History Flakes - The Berlin History Podcast

Pip Roper & Jonny Whitlam
  • 5.0 (23)
  • History
  • Updated Biweekly

Explore the history of one of the world’s most captivating cities with "History Flakes - The Berlin History Podcast." Your hosts, seasoned tour guides Pip Roper and Jonny Whitlam, take you through the highs and low-lows of Berlin's past, exploring events, lives and stories from Berlin's past. From the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall to the artistic renaissance of the Weimar Republic and the dark days of the Nazi dictatorship, each episode is a blend of history, stories from the tour guide streets, and a dash of humour. Whether you’re a history buff, a lover of Berlin, or simply curious about the forces that shaped modern Europe, join Pip and Jonny as they peel back the layers of Berlin's history. Discover the heroes, villains, revolutions, and evolutions that have defined this iconic city. Welcome to History Flakes!

  1. 5d ago

    S4E6: Comedian Harmonists w/ Matti Geyer

    Matti Geyer is here!! And we’re talking about The biggest boy band 20th-century Germany had to offer! The Comedian Harmonists, move over 5ive, get out of the way N’sync. Who could forget ‘Mein Kleine Grune Kaktus’ (my small green cactus)  ‘Veronica der Lent ist da’…a song about Lent. The sexiest time of year  Who’s the cute one? Which one loves his mamma? Most importantly who’s the bad boy?! (It’s…the Bass!).  All against the backdrop of the Third Reich and World War Two, wowzer! ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/ ++++++

    46 min

  2. May 20

    S4E5: Circus Busch comes to town!

    Roll up Roll up and welcome to Circus Busch! Sometimes it’s always there, in a permanent building along the Spree, that may or may not be used for significant meetings by various shades of the political spectrum, but this is Germany everybody, the context is gonna be colourful! Sometimes the circus is travelling to other places, like Paris in 1940 and everyone there is really happy to see you. Honest. We talk about the broader context of the history of The Circus in twentieth-century Europe and focus in on some specific families, like the Althoffs, the Blumfelds, and the Grand Dame of Circus Busch herself, Paula. We talk about some of the shadier elements of what it meant to be the person in charge of a huge money making institution, with incredibly diverse people at it’s core, and how some of the fascinating lives of some of those involved contracted and expanded against the backdrop of the twentieth century. ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/ ++++++ Sources: Online resources: http://www.divergingfates.eu/index.php/2017/02/22/historical-context/ https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-circus#slideshow=58613815&slide=0 Berlin Circus Festival Interview with Gisela and Dietmar Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFyQcsXrng Articles: Dean Carnegie: slow Travel Berlin, Houdini and the Circus Busch Sabine Hanke, Worlds of the ring: Nation and empire in the British and German circus

    51 min

  3. May 6

    S4E4: The Wolf's Lair: Hitler in WWII

    Moving the German army into the Soviet Union could probably be described as one of the more difficult tasks of the 20th Century, or ever really. You may need to get up as early as 6am, no seriously I think at least 8am… not even 10am?! Jonny shares with us some of what he learned heading out to the Wolf’s Lair. Hitler’s WWII bunker complex and residence where he is definitely doing all the things a great leader does. Reading newspapers and getting pissed off, training the dog to do tricks. Calling Eva Braun to tell her how shit everyone else is.  We talk about this massive complex and what it was supposed to symbolise to the German people and to Hitler himself as it became clear the very angry dog had caught it’s own tail and now has very little idea what to do with it. ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/ ++++++ Source: Vor dem Untergang: Hitlers Jahre in der 'Wolfsschanze', Felix Bohr

    1h 4m

  4. Apr 22

    S4E3: Nuremburg Interview with Jack El-Hai

    In this special episode we talk with Jack El-Hai, journalist and author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, recently adapted into feature film Nuremberg with Russell Crowe and Rami Malek. We talk about the importance of the trial to the allies in the aftermath of the second world war, and who was Dr. Douglas Kelley the cheif psychiatrist assigned to the first months of the Nuremburg trials. ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/

