Category Archives: Uncategorized

Festival of Dangerous Ideas. This festival was held in Sydney between 20-30 August this year. I usually report on my podcast listening, but I listened to Richard Flanagan’s address on ‘Heresies’ which is on YouTube instead. On his substack, Derek Thompson says that Everything is Television today, and the slippage between podcasts and You Tube is ubiquitous. There’s not much to see here except a man talking, so you may as well just listen to it. However you access it, here is a link to Richard Flanagan’s excellent lecture on the power of the Israeli lobby. Good on you.

Global Roaming And while I was at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas(metaphorically), I then listened to Nobel Prize winner and editor of Rappler Maria Ressa talking with Hamish Macdonald on How Big Tech is creating the next Donald Trump. She shares some amazing statistics: 74% of the world’s population now lives under some form of dictatorship, and in July 51% of internet traffic was not human. Of the ‘open internet’ only 25% remains open and not behind a paywall. And as far as people saying “I get my news from the internet”, of every hour of internet viewing, only 15 minutes takes you to an actual news website. She lays out an “authoritarian stack”: Peter Thiel bankrolling Donald Trump and JD Vance, Palantir winning a US $10 billion military contract, and Silicon Valley firms wiring themselves into state power. [I’m starting to be really uneasy about JD Vance]. As with the rest of the world, Australia is prostrating itself in front of Big Tech in order to get data centres, but do they provide sovereignty? [not if we’re just becoming a data processing factory for Big Tech say I].And should the ABC allow Anthropic to scrape its archives in order to make AI more Australian?- the ultimate Faustian bargain. [No bloody way, say I]

The War Game Series 1 The Grey Zone Episode 6 Iran- the hidden hand. This series was recorded in 2021, and up until then Iran had mainly used proxy forces as a form of warfare against countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States. In 2018 Trump tore up the nuclear agreement with Iran, preferring instead ‘maximum pressure’. During 2019 oil tankers were blown up in the Straits of Hormuz, probably by Iran, and there was skirmishing and seizures of tankers. [Did Trump learn nothing? Obviously] On 3 January 2020, the United States killed Iran’s top spy master, Major General Qasem Soleimani, in a drone strike in Iraq, thus undertaking similar Grey Zone tactics to what Iran was using.

The Rest is History The Fascist World Cup: Mussolini’s Football Dictatorship This episode was actually from their Extras series for Rest of History Club members. Sport was part of Mussolini’s projection of a New Italy. He built new gyms and sporting fields, and mass sporting events took over the existing Church and Communist sporting clubs. At the 1932 Olympics the Italian team wore black shirts, and gained international prestige for their performance in boxing, cycling and soccer (how lovely to hear the Irish guest historian Paul Rouse refer to it as ‘soccer’ instead of ‘football’! Just as Australia has its own football, so does Ireland). The Italian soccer team started headhunting players from South America, on the basis of their Italian heritage, which wasn’t common at that time.. In 1934 the second World Cup was held in Italy, and it was seen by Mussolini as a showcase for fascism. There was press propaganda, the opening of new stadia and the offering of tourist packages. Not many Italians saw the games, but they did hear them on the radio, where the broadcasts were in Italian, rather than in English. A game against Austria was won by Italy, although there are questions about the refereeing and certainly there were South American players on the team, but there was probably no conspiracy. They then won against the Czech team in the final. The Italian team then went on to win the Gold Medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, then the 1938 French World Cup. By this time, the soccer team had completely different players, which is testament to the depth of the Italian talent.

How Did We Get Here? Episode 10 From 2010 to the Present Day This final episode of the series was recorded in February 2026, and it does not include the prsent Iran-US war. In Israel,Tel Aviv developed as a high-tech society, while Gaza was embedding a tunnel economy. Israel did not see Hamas as a military threat. In the West Bank was undergoing (still is) a huge expansion of settler communities. With the rise of ISIS, the pivot to China and the Arab Spring, American eyes were elsewhere. The 2016 Abraham accords ignored the Palestinians, and constituted a big prize for Israel, especially bringing Saudi Arabia on-side. There has been such polarization on both sides, that journalist Jane Corbin and Jeremy Bowen both view a two-state solution as impossible now.

