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 Apr 14, 2024
Sunday Apr 14, 2024
This episode is going to explain how the north-east corner of the island of Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom and not Ireland. I’m not going to give anything like a full history of Ireland, that would be interesting but would take many, many episodes, but I must give some key points in Ireland’s history for anything to make sense.
Sunday Apr 07, 2024
Sunday Apr 07, 2024
How is the most north-easterly tip of the North America continent an American state and not a Canadian province or territory? And sitting as it does on a Caribbean Island, somewhere that could have been the subject of songs, the destination for beach lovers, honeymooners. How did Guantánamo Bay, instead, become one of history’s most notorious detention camps.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Mar 31, 2024
Sunday Mar 31, 2024
I’m going to take a look at the rival claims to the Falkland Islands or Las Malvinas. I’m not going to look at the war of 1982, but rather how a group of islands off the southern tip of South America, 800 miles or 1300 kilometres from Britain, is deemed as British.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Mar 24, 2024
Sunday Mar 24, 2024
There’s often a bit of banter in schools between historians and geographers. I remember I had a running “battle” with one colleague, each of us playing tricks on the other, each trying to make fun of the other’s subject whenever we got the chance. One of the things I did was to put a poster up above my classroom door that read “In geography, they colour in maps. In history, we change them.” I dedicate this little series to geographers, and as I do, let me say it’s a great subject, really interesting – but they do colour in the odd map or two!
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Mar 17, 2024
Sunday Mar 17, 2024
To end this little series looking at Brazil (with lessons to learn for us all), something good, something not good, and something beautiful.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
Sunday Mar 10, 2024
In this episode I’ll look at how the Brazilian military got itself out of the hole it had dug, and got itself out of its political role.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Mar 03, 2024
Sunday Mar 03, 2024
With America at war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement making some headway (I wouldn’t exaggerate how much), with hippies flocking to San Francisco, and British culture taken over by the Beatles, the Stones, the Who and co; Brazil was taken over by the military. This episode looks at Brazil under the military regime.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
I’m continuing my look at Brazil and in this episode I’m looking at Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo or New State.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Feb 18, 2024
Sunday Feb 18, 2024
I’m continuing my look at Brazil and in this episode I’m going to look at Brazil post-empire, tracing the country’s path to dictatorship. We need to appreciate that democracy is not the only means of governing and if we value it, we need to nurture and protect it.
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
This episode continues our little soap opera looking at the royals of Brazil by looking at the reign of the much-loved (at least in this part of the world) Pedro II. A pity, then, that it didn't end too well for him.