Constitutional Clarion. Religion and Constitution Strictly speaking, this isn’t a podcast but a YouTube video, but given that the presenter, constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey is just sitting in front of a bookshelf with the occasional image popping up beside her, it may as well be. Unfortunately it’s chopped up with advertisements, which is very annoying. But the content itself really is excellent, giving a constitutional historian’s views on current events. For this Christmas episode, she admits that she had to scratch around to find any link between Christmas and the constitution- although she did find one link with wartime legislation banning Christmas and Easter advertising that did end up in court. She then broadens her survey to look at the role of religion in the Australian constitution more generally, starting with the NSW constitution which prohibited religious men from being elected (although not appointed, note) then going on to look at the Federal constitution. She talks about various court challenges over time, e.g. The Defence of Government Schools case against government funding of private schools, the Chaplaincy Act etc. Fascinating.
Being Roman with Mary Beard A Bag of Snails and a Glass of Wine Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas- surely spoof names!- were innkeepers described on a stone excavated in a vineyard in southern Italy, and so Mary embarks on looking at inns and eating-houses generally in Roman times. Upper class Romans wouldn’t be seen dead eating publicly, but the dangers of fires in closely-settled towns meant that poorer people ate communally. Some were just take-away shops, while others were more like restaurants, mimicking the eating habits of the higher classes. Snail stew…..mmmmm.
The Rest is History. Episode 456: Fall of the Sioux: The Massacre at Wounded Knee (Part 3) At last, the final episode of this series on Native Americans. I haven’t really enjoyed this series: partially because of their flippant attitude, and also because I haven’t ever really got into this aspect of American history. Chief Sitting Bull had been seduced into Buffalo Bill’s show, and unable to see visions in the Ghost Dance phenomenon that was sweeping through the remnant tribes, he had lost all authority. He was deeply depressed when the Swiss activist and friend (something more?) Mrs Caroline Weldon left him. Meanwhile, the Indian Agent James McLaughlin teamed up with Lieutenant Henry Bullhead, of the Indian Agency (similar to the Native Police in Australia) to arrest him at his cottage. He was shot and killed. His cabin was picked up and carted around as a fairground exhibit. Then the inevitable denouement, with the massacre at Wounded Knee, when Custer’s old regiment – all raw recruits who had never known Custer, but were imbued with all the ‘honor of the regiment’ rubbish- surrounded over three hundred Lakota people and massacred them. But as we know, this was not the end of Native Americans, millions of whom still live in America today, albeit in the poorest economic and social conditions. Heather Cox Richardson wrote a post about Wounded Knee on her Substack, as she does every December 29. She wrote a book about it: Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American massacre and is obviously still shaken by it.
History Hit Following on from the episode about Tudor Christmas, Georgian Christmas takes up with the re-establishment of Christmas after being prohibited under the Puritans. In this episode, Dan Snow goes on a stroll around the streets of Islington and Clerkenwell with Footprints of London tour guide Rob Smith. It’s not all directly related to Christmas, but they do emphasize that a Georgian Christmas was a public-holiday event for working class people, who celebrated outside and in public. His guest being a tour guide, there’s lots of interesting little snippets including the fact that The Angel, Islington on the Monopoly Board was actually a pub- the only actual building other than railway stations on the board- and it was the last named, largely out of exhaustion.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 