Evergreen Podcasts
70 episodes listed below
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Untangling history’s greatest controversies. Every month, we take a hard look at the historical conflicts that raise difficult questions, stoke controversy, and send our moral compasses spinning.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Zach Cornwell pairs vivid narrative history with careful attention to political systems, contested testimony, and the human choices inside major conflicts.
Zach Cornwell builds narrative history around people caught inside systems of war, belief, and political power. His subjects range from Hiroo Onoda's decades after Japan's surrender to Aum Shinrikyo, the hunt for Adolf Eichmann, the court of Justinian and Theodora, and the 1971…
A Byzantine postal cut becomes a human crisis; Zach Cornwell makes you care about the administrative detail.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured history episode that stays with the Tokyo subway sarin attacks' aftermath.
Conflicted closes its two-part look at the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attacks by staying with the aftermath. It follows a news van toward Kasumigaseki Crossing and uses the business and administrative district to anchor the scene, which keeps the episode grounded in place as the…
A patient origin story that makes the Tokyo subway attacks feel terrifyingly clear.
This episode works as a slow, unnerving origin story for the Tokyo subway attacks, with its real focus on how Aum Shinrikyo took shape around Asahara.
Archer Blood watches a political impasse harden toward war.
Part three of the Bangladesh War series tracks the crisis in East Pakistan as the cyclone, the election, and the stalled transfer of power tighten the pressure inside Dhaka.
A measured look at Pakistan's military rule before the coming election showdown.
It follows Pakistan's slide from the 1958 coup into military rule, with Yahya Khan at the center as president, foreign minister, defense minister, and chief martial law administrator.
A future sexual revolutionary is traced back to a frightened boyhood inside an extremely religious New Jersey home.
Zach Cornwell begins this first part of a three-part series on Alfred Kinsey with a frightened boyhood: a 13-year-old in suburban New Jersey, growing up under an extremely religious patriarch and trying to make sense of bodily urges he has been taught to regard as very bad.
A failed marriage alliance opens the road from Cerdanya to Bordeaux.
Dr. Gary Giroux presents the conflict as a failed diplomatic gamble that hardens into invasion. Eudo, still shaped by the Muslim devastation of his lands a decade earlier and suspicious of Charles, tries to keep the Frankish warlord at a distance through a marriage alliance…
A patient, cinematic opener links Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq to the Gulf's strategic stakes.
The Gulf War is introduced as power closing in around Saddam Hussein. The episode presents him as a 42-year-old ruler backed by oil wealth, a fast-modernizing army, and a frightening grip on Iraq, while still holding onto the awkward reality that health care and education were…
A sharp single-episode look at the weekend as a fragile achievement shaped by factory discipline, worker resistance, and freedom.
The episode frames the weekend as something wrested from factory life, not simply granted by it. The grind of wheels, gears, pistons, and cranks makes the danger and exhaustion feel concrete, especially with workdays that could begin and end in darkness.
History with teeth, politics with memory.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Conflicted begins with a careful reset.
Conflicted opens its Panama Canal series by tying the waterway to trade, empire, and the “largest, most costly single effort ever before mounted anywhere on Earth,” in David McCullough’s words.
Conflicted: A History Podcast ends its three-part Eichmann series with the fallout from Mossad’s 1960 abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires and the push to stage a trial in Jerusalem.
Conflicted: A History Podcast, Part 3 of "When Justinian Met Theodora," covers about 8 years of Justinian and Theodora's reign, from the aftermath of the 532 Nika Riots to the completion of Hagia Sophia in December 537 AD.
Conflicted: A History Podcast traces the weekend back through the French Revolution, the Babylonian sky, Jewish Sabbath practice, and industrial labor संघर्ष over time itself.
Zach Cornwell's Conflicted episode on Adolf Eichmann follows the hunt from Fritz Bauer's tip in West Germany to the paperwork that turned Eichmann into Ricardo Clement in Argentina.
Part four keeps *Conflicted* in the hard choices of the 1971 Bangladesh War.
Zach Cornwell opens with a trip back to the old History Channel before turning to the story of Adolf Eichmann and the years that let him slip away.
Conflicted: A History Podcast shifts from the 20th century to 6th-century Constantinople, where the Hippodrome could hold 100,000 people and the Blue and Green factions shaped both sport and politics.
The series closes under a plague sky.
Bridget Todd's Beef episode on Conflicted follows Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke through the 1854–1864 fight over the source of the White Nile.
Conflicted: A History Podcast, “The Kinsey Report – Part 2,” follows Alfred Kinsey from the 1932 Sierra Madre Mountains to Indiana University in 1943.
Conflicted: A History Podcast’s “When Justinian Met Theodora – Part 2” shifts from the couple’s origin story to the politics of Justinian’s court in 531 AD.
Zach Cornwell's third and final Kinsey episode centers on the 1948 release of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a book built from 10 years of research and 12,000 interviews.
Conflicted opens its three-part Gulf War series by arguing that the 1991 war is often flattened into a simple desert victory story, even though it sits between Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq War and carries far larger consequences.
British Airways Flight 149 landed at Kuwait International Airport on August 2, 1990, just as Iraqi fighter jets bombed the runway and Iraqi soldiers entered the terminal.
This episode explores the construction of the Panama Canal, delving into the historical conflicts and controversies surrounding this monumental engineering project.
A white van screams through Tokyo.
Tokyo's subway system is waiting at the end of the story.
Zach Cornwell starts with a quick correction about John F.
Zach Cornwell launches multi-part series on 1971 Bangladesh War, marking show's 50th episode.
Zach Cornwell introduces 3-part Conflicted series on Dr.
This episode of The French History Podcast, featured on Conflicted, delves into the Battle of Poitiers in 732 AD, challenging the myth that it was a decisive clash of civilizations that saved Europe from Islamic conquest.
This is the sixth and final episode of a series on the Partition of India, where host Zach Cornwell thanks listeners for their support and sets up the conclusion of this complex historical topic, emphasizing its educational and controversial nature.
This episode continues a multi-part series on the partition of India, exploring the historical struggles and moral questions surrounding the event.
This episode is part of a multi-part series on the partition of India, exploring the historical conflicts and moral questions surrounding the event.
This episode explores the partition of India, focusing on the political intrigue, betrayal, and violence that shaped this historical event.
This episode continues a series on the partition of India, recapping the salt march and setting up the next stage of the story.
A history podcast exploring difficult historical controversies and the moral questions they raise.
This episode examines the historical accuracy and cultural impact of the 2006 film '300' and the Battle of Thermopylae.
A history podcast exploring controversial events and moral dilemmas from the past.
This episode explores a dark historical controversy with a warning about sexual violence, part of a series on history's greatest conflicts.
This episode explores the controversy surrounding the 2015 decision to allow women in all U.S.