Category Archives: Podcasts 2021

Travels Through Time. I was in the car driving down to Airey’s Inlet, listening to podcasts through Spotify and it just went from one episode to the next. So I heard Dr Diane Atkinson, who chose 1914 as her year to discuss, looking at The Suffragettes and their actions during this first year of the war. Her three scenes were a drawing room in the industrial city of Preston during January 1914, at Charing Cross Station at the same time, and then on 21 May 1914 at the gates of Buckingham Palace.

She was followed by Sir Michael Palin, no less, talking about HMS Erebus in From Pole to Pole. He cheated a bit by spanning seven years from 1841 to 1848. Still, I guess you don’t pull rank on Michael Palin.He started off in Hobart on 1st June 1841, at the Erebus and Terror Ball, where the best of Hobart Society were there to celebrate the two ships- the Erebus and the Terror. His second scene was the New Year celebrations in the Antarctic, but his final scene was 22 April 1848 off King William Island in the Arctic, where HMS Erebus and Terror were abandoned.

New Books in Latin American Studies Diana Arbaiza The Spirit of Hispanism: Commerce, Culture and Identity Across the Atlantic.1875-1936. In this podcast, she looks at the idea of the ‘Spanish world’ and how it was leveraged as a form of nostalgia for ‘lost glory’ even before Spain lost the Phillipines in 1898. She chose 1875 as her starting year because that was when the Bourbon Monarchy was restored in Spain, and closed off her narrative in 1936 with the Spanish Civil War. She argues that ‘hispanism’ has served different purposes in Spain (nationalism, commerce through the book industry) and that it gave support to the contested idea that the Spanish Empire was less materialistic than British and Dutch imperialism.

History Extra Podcast. I’d never really thought about Ethiopia as an alternative seat of Christendom (in fact, it had been since the 4th century) but in this episode Medieval Ethiopa’s Diplomatic Missions, Verena Krebs discusses the diplomats who were sent to Europe during the 15th and 16th century by the Ethiopian Christian leaders. It was relatively easy for Ethiopians to travel to Europe, compared with the difficulty of Western Europeans going the other way. Although it has often been supposed that the Ethiopian diplomats were seeking military assistance, she suggests instead that they sought religious artefacts (saints’ fingers etc.) out of a clear sense of confidence in their Christianity.

Earshot (ABC) ‘Trough Man’ was an almost mythical figure in the pre-AIDS Sydney gay scene. An afficionado of ‘water sports’, he could be found in the men’s toilets of Oxford Street bars, enjoying a long golden shower. In Searching for Trough Man, the interviewer decided to try to find him, some 30 years later.

Heather Cox Richardson I continue to listen to her Thursday history podcasts, which she is now presenting as ‘one-offs’ rather than following a theme. Her talk of 15 April Why the Civil War Still Matters marks the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination but it’s very much an encapsulation of her arguments over the last couple of years. She starts off by talking about her horror at seeing the Confederate flag in Congress during the January insurrection, and talks more personally about how reading the Civil War through a single Chicago newspaper gave her just a small taste of the shock that people felt when Lincoln was assassinated. She rounds it off by bringing it back to current events. This is a really good podcast- if you haven’t listened to her before, this is a really good place to start!

History of Latin America In The Conquest of Mexico Part 11, attention turns to Honduras. By this stage, Cortez and his men had stopped fighting the Aztecs and were just fighting other Spaniards with their eyes on treasure and loyalties to either Cortez or the guy back in Cuba (whose name I have forgotten).

Background Briefing (ABC). In recent years we have had both state and federal inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse. What makes The memo that erased a scandal particularly distressing is not only that the the man who is accused of causing so much misery is still alive, unable to be tried in court because of his dementia, but that it seems to have been covered up at the highest levels of the Victorian (Liberal) government in the 1960s. Sir John Dillon, Sir Henry Winneke and the Attorney-General Sir Arthur Rylah – they are all named, and are all dead.

