ancient and enduring form of teaching. We explore how this trend might impact humanities courses, history especially, in tertiary education, and what it means for the value of education in our time.

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The Roots of Political Populism

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

In this podcast we ask how the philosophers of the 18th century got it so wrong, that is how their hopes of the Enlightenment leading to peace and prosperity, instead, led to fanaticism and bloodshed. Can we trace the roots of today’s political extremism among western democracies, from Trump’s America to Orban’s Hungary, to this juncture?

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Getting out of our cost-of-living crisis

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

In this podcast we examine the historical roots of the contemporary cost-of-living crisis, particularly in Australia, but also more broadly in the West. We ask where the decline in real living standards of Australian workers and the corresponding growth of poverty and inequality in Australia came from. Was it only from COVID? What about the last financial crisis in 2008? Or later developments? Are these things connected and how doe get out of this crisis?

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What happened to climate activism?

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

In this podcast, we ask ‘where are we now with climate change politics?’ You may have noticed that in the recent Australian election and other elections in the West, there was far less discussion about climate change in the broader debates about energy policy than in previous elections. Are the politics of climate change, which had dominated the environmental movement for forty years, reaching a natural nadir, at least in the effectiveness of mass activism to effect political change? What happens to us either way?

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What on earth is going on with Australian universities?

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

In this podcast, we discuss the crisis in higher education. Massive staff layoffs, the closure of entire departments, mostly in the Humanities across Australian universities, puncture the news cycle. The cost of getting a degree has skyrocket while the quality and value of one may be heading in the other direction, with deep implications for our democracy and social mobility. We ask where this crisis came from and how we can fix it.

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