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If nothing else, having to prepare talks for my Unitarian fellowship makes me read things I might not have read otherwise. On Doubt, by journalist Leigh Sales is part of the ‘On…’ series published by Hachette, and like the other books in the series, it is only short: in this case only 128 pages.

As a journalist, Sales has had plenty of experience with politicians who come onto her program, pumped up full of talking points and bombast. Her exploration of ‘doubt’ is largely through a political lens, but in Part I she starts by talking personally about her own curiosity and rebelliousness as a child. She rarely accepted anything as a given, and although converting to evangelical Christianity as a teenager, she soon rejected the ‘truths’ of religion that had to be accepted on faith, as well.

In Part 2 she turns to politics, struck by the certainty of Sarah Palin who boasted that she “didn’t blink” when asked to be George W. Bush’s vice president, despite her complete lack of experience. She notes that much of our media today is comprised of commentary rather than research or reporting, marked by point-scoring and moral certitude. This is most manifest in the US television that we receive here in Australia but she reports a similar unedifying spectacle between Gerard Henderson from the Sydney Institute and Robert Manne, who often writes for the Schwartz stable of publications. In the part of the book that was most useful to me, she quotes Pierre Abelard from the 11th century who wrote that the path to truth lies in the systematic application of doubt, and that those who have sought the truth begin from a premise of doubt, not certainty.

However, the expression of self-doubt is not seen as a virtue in politics. She was stunned when former Treasurer Wayne Swan revealed that he (and he assumed, most other people) had times of self-doubt. She compares this with George W. Bush who relied on his gut-feelings, bolstered by his religious faith, to the extent that even the people who surrounded him became uneasy. She talks about gut-feeling, citing Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink which asserts that people who are expert in their field (and that’s probably a very important qualification) use ‘thin slicing’ to instantly identify patterns in current situations, enabling them to make decision in the blink of an eye. But she also recognizes ‘the yips’ that assail someone who is very competent when they start to overthink something that they are already expert in- like playing the piano (for her maybe! Oh, to be good enough to get the yips!)

In Part IV she talk about people like her father, who leave nothing to chance, citing his mantra “Preparation and planning prevent piss-poor performance”. While bridling against the certainty and inflexibility that this approach guarantees, she observes that her own “what if” thinking, shot through with doubt, can lead to anxiety and a lack of all-consuming passion.

She finishes off in Part V with a post-script written in 2017, eight years after the original book. In those eight years, she suggests, we have become accustomed to distortion through social media, and we accept with equanimity the shrugs of corporate bosses and the misrepresentations of politicians. While refusing to divulge her own political leanings, she decries the idea of ‘balance’ which gives equal time to both sides.

As you can see, this book is a bit of a grab-bag of observations, not all of which are closely tied to the theme of ‘doubt’. It could almost do with another post-script, given the rise of deep fakes and AI which frighten me for the way that they undercut even what we have seen (or think we have seen). However, it’s an easy enough read- not unlike a long-form article that remains at a largely surface level and with its main interest in the political realm.

My rating: 6.5/10

Sourced from: borrowed e-book from Yarra Plenty Regional Library.

Emperors of Rome Episode CV Spartacus the Gladiator. Did you know that I have never watched ‘Spartacus’? He led a rebellion in 73BCE and it took three years for the republic to finally crush it. At first the Romans just saw it as a petty rebellion, but over time they realized that they had to take it more seriously. There had been previous slave wars in Sicily on the large estates during 2BCE but Spartacus’ rebellion took place on the mainland of Italy. Spartacus was from Thrace, and he had previously served as a soldier with the Romans, but he ended up as a prisoner (because of desertion?). He was sent to the Gladiator School in Capua. His uprising had initial success, and originally grew to between 70,000 and 120,000 slaves. There were two other leaders of the rebellion, but you don’t hear much about them.

