I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 1-7 February

The Daily (NYT) So what happens to the Trump supporters now? A Conspiracy Theory is Proved Wrong interviews a number of ‘true believers’ who fervently believed that somehow Trump would end up as president. As in a millenarian cult disappointed after the Messiah does not appear (again), believers blame themselves for misinterpreting what they were told. I just don’t know how you prove that something – i.e. fraud- did not occur.

Dan Snow’s History Hit .These podcasts are teasers for Dan Snow’s History Hit television channel, and you really needed visuals here. Edge of Empire: Rome’s Northernmost Town looks at Corbridge, two miles south of Hadrian’s wall, and the archaeological ruins uncovered there. It was a garrison town that survived after the soldiers left to become a trading centre. I think you have to see it for this podcast to make sense.

Heather Cox Richardson continues her history series on Reconstruction. In her January 15 episode she looks at two forces which challenged the post Civil War idea that all men (including African-American men) should be able to have a say in the government. First there was fear of ‘communism’, spurred on by the resurrection of unions after the Civil War and the Paris Commune which was publicized by the new improved Transatlantic telegraph table of 1865. Second, there was the careful creation of the independent, government-scorning Western cowboy as a counter to the eastern states ‘socialists’.

Late Night Live (ABC). I saw that Simon Winchester has written a new book Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. Philip Adams interviewed him here. He seems (from this interview- I may be wrong) to start his analysis with the land enclosures in the 1600s onwards but I found myself wondering about feudal ownership beforehand, Indian and Chinese ownership- was there such a thing?- and how nobility and kingship fitted in with land ownership. It all sounds a bit Euro-centric – again, I may be wrong.

Saturday Extra (ABC) It’s the 10 year anniversary of the Arab Spring, and I’m interested to know what the after effects were. A week ago Geraldine Doogue interviewed Sarah Yerkes, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Tunisia: Ten years since the Arab Spring. She argues that Tunisia came out better from the Arab Spring than many other Middle East companies, but that there have been recent uprisings again. Then this week, Doogue interviewed James Dorsey, journalist, and a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute. He argues that in recognizing Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were allowing Trump to give something to his evangelical followers, and to present an alternative to conservative Islam – a trend that is occurring across the Middle East to varying degrees. After the interview, he was chatting informally to Doogue. He said- and she had his permission to add this to the podcast- that Indonesia is being underestimated, but at this point he started to talk to Doogue as a real insider, and I didn’t know what he was talking about, quite frankly.