A Short Walk through Our Long History

In the last couple of episodes, we talked about the birth and rise of rock n roll, and how it shaped the modern world.  The birth of Rock n Roll coincided with a kind of golden age for the United States.  The US emerged from WWII with a booming economy, the most powerful military in the world, and a manufacturing sector that had been kicked into high gear by the war.  So the 1950’s and the early 1...

As I said last episode, a lot of the energy of rock n roll came from youthful rebellion against the culture, values, and politics of the older generation.  This was a big deal in the 1950’s, with Elvis and his dancing, and suggestive songs and bands, but the youthful rebellion thing went to a whole other level in the 1960’s.  While pop rockers like the Beatles created sort of sappy love songs, the...

Episode 132 - The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll Yes, that intro was the song Subdivisions, by Rush.  My normal intro music is an acoustic clip of that same song.  One of my all time favorite rock 'n roll songs.     How in the world can I do one podcast episode on the history of rock 'n roll?  There’s just no way.  So I’ve decided to do split it into two reasonably short episodes, and try to work in some...

Ok, yes, I know, I’ve already talked about the Cold War, just a few episodes ago, but I feel like I need to spend another episode talking about all the important things that happen in the late 1950’s and 1960’s as a part of the cold war, that I didn’t get to talk about in the previous episode.  A lot of things are about to happen, and they are all important to our modern world, and they are all re...

We talked last episode about the Communist Revolution in China, and apparently there was a two for one special on revolutions, because this episode also has a revolution, but this one is VERY different than what happened in China.   Part of the reason that the revolutions were so different was that what is about to happen in India is not a communist revolution.  Communist revolutions are usually d...

We were talking last episode about how the western allies tried to contain the spread of communism in Europe, but I mentioned that Communism was spreading in Asia as well.  This is about to be a problem in China, which, on the face of it, seems an unlikely hotbed for communism.   Back in 1912, before both world wars, the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing dynasty, collapsed.  The Qing had ruled China...

As you might remember from episode 124, which was about the Allied victory in Europe, Germany was basically cut in half by the invading Soviets in the East, and the Allies in the West.  The Soviets had captured Berlin, and they had also occupied the eastern part of Germany.  But they also had occupied all of eastern Europe, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, B...

Ok, WWII is over, and so I’m done talking about famous battles and cool fighter planes for a while.  But I do feel that I need to go back and talk about a really important and horrific story of WWII, and how that affects our modern world.  And that is the story of the Holocaust.  It’s not a pleasant thing to talk about, but it’s really important, and has a big impact on the world after WWII, and o...

Well, here we are, finally.  The Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan have been defeated.   Hitler has committed suicide, at least that’s the official story, Mussolini was captured and hanged, and the Japanese emperor had to go on a nationwide broadcast and admit that he was not a deity.   The Allies were firmly in control of all the Axis lands, and the countries that they had conquered.  If y...

Well, here we are.  Humans are about to devise the technology that could realistically end the world.  For the first time, humans have the ability to basically eradicate all of life on earth, and it’s only restrained by, well humans.  Yikes.   The war in Europe ended in May of 1945, but the war in the Pacific was still going on.  We talked about the turning point in the Pacific, the Battle of Midw...

Well, VE Day is the sort of nickname that the world press gave to the day when victory in Europe was achieved.  So VE stands for victory in Europe, which obviously is where we are going with this episode, but we’ve got a ways to go yet.  And the eventually victory over Japan is going to be called VJ Day, but that one doesn’t get all that much traction, for some reasons that we’ll go into next epis...

Well, here we are.  This episode is about one of the most massive, high-risk and pivotal events of the last 100 years.  Seriously, if you had to pick one day that was the most important or consequential days of the last 100 years, I think you might have to pick June 6th, 1944.  It wasn’t quite the same ‘turning of the tide’ event that Midway and Stalingrad were, but in some ways, June 6th 1944 was...