History Extra From Russia to Texas: the Search for a Jewish Homeland. We’re watching the search for a Jewish homeland (or rather, the assertion of a Jewish homeland) playing out on our screens night after night. At the turn of the 20th century, millions of European Jews were seeking an escape from antisemitic persecution, especially from Russia, where they were restricted to the Pale of Settlement. The idea of Zionism had arisen a few years previously, and there was a flood of emigration to New York, where there were no immigration quotas, and over a million Jews had congregated in the Lower East Side. Things were getting desperate and when Uganda offered a homeland, the Jewish community was split between those who wanted Palestine-or-nothing, and those who saw Uganda as a short term fix. Actually, it wasn’t even Uganda, it was Kenya, which shows how nebulous the thinking was. Australia was approached too, but it rejected the proposal. Galveston had recently been devastated by a huge storm, and when it was suggested that Jewish people could immigrate there, the idea was attractive because so many other people had left town.

The Rest is History Episode 420 Britain in the 1970s: Thatcher Enters the Ring is the final episode in this 4 part series. Five days before the October 1974 election there was a bomb blast in a Guilford pub. People felt impotent to stop the IRA bombing, even though there were arrests (which ended up being the wrong people arrested anyway). Ted Heath, the Tory opposition leader, presented himself as the leader of a unity government, supported by the very visible Margaret Thatcher, and promised to cap the interest rate on loans at 9.5% (a very un-Torylike action). Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe travelled on the hustings by hovercraft, and when it sank, it seems a metaphor for the country. It rained all the time, and people were sick of these Heath/Wilson electoral contests- this was the fourth time they went head to head. The Daily Mail did a special on Wilson’s finances, digging up the dirt on school fees and Swiss bank accounts, but they didn’t publish, preferring to leave it hanging over his head. Wilson ended up with a 3 seat majority. Then 5 weeks after the election there was another bombing, this time in Birmingham, and again they arrested the wrong people. Heath refused to give up the leadership of the Conservatives, even though he had lost four times in a row. Another Conservative, Keith Joseph decided to challenge, but after a disastrous speech in Birmingham, he stepped back from the leadership challenge and Margaret Thatcher stepped forward. And literally, the rest is history.

The Daily A Journey through Putin’s Russia This was recorded on the day that Russians went to the polls, but everyone knows what the result is going to be. Even though the West expected Putin to suffer from the deaths in the Ukraine war, and the economic sanctions that were imposed as part of the West’s response, he has a 86% approval rating and 75% of people think that Russia is heading in the right direction- his highest number ever. His generous compensation payments to the families of impoverished Russian men who volunteer for the Army mean that even bereaved families support Putin, seeing it as a war against the West.

I’m not in Melbourne any more, Toto, but I’m up in Cambodia again. You can follow my travel blog at:

https://landofincreasingsunshine.wordpress.com

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such an unsettling movie and one where the sound plays such an important role. Right from the electronic scream in the opening moments, the sound track and small details (like the smudge of smoke against the sky) provide all the horror that you know exists. Not a great deal happens in the movie: it’s more like watching a painting or the stage in a play. Frightening. Surely it will win an Academy Award for sound, if not for other categories as well.

My rating: 5/5 stars

I was disappointed by this book. It won the Miles Franklin and the National Book Award for Fiction in 2004, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize. So why, 150 pages in, could I not remember or care about any of the characters? why was I exhausted by her pretentious prose, re-reading sentence after sentence thinking “what on earth does THAT mean?” To deny the external and unpredictable made self-possession hardly worth the price (p. 10) or a place being differently aware in that murmurous season (p. 59), or That vulnerability should make a man strong. That there could be thought without helplessness; without that very helplessness in which their women were marooned, as if, by existing at all, one had become a victim. (p. 292). Oh mercy.

You might think from the title that this is about the Great Fire of London, but it’s not- instead the Great Fire is the conflagration of two World Wars.

