Wrong Side Of History

About Wrong Side Of History

What history's 'Bad Guys' believed and why

Publisher

Jay Singleton

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

18 Mar 2026

Latest episode

5 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Nov 2026

   The Gunpowder Plot

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) Why would a group of English Catholics try to blow up Parliament? On November 5th, 1605, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators planned to destroy Parliament with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. But the men behind the Gunpowder Plot weren't trying to destroy England. They believed they were saving it. This is the story of the Gunpowder Plot, what the conspirators believed, and why ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host El Train (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music SPECIAL THANKS A special thank you to historian Dr Mark Nicholls of the University of Cambridge for generously sharing his expertise and helping inform the research behind this episode. JUMP TO: (00:00) — The Letter That Exposed the Plot (02:03) — Why Blow Up Parliament? (03:01) — Life as a Catholic in Protestant England (06:36) — England, Spain and the Fear of Catholic Treason (09:12) — Robert Catesby: The Man Behind the Plot (11:54) — King James I and the Hope of Religious Peace (15:17) — Why Did England Have to Be Catholic? (16:54) — The Plan to Destroy Parliament (19:00) — What Were the Plotters Hoping to Achieve? (21:16) — The Warning Letter and the Decision to Continue (23:04) — The Discovery of the Gunpowder (23:34) — The Failed Rebellion (24:22) — The First Bonfire Night (25:31) — What the Plotters Believed and Why (27:11) — Outro

2. 

   3 Nov 2026

   Black Nationalism: Part 3

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. ⁠Join here⁠ (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) If integration meant depending on white institutions, what would it take for Black Americans to build something of their own? For Black nationalists, self-determination meant more than political independence. Marcus Garvey’s UNIA tried to build a Black economy of businesses, newspapers and even a shipping line connecting Black producers and consumers around the world. Decades later, the Nation of Islam built farms, restaurants, property, businesses and supply chains of its own. But independence required something from the people inside these movements too. Black nationalists argued that self-determination required discipline, thrift, education, strength and a willingness to stop measuring Black advancement by acceptance into white society. And that raises a more difficult question about integration itself. W.E.B. Du Bois wondered whether a good Black school might sometimes serve Black children better than a hostile integrated one. Malcolm X and James Baldwin disagreed over whether the goal should ultimately be a world beyond race at all. Because integration doesn’t only combine things. It can also require something to disappear. So how much of your history, institutions and identity should you be willing to give up to become part of something larger? ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host ⁠⁠El Train⁠⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — Introduction (00:39) — Why Black Nationalists Distrusted Direct Action (02:15) — Stokely Carmichael and the Limits of Nonviolence (04:31) — Independence, Patience and Political Leverage (06:39) — What Does Self-Determination Look Like? (07:39) — Marcus Garvey and the UNIA Economy (10:37) — The Nation of Islam Builds a Parallel Economy (13:15) — Discipline, Strength and the Culture of Independence (17:17) — The Nation of Islam’s Transformation of Black Life (20:37) — Brown v. Board and the Question of Inferiority (22:02) — W.E.B. Du Bois on Separate Black Schools (26:00) — Does Integration Require Disintegration? (29:26) — Malcolm X, James Baldwin and a World Beyond Race (30:30) — Post-Racial America or Black Nationalism? (31:53) — Conclusion and Outro

3. 

   27 Oct 2026

   Black Nationalism: Part 2

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. ⁠Join here⁠ (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) Could Black Americans use the American system to dismantle segregation — or was the system itself the problem? In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional. A year later, the murder of Emmett Till showed just how far America still had to go. For integrationists like Martin Luther King Jr., the answer was to make America live up to its own promises. Use the courts to remove legal barriers, education and religion to change hearts, and integration to free both Black and white Americans from the psychology of segregation. Black nationalists saw something different. They feared that the same institutions that had tolerated segregation for generations could delay change, absorb Black Americans without giving them real power, and turn them into a constituency to be courted rather than a people capable of determining their own future. So the disagreement was no longer simply over whether segregation should end. It was over a slightly harder question: Can the tools of the American system change America? ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host ⁠⁠El Train⁠⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — Introduction (00:56) — Brown v. Board and the Promise of Integration (05:31) — The Murder of Emmett Till (08:14) — The NAACP and the Integrationist Strategy (10:19) — Martin Luther King’s Case Against Segregation (14:18) — Can Law Actually Create Integration? (15:13) — Can the System Change the System? (16:13) — Why Black Nationalists Were Skeptical (17:02) — Delay, Incorporation and Political Power (18:16) — The Black Nationalist Alternative (18:40) — Next Episode and Outro

4. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Black Nationalism: Part 1

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) Why would Black Americans fight segregation and reject integration? For some Black nationalists, integration meant asking people who despised them for permission to belong. They wanted something else: institutions they controlled, a history they could claim, and a future they could build for themselves. But did overcoming racism require abandoning race or organising around it? In Part One, we talk about why people doubted that integration was possible, desirable, or enough. Martin Luther King Jr. believed America could be redeemed. Malcolm X questioned the dignity of seeking acceptance from people who kept refusing it. And Martin Delany changed his answer as America gave him reasons to hope, leave, and hope again. And beneath all of this was the question: Can you be Black and American ? ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host ⁠El Train⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — Introduction and Membership (00:24) — The Civil Rights Revolution (03:32) — What Is Black Nationalism? (09:16) — Can You Be Black and American? (12:52) — Rootlessness and the Search for Identity (14:26) — Is Harmonious Integration Possible? (15:23) — Martin Delany’s Changing Convictions (19:18) — The Nation of Islam on Integration (21:42) — The Story of Yakub (23:25) — The Sparks of The Modern Civil Rights Movement (23:40) — Next Episode and Outro

5. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Preview: Eugenics Endnotes

   .⁠⁠Join here⁠ (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com) to become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the full End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show ______________________________________________________________ In this members only episode we’ll  talk about: How Eugenics was practiced differently in different places The central anxiety that helped justify the most radical policies More about the religious aspect of the whole movement And wrestle with this moral challenges that surrounded this movement READ THE BOOKS Caleb Williams Saleeby, Parenthood and Race Culture (1909) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm (Bushhttps://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm) The Eugenics Review, volume 1 (1909–10): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261 (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261) Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: ⁠ (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-status-game-on-social-position-and-how-we-use-it-will-storr)https://www.routledge.com/Eugenics-Human-Genetics-and-Human-Failings-The-Eugenics-Society-its-sources-and-its-critics-in-Britain/Mazumdar/p/book/9780415514811 (https://www.routledge.com/Eugenics-Human-Genetics-and-Human-Failings-The-Eugenics-Society-its-sources-and-its-critics-in-Britain/Mazumdar/p/book/9780415514811) Music: ⁠El Train⁠ (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA)

6. 

   15 Sept 2026

   Eugenics, Part 2: The Promise of Human Betterment

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) What kind of future did the eugenicists believe they were building? Eugenics did not only promise to prevent human decline. Its supporters imagined a world without hereditary disease, a more intelligent and cooperative humanity, and eventually even world peace. In Part Two, I follow that promise from one of the movement’s clearest early targets, haemophilia, into its increasingly ambitious visions of human betterment. Francis Galton tried to measure inherited genius. Caleb Saleeby imagined raising the average person. William Inge proposed an ideal hierarchy of human excellence. And at the movement’s fringe, Nietzsche’s Superman became a prophecy that eugenics might fulfil. To understand why eugenics became mainstream, we have to understand the future its supporters believed they were creating: not one of death and destruction, but health, abundance, purpose and peace. Follow Wrong Side of History for the End Notes on September 22. The opening section will be public; members receive the complete episode. READ THE SOURCES Parenthood and Race Culture by Caleb Williams Saleeby: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm) Hereditary Genius by Francis Galton: https://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/ (https://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/) “Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics” by Francis Galton: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_71/August_1907/Probability%2C_The_Foundation_of_Eugenics (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_71/August_1907/Probability%2C_The_Foundation_of_Eugenics) Aratra Pentelici by John Ruskin: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25897/25897-h/25897-h.htm (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25897/25897-h/25897-h.htm) The Eugenics Review, Volume 1: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261 (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261) SOURCE NOTES The John Ruskin passage comes from Aratra Pentelici, a series of Oxford lectures delivered in 1870. William Inge was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and later Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host El Train (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — Introduction and Membership (00:42) — What Victorians Owed Future Generations (03:50) — Haemophilia and Preventable Hereditary Suffering (08:31) — Eugenics and the Birth of Modern Statistics (10:19) — How Eugenicists Judged a Condition (12:03) — From Colour Blindness to “Feeble-Mindedness” (15:14) — The Genie Out of the Bottle (17:01) — From Preventing Suffering to Improving Humanity (18:06) — Galton and Hereditary Genius (19:12) — Saleeby’s “Elevated Humanity” (24:00) — William Inge’s “Ideal Humanity” (27:00) — Nietzsche and the Superman (29:44) — Eugenics as a Religion of Peace (32:02) — The Organising Principle of Civilisation (33:05) — Outro

7. 