Fifteen Minute History from the University of Texas. Episode 132 History of the Second Ku Klux Klan features historian Linda Gordon who wrote The Second Coming of the KKK The Ku Klux Klan: of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition in 2017. She argues that the KKK has had several iterations: after the Civil War, in the 1920s, during the Civil Rights Movement and more recent events. During the 1920s, the second iteration, she suggests that between 4-6 million Americans were members (or at least agreed with their politics). It was a sort of pyramid scheme, and it was the financial improprieties that largely led to its temporary decline. There were women KKK members who even leaned towards feminism, while still maintaining KKK beliefs. Interesting- and you don’t need a lot of background knowledge to enjoy it.

New Books Network. I seem to be on a bit of a Paraguayan ‘thing’ at the moment. My friend Diego mentioned the Triple Alliance War (which I had never heard of), and sent me an article from BBC Mundo. Then I watched the movie ‘Guarani’. I also listened to this podcast Road to Apocalypse: Paraguay versus the Triple Alliance 1866-1870. Historian Thomas Whigham discusses his second volume on the war- the result of 20 years work- where he has accessed the archives of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, something that few Latin American historians would have the funding to do. It’s a really interesting podcast, and doesn’t require back ground knowledge (although a glimpse at a map first wouldn’t hurt).

History Extra Podcast. I wasn’t very impressed when I heard Simon Winchester speaking about his book Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World earlier. But this podcast on History Extra How Our Hunger for Land Shaped History gives him more scope to talk about the book in a wider context than just ‘settler colonies’. Perhaps I would be interested in it after all.

Duolingo Spanish Podcast The podcasts presented by Duolingo, the language learning program, are excellent. They alternate between Spanish and English, and even if you don’t speak Spanish, you could probably understand them anyway. Episode 81 La lucha libre de hoy is about José Luis Hernández, whose stage name is “El Demasiado” (The Too-Much) and he \’free fights’ (i.e. think World Championship Wrestling on Sunday Mornings in the 60s and 70s) in drag.

The Daily I was wondering why I hadn’t heard much about ‘herd immunity’ any more. This NYT podcast Why Herd Immunity is Slipping Away discusses vaccine hesitancy and refusal in U.S. and the idea that COVID might end up like measles (which Orthodox Jews refuse to vaccinate against) which continues to kill unprotected people, but is just seen as inevitable.

Travels Through Time I’ve been hearing good things about Kate Fullagar’s book The Warrior, the Voyager and the Artist which recently won the Premier’s Prize for General History and the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction in the recent NSW literary awards. Unfortunately it is eyewateringly expensive at $76.00. So I listened to her instead, on the History-Today associated podcast Travels Through Time and the episode named for the book The Warrior, the Voyager and the Artist. The ‘rules’ are that the visiting historian/guest has to choose one year in history and three scenes to visit. She/he has to just observe, without changing anything. Kate Fullagar chose 1776- in fact just one day (10 December)- in three places: Somerset House in London, a Cherokee town in the Southern Appalacian Mountains and the Indian Ocean. These places pick up on the three main characters in her book: Sir Joshua Reynolds and the exotic ‘ambassadors’ Ostenaco of the Cherokee nation and Mai, one of the Pacific Islanders who accompanied Captain Cook.

Nothing on TV. I do enjoy Robyn Annear’s podcast series, and the first episode in her second series Agnes and Geraldine was as delightful and discursive as those of her earlier series. It tells the story of Agnes Simmons, a swimming teacher at Hegarty’s Baths in St Kilda and her very good friend Geraldine Minet who was deeply involved in spiritualism. Together they launched a coal mine at Red Bluff in St Kilda, which despite being directed from ‘beyond the grave’, never made money.

Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson refers to herself as a ‘Lincoln Conservative’ and in this episode of 18th March she explains why. American conservatism had nothing to do with Edmund Burke’s conservatism (which arose out of his horror at the French Revolution). When the slave owners deprecated the new Republican party for being ‘radical’ and wanting to get rid of slavery, Abraham Lincoln claimed to be ‘conservative’ in that he wanted to keep to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, which was silent on slavery and proclaimed the equality of man (albeit, assumed to be white men). She does not use the term ‘conservative’ for today’s Republican party.