The 1947 setting, in post World War II Asia, is an interesting one from an Australian perspective. The English protagonist Aldred Leith, who had sustained injuries during the war, has been dispatched to write reports on China, and then occupied Japan; while Australian Peter Exley, whom he had met during the war and rescued, is working as a war crimes lawyer after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. The story traces through their progress through Japan and Hong Kong. Aldred falls in love with the 17 year old daughter of the Brigadier in charge of the army base in which he is staying. She is devoted to nursing her chronically and fatally ill brother Benedict, but she reciprocates Aldred’s feelings, and yearns to join him, especially when her parents, who disapprove of the relationship, take her to New Zealand. It was at this point that I began to be interested in the book and the characters fell into place.

The book, written in 2003, has captured well the stiff formality of language of the 1940s, and is replete with small details of clothing, setting, communication etc. The theme of Empire runs throughout, especially in the ashes of World War II which has devastated England and will wrench apart the Empire on which the sun never sets. Hazzard generally sees Australia as a parochial outpost, to which people are exiled- a reflection of her own attitudes to Australia, I suspect.

But her descriptions are so laboured and unnecessarily complex, and I felt as if I was drowning in a sea of unnecessary, pretentious words. And no Miles Franklin winner should take 150 pages to engage its reader, and even after finishing the other 150 pages, I really don’t know if it was worth the effort.

My rating: 6/10

Read because: CAE bookgroup selection.

February already!

Expanding Eyes. Continuing on with A Midsummer Night’s Dream before going to see the play in the Botanic Gardens, Episode 99: Night Rule goes through the scene of Puck and the “love juice” which he manages to place on the eyes of the wrong people: on Titania, who instantly falls in love with Bottom wearing his ass’s head, and Lysander who is woken by the treacherous Helen, and instantly falls in love with her. Helen, who is infatuated with Demetrius, gives a rather pathetic speech where she begs him to treat her like his dog. He’s not worth it, Helen.

Episode 100 A Milestone, the Lovers and Fairies’ Conflicts Resolved. Michael Dolzani starts this episode by talking about imagination in Shakespeares’ work and the difficulties in trying to pin Shakespeare down to a specific theological approach. Duke Theseus’ oration about imagination here reflects Hamlet’s “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends” but it’s not as clearcut as that. There are many opposites in this play, and when Dolzani was teaching this play, he would get his students to identify them: reason/desire, order/chaos, masculine/feminine, reality/imagination. At the end of Act III, everyone is asleep and Puck and Theseus get the opportunity to undo the mischief they have caused. In Act IV, Oberon has ‘won’ and he has taken the child that Titania wanted to protect. Act V returns to Theseus, and it is here that he gives his speech about imagination.

Episode 101 A Midsummer’s Night Dream: What is the purpose of Act V? Good question, because this is where the lovers are all back with the people they are supposed to be with, and the rude mechanicals put on their play. Dolzani reminds us that this is a festive comedy, and the slapstick in their production of the play is a crowd-pleaser. However, at the end, Bottom asks whether the whole thing is a dream- a theme that Shakespeare addresses often. Is life real? Are we all just puppets, and who is the puppeteer? Dolzani reminds us that the play put on by the rude mechanicals has multiple audiences: the court, the fairies and us. Is someone watching US? (cue spooky music)

[By the time I’ve written this, I have seen the play and gained much by listening to these lectures – because that’s in effect what they are, complete with the rustle of paper as he turns the pages. He repeats himself a bit, so much so that I wondered if I was listening to an episode I’d heard before, but the repetition worked well for me in keeping the continuity when I was listening to episodes several days apart.]

History Hit I’ve finally finished the series on Napoleon. Episode 4 Napoleon: The Myth features Andrew Roberts (who appeared in the first episode) as he traces through Napoleon’s exile on St Helena, 2000 miles from any other land. He had 29 people in his entourage, and he spent his time writing The Memorial of Saint Helena where he himself crafted the ‘great man’ personae. He died after 6 years, and there are suggestions of arsenic poisoning, but tests have shown that all his family had high levels of arsenic as well, which could be ingested through many number of environmental sources. He was buried on St Helena, but in 1840 he was disinterred by Louis-Phillipe who was hoping for some reflected glory. Roberts thinks that Napoleon kept the best bits of the French Revolution, but there was such bloodshed. He thinks that Napoleon is unfairly stigmatized by the “Napoleonic Wars” because five of the seven such wars were started by the anti-Napoleon coalition. The coat, the medals, the bi-corn hat was all part of a carefully cultivated image on Napoleon’s part- and in promoting this visual image, you’d have to say that he succeeded brilliantly.

