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Anti-Social Studies

Emily Glankler

History class, but make it make sense for your group chat.

Anti-Social Studies is the history podcast for people who follow the news, have opinions, and never quite got the full story in school. Each season takes on a different slice of the past — World History, U.S. History, and the current events that are basically history happening in real time — and breaks it down for people walking in with zero background and zero patience for boring. No jargon, no gatekeeping, no assuming you already know who these people are or why any of this matters. Just the context you actually need, delivered like your favorite teacher going on a very fun tangent.

Hosted by Emily Glankler — 12-year high school history teacher turned full-time history-explainer — Anti-Social Studies exists on one belief: the world would be a better place if everyone paid a little more attention in history class. Consider this your second chance.

New episodes contextualize the chaos, one historical tangent at a time.

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  • 21 episodes
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Episodes 21

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  • Wednesday · 8 min· Video

    When did we become "civilized?" (Emily Teaches World History #1)

    Welcome to Emily Teaches World History — a new series where we go all the way back to the actual beginning, starting with the discovery that changed everything: farming. This episode covers the Neolithic Revolution (aka the invention of agriculture, aka the reason you're not currently living in a small nomadic hunting tribe), why it probably wasn't invented by any one person or culture, and why it happened almost everywhere on Earth within a few thousand years of each other with zero communication between continents. Then we get into the real question: once farming shows up, what actually makes a "civilization" a civilization? Turns out historians have a checklist — seven characteristics, more or less agreed upon across textbooks — and some of them hold up better than others. A stable food supply and specialized jobs? Sure, makes sense. A required, organized writing system? That one's a problem, and it's the one I have the most beef with: it's a rule written by historians who value written documents (because their whole job depends on written documents), and it conveniently writes off civilizations that kept extraordinary records a different way — like the Inca, who tracked accounting through a system of knotted rope called khipu, or societies across Africa with long, rigorous oral history traditions carried by trained griots. Built Machu Picchu on top of a mountain with no wheels and no draft animals, but didn't leave a grocery list? Historians have questions. Also featured: my dogs Betty and Amby as a case study in domestication, an extremely strained Hunger Games metaphor, and my husband Zach's dishwasher-loading crimes. This is the first of many — if you want the long-form, no-TikTok-time-limit version of how the world actually got here, this is the series for you. ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Instagram: @antisocstudies · TikTok: @antisocialstudies · YouTube: Anti-Social Studies ???? Want the deeper, classroom-ready version of world history? Check out my curriculum and courses at antisocialstudies.org #worldhistory #history #civilization #ancienthistory #education

  • September 15 · 10 min· Video

    How 'The Party Switch' really worked (follow the money, not the names)

    "The parties switched" is the most confidently repeated, least accurately explained sentence in American political history. Sometimes a party shifted its platform over time to hold on to core voting groups. Sometimes a voting bloc switched to another party. But there was never a simple "Switch." This clip is a segment from one of my live monthly History Lecture Party sessions — the Patreon series where subscribers get a full deep-dive lecture plus live Q&A every month. This session, we traced three voting blocs through American history to see what they actually wanted from government — and it turns out the answer barely changed at all: Wealthy merchants and business owners have wanted a government that protects their money since before the Civil War. Sometimes that meant a strong federal government (tariffs, national infrastructure, a unified economy to grow into). Sometimes it meant "get out of my way" small government. Same voting bloc, opposite asks — because the goal was never "big government" or "small government," it was whatever kept the money moving in their direction. The party willing to deliver that just happened to change. Black and other marginalized voters have wanted the same thing since Reconstruction: a federal government strong enough to overrule states and actually enforce the Constitution. That bloc backed the party delivering it — Republicans in the 1860s, Democrats from the New Deal through the Civil Rights Act — not because they kept switching teams, but because the team delivering federal protection changed. White Southerners backed the Democratic Party from Andrew Jackson through Jim Crow, as long as "Democrat" meant "economic support for the common (white) man." The second the national Democratic Party got serious about civil rights, that bloc left for a Republican Party actively recruiting them with the Southern Strategy. None of these groups changed what they wanted. The parties changed who they were willing to serve to get elected. Want to attend the next lecture live? It's a Patreon perk! ????️ Join History Lecture Party (Patreon): patreon.com/antisocialstudies ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Instagram: @antisocstudies · TikTok: @antisocialstudies ???? Want the deeper dive? My U.S. History courses and curriculum cover every era in this video in a lot more depth: antisocialstudies.org #ushistory #politicalparties #history #patreon #civilrights

  • September 11 · 20 min· Video

    WHY did Al-Qaeda attack the United States on September 11?

    There are adults walking around right now, almost old enough to rent a car, who weren't alive on September 11, 2001. And a lot of the rest of us watched it happen live and never actually went back to learn it as history. We lived through it. We never studied it. This episode covers both halves of that problem. First, the basics of what happened that morning — the timeline, the casualties, why historians are seriously discussing whether 2001 marks the start of an entirely new era of human history. Then the much longer, much messier story underneath it: who al-Qaeda actually was, why Osama bin Laden considered the U.S. his enemy, and the 50+ years of American coups, arms deals, wars, and occupations across southwest Asia that built the conditions al-Qaeda grew out of — from the 1945 Quincy Agreement through Cold War-era Iran and Syria, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Afghan-Soviet War, the Gulf War, and al-Qaeda's own escalating attacks throughout the 1990s that most people have never heard of. I want to be completely clear about something up front: none of this is a justification. Nothing excuses the deliberate murder of 2,977 people. But there's a real difference between "this came out of nowhere" and the truth — al-Qaeda had been trying, and failing, and trying again to hit American targets for almost a decade before September 11th, and had said exactly why. The scale of that day was shocking. But the fact that al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. was not (at least for anyone paying attention to history.) I also correct a myth in this one that I used to believe myself: that the CIA directly funded and armed Osama bin Laden. The record doesn't actually support that. What the U.S. did fund was the broader infrastructure — money, weapons, training — that the entire anti-Soviet jihad ran on, and bin Laden built his own organization inside that ecosystem. That distinction matters, and it's more interesting than the flattened version anyway. This is a long one, and an important one. Please watch the whole thing before drawing conclusions from a single clip out of context. ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Instagram: @antisocstudies · TikTok: @antisocialstudies · YouTube: Anti-Social Studies ???? Want the deeper dive on U.S. involvement in the modern Middle East and the rest of the 20th century? My Course 3 (1945–present) covers this era in a lot more depth: https://emily-glankler-s-school.teachable.com/p/u-s-history-course-2-modern-united-states-1945-present #september11 #911 #ushistory #alqaeda #history

  • September 8 · 7 min· Video

    Washington warned us about political parties. Nobody listened.

    George Washington's Farewell Address is basically a 1796 subtweet aimed at the entire rest of American history. He warned the country against "the baneful effects of the spirit of party" — and by the time he finished writing it, political parties had already formed. Nobody listened. Nobody has ever really listened. This clip is a segment from one of my live monthly History Lecture Party sessions — the Patreon series where I do a full deep-dive lecture (plus live Q&A) for subscribers every month. August's topic was the history of the political party "switch." Here's the arc: the ratification fight over the Constitution split the country into Federalists (strong central government, hi Hamilton) and Anti-Federalists (deeply suspicious of that same strong central government). That fight didn't go away after ratification — it just put on a suit and became the first real party system, with Hamilton's Federalists squaring off against Jefferson and Madison's Democratic-Republicans. Washington watched this happen from inside his own cabinet, hated it, warned everyone about it on his way out the door in 1796 — and then it got worse anyway. The Federalists eventually collapsed (turns out flirting with disloyalty during the War of 1812 will do that to a party), and the Democratic-Republicans ended up so dominant that historians call the period that followed the "Era of Good Feelings" — a name that is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because "good feelings" is not exactly what one-party dominance actually produced. Want the full lecture, live Q&A, and invites to future History Lecture Parties? That's a Patreon-exclusive perk — link below. www.patreon.com/antisocialstudies ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Instagram: @antisocstudies TikTok: @antisocialstudies ???? Want the deeper dive on this era? My Course 1 (1491–1877) covers the founding and early republic in full: course website. #ushistory #foundingfathers #politicalparties #history #patreon

  • September 4 · 16 min· Video

    Tradwives or, "The Cult of Domesticity with Better Lighting"

    The TradWife trend is not new. We just used to call it the Cult of Domesticity — and back then it didn't come with a ring light. Every few decades, America falls back in love with the idea that women, especially moms, belong at home. It's happening again right now with linen aprons and homemade sourdough, but if you've sat through a U.S. history class with me, you already know this movie. I've seen this film before, and I didn't like the ending. In this video I'm tracing the very old, very repetitive story behind the TradWife trend: from Republican Motherhood in the earliest days of the republic (when a mom's job was literally to raise virtuous citizens for the new nation), to the "New Woman" of the late 1800s who terrified everyone by wanting an education and a bicycle, to the Victorian "Cult of Domesticity" that decided the home was a woman's entire moral universe, to Rosie the Riveter — when the country suddenly needed women in factories and decided domesticity could wait — and then the hard pivot right back to the kitchen the second the war ended. Here's my actual argument: this isn't a coincidence, and it was never really about aesthetics. People in power — political, economic, whoever benefits from things staying exactly as they are — want stability. And historically, a "stable" society starts with a stable home. Moms are the lynchpin of that home: they set the routines, model the values, and raise the next generation of voters, workers, and consumers. A "traditional" home is a predictable home — predictable in how it votes, how it spends, how it makes decisions. And predictability is extremely good for anyone trying to hold onto power or make money. So every time that stability feels threatened — economically, politically, socially — you can set your watch to a cultural push back toward "traditional" womanhood. It happened after the Revolution. It happened at the turn of the 20th century. It happened the moment WWII ended. And it's happening again right now, just with better lighting. This isn't a takedown of anyone's personal choices about how they want to live. It's a look at why this specific aesthetic keeps getting culturally rewarded at very specific moments — and who actually benefits when it does. Topics include: Republican Motherhood; early women's education; the "New Woman"; Jane Addams; Mary Rozet Smith; Hull House; Godey's Lady's Book; Sarah Josepha Hale; Cult of Domesticity; Vassar College; suffrage; temperance; World War II; Rosie the Riveter; 1950s housewife; feminism; Gloria Steinem; Shirley Chisholm If you're into this kind of pattern-spotting, this is basically the whole reason this channel exists — history explains a lot more of the present than we give it credit for. ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Instagram: @antisocstudies · TikTok: @antisocialstudies ???? Want the deeper dive? My self-paced U.S. History courses (1491–1877 / 1865–1945 / 1945–present) and classroom-ready curriculum PDFs cover every era in this video in a lot more depth: Online Classes: https://emily-glankler-s-school.teachable.com/l/products?sortKey=name&sortDirection=asc&page=1 Curriculum: https://www.antisocialstudies.org/category/curriculum #tradwife #womenshistory #ushistory #feminism #culturaldomesticity #gloriasteinem