As the Soviets were fighting the Germans all along a 1000 mile long front, they were demanding that the Allies in the west do something to open a second front against the Germans.  We’ll get to the Allies eventual response to this in a couple of episodes, but the western allies had the same problem invading Europe that the Germans had had when they were thinking about invading Britain.  That probl...

Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history.  Yes, yes, I know I said that exact thing at the beginning of the last episode too, but I need to say it again, because this episode is, once again, a pivotal moment in human history.  And instead of it being decided by a few crucial minutes, this battle will take about half of the year of 1942.  An...

Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history.  The Battle of Salamis, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Charles the Hammer winning the Battle of Tours, The Battle of Hastings in 1066, Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the time I defeated my neighborhood HOA by installing a whole...

Ok, it’s the beginning of 1942, and for the Allies, things are looking, well, kinda bleak.  France, one of the great powers of the world as recently as 1939, is now occupied by the Nazis, who are in total control of the north and west of France, and who have installed a puppet government in the south and east of France.  Great Britain is alone in Europe, and it very dependent on imported goods, bu...

Last episode, we left the German soldiers freezing off ihr Gesäß in the the early, harsh Russian winter of 1941.  But there was more going on in the winter of 1941 than just frozen Germans.  I mentioned back in episode 113, which was about the rise of Hitler and fascism, that the Germans had made a pact with Italy and with Japan.  Both the Germans and the Empire of Japan regarded the Soviet Union...

Last episode, I said Hitler might have done better in the long run if he hadn’t had Germany attack Great Britain. Well, after that mistake, he decides to double down, and make an even bigger mistake.  He is about to fall victim to one of the classic blunders - never get involved in a land war in Asia!  Well, technically, he doesn’t get all the way to Asia, but he was trying to.   Anyway, it’s goin...

I’m going to make a quick confession to you here:  The Battle of Britain is one of my three favorite parts of all of human history.  The other two would be the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus, and then the American Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the Constitution, all of that right as the US was being founded. And then this, the Battle of Britain.   Why is this one one...

You might have noticed that I kind of used the same title twice in a row, which might seem like kind of lazy writing, but I really couldn’t think of a better title to describe what is about to happen.  Since Germany had such easy success in the blitzkrieg of Poland, Hitler decide that they could do it to France too.   And basically, that’s exactly what they do.  In fact, they were maybe even more...

Ok, here we are, poised right on the edge of World War II.  I’m going to try to not bog down as much as I did on the US Civil War, but I still have 9 episodes planned to cover World War II.  Is that bogging down?  I can’t imagine doing it in less episodes than that.  Too much interesting and important stuff is about to happen.  Also, what happens during the war, including who wins which battles, w...

Well here we are, about to introduce one of history’s most notorious villains.  I’m talking about Adolf Hitler.  He really is remembered as one of the worst, most dangerous people of all time.  If you took a survey and asked most people ‘Who is the worst person who ever lived?’  I bet Hitler would be the runaway winner.  Also, if you asked people, ‘Who had the worst mustache of all time?’ Yeah, Hi...

This episode, we’re going to talk about the great depression.   Last episode, we talked about the stock market crash of 1929, and mentioned that it was one of the causes of the Great Depression.   The Great Depression left a very strong mark on the people who lived through it.  We’re getting to the point in history where a lot of us know people who have lived through the events that we’re talking...

The 1920’s was a very prosperous time for America, and for much of the world. As I mentioned last episode, during the 20’s the American economy became the largest in the world.   Yet postwar prosperity was precarious. Much of the American boom was a speculative affair. Fueled by optimism, and fueled by borrowing.  Customers were urged to buy on credit or to borrow from the banks, and thus the bank...

Well, the war to end all wars was over.  After a period after several months, the surviving soldiers began to return home.  The Treaty of Versailles was signed, and Europe began to try to rebuild and re-organize.  The political and social landscape of Europe was very different after the war.  The Austro-Hungarian empire was gone, as was the Ottoman Empire.  Lots of lands and peoples had seen their...