    44 min

  5. Apr 8

    S4E2: Queen Luise of Prussia

    Why do bad things happen to hot people?! Welcome all, we are talking about the one and only Queen Luise of Prussia, wife, mother, babe. Although she's often difficult to find under the centuries of cultural and national baggage loaded on top of her, we do our best to unpack her life from minor aristocracy to Queen of small-ish kingdom that happens to be between a power crazed Frenchman and Moscow...and then you've got to sit through dinner with him?! You should smile more love. Watch out for the C-bomb half way through if you're in the car with the kids...but they should know that Napoleon really was a massive CURMUDGEONLY warmonger and misogynist. ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/   ++++++ 📚 Sources: Samantha Sproviero: Queen Louise of Prussia: Gender, Power, and Queenship during the Sattelzeit Era. Constance Wright, Beautiful enemy; a biography of Queen Louise of Prussia Heinrich Merz, Louise, Queen of Prussia Review of Collected letters: Loretana de Libero, "Königin Luise von Preußen. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen 1786–1810 ROYAL HOUSEWIVES AND FEMALE TYRANTS: Gender and Sovereignty in Works by Benedikte Naubert and Luise Mühlbach Elisabeth Krimmer

    1 hr

  6. Mar 25

    Doping in the GDR

    Welcome Back everybody! We kick off season 4 with a look at doping in the GDR. How can we prove we’re the most awesome non-democratic socialist state of all time?! MEDALS of course. But which sports and athletes will yield the biggest margin of growth that can be state administered and controlled? Who knows what when? And how many acronyms can one episode contain?  We’ve left Seson 3’s focus on the WAR, but…this is actually still pretty sad. Join us to talk about the GDR’s obsession with winning medals on an international stage and some of the shocking sad effects it would have on it’s athletes (mostly female). ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/   ++++++ 📚 Source: Sport under Communism Behind the East German ‘Miracle’ by Mike Dennis and Jonathan Grix

    57 min

  7. 12/17/2025

    Live Bonus Episode! Wilhelm II and Empress Frederick

    We went in hard on this one… you’re getting a 2 for 1. A live spectacular on Kaiser Wilhelm II and his mother Empress Frederick AND some musings from us afterwards because we couldn’t get enough of this German/British collab that ended, well… terribly. Follow Vicky, daughter of Queen Victoria and liberal reformer Prince Albert, as she dives into the absolute viper’s nest that was the 19th Century court of Prussia ruled over by the Hohenzollerns. She’s got a gorgeous, kind husband, representing the hopes of German reformers. But first born Kaiser Wilhelm will fall terribly far from the tree and ruin a lot. If you get to the end, you will be rewarded with the scandal of how Empress Frederick was possibly buried  and the traditional British cure for cancer… smiling at it.  (Sorry that some of the sound goes up and down and that you can occasionally Pip fanning herself dramatically. It was hot) ++++++    💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! You can find Pip on Instagram ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/   ++++++ 📚 Sources:  An Uncommon Woman, The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm, Hannah Pakula. George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I,  Miranda Carter Iron Kingdom, Christopher Clark Blood & Iron, Katja Hoyer

    1h 23m

  8. 11/19/2025

    Berlin Wall Escapes - LIVE from the Vault!

    Hello Dear History Flakes Listener! We miss you all most cruelly. To tide you over until Season 4 begins in 2026, here's a live show all the way from August 2024. It was over 30 degrees but Jonny rallied valliantly (and only mentioned it 7, 8, or 100 times).  We share with you some of the more ingenious and puzzling escapes from East to West Berlin. Air, land, sea, and even an inflatable mattress - you name it, it's here. So settle in for some daring escapes to freedom in the West, home of demorcracy, Hasselhoff, and Ikea: everything a growing boy or girl needs. Shout out to our wonderful friend and fellow guide Glenn in the audience for live fact checking! ++++++  💸 Donations keep us running. Click below to support the show  🤩 Donate €50 😆 Donate €20 😄 Donate €10  🙂 Donate €5 ++++++ 🎟️ You can get in touch and book Jonny or Pip for a tour of Berlin via www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com. Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks! ++++++ Follow us online! Pip is on Instagram ... and you can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok! ++++++ Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffiths https://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/ https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/   ++++++

    53 min
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5
out of 5
23 Ratings

About

Explore the history of one of the world’s most captivating cities with "History Flakes - The Berlin History Podcast." Your hosts, seasoned tour guides Pip Roper and Jonny Whitlam, take you through the highs and low-lows of Berlin's past, exploring events, lives and stories from Berlin's past. From the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall to the artistic renaissance of the Weimar Republic and the dark days of the Nazi dictatorship, each episode is a blend of history, stories from the tour guide streets, and a dash of humour. Whether you’re a history buff, a lover of Berlin, or simply curious about the forces that shaped modern Europe, join Pip and Jonny as they peel back the layers of Berlin's history. Discover the heroes, villains, revolutions, and evolutions that have defined this iconic city. Welcome to History Flakes!

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