Prohibition. This episode comes from the American History Hit series. Under the Prohibition legislation passed in 1920, it was made illegal to manufacture, transport or sell alcohol, although not to actually drink it. Featuring Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK. [Public Understanding?? Whatever happened to HISTORY?] she identifies prohibition as one of the three political movements that arose out of second wave Revivalism in America, the others being abolition and the suffrage. In 1920, 90-95% of the American population identified as being Christian, and so prohibition was framed as a moral campaign, led by women concerned about the link between alcohol, poverty and domestic violence, and the Anti-Saloon League, a powerful lobby group. It was spectacularly unsuccessful. New York ended up with 100,000 speakeasys, and organized crime moved into the trade. The government ended up adding poison to ‘rubbing alcohol’ to deter people from drinking it, which was not a good look, and with the coming of the Depression, the government became aware of the taxation revenue it was foregoing. So the Prohibition legislation was repealed in 1933, the first time a constitutional amendment was amended by a later amendment.

Sydney Writers Festival. Diary of an Invasion. I’m not really sure why this turned up in my podcast feed because events have largely overtaken it. Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov has been writing about daily life in Kyiv, and here he talks with Matt Bevan who, much though I like him, doesn’t do a particularly good job of posing questions to him (in fact, he sounds surprisingly nervous). Kurkov emphasizes that there are many Russian-speakers in Ukraine, but many of them have distanced themselves from their Russian identity as Putin insists that there is no such thing as ‘Ukrainian’ history or language. The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin was still alive at that time, and Kurkov discusses his role as an alternative political persona to Putin- but we all know how that ended. Badly.

Things Fell Apart (BBC) Episode 2: We’re Coming After You Honey. In 2006 a barmaid in a yachtclub was befriended by the Wittermore family, whose daughter was very sick with Chronic Fatigue. The barmaid (Judy) had worked as a medical researcher, and the family set her up in a research facility that they funded in order to search for a cure for CFS. She found traces of XMRV, a mouse virus, in the blood samples of CFS sufferers, and her research which she presented with 13 other authors, was published in ‘Science’ magazine. However, other researchers were not able to replicate her findings and the study was retracted. Judy angrily asserted that Big Pharma was attacking her research as an outsider to the medical establishment, and when she refused to hand over her cell lines on which the research was based, the Wittermore family sacked her. She stole the cell line and her notes from the laboratory, and ended up arrested and bankrupt. Eight years later, in May 2020, she appeared in the viral (haha) video ‘Plandemic’ accusing Big Pharma and Fauci of collusion in inflecting the population in order to sell vaccines. Interesting.

The Global Story (BBC)I had heard of the Houthis before the current attacks on ships in the Red Sea, but certainly they have more prominence in recent days as the Middle East becomes even more combustible. Why are the US and UK attacking the Houthis in Yemen?, featuring the BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner explains that the Houthis come from the north of Yemen, although they only constitute 15% of Yemenis. They are a Shia sect that overthrew the President in 2014 and teamed up with the Republican guard to take power. The Saudis bombed them for years because Saudi Arabia didn’t want an Iranian ally on their doorstep. When the Houthis withstood this bombing, they developed a sense of invincibility. As devout Muslims, they see themselves part of the Axis of Resistance, comprising Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi. They are attacking at a chokepoint in the Red Sea, where 15% of global shipping passes. Australia has given logistical support to the US/UK bombings as part of a twenty-country coalition. I think we did the right thing in refusing to send a ship there.