Start the Week (BBC) What if the Incas had colonized Europe? features the recently-released book Civilizations by Laurent Binet, which is a counter-factual fictional book that images what would have happened if the Incas and Aztecs had colonized Europe, instead of the other way round. He is joined by two academic historians, Caroline Dodds Pennock, one of the world’s foremost historians of Mesoamerican culture, and Christienna Fryar’s from Goldsmiths, University of London, who focusses on British/Caribbean History. Both historians are fairly relaxed about counter-factual fiction, and have some interesting observations about the new perspectives that what-if history can bring. I really enjoyed Binet’s HHhh, so I’ve put a reservation on this book at the library.

Rear Vision (ABC) I was out doing the weeding with ABC listen on my phone, and a string of Rear Visions floated past. The Suez Canal burst back into our consciousness when it was blocked by that humongous container ship, and The Suez Canal -ambition, colonial greed, revolution and the ditch that reshaped global trade tells the story of the creation of the Suez Canal and its interweaving with French and British colonial politics and Egyptian nationalism. I hadn’t realized that the Egyptians have blocked the Suez Canal in the past, or the broader political implications of the Suez Crisis (which I’m a bit fuzzy about anyway).

Next program was Edward and Harry- the men who left the Royal Family. The program focussed mainly on Edward’s abdication, then finished up by looking or debunking parallels between the two situations.

The Latin American History Podcast. Episode 10 of The Conquest of Mexico follows one of Cortez’s conquistadors, Pedro de Alvarado as he strikes out from Tenochitlan down to Guatamala. He might have been good at fighting, but he lacked the skills to actually establish colonies. Many of the names were unfamiliar here, so I found it a little hard to follow. But- in short, there was lots of killing and betrayal.

The Latin American History Podcast. In The Conquest of Mexico Part 9, Max Sarjeant continues the story beyond the usual end point of the Spanish retaking of Tenochtitlan. Even though they had Tenochtitlan under their control, the Spanish troops did not occupy it immediately, preferring to camp at another location not far away (perhaps all that rampant smallpox turned them off a bit). But eventually they moved into Tenochtitlan, destroying most of the temples in order to construct their own buildings on top of them. They then had to build a stable government, while keeping his own troops and the defeated Aztecs happy, while fending off rival conquistadors.

Big Ideas (ABC) During Trump’s presidency, we saw again the craziness of fear, hysteria, and political grandstanding. In Joe McCarthy and the politics of fear, historian Richard Norton Smith talks about the political rise of Joe McCarthy, his fall and his toxic legacy. It’s an interesting podcast- I learned a lot about Joe McCarthy.

In Our Time: Religion. Arianism was an early form of Christianity that believed that the Son of God was not co-eternal (and therefore equal) with God the Father. (Be careful- it’s not Aryanism, which is the belief in white supremacy.) It was quite a common belief amongst early Christians, but during the Council of Nicea in 325 it was declared to be heresy. However, it continued amongst the Goths and Visi-Goths, and still lingers today amongst Unitarians and (yikes!) the Church of the Latter Day Saints. This episode Arianism has three historians contextualizing Arianism within early Christianity and the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.

Not content with listening to one arcane program, I then listened to a previous 2007 In Our Time episode on The Nicene Creed. It was the Nicene Creed that finally marked the end of my mainstream Christianity, when I found myself unable to say even a single sentence with any conviction. This program covered much the same territory as the Arianism one, albeit with different historians, and I must confess that angels dancing on pin heads did come to mind.

Rear Vision (ABC) There has been a great deal of attention on the Australian Parliament recently. In The Political Swamp: Poisonous for Women, the history of female representation in Parliament is addressed. Women may have achieved the vote and the right to stand for Parliament but it took 40 years until someone actually did. The program looks at New Zealand and Scandinavian countries to show that it can be done much, much better.

Heather Cox Richardson. Well, she really did finish her series on Reconstruction on 26 February when she said she would. So what now? Well, on 5 March, she discussed the concept of ‘the shining city on the hill’. The origin of the term was actually back in Puritan days, when the Puritan leaders were worried that if the new community failed, then the rest of the world would mock their endeavour. What John Winthrop meant was that “we’re sticking out like a sore thumb, so we’d better behave”. A bit different to the triumphalist use of the term ‘shining city on the hill’ by Robert Reagan and most recently by Mike Pompeo to mean “we are perfect, so other countries had better behave”. She goes on to talk at the end about Trump’s 1776 Commission, which aimed to teach a ‘patriotic’ American history, and the countering 1619 project.