Stuff Matters What a fascinating program. In this episode Ed Conway looks at airpods, or more specifically the satisfying snap when you put them back into their case. They snap shut because of neodymium magnets. Early experimentation with what we now can ‘rare’ earths started in Ytterby in Sweden in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They discovered Yttrium (Y), ytterbium (Yb), terbium (Tb) and erbium (Er) but there was no commercial use for them. But the discovery that Neodymium makes magnets more powerful has had huge implications for electronics and speakers (hence the airpod). Despite the name ‘rare’ earths, they are not rare but separating them out was difficult until China perfected a way of processing them so that it just took one ‘take’ to process the raw material instead of needing to process separately for each different compound. Deng Xiaoping became a champion of the process and announced that China would become a world leader in the field and he was right: China now processes 90% of the ‘critical minerals’ (a more accurate term than ‘rare earths’). In 2010 there was a conflict between China and Japan over maritime territory and China imposed an embargo on Japan, which reinforced to China just how powerful their leverage was. China used critical minerals in response to Trump’s tariffs, leading to a trade stand-off between the two countries. Western countries are happy to offshore critical mineral production and its attendant pollution to China, until there is a choke-point and then nations start clamouring for domestic production again (until the pressure is off, and then they’re happy to let China have it- and the attendant pollution again.)

The Book Club Episode 7: Frankenstein: Horror, Humanity and Hubris I must confess that I have never read Frankenstein. I didn’t realise that it was an epistolary novel, ostensibly written by Captain Walton, a young and ambitious North Pole-bound explorer, who rescued the crazed Victor Frankenstein. Dominic and Tabitha discuss Mary Shelley and the writing of the novel and the circumstances under which is written, before going on to talk about the book itself. Despite misconceptions that the monster is called ‘Frankenstein’, that is actually the name of the doctor who created him. The book itself does not depict The Creature coming to life. Dr Frankenstein thought that it would be beautiful, but instead he was repulsed by it. In the first chapters the Creature tells his story, revealing a gentle, articulate creature with a moral compass who feels that he is human. He is child-like but springs to violence. There is no physical description of Victor Frankenstein, but we see him as an ambitious, heedless man with a saviour-complex, who takes no responsibility for what he has done. Tabby gave it 7/10, tiring of the relentless self-flagellation, and characters who were representative of a philosophical stance than characters in their own right. Dominic gave it 8/10 as the foundational book of the popular canon.

I’m over in Singapore for five days- well, four full days actually- so if you’re interested, you can follow my travel blog at https://landofincreasingsunshine.wordpress.com/2026/06/07/singapore-5-june-2026/

But it’s blink-and-you’ll miss it because it’s a very short trip!

Foundling. Episodes 1-3 This is a six-part series, presented by journalist Lucy Greenwell and I binge-listened to the first three episodes. Greenwell remembered a story about a baby that was found on the verge in a deserted lane in her village in October 1987. The mother was never found and the baby, Jess, was placed for adoption. So, some 40 years later, Greenwell goes in search of Jess, and when she finds her, Jess is already wondering about her own origins. Jess does a DNA test, and she and Greenwell go back to the village to talk to people who were living there at the time, and one of the villagers suggests that she look at the young women who were working there as nannies at the time. When Jess receives the DNA results, Greenwell realizes that, as a child, she actually knew Jess’ mother who was acting as a nanny in a neighbouring house. Jess finds a half-sister and discovers her mother, but it is a complex relationship that doesn’t turn out as she thought it would.