The Daily (NYT) What the Houthis Really Want. Continuing on about the Houthis, this podcast is from 18 January, after several bouts of bombing. Vivian Nereim, the Gulf bureau chief for The New York Times points out that the Houthis have a larger Western presence than might otherwise have been the case because of their internet presence through videos, songs and TikTok. They go back to the 1990s, but came to prominence after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. After the 2010-2011 Arab Spring they toppled the US-back Yemeni strongman, and seized the capital in 2014 and installed themselves as the government. Saudi Arabia was concerned at having an Iran-aligned country on their border, so with US support, the Saudis began bombing Yemen, causing huge damage and famine- although this US support has frayed since 2018. The Houthis, at their core, are anti-US and anti-Zionist, and although their stated aim in the recent attacks on shipping is to support Palestine, it is also in their interests to distract attention from their difficulties in being the government and doing government-y things, rather than being rebels. October 7 was a gift to them, and they have nothing to lose from their pro-Israel support, and the US/UK bombings just feed into the anti-US rhetoric. They will not stop.

Being Roman. Episode 2: The Vengeance of Turia. This was a fantastic episode. The assassination of Caesar was followed by ten years of civil war. It’s easy to forget the perils of picking a side in a brutal, vicious civil war, where there is no stable government and when the sides keep shifting. Turia’s parents were both killed by thugs, the day before her wedding, and she had to fend off the legal claims of her relatives for her inheritance. Her husband chose the wrong side, and was exiled by the junta that took over after Caesar’s death. Eventually Augustus agreed to him returning, but Lepidus blocked it. She challenged him, and was bashed for her trouble. She and her husband were not able to have children, so she offered to give him a divorce and live in a menage a trois with a woman who could provide him with an heir. He rejected her offer (perhaps because he feared that he was the infertile one?) Anyway, we learn all this from a long inscription on her funeral monument, which just happened to reflect well on him too.

The Rest is History Episode 402 The Mystery of the Pregnant Pope was believed by the Catholic Church for about three hundred years, although in 1601 Pope Clement VIII declared the legend untrue. Later historians have christened the 9th century papacy “pornocracy”, and this is when the Englishwoman Joan was supposed to have lived, and ascended the ladder to become “John VIII”. Tom Holland (who wrote the book Dominion) goes on at length about the Gregorian Revolution which replaced the power of kings over the church with cardinals instead, with the church was conceptualized as the Bride of Christ. Even though most people acknowledge that the legend of Pope Joan is untrue, Saint (Abbess?) Guglielma had many echoes of the Pope Joan legend. When she died around 1280, her burial site became a shrine for the Guglielmites, who believed that she would be resurrected and lead a new church headed by women. The Inquisition charged 30 of her followers with heresy and dug up Guglielma herself, and burned her along with several of her followers. Fascinating.

Things Fell Apart (BBC) This is the second season of this podcast. Presented by Jon Ronson, it looks particularly at conspiracy theories that arose in May 2020, about six weeks into the COVID pandemic. In the first episode, Ep. 1 The Most Mysterious Deaths Ronson looks at the concept of “excited delirium” to explain the death of George Floyd which occurred on May 25, 2020 (I’d forgotten that it occurred during COVID). This spurious medical concept, developed and promulgated by a Dr Wetley, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Miami, arose in the 1980s when 32 black sex workers were found dead. Instead of going for the serial killer explanation, which seeme the most likely, Wetley said that it was the result of a mixture of cocaine and sex that led to “excited delirium” which manifested as sudden death in women, but psychosis and superhuman strength in men. The term was eventually debunked, but Wetley continued to publicize it up to 2020, sponsored by the manufacturers of Tasers who argued that deaths during Taser use were the result of “excited delirium”. It continued to be circulated amongst police officers, and indeed during George Floyd’s arrest, one of the arresting officer suggested putting him onto his side because he was suffering from “excited delirium”.

