In the Shadows of Utopia. My son has been raving about this podcast for ages, and now I know why. It’s excellent. I didn’t particularly want to listen to another genocide podcast, and I find it frustrating that books on Cambodia seem to concentrate on either the Angkor period, or else Pol Pot as if nothing else happened between those two events. Looking through the list of episodes, it seems that my yearning for the ‘in-between’ might be met, even though the emphasis of the project as a whole might be on the 20th century. The first episode Introducing the Cambodian Nightmare starts by asking you to imagine how you would cope with the expulsion from Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, then backtracks to 1969 and the Vietnam War. He starts with Sihanouk, who was playing both sides a bit until he was voted out in 1970 and replaced by the fervently U.S. Lon Nol who was rewarded when US were pumping $1million per day into Cambodia. But then Nixon decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam and encourage the ‘Vietnamization’ of the fighting. But the U.S. had been secretly bombing Cambodia for years, trying to get rid of the ‘sanctuaries’ where the Viet Cong could slip across the border, move south, then go back into South Vietnam. By 1973 all U.S. troops had withdrawn, and by 1975 the U.S. withdrew completely. Lon Nol fled with millions of dollars, and the fighting came to Phnom Penh. On 17 April 1975 first the Chief Monk got onto the radio and told people to calm down, then the chief of Kymer Republic army told them to lay down their arms. The Kymer Rouge troops were at first greeted as liberators, then that afternoon they evacuated Phnom Penh, ostensibly for three days, because they said that the U.S. was going to bomb them. Then followed almost four years of the Kymer Rouge nightmare until the Vietnamese Army took Phnom Penh in January 1970. Photographer Ho Van Tay was the first to see the Tuol Svay Prey High School, and to document the horror. This is an imaginative, well-told, and wide-ranging episode. I’m impressed.
The Rest is History Lord Byron: Death of a Vampire (Episode 4) Back into European exile, Byron revisited the sites he had previously visited when writing Child Harolde, comparing his current situation with Napoleon. In May 1816 he met up with Shelley and stepsisters Mary Godwin and Claire Claremont, who was pregnant with Byron’s child. They spent the summer together in Geneva where the bad weather caused by the eruption of Krakatoa forced them inside to tell vampire and horror stories- hence Frankenstein. Even though Byron had claimed that he wanted nothing to do with Claremont’s baby, when it was born it was agreed that the parents would have shared custody but Bryon was still moving around. In Ravenna he fell in love with a 19 year old married woman Theresa. He was becoming increasingly involved in British and Italian politics, and ended up getting expelled from Tuscany. Shelley drowned, and the circle of radicals broke up. By now Byron was getting bored, and became obsessed with Greece again. Greece was a cause celebre amongst many British intellectuals and society people, and he became a type of Ambassador, raising money for the cause. He went to Missalongi to raise the profile of the war, but fell ill there and died.
Embedded (NPR) This was an interesting experience. Tested is a six-part series looking at the history of sex testing in sports over the past 100 years. This controversial topic raised its head again in the recent Olympic boxing match, but this podcast series had been completed before then. As part of my own echo-chamber of media, I usually only listen to podcasts that are slightly left-leaning and which I’m generally in agreement with. However, with my somewhat ‘TERF’y views, I found this series rather challenging. (Not that I support J.R. Rowling’s very spiky and unnecessarily hostile response to the boxing match, either). Certainly the presenter of this podcast opposes to testing and hormonal management (she would call it manipulation) and it shows in her questions and approach. When women were first permitted to compete in the Olympic Games in 1928, it was feared that competitive sport would make them ‘unwomanly’, and that strenuous exercise would make you a man. The first transgender athlete was the Czech runner Zdeněk Koubek, who transitioned from female to male, prompting the issuing of a rule permitting physical examination of athletes, which by 1966 resulted in the mandatory inspection of all female athletes. In 1968 genetic testing was introduced, and tested female athletes were issued with a card testifying that they were women. By 2011 the testing focus shifted to hyperandrogenism and testosterone levels, and individual sports issued their own guidelines. In the case of athletics, the permitted testosterone level has been progressively reduced. The series focuses on two athletes: Namibian runner Christine Mboma, who took hormone drugs to reduce her testosterone level, and who has struggled to achieve her earlier results, and Kenyan sprinter Maximila Imali who refused to take drugs or undergo surgery to meet the testosterone criteria. Instead, she has taken up her cause in the courts, but a delay in the findings meant that she could not compete in the Paris Olympic Games. The issue has bounced back and forth in the courts, with competing medical claims, and accusations of Western racism against the global South (especially Africa runners) and denial of human rights. The last episode raises a number of possible scenarios for women’s sport: to continue testing; to have a special category; and to have no testing at all. I know that the last option fills me with trepidation. Interesting, but I found it a rather challenging listen.
Emperors of Rome Episode CCXXII A Stolen Election (The Catiline Conspiracy III) In 64BCE Catiline fronted up for his third attempt to be elected Consul, and he lost yet again. Catiline was angry, but he decided to run the following year at the 63BCE elections. He ran on a plank of debt cancellation, which would have been very convenient for him, as he was heavily indebted, and he was supported by quite a few other people who had run up large debts as well. By this time, Cicero was firmly in the Optimate political grouping, even though he was strictly speaking a ‘new man’, and Catiline was in the Populares (even though he had long aristocratic family ties). He lost yet again, and by now he was broke and a social outcast. The other accusations of a ‘conspiracy’ earlier on are a bit dodgy, but this is really into conspiracy territory now as there were accusations of women riling up the slaves to rebel. Although Catiline might have been the spark, there was general discontent building up over many years since the Gracchi tried to implement land reform 60 years earlier. Perhaps now was the time!
Being Roman (BBC) Death on the Nile In this episode, historian Mary Beard takes us on Emperor Hadrian’s trip down the Nile to see the ‘singing’ Colossus of Memnon (actually, it was a statue of a Pharoah but somehow the legend had changed to link it with Greek and Roman mythology). Hadrian was an inveterate traveller, accompanied by about 5000 other people. On the way, Hadrian’s young male lover Antinous drowned in the Nile (did he jump, was he pushed, or was he just making a spectacle of himself?). Heartbroken, Hadrian continued on his journey, and the poet Julia Balbilla (a friend of Hadrian’s wife) had poetry inscribed on the bottom of the Colossus, praising Hadrian and his wife.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 