Making sense of this crazy world
I am a student of history, a teacher of history and a writer of history. You could say history is a passion of mine. I have a website for students and I had been mulling around this idea of a podcast for some time. Would people be interested? Would I make it interesting? That’s essentially what was holding me back. But with a new year starting, the craziness still all around us, I thought what the hell – give it a go, John! The primary purpose of the podcast is to use history to help us make a little more sense of this crazy world we are living in. I aim to do this by using history. It’s not the only tool to be used, but it is my chosen tool. Everything happens in a context and that context is recent history. But that recent history is almost always the result of older history. We have to go back into our past to understand today. I could easily rattle off a hundred other aims but trust me, they will be introduced as we go along. But there are two other aims I must own up to straight away. The first is that I really want to lay it on the line that history is always about people. I think it was the great historian, Eric Hobsbawm who said unemployment is an economic statistic but a human experience. And you can’t appear to be further away from people than with dry statistics – but you’re not. And the second is that there is always more than one story to tell; more than one “truth”. History is an interpretation of the past, nothing more. There are always other interpretations. When we look at this crazy world of ours today and try to make sense of what is happening, it is so important to bear that in mind - someone else thinks differently. And if we don’t understand that other interpretation, if we don’t even know it exists, then we can’t reach an understanding of what is happening. And our truth is less secure! I hope that makes sense.
Listen on:
Episodes
4 days ago
4 days ago
Having taken a look at the influence Jeremy Bentham has on our world today, I’m moving on to look at someone who had an even greater influence: John Stuart Mill.
Why? Because Mill, a man way, way ahead of his time, put liberty front and centre in his political work
Sunday May 24, 2026
Sunday May 24, 2026
I said last week that I’d look at how British liberals picked up the baton from the Enlightenment and developed liberal thinking. And I’m going to begin with Jeremy Bentham, the man who gave us utilitarianism and much more. And don’t worry about utilitarianism, I am not going to get too heavy (I can’t) but it is very important and pretty straightforward really.
Sunday May 17, 2026
Sunday May 17, 2026
Having looked at revolutions in England, America and France, the idea of liberty is what powers through most and it gave rise to a political ideology that we’ll be familiar with today: liberalism. So, this episode takes stock of where we are at in the wake of the French Revolution with liberal ideas.
Sunday May 10, 2026
Sunday May 10, 2026
This is the episode where I try to put the French Revolution in perspective. Just how significant was it?
Sunday May 03, 2026
Sunday May 03, 2026
I left things last week in France with the 18 Brumaire coup which had left France governed by three consuls: Abbé Sieyès, Napoleon and, just for the record, Roger Ducos. I called the last episode “Reaction”. Well, I’m calling this one “Delayed Reaction” because that’s what it seems like to me. There is not a counter-revolution going on but a reaction to what was seen as the excesses of the revolution, and the first reaction that brought in those three consuls wasn’t seen as going far enough, not by Napoleon anyway. So, what kind of government did Napoleon bring about?
Sunday Apr 26, 2026
Sunday Apr 26, 2026
We left things last week with the death of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. In Paris, people were literally hugging each other in the streets, such was the relief that it was over. Well, in politics as much as in chemistry and physics, actions nearly always result in a reaction, and that’s what happened in France. Things had gone too far, time to rein the runaway horse in.
Sunday Apr 19, 2026
Sunday Apr 19, 2026
Last week I ended things with the execution of Louis XVI. This week I move on to look at the ways in which the French Revolution radicalised and resorted to terror.
Sunday Apr 12, 2026
Sunday Apr 12, 2026
Last week I mentioned that most of France thought the Revolution was over as the Constituent Assembly settled down to write a constitution for France but I also said a few weeks ago that the genie had been let out of the bottle, well, the bourgeoisie were still struggling to get the lid back on that bottle with the genie safely inside. And they were to fail. To go back to how I ended things last week, what it all goes to show, again something we see so much today, is that as more people get politicised, they splinter into different factions and head in different directions and it’s so much harder to regain control.
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
Sunday Apr 05, 2026
This week we’ll look at how, having pushed the revolution forward only to lose control, the bourgeoisie, men of property lest we forget, tried to haul the reigns in on the runaway horse and regain control.
Sunday Mar 29, 2026
Sunday Mar 29, 2026
We should, in so many ways, see the French Revolution as the model for future revolutions. Last week, I talked about “letting the genie out of the bottle” and that’s what happened, and it proved so difficult to put the cork back into the bottle. So, what we’ll look at today is the way in which the bourgeoisie, at least temporarily, lost control of events. Just as so often. those that start things today lose control.