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.
Episodes
Nov 19, 2023
Nov 19, 2023
25 min
Three wars that literally shaped the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as we see it today: the first resulting from the Suez Crisis in 1956; the second, the Six Day War in 1967; the third, the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Three wars that we must know about in order to understand today's conflict.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Nov 12, 2023
Nov 12, 2023
21 min
This episode examines what led to the creation of the Israeli state and the immediate reaction from Israel's neighbouring Arab countries.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Nov 5, 2023
Nov 5, 2023
12 min
Bob Dylan repeatedly asks the question “How many”? How many times, how many roads, How many seas….. “How many”? How many times must we make the same mistake, go through repeated tragedies, how many years before we learn? Clearly, he was hoping that things would change – but this was sixty years ago. This episode considers what's happened since 1963.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Oct 29, 2023
Oct 29, 2023
15 min
I have talked about Hitler having lived in Vienna, the capital of Austria-Hungary as it was pre-WW1, and where both his anti-democratic views and his anti-Semitism took root. Well, by a freak of history, it so happens, for a short period in 1913, Hitler had some interesting neighbours when he was in Vienna. This episode is going to take a look at them and consider what might have been as well as what was.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Oct 22, 2023
Oct 22, 2023
13 min
In this final episode in my little series called “Lessons from Hitler”, a second episode looking at fascism and comparing Hitler’s Nazi Germany to Putin’s Russia and to Trumpism. The focus this time is on fascisms contempt for democracy and its violent nature.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Oct 15, 2023
Oct 8, 2023
Oct 8, 2023
22 min
In this episode we come to Hitler’s lesson for Putin in my little series on “Lessons from Hitler”. We take a look at how Hitler dealt with opposition and then a look at how Putin does so. It's not that Putin really learnt from Hitler but that we should learn from both of them.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Oct 1, 2023
Oct 1, 2023
19 min
Last week I looked at the dangers of putting Trump on trial, this week I’m going to consider the argument for stopping someone like Hitler, someone with utter disregard for the values of liberal democracy, someone such as a Trump or a Putin by focusing on how Hitler so easily destroyed democracy in Germany.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sep 24, 2023
Sep 24, 2023
25 min
I’m starting a little series that I call “Lessons from Hitler”, comparing what Hitler did with what Trump and Putin have been up to. In this first episode I go back to Hitler's trial in 1924 that followed his failed coup in the previous year. It serves as a stark warning - not that Trump shouldn't face justice.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sep 17, 2023
Sep 17, 2023
24 min
On September 16th, one year ago, Mahsa Amini died in a Tehran hospital three days after being arrested by the Iranian moral police for not wearing her headscarf properly. This episode looks at issues behind the hijab, not just in Iran but in France too.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad