History's Greatest Idiots
This hilarious history podcast explores the epic failures, disasters, and terrible decisions that have shaped our world, providing us with memorable lessons to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 10
- Latest publication
- Sep 7, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest episodes
Wales' Greatest Idiots (Season 7 Episode 19) (opens the original)
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A dancing marquess who blew through approximately £70 million in today's money in six years, and a miner's grandson who took cash from a Harrods billionaire to ask questions in Parliament. Wales has produced some characters. This Greatest Hits special revisits Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey (the Dancing Marquess who converted his family chapel into a theatre, spent everything he had being magnificently, defiantly himself, and died broke and tubercular in Monte Carlo at 29), and Neil H
Andy Warhol: Art, Fame, And Tragedy (Season 7 Episode 18) (opens the original)
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Andy Warhol said there was nothing behind the surface. The CIA, Valerie Solanas, and John Lennon all disagreed. Born in a two-room shack in Pittsburgh to Slovakian immigrants, Andy Warhol became the most famous and influential artist of the twentieth century. He invented Pop Art, redefined celebrity, predicted social media before the internet existed, and coined the phrase "fifteen minutes of fame" before anyone knew what to do with it. From Campbell's Soup Cans and the Factory to managing the V
Every Economic Bubble Ever (Almost) - Season 7 Episode 17 (opens the original)
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Every generation finds something new to bet everything on. Then they act surprised when it stops working. From Dutch tulip mania and England's South Sea Bubble to Spain's silver empire, the Amazon rubber barons, Nauru mining its entire island into a moonscape for fossilised bird poo, Iceland's banks collapsing within a week in 2008, and the $725 billion being spent on AI infrastructure against $12 billion in consumer revenue, this is the complete(ish) history of economic bubbles and the remarkab
The Worst Presidents Ever? (Season 7 Episode 16) (opens the original)
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A man who sleep-walked America into the Civil War, a president whose administration was so corrupt his own Attorney General went to prison, and the commander-in-chief who escalated Vietnam while privately admitting it was unwinnable. History's Greatest Idiots is taking a well-earned break, and leaving you with three of the worst presidents America ever produced to keep you company. This 3.5-hour Greatest Hits special revisits James Buchanan (ranked the worst president in US history by multiple s
Can Social Media Be Saved? (Season 7 Episode 15) (opens the original)
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The platforms that were supposed to connect us have spent twenty years getting progressively worse at it. Something has to give. From X (Twitter) losing half its advertising revenue since Elon Musk's takeover, to Facebook becoming irrelevant to anyone under 35, TikTok being sold to a Trump donor, and governments across the world finally moving to regulate social media, this is the complete picture of where social media stands in 2026. We also look at what's coming next: Myspace's surprise reviva
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