Sean Munger

In 1981, the United Kingdom was convulsed by a severe recession, political turmoil, racial strife, police brutality, and the most extensive wave of urban violence anywhere in the developed world during the decade of the 1980s. How did things go so terribly wrong? In this video, we’ll examine the many causes and effects of Britain’s terrible year, including the New Cross Road fire, the Brixton and Toxteth uprisings, the Yorkshire Ripper killer and the political travails of one Margaret Thatcher. We’ll also examine what was going right in Britain in 1981, such as the vibrant punk and heavy metal music scenes.

In April 1789, about half of the crew of the British Royal Navy ship Bounty, just out of Tahiti, mutinied against her commander, Lt. William Bligh. This event is well-known and often retold in popular culture, but it also has a tremendous reach throughout the world and in recent history. In this video we’ll look at all aspects of the Bounty phenomenon through the lens of geography and place, examining the locations where parts of the story happened and analyzing what unites them. This is the story of the mutiny on the Bounty as you’ve never heard it told before.

Mexico was a member of the Allies in the Second World War, and even sent a squadron of planes to fight the Japanese in the Philippines. But there’s a great deal more to Mexico’s involvement in the conflict than that, and it’s a historical story that’s not very well known. In this video we’ll look deeply at the complicated context of 20th century Mexico, the reasons why Mexico joined World War II, what its leaders were trying to accomplish, and how the war changed Mexican society despite the country’s small contribution on the actual battlefronts.

The revolt of the American colonies against Great Britain was one of the major events of world history. In this video, you will experience the Revolution as its participants did—through their own words. Almost this entire video consists of primary source documents from the Revolutionary era, from acts of Parliament, private letters of people both famous (like George Washington) and not (like Elizabeth Liechtenstein Johnson), and eyewitnesses to political upheavals, battles, debates, tragedies, triumphs and missed opportunities. You may think you know about the Revolution, but you may not have seen it quite like this.

Brazil was the only country in Latin America that formally participated in both World War I and World War II, each time as a member of the Allies. Though Brazil’s role isn’t much talked about, the whole period between 1914 and 1945 was vitally important to the emergence of the country as a modern economy and a major player on the world stage. In this video we’ll examine what happened, why Brazil declared war (twice), how its armies and navies took part in the conflicts, and what it all meant in the end.

At the turn of the 20th century, China was still ruled by a dowager empress, last of an ancient dynasty that refused to engage with the modern world. Half a century later it was the People’s Republic of China, headed by Mao Zedong, on track to become one of the most powerful nations on Earth. In this video we’ll delve into the complicated story of China’s tumultuous half-century and try to understand how it became what it is today.