History in the Bible Although I have admitted to a secret enjoyment of ‘what-if’ history, I don’t know if my enthusiasm extends to the Bible. Speculations I looks at the years 35CE to 60CE and asks What If John the Baptist had been bigger than Jesus? His answer: John the Baptist was very popular and both were apocalyptic preachers but John the Baptist wouldn’t have spoken to Gentiles, and he would have been one among many sects in Judaism. Second question: What if Paul had split to form his own independent movement? His answer: perhaps the Jews who were left might have had more influence on Temple worship, and Jesus might have been seen as one of the great rabbis. If Paul had gone his own way, the Jewish part would have faded away, and what was left would probably have got on better with the Christians. Paul might have been able to downplay Jesus completely as the Marcions did later.

Expanding Eyes Episode 56 Book 24 The Meeting of Priam and Achilles is the final podcast about the Iliad. He concentrates mainly on Book 24, which is not a coda (even though it could have finished at Book 22) but instead one of the most important books in Western literature. Book 23, where Homer describes the games (rather boring) shows Achilles being re-integrated back into his society. The gods get involved again, and Achilles is ordered to give up Hector’s body and Priam is told to go and retrieve it. FINALLY we learn why it is called ‘The Iliad’: Priam and his manservant stop at the tomb of his ancestor Ilios, indicating that the whole thing has been about fathers and sons. When Achilles is transformed by the recognition of his grief for his own father, and extends this empathy to Priam, he shows his true greatness. In his speech about the 2 jars of life, that the Gods can dispense at will, Achilles emphasizes that fate is random. The play has a slow and dignified closure, with three speeches by women: Hector’s wife, mother, and rather surprisingly, Helen, whose actions had prompted the whole thing. Although there was a bit of a dip in the middle, I really enjoyed this series and found it really worthwhile. But do I want to launch into Milton’s Paradise Lost? Nah, I don’t think so.

Emperors of Rome Podcast. This is their hundredth episode and to celebrate it was taped in front of a live audience here in Melbourne on 8th August 2-18 (It’s taken me a while to find these podcasts!). Episode C The Death of Caesar points out that it wasn’t just Brutus, Cassius and Decimus acting alone- instead there were about 60 co-conspirators. They chose this particular time because Caesar was just about to go off to the Parthian War. The involvement of Brutus may have been particularly poignant for JC “et tu, Brutus?” because Brutus was rumoured to be Caesar’s illegitimate son.

BBC Radio Being Roman with Mary Beard. I just love Mary Beard. I wondered at first whether I was hearing the soundtrack to a television program, but no, it seems that these have been produced for BBC Radio. Episode 1 Loving an Emperor looks at the letters between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius between 161-181 CE, when Marcus was still a young man. To our reading they are blatantly homoerotic, but who knows how they read at the time.

Let’s Talk Religion Yes, at the time I listened to this I was still preparing for my Christmas service at Melbourne Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. I heard this as a podcast, but it’s also a YouTube video The Pagan Jesus? Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is often used to argue against Jesus, although they are both historical figures. Most of the information about Apollonius comes from a 3rd century biography written by Philostratus, and there are letters of doubtful authenticity. Difficult to say anything historical about him- it’s easier to talk about the mythical Apollonius, as depicted in Philostratus’ work. He was a wonder-working sage, a Neo-Pythagorean, following an itinerant lifestyle with a focus on numbers. It is said that his mother was visited by the god Proteus when she conceived, and his birth was surrounded by swans (like Apollo’s birth), accompanied by a thunderclap. He went to India and studied with the Brahmins, then returned to the West where he was known as a Sage. He travelled throughout Anatolia and Egypt, performing miracles and raising people from the dead. He rejected animal sacrifice, and may have seen God as a unitary, transcendant being. He was tried before the courts, but disappeared before he was sentenced. Philostratus’ biography of him was written in the 3rd century, possibly as a response to the gospels to show that Jesus wasn’t so special.

Pythagorus and his Weird Religious Cult looks at the ancient mathematician, and the emergence of a neo-Pythagorean lifestyle at the turn of BCE/CE when men would adopt vegetarianism and wear simple, ragged, smelly clothes. Pythagorus himself had an interest in numbers, music and the cosmology of the spheres.

The Rest is History Continuing on with Cortez: Episode 4: The Fall of the Aztecs: Prisoners of Montezuma. Aztec society was a Bronze Age society, similar in technology to the Sumerians, but their city was huge, with over one million inhabitants, well maintained and new (compared with European cities at the time). Who is exploiting who here? Why didn’t the Aztecs just kill them all. Matthew Restall, who wrote When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History suggests that Montezuma was planning to sacrifice them for display, but then the 18 other Spanish ships arrived to apprehend Cortez for disobeying his orders. Cortez decided to split his troops, with 80 to go off with Montezuma to confront Spain, and the rest of the troops to stay there.

Very Short Introductions This podcast has short interviews with the authors of books in the ‘Very Short Introduction to…’ series. I had just finished reading Marina Warner’s rather dense book From the Beast to the Blonde so I though I’d listen to this episode Fairy Tale- The Very Short Introductions Podcast Episode 20. She explains what a fairy tale is better here than she did in her lengthy book i.e. that anything can happen; it faces difficult themes like cannibalism, incest and jealousy, and it has a happy ending.

History Hit History Hit is responding to the interest in Napoleon prompted by Ridley Scott’s recent film with a short series on Napoleon. Episode 1: Napoleon The Early Years . The episode features biographer Andrew Roberts. He points out that Napolean was not of humble birth- he was from an aristocratic family which could prove its nobility for at least 250 years. His family was impoverished, but it was not nothing. Corsica had been purchased from Genoa in 1768 (the year of Napoleon’s birth) so its French identity was not well-established, and Napoleon himself was conflicted over his Frenchness as a young man. He received a free education from the French military academy, and was a great reader and good mathematician. He was 20 years old when the French Revolution began. He made a name for himself in the battle of Toulon, which is shown in the movie.

Theology in the Raw. Who would have thunk that I’d be listening to THIS? Hosted by Preston Sprinkle (is that even a real name?), it’s unapologetically Christian in its emphasis. The Scandal of Christmas is a four-part series leading up to Christmas and he starts Ep#927 The Scandal of Christmas Part I with Dr. Craig Keener talking about Luke 1-2, the politics and sociological scandal of Christ’s birth, his earthly vocation , the location of Christ’s birth, Matthew 1-2 (and the differences between Luke and Matthew), the problem of genealogies, and much, much more. The guest is rather discursive and sounds rather nervous. He starts by talking about other angelic visitations to announce births e.g. to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Caesar Augustus seems to be setting the agenda, but it was really God (hmmm). Most Galileans were immigrants to Judaea, some first generation others six generations on. It is said that Jesus was born in a cave where animals were kept, attached to a house. When Emperor Hadrian went through Judaea in 135CE deliberately placing pagan sites on Christian ones, he placed one on this cave, so it’s probably the authentic site according to legend. It could have been as much as two years before the Magi turned up, so Joseph, Mary and Jesus may have been in Bethlehem for some time. Nazareth only had a few hundred people, and it was more conservative, especially Upper Galilee. Aramaic was spoken but lower Galilee (where Jesus came from) was more multicultural. It is believed that Jesus spoke Aramaic, but he may have been able to speak Greek as well. Joseph was a ‘hand worker’ – probably he didn’t specialize, but did all sorts of construction. 70-90% of Galilee was agricultural, so as an artisan, Joseph may have had slightly higher status, but could not be said to be ‘high status’. If we only had Matthew’s gospel, we wouldn’t have realized that Jesus came from Nazareth. After Jesus’ birth they went to Jerusalem (about six miles) then returned to Bethlehem before going home to Nazareth. Herod acted like Pharoah did, killing babies to shore up his own power, and the wise men were pagans. There is no historical evidence of the Slaughter of the Innocents, but it’s consistent with his personality. Both Matthew and Luke go through Jesus’ genealogies, but Luke goes back to Adam, while Matthew lists Jesus’ ancestors and there is little overlap between the two genealogies after David.