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
Jun 1, 2025
Jun 1, 2025
20 min
This week we are going to look at the UN embroiled in a civil war in the Congo at the beginning of the 1960s. A sorry tale that also serves to illustrate just what imperialism had done to Africa.
May 25, 2025
May 25, 2025
18 min
The way the United Nations is being ignored by the Soviet Union with regard to Ukraine, ignored and attacked by Israel in Gaza (more than 280 UNWRA and other UN Humanitarian personnel killed by the Israeli Defence Force), it seems as if we are witnessing the end of the UNs usefulness. But this isn’t the first time the United Nations has faced huge controversy, has seemed to be finished as an international peace-keeping body, as a force for good. There are two truly massive crises that I’m aware of that I thought would be useful to share with you.
May 18, 2025
May 18, 2025
21 min
This is my second episode looking at the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. Having looked at the Kurds in Turkey and in Syria, today we’ll look at the Kurds in Iraq and Iran.
May 11, 2025
May 11, 2025
16 min
I’m looking at the Kurds today, the largest ethnic group in the world without a home to call its own. That fact alone makes it necessary for us to know something about their history, I think. Well, this is the first of two episodes doing that.
May 4, 2025
May 4, 2025
16 min
This episode sets out to explain the reasons behind the schism in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shi'ites or Shias, as well as the consequences of the schism.
Apr 27, 2025
Apr 27, 2025
18 min
A final episode on Syria taking a look at the consequences of the civil war, most importantly on people but also on the politics of the region.
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 20, 2025
21 min
I don’t want to plot the path of the war so much (though there will inevitably be a bit of that), rather I want to focus on the nature of it, its characteristics, so that we can better understand its significance today.
Apr 13, 2025
Apr 13, 2025
21 min
For a very brief period, Bashar seemed to offer a liberal regime but he soon revived the authoritarian tactics of his late father’s administration. It would eventually lead to protests, that became an uprising or a revolution, and eventually a civil war; and that’s what our focus is for this episode.
Apr 6, 2025
Apr 6, 2025
22 min
Hafez Assad moved Syria ever closer to the Soviet Union (and then lost it). And he set out to position Syria as a regional power and himself as the leader of the Arab world, filling the vacuum left by Nasser, and that meant taking on Israel (or at least at first it did), it also meant rivalry with Saddam Hussein, and, as we have seen, it meant interfering in the Lebanon Civil War and, indeed, its occupation of Lebanon (so I won’t revisit that). But all this also meant that, one way or another, whether he wanted it or not, there would be a relationship with America.
Mar 30, 2025