Wrong Side Of History

Jay Singleton
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Philosophy
  • Updated twice weekly

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? On Wrong Side Of History I try to help you understand history’s bad guys the way they understood themselves. Each season takes the perspective of a person or movement that ended up on the wrong side of history to learn what they feared, what they valued, and why their ideas made sense to them.

Episodes

  1. 1 Sept

    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 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 The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin: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 The Eugenics Review, Volume 1:https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529261 ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and host El Train: 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

  2. 18 Aug ·  Bonus

    Premium Preview: 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 __________________________________ 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.

  3. 11 Aug

    Queen Victoria, Imperial Motherhood and the British Antis

    Become a member of Wrong Side of HistoryGet End Notes at the end of each series, occasional essays and Q&As, and help support the research behind the show.Join here _____________________ 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 The Freedom of Women by Ethel B. Harrison: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 ON THIS EPISODE Jay Singleton: Writer and hostEl Train: 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

  4. 5 May

    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 ⁠⁠IG⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Tik Tok

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

  5. 21 Apr

    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 ⁠IG⁠ ⁠Tik Tok

    Anti-Suffragist: Another Kind of Power | Part 3

  6. 7 Apr

    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 Tik Tok Instagram

    Anti-Suffragist: Resisting Modernity | Part 2

  7. 24 Mar

    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 IG Tik Tok

    Anti-Suffragist: Gender Roles | Part 1

  8. 18 Mar

    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.

Trailer

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

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? On Wrong Side Of History I try to help you understand history’s bad guys the way they understood themselves. Each season takes the perspective of a person or movement that ended up on the wrong side of history to learn what they feared, what they valued, and why their ideas made sense to them.

Information

  • Creator
    Jay Singleton
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Jay Singleton
  • Show Website
    Wrong Side Of History

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