EP30 So, you say you want a revolution?

it's hardcore history there are two kinds of people that listen to this um podcast one group are history fans the other group are people who are in the process of becoming history fans and so um like to talk to them for a minute history fans already know what I'm going to say here but it's an interesting aspect of why the asked in terms of a field of study should matter to us today we exist in a time period where uh the value of a history education for example among several Humanities um SL social science disciplines are sort of at a low E because a whole bunch of factors including people who come out of college with huge student loans they have to pay back is geared towards you know trying to maximize the investment that was your you know University education which is totally understandable but it causes us to sort of look to knee jerk at the connection between education and earning potential right you study computer science you get out you have a job as opposed to you become a more formidable person uh by immersing yourself in the humanities which helps you in a whole bunch of ways as life requires you to adapt over and over again um I understand people devalue it and maybe those subjects are not the same as they used used to be but there was always a practical value to learning about things like history although not always in the way non-history fans assume again history fans already know this let me let me use my favorite example you'll often hear usually when we're talking about some military uh Affair that might involve um you know combating a dictator or something you'll hear the 1938 Munich appeasement argument brought into Play You'll often see this some will say we learned in 1938 that you can't appease dictators cuz we appeased Hitler and look what happened this is a standard non-history fan understanding of cause and effect where they look and say Well it happened this way once therefore it'll happen this way again ignoring what history fans obviously already understand that there are bazillion variables and all those variables make the situation you know that you're using that 1938 aasan example to you know make an argument point in that the two situations are not comparable ...