History's blame board, with jokes.
The Alarmist turns tragedies, feuds, and famous deaths into brisk cases about responsibility. It moves from Socrates and Rosa Parks to Janis Joplin and La Voisin with research, argument, and sharp comic relief.
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The Alarmist is built like a comic tribunal for history's worst days. Each main episode starts with a disaster, death, scandal, or cultural wound, then asks who should go on the board. That structure gives the show a clean engine. The conversation itself is much looser, with researched setup giving way to questions, corrections, side jokes, and small arguments about what actually mattered. Socrates is not just treated as a famous philosopher drinking hemlock. His death becomes a window into postwar Athens, the Thirty Oligarchs, restored democracy, religious rigidity, and the fear that one man's ideas could destabilize a shaken city. The Hatfield-McCoy feud gets the same treatment, with the show looking for more than family shorthand. Janis Joplin's death is handled through pressure, performance, and the sadness that still clings to her story. La Voisin opens into poison, court rumor, magical networks, royal power, and the strange business ecosystem around fear. The arrest of Rosa Parks is placed inside organizing work that long predated the famous bus moment. The Aftermath format helps the show widen the frame. Guest experts such as Dr. Bob Hutton and Holly George Warren bring in deeper context without sanding off the show's conversational edges. The humor is often nervous and blunt. It works because the jokes usually orbit the absurdity of power, panic, vanity, or bad decisions, not the suffering itself. The show is especially good at puncturing the neat version of a famous story. It asks what popular memory leaves out. It also asks who benefited from the simplified version. The result is history that feels researched without becoming remote. It suits listeners who want facts, blame, and a little gallows laughter in the same room. The verdict is rarely clean, which is the point.
Made for: For curious history listeners who like disaster stories, corrective context, and conversational comedy. It especially fits anyone who enjoys famous events being treated as messy cases rather than settled legends.
What sets it apart: The show is not just a retelling machine; it keeps returning to responsibility, power, and the stories people use to explain catastrophe. Its Aftermath episodes add guest context after the panel has already built the blame case.
Who is to blame for history's greatest tragedies? The Plague. The sinking of The Titanic. The break-up of the Beatles. Writer/Comedian Rebecca Delgado-Smith, along with a special guest, scrutinizes history’s greatest disasters to figure out what went wrong, and most importantly, who’s to blame. This comedy podcast is the perfect remedy to our everyday anxiety! They say history repeats itself, not on The Alarmist's watch! Thrillist called The Alarmist one of the best new podcasts of 2019 saying, "It's hilarious, informative and addictive." Maria Claire named The Alarmist one of the best new podcasts of 2020. Sign up for our Patreon for ad-free listening, post-aftermath interview discussions &…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Historical disasters become arguments about responsibility, with humor, sourced context, and a blame board that keeps simple verdicts under pressure.
The Alarmist turns historical causation into a lively argument, with Rebecca Delgado-Smith and other speakers building a case for who or what belongs on the blame board.
Louis XIV lands on Rebecca Delgado-Smith's blame board, and you get to argue the case.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Socrates's death is framed through civic unease, not a polished philosophy lesson.
PlayNext's history lane treats Socrates's death as something shaped by civic unease rather than a neat philosophy lesson. It starts with Athens emerging from the 30 oligarchs and a democracy that still feels brittle, then folds in religious rigidity and the city's distrust of…
La Voisin is used to map a Paris network shaped by magic, referrals, and court fear of poison.
The episode presents La Voisin as part of a Paris network story, where dabbling in magic, referrals, and nearby neighborhoods all feed the affair of the poisons.
A wide-ranging conversation about leadership, work, and risk as technology keeps advancing.
The piece centers on a simple but durable question: what makes a leader worth following, and how does that answer shift as work and technology speed up.
Rosa Parks' arrest is placed inside a planned campaign shaped by organizing, risk, and a contested legal choice.
The episode reframes Rosa Parks' arrest as the result of organizing already in motion, not as a clean first spark. It traces the Women's Political Council through years of meetings with city officials and the bus company, then shows how a boycott plan was paused after Claudette…
A blunt look at Jim Crow, separate-but-equal, and the language of enforced order.
The episode follows a clear line from social policing and a culture of hate into racism, then widens that line with Jim Crow laws and the separate-but-equal doctrine. Britannica and EBSCO help ground the history, linking Reconstruction, Plessy v.
A famous feud gets a harder reading as revenge is set against the history of lynch-mob violence in Kentucky.
The Aftermath: The Hatfield-McCoy Feud looks at the famous feud as a story of escalation, asking what changes when the killing of three captured McCoys is set against the broader violence of 1880s Kentucky. Dr.
A Romanov blame case that links Nicholas II, Alexandra, and the family tragedy to politics, pressure, and later commemoration.
The episode frames the Romanov execution as a blame case, tracing Nicholas II's unpopularity into the March 1917 protests and the soldiers' refusal to fire.
Host Rebecca Delgado-Smith interviews historian Dr.
Comedian Rebecca Delgado-Smith and guests analyze the 1918 execution of the Romanov family, Russia's last royal dynasty.
This episode explores the aftermath of Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast that caused widespread panic among listeners who believed it was a real alien invasion.
This episode examines the 1913 Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet, Michigan, exploring who was responsible for the tragic event that occurred during a mining strike.
This episode of The Aftermath features an interview with Professor Amani Roberts discussing the Monica and Brandy feud over 'The Boy is Mine' and exploring who is to blame for this historical tragedy in pop culture.
The host, who identifies as a catastrophizer, introduces an episode analyzing the 1988 film Die Hard to determine who is to blame for the events in the movie.
This comedy podcast episode analyzes the 1990s feud between R&B singers Brandy and Monica over their hit song 'The Boy Is Mine' to determine who is to blame.
The city is still bruised.
This episode examines the historical Hatfield-McCoy feud with guest expert Dr.
This comedy podcast episode analyzes the historical Hatfield-McCoy feud to determine who is to blame for the tragedy.
This episode explores the death of Janis Joplin with guest expert Holly George-Warren, a music journalist and author, discussing the historical tragedy and who might be to blame.
This comedy podcast episode analyzes the death of Janis Joplin to determine who is to blame, using a catastrophizing perspective.
The episode circles back to La Voisin through Paris networks of magic and referrals.
The episode asks what absolutist France looked like when one man held most of the power, and it treats boredom, gossip, and court ambition as part of the story.
The Alarmist's "The Aftermath: The Arrest of Rosa Parks" reframes December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, as the product of years of organizing, not a single tired refusal on a bus.
The Alarmist turns segregation into a blame-board conversation about racism and Jim Crow.