The Rest is History Episode 644 The Fall of the Incas: Empire of Gold (Part 1) I must confess that I’m not absolutely clear about the Aztecs and the Incas, and I find from this episode that many historians and chroniclers of the time weren’t either, as similar themes and events occur in both of them. Somehow 167 men overcame 24 million Incans. The conquest of the Aztecs was the model. Christopher Columbus’ monopoly was abolished, and now anyone could go to Hispaniola if they shared the proceeds with the Crown. There were rival, feuding networks of Conquistadors, hopping from island to island. The Incas were what is now known as Peru, Western Ecuador, a bit of Colombia and Chile, and they were completely geographically isolated, and unaware of the conquest of the Aztecs. The leader of the expedition, Pizarro, was illiterate, strong and austere, compared with Cortez. In 1524 Pizarro and Diego de Almagro set off exploring, but they were unsuccessful and then in 1526 they set off again. His pilot Bartolomé Ruiz went further south, where he encountered a raft, laden with jewels for inter-tribal trade, so they knew that there was great wealth in the country. Pizarro was recalled to Panama but he refused to go, and only 12 men stayed with him. In 1529 Pizarro went back to see King Charles V and was given a franchise, but not for Almagro (which was to cause problems later). In 1530 Pizarro returned with 200 recruits, including his brothers and six Dominican friars. He promised Almagro the country of Chile, and Almagro stayed behind in Panama. Then Hernando de Soto arrived with more men and importantly, the horses, that struck such fear into the Incas. They crossed into modern-day Peru where they learned of the Inca empire that the Incas themselves called ‘The Realms of Four Parts’. They did not have writing, horses or wheels; it was a totalitarian slave-based society with no private property. There had been a recent civil war in 1532 between brothers Atahualpa and Huáscar which devastated the countryside and splintered the elites. This was the environment into which Pizarro and his men appeared.

How Did We Get Here Episode 3: From the Nineteenth Century to World War I In the 1800s there was still no ‘Palestine’ as such. The Ottomans saw their holdings as provinces, with no territorial identities. Jerusalem itself may have had only 2000 inhabitants. The province was Arabic speaking, with some Turks, Frankish merchants, migrants and pilgrims and travellers. Jews constituted about 5% of the population and they mainly lived in scholarly centres. The European powers each had ‘their’ group to support. The French championed the Maronites, the Russians the Orthodox Christians and Britain the Jews. In 1882 Russian persecution saw the sponsorship of Jewish families to move to what was to become Israel by rich families like the Rothschilds and Montefiores. At this point, Hertzel began talking of a ‘Jewish state’ but there was no sustained ‘Palestinian’ resistance at this stage (the term ‘Palestinian’ was coined by the Ottomans in about 1850). It was still a farming community, and large Arab families sold some land to Jewish purchasers. World War I saw the area become strategically interesting to the European powers. The Sykes-Picot agreement envisaged an internationalized Palestine, with defined spheres of influence for the British, French and Russians. Mark Sykes, the British Middle East expert, later distanced himself from the agreement that bore his name. Episode features Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University, and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.

Journey Through Time. I decided to journey through time myself, and went back to the first episode hosted by David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell in April 2025. The Attack That Shook America: German Spies in New York tells the story of the huge explosion on Black Tom Island, an island in New York Harbor next to Liberty Island, since infilled and annexed to Jersey City. The United States was officially neutral, with Germany still operating an Embassy in New York,but the munitions that were stored on the island were mainly exported to the Allies. Von Pappen, who was to reappear on the world stage some 20 years later was working in the German Embassy, and he set up the War Intelligence Centre gathering information in Manhatten. In 1914 Berlin ordered him to sabotage shipping of munitions between US and Europe, and 200 bombings were carried out. Wilson refused to believe that spies were at work, preferring diplomacy. The sinking of the Lusitania caused strong anti-German feeling in US, and Von Pappen was expelled from the US in 1916. Black Tom Island was an obvious target, but no-one tended to take it seriously.