Early last year, historian Claire Aubin shared what she thought was just a joke on Twitter.
"I wish there was a podcast called 'This Guy Sucks,'" Aubin tweeted, "where my historian friends and I could talk about people we hate from our research."
Much to her surprise, the tweet quickly went viral, racking up more than 1.5 million views and tens of thousands of likes and retweets.
As she read through the comments, Aubin realized that "people actually wanted it to be real."
So, she decided to make it. She revised the title to past tense and launched "This Guy Sucked" in March 2025, with the help of producers and the independent podcast collective Multitude. The show took off, quickly attracting thousands of listeners for each episode. Apple named it one of its best new podcasts in 2025, and it was nominated for (but didn't win) Best Emerging Podcast at this year's Ambies awards, which celebrate excellence in podcasting.
Each week, Aubin welcomes a different scholar onto the show to talk about a historical figure from their research. Most of the figures are well-known - a sampling includes the ancient Athenian military leader Alcibiades, Roman emperor Charlemagne, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and singer/songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis - but what these scholars reveal as their less flattering traits are often a surprise.
Each episode of the show begins with the same opening lines: "Welcome to 'This Guy Sucked,' the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer and, most importantly, certified hater."
The tone of the show is grounded in humor, but Aubin also sees a serious purpose behind its reevaluations. As the show's website puts it, the podcast "teaches listeners that a fundamental part of 'doing' history is critical engagement with the past - which sometimes means literally criticizing it."
A postdoctoral fellow in the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, Aubin's research focuses on Nazism, especially in 20th-century America. Her first book, on Holocaust perpetrators as immigrants in the post-war United States, will be published this year.
Aubin is also a Whitney Humanities Center fellow and a fellow in the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. (The podcast is independently produced and not affiliated with Yale.)
Aubin sat down with Yale News to talk about why her show focuses on the dead, the critical lens through which she evaluates historical figures, and her favorite history podcasts. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
In the opening of each show, you note that you are a "certified hater." What qualifies you as such?
Claire Aubin: Anybody who knows me on an individual level knows that I'm not that much of a hater. I'm very sociable and friendly. But I am very critical when it comes to reception of historical figures. Public narratives around historical figures are often uncritical. To be a "certified hater" in the context of being a historian means urging people to be willing to reimagine or reexamine their relationship to historical figures and acknowledging that popular narratives are often wrong in some respect.
What are your criteria for historical figures who sucked?
Aubin: Two things about this. First, in terms of who we talk about, they have to be dead. I'm not particularly interested in doing living people because there are other shows that do that. I want historians to really be the stars of this podcast.
Second, we don't ever pick "the guy." We only pick the scholar. I only invite people who I'm interested in hearing from onto the show, and I give them complete freedom of choice for who they'd like to talk about, other than the person needs to be dead and they need to be an expert on that person.
How do you find these scholars?
Aubin: I have a large professional network and quite large social media platforms. I look for people who are interested in doing public scholarship. I frequently have historians who also have podcasts or public-facing books on the show because they know how to translate their work for the public and make their work accessible. Also, people who I think have interesting perspectives on the world or who are nominated for prizes - I know that they have done a lot of critical thinking about the people we're discussing. Our list of people to talk to now is enormous because I am constantly coming across people that I want to reach out to and have conversations with.
You always do your own research before each show, and it often seems like you're learning new things. Is there anyone that's been particularly surprising?
Aubin: I never ask the guest ahead of time specifically what their problem is with the person because I like learning alongside them. I do research and I guess what the problem is going to be, but sometimes I'm surprised. For example, the medieval historian and author David M. Perry came on the show to talk about Petrarch. I assumed the issue was going to be about his framing of classical antiquity. That was wrong. Actually, it was that Petrarch's show-offy writings in Latin made translating his letters tortuous for David in college. That was a very personal thing that I could not possibly have anticipated.
I love episodes where I feel like I am really learning. I want listeners to understand that even people with Ph.D.s who are teaching at places like Yale are constantly learning new information. That is part of being a scholar - absorbing new information all the time and being willing to admit not knowing something. One of my favorite episodes was with another Yale historian, Marlene Daut, on Napoleon in the French Caribbean. She was constantly giving me information that felt totally new. Some of the things she talked about that he did were just so beyond the pale, and you can hear how frustrated and angry I feel about it.
