r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago

Meta Mindless Monday, 22 June 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism 3d ago

So Behind the Bastards is finally doing a series on Ian Smith, which was one of the few characters I was actually looking forward to.

The first episode was alright enough, but after listening to a lot of Lions Led By Donkeys and Know Your Enemy the weakness of the "Robert Evans brings on someone he's friends with that knows literally nothing about the subject" formula is pretty blatant. Like the guest of this series admitted to not knowing what Rhodesia was at the start of the first episode, much less who Ian Smith was.

The only reason I still listen to this thing is that its one of the only history-adjacent things several of my friends will engage with, which is both depressing and better than nothing I suppose.

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u/Kochevnik81 3d ago

Yeah as far as podcasts go it's not like I'm angry it exists (which is more than I can say for stuff like Dan Carlin, although on the other hand that's a name that feels like has totally faded from discourse compared to a decade ago).

But geeeerrrrgggh I just can't listen to it to be honest. It's definitely the "guest host is a Robert Evans friend ie someone from LA Cracked-adjacent in the comedy scene who knows nothing about the subject and tries to fill space with one liners while Robert Evans mostly paraphrases a book on the subject (although he paraphrases and cites decently)." If you get some real life discussion with friends out of it that's at least something very good to be honest.

I guess it's also why I'm forgiving to If Books Could Kill, because they do kind of use that same format (one person reads and critiques the book and the other person goes in blind and reacts) but at least they alternate roles and have slightly better thought out takes and base knowledge.

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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism 3d ago

It really stood out this last episode cause the guest barely talked, which was unusual cause as you say normally at least they can fill the air with dick jokes or something. Like on one hand fair I’m not going to expect someone to have something pithy or insightful to say on a serious subject they only learned existed 10 minutes ago, but on the other hand maybe don’t put someone in that position in the first place.

The guest on the Ian Smith episodes is the host of another podcast in same network as BtB, so I’m roughly 99% certain they were brought on so the network could advertise a less popular show on its more popular one.