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 Oct 01, 2023
Sunday Oct 01, 2023
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
Sunday Sep 24, 2023
Sunday Sep 24, 2023
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
Sunday Sep 17, 2023
Sunday Sep 17, 2023
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
Sunday Sep 10, 2023
Sunday Sep 10, 2023
Ray Lamontagne, a great song writer and a great musician, wrote a song called Be Here Now that includes a such a profound line: ‘Don’t put your trust in walls cos walls will only crush you when they fall’. The first time I heard it I thought wow, that’s a great lyric, and it’s the same every time I listen to the song. If you don’t know him, you really should check him out. More recently, I came across Anais Mitchell and her song, Why We Build the Wall:
We build the wall to keep us free
The wall keeps out the enemy
Because we have and they have not
Because they want what we have got
The enemy is poverty and the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
Again, do check her out, you won’t be disappointed.
Where am I going with all this? Well, we’ve been looking at China for a good few episodes. China has a wall and so I thought an episode on walls in history was in order.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Sep 03, 2023
Sunday Sep 03, 2023
It is so important to step back and take stock of the impact of the Cultural Revolution, as well as to try and make sense of it. And China itself had to do this. With Mao’s death in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping effectively in control by the end of 1978, soon to be made ‘paramount leader’ (what a survivor!), China needed to put the whole affair in the rear-view mirror and move on. But it had some explaining to do before it could do that!
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Aug 27, 2023
Sunday Aug 27, 2023
We left things last week at the beginning of 1967 with the Cultural Revolution out of control and turning on the Chinese Communist Party itself. Even Mao now thought that “trusting the masses” had gone too far.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Aug 20, 2023
Sunday Aug 20, 2023
This week we are continuing our examination of Mao in power by looking at what must be the most chaotic, crazy period in any country’s history as the Cultural Revolution spiralled out of control.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Aug 13, 2023
Sunday Aug 13, 2023
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to give its full grand title, lasted from early 1966 to Mao’s death in 1976, though its fiery phase ended in 1969. But what was the Cultural Revolution? The answer - surprise, surprise - is not straightforward.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Aug 06, 2023
Sunday Aug 06, 2023
Thgis second episode looking at China’s Great Leap Forward in the 1950s will show just how crazy and tragic the whole thing was, and why I call this episode ‘Farce and Famine’. It also serves as an example of just how one person can destroy the lives of millions.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
Sunday Jul 30, 2023
Sunday Jul 30, 2023
This week I’m going to take a look at the first of two disasters that were the end product of Mao policies. This first, the Great Leap Forward, was ideological and economic in nature but its cost was measured in human terms: millions of human lives.
Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream:
https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad
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