  • August 31 · 16 min

    The National Debt or, "Is $40 trillion a lot? It seems like a lot..."

    The national debt just hit $40 trillion. If the U.S. decided to pay that off at a cool $1 billion a year, we'd be debt-free in about 40,000 years — so, cool, normal, not concerning at all. This week we're digging into how we actually got here. Turns out America has basically never not been in debt — we owed money before we even finished writing the Constitution. We'll trace the whole wild ride: how Alexander Hamilton picked a fight with half the founding fathers over who should pay for the Revolutionary War, how Andrew Jackson briefly got the debt down to zero (and immediately triggered an economic crash), how FDR and a British economist named Keynes convinced the country that borrowing money could actually be a strategy, and how the debt has ballooned, shrunk, and ballooned again through World War II, the Reagan years, the Clinton surplus, and the 2008 financial crisis. Spoiler: debt itself isn't the villain of this story. What we borrowed for, how fast the economy was growing, and who ended up footing the bill — that's where things get interesting (and a little infuriating). By the end, you'll never hear a headline about the national debt the same way again. If this type of history is your thing, this is basically the appetizer version of what's covered — in a lot more depth — in my self-paced U.S. History courses or in the individual curriculum units if you're a teacher who wants classroom-ready materials. ???? antisocialstudies.org ???? Courses: emily-glankler-s-school.teachable.com ???? Teacher curriculum PDFs: antisocialstudies.org/category/curriculum ???? @antisocstudies (IG) · @antisocialstudies (TikTok)

  • March 6 · 35 min

    A Brief History of Egypt

    Welcome to a special episode I've created for my Historical Travel Society members who are traveling to Egypt! Click here for my History of Egypt TIMELINE to follow along

    • Chapters
  • Sep 27, 2023 · 1 hr 9 min

    Smedley Butler or, "The Making and Breaking of America's Empire" (with author Jonathan M. Katz)

    This week I'm joined by Jonathan Katz, author of Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire. On today's episode we talk about ALL of it: American imperialism, the Bonus Army March of WWI vets, an attempted fascist coup against FDR, and the Imperialist-With-A-Heart-Of-Gold (?) at the center of it all: Smedley Butler.

  • Aug 23, 2023 · 57 min

    Riga or, "Other Emily is a Latvian Princess!" (with Emily Pool)

    The Emilies went to Latvia and fell in love! Join us as we share all the history, fun facts, and personal revelations we discovered in our new favorite European city: Riga. Follow Emily Pool for all things European History on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube and check out her AP European History Ultimate Review Packet to get ready for the exam! www.snipfeed.co/antisocialstudies

  • Mar 14, 2023 · 49 min

    US History Ep. 23 The 1990s or, "The Seinfeld Decade"

    Listen. Never have I felt older than this moment, in which I am lecturing via podcast about the historical epoch that is the 1990s (or, as the kids refer to it, “The late 1900s.”) So, what were the 1990s about? It was confusing. We didn’t have a clear “enemy” in the world anymore. The internet boom glossed over rising inequality. The world became “globalized” and the country became obsessed with talking about “multiculturalism” and whether that was a good or bad thing. The 1990s are a hodge-podge of developments that will become more important as “origin stories” for 21st century developments. It was a decade full of stories but also kind of about nothing. Today we’re talking about the 1990s or, “The Seinfeld Decade.” I’m Emily Glankler; this is Anti-Social Studies; settle in and let’s go back in time…

  • Jan 20, 2023 · 47 min

    US History Episode 21: The 1970s or, "If an entire decade was a middle child..."

    It's 1968. White middle-class Americans are tired. They’re tired of everyone complaining - it’s “systemic racism” this and “unjust war” that. Can’t we all just be happy? Isn’t it time we all just calmed down and got back to work? It’s time for some tough love and Nixon is the man to drag us out of the 1960s kicking and screaming… Today’s episode is all about the 1970s or “If an entire decade were the middle child.” This is Anti-Social Studies; I’m Emily Glankler: settle in and let’s go back in time… This episode is brought to you by the Choices Program. The Choices Program creates fantastic social studies materials that connect history with current issues. Check them out at choices.edu and use the code ANTI-SS for a 15% discount on your purchase. Discount does not apply to site licenses.

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