Emperors of Rome Episode CIII Old Age in the Roman World. Professor Tim Parkin (Elizabeth and James Tatoulis Chair of Classics, University of Melbourne) is so careful to point out that the sources deal only with wealthy Roman men, that I don’t know that I learned much here. It’s hard to say what ‘old age’ was: people lived into their 60s and 70s in Rome, and people and headstones often exaggerated people’s age. There was variation in perceptions of old age across the Empire: in North Africa, for example, there was more openness about peoples’ ages on their tombstones. He talks about ideas of medicine at the time, with the four humours, and it was generally seen that during old age, the humours ‘dried up’. Tell me about it.
History Extra Chivalry: Everything You Wanted to Know. Featuring medievalist Lydia Zeldenrust, this episode talks about the changing perception of chivalry from its origins in the post-Carolingian world – about the 11th or 12th century as a way of knights treating other knights; through the Crusades; its adoption during Tudor and Elizabethan times (thinking of Henry VIII’s Cloth of God knightly games) and then its 19th century manifestation as manners. There is always an interplay between the warrior-reality and literature. The idea of the strong protecting the weak was not extended to peasants, and it does have a dark side, sliding at times into misogyny (women are there for kidnapping and rescuing) and colonialism (the Spanish Conquistadors drew on the language and imagery of chivalry to justify their actions).
New York Times A Guilty Verdict for a Mass Shooter’s Mother This was fantastic. In Michigan, Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of a 16 year old mass shooter at his school, was found guilty of criminal manslaughter for the shooting. She didn’t do the shooting: her son did. However, she purchased the gun for her son and took him to a shooting range (legally); she did not take him out of school when she and her husband were called in because her son had drawn pictures of shooting and guns on his geometry paper (but then again, none of the other adults in the room, who were all under mandatory reporting rules, allowed him to stay at school) and she did not seem to take seriously strange messages texted to her by her son (which she says have been taken out of context). The reporter on the story, Lisa Miller (no, not ‘our’ Lisa Millar) obviously has concerns about the case, which legal experts said was unlikely to end up with a guilty verdict- but it did. Really interesting.
I Was a Teenage Fundamentalist. So was I. This podcast, which started in 2021, is hosted by two other men who were part of the big evangelical churches during their adolescence/early adulthood, but as middle aged men, no longer attend. It’s a story-based podcast, and each episode is pretty much self-contained. I went right back to the starting episodes, where they were rather coy about their identities, referring to themselves by the letter of their first name only, but that has obviously gone by the board as their website now names them openly. Episode 1: Brian’s Conversion Story and Episode 2: Troy’s Conversion Story are just what the name says: they talk about how they came to ‘give their lives to Jesus’ – something that I had done some ten years earlier than did, but which seemed to be very much the same experience. Now in its third year, there are more episodes here than I’m likely to want to listen to (there is, after all, a sameness about them) but as an ex-fundamentalist, I find them interesting. I like that it’s Australian.
Democracy Sausage. I was always bemused by the term ‘water cooler conversation’, given that I had heard of the expression before I even knew what a water cooler was, in those days when we didn’t feel compelled to lug water bottles everywhere and got water from a tap if we were thirsty. Anyway, the recent ABC documentary Nemesis has certainly gained ‘water cooler conversation’ status among my circle of left-leaning, politically-engaged friends. In the episode Do Unto Others Emeritus Professor Paul Pickering, Dr Marija Taflaga and Professor Mark Kenny discuss the recently-completed ABC Nemesis program. Interesting to get other perspectives on it.
Things Fell Apart Season 2 Episode 3 Tonight’s the Night Comrades Continuing on with Jon Ronson’s exploration of culture war skirmishes in 2020, this episode looks at a family who were going on a short camping holiday in their converted white camperbus, only to find themselves in a small town, surrounded by heavily armed townfolk. Locals had been riled up by media reports of ‘Antifa’ plans to move out of the city centres into the countryside, and they were ready.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 