   1 Sept 2026

   Eugenics, Part 1: The Fear of Human Decline

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get the complete End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) Why did eugenics become mainstream among some of the most educated, scientifically minded and socially conscious people of the early twentieth century? Before eugenics became inseparable in public memory from Nazi Germany, forced sterilisation and racial supremacy, British eugenicists believed modern civilisation had created a serious problem: medicine, sanitation, welfare and charity were saving lives while interrupting the natural selection that had shaped humanity. In Part One, we try to understand the fear of human decline that gave the movement its urgency, from evolution and heredity to Victorian workhouses, “care and quarantine,” positive and negative eugenics, and the belief that humanity could consciously direct its own future. This is the story of how a movement remembered for cruelty understood itself as compassionate, enlightened and even religious. Follow Wrong Side of History so you don’t miss Part Two: The Promise of Human Betterment. September 15. READ THE SOURCES Parenthood and Race Culture by Caleb Williams Saleeby: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42913/42913-h/42913-h.htm) The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin: https://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1874_Descent_F944/1874_Descent_F944.html (https://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1874_Descent_F944/1874_Descent_F944.html) Essays in Eugenics by Francis Galton: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73802 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73802) The Eugenics Review, Volume 1: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261 (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261) ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host El Train (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — What Were They Thinking? (00:55) — Why Eugenics Became Mainstream (02:25) — Two Observations That Changed Everything (04:17) — Could Humanity Direct Its Own Evolution? (05:21) — The Three Questions of Eugenics (06:38) — Eugenics as a New Religion (10:34) — The Victorian Problem: Charity and Natural Selection (14:05) — Care, Quarantine and Human Decline (18:00) — If Natural Selection Was Broken, What Next? (18:52) — Positive and Negative Eugenics (20:05) — Why Persuasion Came Before Force (24:29) — Preventing Predictable Hereditary Harm (25:31) — Next: The Promise of Human Betterment

8. 

   18 Aug 2026

   Dead Dogma

   Get End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com/) __________________________________ What does it mean to believe something without really understanding why? John Stuart Mill called this dead dogma: a belief that may be true, but has become little more than a script. I look at why Mill thought even correct ideas become weaker when they’re never challenged and what happens when certainty replaces understanding. This is an essay about testing what we think we know, understanding the strongest arguments against us, and keeping truth alive rather than merely repeating it.

9. 

   11 Aug 2026

   Queen Victoria, Imperial Motherhood and the British Antis

   Become a member of Wrong Side of History Get End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show. Join here (https://wrongsideofhistory.supercast.com) _____________________ Queen Victoria called women’s rights a “mad, wicked folly.” But unlike their American counterparts, some British anti-suffragists proposed women’s councils, a ministry for women and even a separate women’s chamber of parliament organised around the belief that the sexes had different duties. To understand how that vision made sense, I compare British and American anti-suffragism, from Queen Victoria and imperial motherhood to suffragette militancy. READ THE BOOKS Women Against the Vote by Julia Bush: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/women-against-the-vote-9780199248773 (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/women-against-the-vote-9780199248773) The Freedom of Women by Ethel B. Harrison: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL32871291W/The_freedom_of_women (https://openlibrary.org/works/OL32871291W/The_freedom_of_women) The Status Game by Will Storr: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-status-game-on-social-position-and-how-we-use-it-will-storr (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-status-game-on-social-position-and-how-we-use-it-will-storr) ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host El Train (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5q4pPTzefHs5kUuBSQSHbJ?si=l3e8w5VvTIWRWx5ldYSmPA): Music JUMP TO: (00:00) — Introduction and housekeeping (02:47) — British vs. American anti-suffragism (03:32) — How large were the two movements? (05:00) — Suffragette militancy (07:05) — What British and American antis shared (08:06) — Queen Victoria: an anti-suffragist icon (10:22) — Imperial motherhood (12:18) — Did political authority depend on force? (14:37) — The anti-suffragist “forward policy” (15:23) — A separate political sphere for women (17:51) — End Notes (18:48) — The danger of defining human differences (24:09) — Humiliation and political change (27:41) — Outro

10. 

    5 May 2026

    Anti-Suffragist: The Vote Was An Illusion | Part 4

    Up until 1916, women’s suffrage was never backed by a majority of American women. In this final episode on the anti-suffragists, we look at why many of them did not see the vote as a natural right, or even as the real source of political power. To them, governments enforced public opinion, men enforced the law, and women’s real influence came through status, moral authority, and shaping the culture upstream of politics. Sources on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠ (https://substack.com/@thewrongsideofhistory) ⁠⁠IG⁠⁠ (https://www.instagram.com/) ⁠⁠Tik Tok (https://www.tiktok.com/@wrong.side.of.his?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc)

11. 

    21 Apr 2026

    Anti-Suffragist: Another Kind of Power | Part 3

    In 1895, anti-suffragists in Massachusetts were asked to do something absurd: vote to show they opposed voting. What happened next helps explain one of the strangest ideas in the anti-suffrage worldview; that the vote was only one part...and maybe even the smallest part of the whole political process In this episode, we look at how anti-suffragists understood indirect political power: shaping legislators before a vote, moving public opinion through clubs and committees, and influencing the culture that produced politics in the first place. If politics is downstream from culture, they believed women were already standing at the source. Sources on ⁠Substack⁠ (https://substack.com/@thewrongsideofhistory) ⁠IG⁠ (https://www.instagram.com/) ⁠Tik Tok (https://www.tiktok.com/@wrong.side.of.his?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc)

12. 

    7 Apr 2026

    Anti-Suffragist: Resisting Modernity | Part 2

    In the last episode, we looked at separate spheres (ie. gender roles). In this one, we go deeper into the political role many anti-suffragists thought women already had. Long before the fight over suffrage reached its peak, American women were given a civic calling: republican motherhood. They were told the republic depended on them not as voters, but as the people who formed citizens, guarded virtue, and held together the moral center of the nation. To many anti-suffragists, that was not a consolation prize. It was status, purpose, and power. But by the early 1900s, that world felt under attack. Industrialization, capitalism, individualism, and even socialism seemed to point in the same direction: away from the home, away from interdependence, and away from the kind of work that could not be measured, priced, or made efficient. From their point of view, the vote was never just a ballot. It was a sign that the line between the public and private spheres was collapsing and that the market and the state were moving into places they did not belong. This episode is about why so many anti-suffragists saw themselves not as dupes or victims, but as the last defenders of the moral and relational life that made a republic possible. Full sources and research notes are on Substack (https://substack.com/@thewrongsideofhistory/note/p-191932453?r=1r319&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web) Tik Tok (https://www.tiktok.com/@wrong.side.of.his) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/wrongsideofhistorypod/)

13. 

    24 Mar 2026

    Anti-Suffragist: Gender Roles | Part 1

    Why did so many women oppose women’s suffrage? Before 1916, suffrage was never backed by a majority of women, and for years men were more progressive on the issue than women were. In this episode, we enter the worldview of the American anti-suffragists and begin with their core idea: separate spheres.
 To them, the vote was never just a ballot. It was a sign of a much larger social change, one that threatened women’s moral authority, sex-based protections, and the family as the basic unit of society. 

Many of these women did not see themselves as powerless. They believed they already had influence, just not partisan influence.
 This episode is about what they feared, what they thought they were protecting, and why their position made sense to them at the time. Sources on Substack (https://substack.com/@thewrongsideofhistory) IG (https://www.instagram.com/) Tik Tok (https://www.tiktok.com/@wrong.side.of.his?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc)

14. 

    18 Mar 2026

    Trailer

    No one thinks they’re the bad guy. No one wakes up and says, ‘Today I’ll be on the wrong side of history.’ So here’s the question: if nobody thinks they’re the villain… what were they thinking? The Wrong Side of History is a show about understanding history’s bad guys the way they understood themselves: what they feared, what they valued, and why their worldview made sense to them at the time. You probably won’t agree with them. But you may start to see that the stories we’ve known of heroes and villains, saints and bigots, reason and ignorance, are often too simple.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

24 ratings