A history teacher who sometimes takes the student's chair.
Anti-Social Studies is a history conversation where the teacher and the student keep changing seats: sometimes Emily explains, and sometimes a guest does. The subjects range from ancient Egypt and export porcelain to the graphics of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the story of Smedley Butler.
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Anti-Social Studies is a history show powered by a teacher's reflex to explain. Emily Glankler teaches high school history, and she describes a whole life and career built on loving to know things and tell them to other people. That pleasure is the engine of the show. The format turns on who is teaching whom. In some episodes Emily is the student: Mr. Beat, a former history teacher who now makes history videos on YouTube full time, comes on to walk her through Henry George, a name she admits meant nothing to her when he suggested it. His account turns on a day in 1870 when George, overlooking San Francisco Bay, grasped how much wealth was tied up in land. The subtitle, 'Emily is forced to discuss economics!', signals her mock reluctance. In other episodes the roles flip. She teaches returning guest Ernest Crim III about Jane Addams and her work with Black progressive activists like Ida B. Wells, and puts Addams in the running with Eleanor Roosevelt for her favorite American woman in history. Crim introduces himself as a teacher of twelve years who now educates outside the classroom through Black history content, speaking and writing. Seema Rao, who covers art history on TikTok and Instagram, turns up on both sides of the exchange. In one episode she explains why porcelain mattered, describing Chinese kilns that made pieces specifically for export as a huge business. In another, Emily finally gets to use her grad school research, walking Rao through the graphic design of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and how indigenous artists were invited to make traditional yarn paintings on top of the design template. The eagle, cactus and snake of Mexico City's founding story come up too. Journalist and author Jonathan M. Katz brings the subject of his book Gangsters of Capitalism, Smedley Butler, and with it a pointed look at American occupations that Harding, Coolidge and Hoover all left in place. They also note that Wilson had used the slogan 'America first' before Harding ran on it. A special episode on ancient Egypt, partly meant for people traveling there with her, calls the 18th dynasty the most important and then confesses a soft spot for it because 18 is her lucky number. Hatshepsut, a queen who ruled in her own right, ranks among her favorites. None of it is slick: she mentions recording in her bedroom, and her dog Betty can be heard sneezing. What a listener gets is an excitable, knowledgeable guide and a rotating cast of fellow explainers, each episode anchored to a single person, event or object.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants history explained in a relaxed conversation by an enthusiastic teacher, and who enjoys jumping between subjects, from ancient Egypt to Chinese porcelain to Olympic graphic design. It also fits someone who follows history and art educators online and wants longer conversations with them.
What sets it apart: The show passes the teacher role back and forth: in some episodes a guest teaches Emily, and in others she teaches the guest, so every conversation has one person explaining and one person curious. Titles that pair a subject with a joking subtitle, like 'People have always liked pretty things', set a playful tone from the start.
With a masters degree in history and years of experience explaining old things to teenagers, Emily Glankler is bringing her high school social studies classroom to the masses. Join her as she tells stories from the past that are relevant to more than just history buffs. Relearn all the history you feel like you should already know from an expert with absolutely no homework or quizzes involved. Guaranteed.
Emily Glankler makes you follow the money behind a porcelain vase you thought was just pretty.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm, knowingly compressed sprint through ancient Egypt, with Hatshepsut as its clearest highlight.
Anti-Social Studies takes on ancient Egypt with a cheerfully impossible assignment: compressing millennia into a brisk single episode while still finding room for personality.
A San Francisco Bay land price opens a clear path into Henry George's case against Gilded Age inequality.
Henry George comes into focus through a sharp contrast: poverty seen in New York City, then in California, and the later moment overlooking San Francisco Bay when he heard that a nearby acre of farmland was expected to sell for $1,000.
Emily Glenkler gives her grad-school research a vivid second life in a warm look at the Mexico City Olympics' indigenous-inspired design.
Emily Glenkler revisits a graduate-school paper from 2013 and turns it into a brisk, personable guide to the design language of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
A lively look at porcelain as art, trade, and a quiet carrier of Asian influence.
Porcelain gives this episode a clean way into a much larger story: Asia, especially China, and the innovations that shaped world history while not always getting their due.
Jonathan M. Katz frames Smedley Butler as a revealing figure in American power and patriotic language.
A discussion of Smedley Butler opens into a broader look at America's overseas occupations and the language used to sell national purpose. Jonathan M.
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
["Anti-Social Studies' \"A Brief History of Egypt\" compresses 4,000 years into four eras: the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, and Ptolemaic Egypt.", "The episode ties the Old Kingdom to Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza, and Khafra's likely connection to the Sphinx.", "It moves through Nubia, the Hyksos invasion, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Ramses II before reaching Alexander the Great and Cleopatra VII.", "The final stretch follows Egypt into Rome, then through Muhammad Ali, the Suez Canal, Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and the 2011 revolution."]
Mr.
The 1968 Mexico City Olympics episode centers on the Mexico 68 logo, op art, and the attempt to make a city look modern through design.
Emily Glenkler and Seema Rao use porcelain to explain why Chinese ceramics, not just silk, pulled Europe, the Middle East, and India into long trade networks.
Anti-Social Studies brings on Jonathan M.
Jane Addams helped found Hull House in Chicago and worked with Ida B.
Ernest Crim III tells Emily Glencler that Sam Harris arrived in Williamsburg in 1872 with $70 after enslavement in Richmond.
Emily Glenklar frames the 1832 nullification crisis as a comparison point for arguments that the Civil War was about states’ rights rather than slavery.
Host Emily Glenkler, a history teacher from Austin, Texas, asks TikTok commentator Dara Starr Tucker whether Lincoln's anti-slavery stance was personal conviction or political strategy.
Emily Glencler and Emily Poole, both high school history teachers, trace Latvian history after a trip to Riga prompted by Poole's 47% Latvian ancestry result and her grandmother's adoption from a Riga orphanage.
Emily Clinkler closes Season 3 of Anti-Social Studies with the Bush years, starting from the 2000 election that Bush won by 537 Florida votes despite losing the popular vote by half a million.
Emily and Rudy Ramirez discuss Emma Goldman's involvement in an assassination plot against a robber baron during the Homestead Strike.
A bonus episode where Emily Glinkler interviews her former AP US History teacher Cathy Cluck about the Hamilton-Burr duel and Burr's tragic life.
A preview of a Patreon episode where the host breaks down weekly news with three key points, two perspectives, and one prediction.