History Workshop Even though it won the An Post Irish National Book of the Year and the Foyle’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year, perhaps I should NOT read Doireann ní Ghríofa’s book A Ghost in the Throat. She is an Irish poet, and her book is a mixture of biography and autofiction as she interweaves her own relationship with pregnancy and motherhood, and the life of eighteenth-century poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. The author is not a historian, and not part of academia and she in effect found her own way through this biography, albeit drawing on the work of many other scholars. This interview Writing Women’s Lives & Histories is with an academic historian Christopher Kissane, who points out that as an amateur historian, she faced the same dilemmas and roadblocks as academic historians do. He is obviously more comfortable with the insertion of autofiction than I am. On the other hand, it is very cheap as an ebook ($8.46).

The Law Report (ABC). Thomas Embling Hospital is relatively close to my house, on the site of the old Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital. Inside Thomas Embling Hospital, a Forensic health facility is the first radio broadcast from inside this health facility for patients who have committed a serious crime, but were either found not-guilty or judged unable to stand trial because of mental illness.

Then this omnibus episode looks at Christian Porter and has an advertisement for a new ABC Listen Podcast on ‘good’ divorces, but more interesting to me was a discussion of the Kathleen Folbigg case. Just as the legal system via the NSW Court of Appeal ruled that she stay behind bars, the Australian Academy of Science, along with 90 eminent scientists argued that medical discoveries over inherited conditions had moved on since her sentencing, and that she should be pardoned.

Big Ideas (ABC) Historian Leigh Straw, whose books on WWI soldiers and Dulcie Markham I have reviewed previously, gives the Geoffrey Bolton 2020 lecture History of Women and Crime. In this lecture, she talks about women she has discovered in the archives who fell foul of the ‘disorderly conduct’ provisions of the law during the early 20th century, from crime madams like Kate Leigh through to sex workers with traumatic histories. Following Leigh’s talk, there is a 20 minute interview with the journalist and writer Juliet Wills who has been working for years on the still unsolved case of Shirley Finn 45 years ago – it would seem that there are powerful people who do not want this case solved.

Let’s Talk about Sects The Zion Full Salvation Ministry was based in Sydney from the 1970s to the 1990s. Violet Pryor, aged in her 50s and very charismatic, claimed that she had the best stigmata ever, and recovered the most quickly ever from a car accident – are you hearing shades of Donald Trump? The person interviewed in this podcast is David Ayliffe, who was her right-hand man for over 20 years. He sounds such a grounded, sensible person that you realize just how powerful cult figures must be.

Outlook (BBC) Before the big ship got stuck in the Suez, the Outlook program broadcast Abandoned at sea for three years about Indian marine engineer Vikash Mishra who, along with the rest of the crew on the Tamin Aldar were left abandoned 20 kms from Dubai, with dwindling supplies, when the ship owners went broke. The company bought off the other workers by offering a small percentage of the wages they owed them, but Vikash knew that as long as he held off, he was in the more powerful situation. This is his story.

The History Listen (ABC). How could they have a program on The Lost Boys of Daylesford, and only mention my friend Kim Torney and her book Babes in the Bush in passing? I kept expecting her voice to come bursting out of my earbuds but, no. This episode The Lost Boys of Daylesford focuses on three little boys- and they were little with the eldest just six- who disappeared around Daylesford in 1867. Certainly the local tourism industry there is making that sure they are no longer forgotten.

