The Atomic Bomb & Civil War Cigars: Greatest 'What Ifs' from History
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We think of history as a neat chain of predictable events; but what if the truth is far wilder than that? Today, we're talking about the pivotal forces of randomness and chance, and how tiny moments can change the course of our human story.
Dan is joined by Brian Klaas, associate professor in global politics at University College London and author of 'Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters'. Brian unpicks our traditional telling of history, and explains how our world really works.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Anisha Deva.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.
We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.
You can take part in our listener survey here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history. |
| 0:02.0 | You know I love talking about leaders on this podcast and battles and elections and movements and speeches and uprisings. |
| 0:09.0 | The people and the events that have shaped us. |
| 0:13.7 | But today I'm going to take a very different approach |
| 0:15.8 | and do something unusual. |
| 0:17.5 | I'm going to look at the moments of blind luck, |
| 0:21.4 | total coincidence. Some of them, as you'll hear, gigantic in scale, others, well, |
| 0:27.0 | literally microscopic, seemingly insignificant. All of them have changed the course of life on this planet. |
| 0:36.1 | And all of which prompt us to ask the question, what if they hadn't happened? |
| 0:42.3 | I'd be joined by Brian Class. |
| 0:43.6 | He's an associate professor of global politics |
| 0:45.5 | at University College London. |
| 0:46.9 | He's a writer of the Atlantic. |
| 0:48.4 | He's author of the book, Fluke, |
| 0:49.8 | Chance Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters. |
| 0:52.2 | And he's a great friend of this podcast. |
| 0:53.6 | He's been on several times before. |
| 0:55.3 | He's picked out some of his favorite what-if moments. |
| 0:58.1 | And trust me, they are titanic. |
| 1:00.9 | I always think when you look out of the world, |
| 1:02.3 | it all seems so permanent, so inevitable. |
| 1:06.2 | Of course the United States of America stretches from sea to shining sea. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.