All in the Mind (ABC) How to Help a Conspiracy Theorist: An Ex-Believer and an Expert Weigh In. This episode has three participants: Jane, a mother who has lost her son to conspiracy theories; Professor Karen Douglas, a researcher who studies them; and Brent Lee from the Some Dare Call It Conspiracy podcast. Jane is walking on eggshells with her son, and Professor Douglas had some suggestions about meeting him on neutral ground and curtailing the conversation. Brent Lee was the most interesting, especially when he described how his beliefs were shaken. He had believed Pizzagate etc. as being a satanic child sacrifice conspiracy, but when Sandy Hook happened, he just couldn’t believe that the parents were crisis actors, and it didn’t fit in with his child sacrifice scenario. He described his conspiracy beliefs as being like Jenga blocks, where you could reject one or two elements, but eventually the whole thing came tumbling down. All three spoke about the importance of maintaining contact, no matter how difficult it is.
Some Dare Call It Conspiracy. After hearing All in the Mind, I hopped across here. As a historian myself, I was attracted to History is Written by the Whiners: Neil Oliver Dismantled What? Handsome young Scots historian Neil Oliver, striding across the heather, the wind in his hair. Oh dear. He seems to have gone “off”. I’m not even game to watch any of his YouTube videos lest the Algorithm Gods decide that I’m actually interested in what he’s saying. That said, I wasn’t particularly enamoured of the snide comments by the presenters of this podcast, Brent Lee and Neil Sanders. The name-calling and snarkiness seemed unnecessary.
New York Times Podcast I listened to this so long ago that it is now completely overtaken by events! Inside Trump’s Search for a Running Mate Trump takes up so much oxygen that we haven’t really heard about who is going to have as Vice President. Michael Bender, a political correspondent for The Times, explains that this time round, Trump demands absolute loyalty (which he feels he didn’t get from Mike Pence), doesn’t want anyone who is going to cause him any problems, and definitely doesn’t want anyone who is going to overshadow him. As far as Bender is concerned, the front runners are: 1. J. D. Vance (author of Hillbilly Elegy), who criticized Trump in 2016 but was his supporter by 2020 when he became a Senator. He’s a good media performer, but there’s a risk that he will be too good and overshadow Trump. 2. Marco Rubio. Even though Rubio was very critical of him during his first term, he has since become an important behind-the-scenes worker and a good attack dog. 3. Doug Burgum from North Dakota, another rich white man, who made his money through Microsoft. He’s in his mid-60s and a rather mediocre media performer, and very anti-abortion and conservative. Wait and I see, I guess.
History Extra: Breastfeeding in the Middle Ages features historian Hannah Skoda. She points out that in the Middle Ages, breastfeeding was more about loving relationships within the wider family, rather than between mother and child. Colostrum was seen as poisonous, and breast feeding only began three days after birth and tended to last for two years. It was done casually, and there was no routine. If milk was insufficient, there was pap (a mixture of grain and water), a wet nurse or milk sharing between close acquaintances. Wet nurses were often slave women – remember that there was slavery in Europe. Florence stands out as an example where at the Foundling Hospital, women fed the abandoned children – although there is some evidence that they were actually the mothers themselves who couldn’t afford to keep their children (a practice that the hospital frowned upon). It was believed that breast-feeding worked as a contraceptive, which was a problem for wealthy women and especially their husbands, who relied on her reproductive fecundity.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 