Fifteen Minute History. The episodes of Fifteen Minute History often go a bit longer, as happened with The History of the US-Mexico Border Region where C.J. Alvarez discusses his book Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide (2019). Even though most of us are aware of ‘The Wall’, he examines three other large construction projects in the borderlands, which are less well known. The first involves remote army patrol roads, built in 1910s in the midst of the Mexican Revolution (deployment of troops peaked in 1917- eight times as many as are there today); the second is the project to straighten the Rio Grande in the Rio Grande Rectification Project; the third is Amistad Dam completed in 1969 built as a joint project by Mexica and America. He doesn’t speak of THE border, but the border region. ‘The Wall’ was started in the 1990s and ramped up in 2006, but it accompanied by an equally large project to built infrastructure to support the movement of goods under the Free Trade agreement. He points out that in terms of projects to prevent border crossings, the projects to prevent animals from crossing were always more locally oriented (to work out where the animals were getting through) compared to projects to prevent people from crossing which were often national projects and ignorant of local geography.

Rear Vision (ABC) During the COVID lockdown, my suburb lost its local paper. It has not returned. Talk about “don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone”. Sure, it was full of advertising and soft news, but at least it was local, and at least it was ours. It has really hobbled our ability at the local Historical Society to document current events, so that we can locate them again in the future. How the death of local news is destroying democracy looks at the effect of the loss of a local paper, not only socially but politically. It worries me that local council is no longer reported on, and that ‘news’ is now just ‘publicity.’

Latin American History After just escaping Tenochitlan with the remnants of his troops, Cortez lay low for a while, working out how to retake the city. In Episode 44 The Conquest of Mexico Part 8 he could let smallpox do its work in Tenochitlan, while besieging the city for three months to weaken the Aztecs further. He then could return to Tenochitlan and take the city, which the Spaniards maintained until the War of Independence in the 19th century. Although certainly Tenochitlan was the jewel of the Aztec empire, he only actually controlled a sliver of territory at this stage.

Kerning Cultures This is a Middle Eastern podcast from UAE- in English of course! The episode Flagged and Stamped looks at two markers of national identity: the flag and postage stamps. First it tells the story of the Iraqi flag- did you know that the ‘God is Great’ lettering on the flag during Saddam Hussein’s time was written in his own handwriting? Sure enough, the Americans weren’t too happy with that, so the font was changed and eventually the three stars that signified the aspiration that Egypt, Syria and Iraq would form a united block were removed too. The second part of the podcast looks at stamps in the UAE (formerly known as the trucial states because of a truce with UK). An American stamp entrepreneur (who knew there was such a thing) called Finbar Kenny contracted with the northern trucial states to issue thematic stamps for collectors. They were virtually worthless because there were so many of them- they are called ‘Dunes’. Once the emirates became independent, Kenny moved his business on to the Cook Islands instead.

The Forum (BBC). People really must have put up with a lot of pain before modern dentistry. I’m such a wimp in my old age that just the thought of having a feeling without a needle now makes me feel quite faint (even though most of my early fillings were done without anesthetic because my mother, who was paying the bill, didn’t believe in needles “now that drills are so fast”). Adventures with dentures: The story of dentistry is fascinating. Makes you glad to be alive in the 21st century

Rear Vision (ABC) Now that the COVID supplement is coming to a close, the government has given a risible $4.00 a day increase to the Jobseeker allowance. (The name has changed from Newstart – which was always a false promise- to Jobseeker – just to remind the recipients that they’re looking for a job) The struggle for work – why are the unemployed expected to live below the poverty line looks at the history of unemployment benefits.

Saturday Extra (ABC) I haven’t yet read Judith Brett’s essay in the Monthly (because I am so behind in reading The Monthly) but she talks about her essay here and perhaps I won’t have to. In Our Universities, the Humanities, Our Society she had this old humanities-loving-baby-boomer nodding her head in agreement. Then there was a fascinating piece on Wikipedia turns 20. Apparently one of the biggest threats to Wikipedia now is that people just look at the Google ‘snippet’ and don’t both going to the article. So, there’s a belated New Years Resolution- go to the article.

Heather Cox Richardson. I’m not sure if her series on Reconstruction finishes here or not. On February 26 she starts off with a good summary of the ground that she has covered over the past few weeks (and I was thinking that if you were joining the series here, this would be a good place to start – but if it’s the end, then don’t bother!) She talks about how the South became solidly Democrat (until Barry Goldwater) and in effect a one-party state. The Republicans in the north were pretty dodgy, adding states to keep power, even though there almost certainly wasn’t the population to sustain it. She finishes with the Wilmington coup of 1898 which was, until recently, America’s only coup.

