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
Sunday Jun 04, 2023
Sunday Jun 04, 2023
This episode looks at the consequences of the Iran-Iraq War as they rippled out across time from Iran and Iraq and their people, to the region as a whole and to the wider world.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday May 28, 2023
Sunday May 28, 2023
We’ve been looking at the impact of Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini on their people, and I’m going to end this mini-series by taking a look at the Iran-Iraq War. Lasting eight years, from 1980 through to 1988, the Iran-Iraq War was one of the longest wars since WW2, and it was one of the most bloody.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday May 21, 2023
Sunday May 21, 2023
We are looking at the impact of Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini on history and on people’s lives, and in this episode, it is the effect on the Iraqi and Iranian people that I will focus on.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday May 14, 2023
Sunday May 14, 2023
We are looking at the impact of Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini on history and on people’s lives, and in this episode, I’m going to look at the nature of their rule. Saddam is often described as a dictator, enforcing his vision of how a society should be, the policies that will make that vision a reality, and destroying anyone who thought differently. Whereas In sharp contrast, Ayatollah Khomeini's regime was a theocracy.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday May 07, 2023
Sunday May 07, 2023
“History is always about people” and this episode will look at the rise to power of two individuals who had a profound effect on history and not just in their own countries but in the Gulf states as a whole and, indeed, on the world. These two men were going to shake things up and the world is today a very, very different place, far less stable, than before they came to power.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Apr 30, 2023
Sunday Apr 30, 2023
In the light of the coronation of Charles III, this episode considers the role of the British monarchy in a class system that prevents a meritocracy and leaves Britain still looking as it did in the nineteenth century.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Apr 23, 2023
Sunday Apr 23, 2023
This is the second of two episodes that look at the accusations of war crimes made against Putin and Russia, and attempts to strike a sense of balance by looking at similar war crimes.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
This is the first of two episodes that look at the accusations of war crimes made against Putin and Russia, and attempts to strike a sense of balance by looking at similar war crimes.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Apr 09, 2023
Sunday Apr 09, 2023
I'm interrupting my schedule with this one-off episode, to consider the dangers of putting political leaders on trial. Clearly, I’m responding to Trumps arraignment this week in New York. There are dangers attached and we’ve all been listening to very clever political commentators telling us about the dangers in Trump’s case. I'm sharing an historical precedent with you and I make some controversial comparisons!
Sunday Apr 02, 2023
Sunday Apr 02, 2023
This is the final episode in my mini-series that sets out to explain the war in Ukraine. We began this series by considering Putin’s mindset, and that’s where I want to return to in order to wrap things up.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad