The mood music about history, which I agree in the last, let's say 15 years, has been intensely moralistic.

Is that wrong? Like, should we not be trying to learn the moral lessons from the past?

The biggest killers were utopian idealists. They were people who believed in a better world.

Hitler undoubtedly, you know, it sounds weird to say it, but he's an idealist. Stalin is obviously

an idealist. Mao is an idealist. They think they are going to make a better world. We now have a

slightly sanitised and a self-deluding idealistic view of human nature and of what we're capable of.

They've been completely insulated from the beast and other people and in themselves.

Knowledge of the beast is so important.

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bonus content ad-free. Dominic Sambra, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's a great privilege. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor for us to have you. You're, of course, part of the hugely successful Lereste's History podcast with our former and future guest, Tom Holland. And history has always been a fascination of ours. Our audience love our history episodes. It's great to have you here.

The thing we wanted to talk about with you is, I think given the current political climate and everything else has been going on, a lot of people are kind of aware of the fact that the way

history has been taught for quite some time now has produced people who see a history, our history, the history of the West, the history

of much of the world, really, in very one-dimensional, black and white, quite moralizing

terms. Yeah. And what we wanted to explore with you is, A, you know, how that was generated

and perhaps fill in some of the blanks and the gaps and, you know, contextualize and add the nuance that I think history always requires.

So first of all, how do we get here?

It's a good question. I think it's not so much actually about how history is taught, but it's how we talk about history more generally.

So I do a lot of talks in schools, events in schools, to sort of promote history

and whatnot. And I'm actually always struck by how enthusiastic the teachers are, how committed

...