Rear Vision (ABC) Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first 100 days have been referenced several times by Joe Biden. Unlike Biden, Roosevelt had sizeable majorities in both houses, and although he didn’t get everything he wanted, there was more willingness to cross party lines to pass legislation. His initial bill to stop the run on the banks was passed quickly and set him up for further success, much as a successful vaccination program would do for Biden. Although Roosevelt didn’t really know what he was going to do, he knew that he had to do something and he surrounded himself with experts.

The Last Archive. Yesterday I was sitting at the railway station with my 5 year old granddaughter, and she asked if the lady making the announcements was actually in the railway station. Of course, she wasn’t as she is an automatic recording, scheduled fifteen and then one minute before the train arrived. I thought of the disembodied women when listening to Jill Lepore’s The Invisible Lady episode. It’s a wide-ranging podcast, starting with the gimmicky ‘Invisible Lady’ who was put on display in New York in 1804, moving to Emily Dickenson (“I’m nobody, Who are You?….”), the Warren and Bradeis Right to Privacy doctrine, H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man book and subsequent movie, and ending up with Siri and Alexa and other disembodied female voices.

History Extra. This episode 1962:London’s Big Freeze was really good, and it has spurred me to buy (yes, buy!) the book. Between Boxing Day 1962 and the first week of March 1963 – three months!!!!– England was plunged into freezing temperatures. The author Juliet Nicolson looks at this period in her book Frostquake. Written prior to this current lockdown, it tells of a different sort of lockdown with any similarities – transport paralysis, public events cancelled, schools closed etc. It also examines other events of the time: the Beatles, Profumo, the Cuban Missile Crisis etc.

Heather Cox Richardson took a week off from her ‘Reconstruction’ series of podcasts because Trump’s second impeachment was being debated, but she returned on February 19 to discuss the way that women, after the war, found themselves sidelined after the 14th Amendment the the Minor v Happersett decision. So they reframed their identities as “mothers of the nation”, and used the education they had gained from the colleges that had opened since the war to present evidence of the working/living conditions of women.

Latin American History Podcast In The Conquest of Mexico Episode 6 the presenter, Max Sarjeant, says that he is about half way through his planned series, and that for the last time he will explore Cortez’ character (which he sees as crazy-brave and impetuous) and the inevitability of the conquest of Mexico. He suspects that the ‘Montezuma thought Cortez was a god’ trope is a bit of ass-covering (not that he says that) and also that European conquest was an inevitability. In The Conquest of Mexico Episode 7, it’s all action with Cortez having to go off back to the coast to fight Spanish soldiers who had been sent from Cuba to stop his progress, then returning to find that the relationship had really deteriorated with the Aztecs. Montezuma died and the Spanish needed to escape Tenochtitlan. I watched the SBS series Hernan a while back, and this is the point where the series finished.

Heather Cox Richardson In her podcast of 5 February, Heather Cox Richardson turns her gaze westward, where, as she points out, the new areas being opened up already had well-established government systems, be they Spanish or Mexican. Treaties were signed with Indigenous tribes that were more a relationship with obligations rather than a land-ownership matter, and when the settlers did not keep up their side of the bargain, all bets were off. The indigenous people were purposely excluded from the 14th amendment, which is ironic given that the whole point of the Civil War was over men’s rights.

The Real Story (BBC) I like this podcast. It has experts who don’t necessarily settle into the expected left/right, liberal/conservative dichotomies. In China’s Advance into Latin America, the guests are a Brazilian economist, a former Mexican ambassador to China and two directors of academic programs- one at the centre for Inter-American Dialogue, and the other the director of Latin American programs at a Beijing University. Lots of parallels between Australia and Latin American countries, especially in terms of China’s use of market power for political outcomes.

Dan Snow’s History Hit. Carol Dyhouse, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sussex talks about her book Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen. Her book of the same name examines how women’s (and mens???) attitudes to love have changed since 1950, when Disney’s Cinderella was released, up to the present day. Actually, there’s an interesting timeline to accompany the book on the OUP blog here.