Episode #230- Why President McKinley? (Part I)

Our Fake History

PodcastOne

Education, Talk Radio, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

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Summary

The 25th President of the United States, William McKinley, has recently been in the news. In the 2025 inaugural address it was announced that Alaska's highest peak would once again be known as Mt. McKinley to honour the former President, who was apparently a "great businessman" who made America "very rich." Like many, Sebastian found this newfound interest in president McKinley rather curious. For most of the 20th century he was overshadowed by his successor Theodore Roosevelt, who once claimed that McKinley had the "backbone of a chocolate éclair." Why had this particular President been plucked from history and held up as worthy of emulation? It turns out a growing number of American conservatives, including Republican strategist Karl Rove, have been attempting to revive McKinley's reputation for years. What do they see in this turn-of-the-century politician? Tune-in and find out how threats to annex Canada, civil war stories, and boom-bust capitalism all play a role in the story.

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Transcript

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0:43.9	Wondery UK. That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. Friends, if you've been listening to this show for any length of time,
1:02.4	then you know that our fake history has never explicitly been about contemporary politics.
1:09.6	Oh, sure. When I'm feeling a little puffed up,
1:12.2	I like to think that one might be able to glean some insights
1:16.5	from this show that might shed some light on our current moment,
1:20.3	but this is not a current events show.
1:24.4	In fact, I know many of you listening are immediately put off by anything that might
1:30.0	resemble a political opinion.
1:32.9	I'm deeply aware that mentioning anything about our current political moment is a minefield.
1:41.3	So perhaps it's best to just avoid it.
1:45.3	But sometimes things bubble up in the discourse that are hard for me to ignore.
1:52.2	As fans of this podcast know, one of my enduring interests is how history is reframed, reimagined, and then redeployed to suit a particular occasion.
2:06.4	Anytime a politician or public figure decides that they're going to draw parallels to a particular historical moment,
	...

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