Over the next six episodes, Mr. Cooper ping-pongs between Zionist and Palestinian perspectives, condensing reams of academic history into a sweeping story about a tragic cycle of revenge, reading first-person accounts along the way. (Sometimes, he does voices.)
The show is critical of Zionism, and Mr. Cooper has been outspoken on X about his disgust with the Israeli government’s conduct in its current war in Gaza, a stance that has won him some fans on the left. Mr. Cooper has said he is proud to receive correspondence from both Israelis and Palestinians who say they are more sympathetic to the other side after listening to his program.
Over the next few years, shows about Jonestown, the American labor wars and Jeffrey Epstein followed. The plain-spoken Mr. Cooper refined his approach, weaving anecdote, digression, testimony and historical analysis into hourslong narratives.
The nearly eight-hour final episode of the Jonestown series is, among other things, a panoptic account of urban disorder and left-wing politics in the 1970s, and features a dizzying array of references, including to the anticolonial psychiatrist Frantz Fanon and the filmmaker Terrence Malick.
In an era in which much political content preaches to the choir, and comes in rabid, bite-size chunks, a long-form history podcast may seem like an absurdly cumbersome way to push a message. But Mr. Cooper has done just that. According to Substack’s public leaderboard, Mr. Cooper’s newsletter has tens of thousands of subscribers, who each pay $5 a month. This means, at the very least, he is making approximately $50,000 a month, minus the platform’s 10 percent cut. (And that does not include whatever Mr. Cooper makes in revenue from various streaming platforms.)
“If he weren’t good at it, I’d be less worried,” said Patrick Wyman, a trained historian and the host of the podcast “Tides of History.”
