Gladio Free Europe

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- On September 4, 476 the barbarian general Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in the West and proclaimed himself king of Italy. After 500 years of existence, the Western Roman Empire was gone. But if you were living there at the time, would you have even noticed anything had changed? Liam and Russian Sam return to one of their favorite historical subjects...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Liam and Russian Sam tunnel beneath the hills of Mexico to uncover the remarkable history behind the 1948 film "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and its creators. Based on a 1927 novel about three American gold-hunters torn apart by greed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the only modern novels whose author is effectively unknown. Attributed...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Liam, Russian Sam, and Turan Explorer continue their journey across the vast steppe of Hungarian Turanism in this episode on Ármin Vámbéry, the all-time Orientalist white boy whose remarkable wanderings were fundamental to the development of the Hungarian obsession with the East, and the rise of a political movement that would convince millions of Central Eur...

⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This week, we have a very special guest coming to us from the steppe via transfer in Central Europe. This episode is all about the constitutive elements of Hungarian Turanism, the ideology that traces Hungarian origins back into Asia and often comes with a political program for what to do with that knowledge. In this multi-part series, we set the stage fo...

⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. Vladimir Lenin surprisingly did not say these words about 2014, a year that saw monumental pivots in culture, technology, and world events and arguably never ended at all. Liam and Russian Sam are joined this week by their good friend Jackson or Grace Cathedral Park , a longt...

⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- The Dune series has gone through a revival of late thanks to the film adaptations of Denis Villeneuve, but what are we to make of it? In this episode we explore Dune through the lens of its author, Frank Herbert. His beliefs defy easy political classification according to today's preconceived notions, making him difficult to situate. Herbert was a libe...

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Since the 17th century, nearly 10 million Irish people left their homes for an uncertain life abroad. While stories of Irish settlement in the United States and Canada are well-known, the lives of tens of thousands of Irish people who settled in Latin America are much more obscure. In the first Gladio Free Europe solo episode, Liam runs through the long hist...

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In 1675, the Puritan colonies in North America were fighting for their lives. A brilliant young commander named Metacomet assembled a Native American coalition that upended a half-century of colonialism, pushed the English back to the coast, and would come very close to obliterating settler life in New England. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In November 1622, the great diplomat Squanto died while leading a trade expedition with his English allies. Only a year had passed since he formed a treaty between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the indigenous Wampanoag people. While the early years of English-Indian relations were marked by cooperation and accommodation, including the famous Thanksgiving feast,...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In 1615, just days before the New Year, famed astronomer Johannes Kepler received the news that would change his life. His mother Katharina had been accused as a witch. Over the next 6 years, the Keplers would battle these charges with every means at their disposal, just as the world around them began to collapse into the carnage of the Thirty Years' War. Gl...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Each Christmas season, the mountain peoples of Europe are beset by monsters. Fearsome figures like Krampus, Perchta, and the Kuker descend into quaint hilltop villages, sometimes to spread holiday cheer, sometimes to hasten the coming of spring, and sometimes just to sew chaos and discord. These figures are all part of similar winter celebrations found across t...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This week, friend of the pod John Bellamy Poster commandeered a gunship and made his way onto Gladio Free Europe to discuss 19th century Japanese history in the backdrop of the unique historical manga Golden Kamuy . Exploring the pivotal moments that reshaped Japan, John takes us through the monumental arrival of Commodore Perry's black ships, an event that b...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- We return to the dark foothills of the Carpathians in our continuing history of Transylvania. This episode focuses on Europe's most infamous countess, Elizabeth Bathory, accused of torturing and killing up to 600 hundred young girls gathered from across Central Europe. While it's now agreed that Elizabeth Bathory was not a vampire, and didn't even bath...

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Americans are known for many things. Geographic insight of Eastern Europe is not one of them. Yet every American over age six can tell you which Romanian region is the home of Count Dracula. Thanks to the incredible popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Transylvania has a unique place in the American and British popular consciousness, totally beyond that of...

⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In 1869, the Meiji Emperor declared the northern island of Hokkaido to be sovereign territory of Japan. In a process direclty inspired by American colonization, Japanese settlers were brought in to "civilize" the territory, a process which would have terrible consequences for the indigenous inhabitants -- a non-Japanese people known as the Ainu. Japanese...

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In 1936, acclaimed German exile director Fritz Lang made his American debut: Fury . The ripped-from-the-headlines story of a deadly false accusation was acclaimed by critics as the best drama of the year, but audiences and studio executives shunned the film for its dark content and uncomfortable social commentary: particularly how Lang shed light on the crimes of his...

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Put on your rubber boots, we're continuing our exploration of Southeast Asia as we excavate the deep jungle ruins of the Classical Age. From the Khmer Empire to Champa to Srivijaya and beyond, the early medieval period of Southeast Asian history is marked by the emergence of incredible states and empires whose histories, though tantalizingly obscure, hint at grea...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- For thousands of years, voyagers from all across the known world have docked their ships in the harbors of Southeast Asia. The diverse countries that make up this region have played an essential role in human history, witnessing the first waves of migration out of Africa, the development of the earliest oceanic trade networks, the synthesis of political and religious i...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- It's October 1910 and Los Angeles is on fire. The California labor war had reached its highest level of violence with the bombing of the LA Times Building, and now the world wanted to know who was responsible. Some thought radical anarchists planted the bombs while others thought the LA robber barons had lit the fuse themselves to defame the worker's movement....

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- On September 30, 1910, the L.A. Times declared that anarchism has been defeated in California. The city of Los Angeles would be rid of trade unionists. Less than 12 hours later, these same anarchists and trade unionists would strike back in the grandest act of terror thus committed in the United States. This deadly bombing launched a nationwide manhunt and one of the m...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- By now much of our audience may have heard of PMC Wagner, the mercenary group that marched on Moscow earlier this week in what appeared to be an abortive coup against the Russian government. Wagner infamous for its many alleged atrocities, and has been proven to be the most effective force in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But this notorious private army is all the...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- On Easter 1918, Georgian painter Nikolo Pirosmani passed away in a hospital bed before he could be examined by a physician. This enigmatic naive artist whose works graced the walls of half the taverns of Tbilisi was only mildly famous in the avant-garde world when he drew his last breath. But after this corporal death, Pirosmani would live on, reaching a mythic stature...

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ --- At the close of 18th century, the Mississippi River ran dark with blood and whiskey. This great artery of North America was a lawless frontier contested by Spain, France, Britain, the United States, as well as indigenous governments like the Choctaw and Chickasaw that had no intention of vacating land that had been theirs for generations. But there was one more ingredi...

⁠⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- What do pocket watches, Korean prisoners, and samurai armor have in common? All of them help explain the close relationship between Portuguese merchants and Japanese warlords in the late 1500s. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, we see how Portuguese Catholics entered the inner circles of Japan's most powerful men before a sudden change of heart turned...

⁠⁠⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- In 1549, a Portuguese priest and a Japanese pirate disembarked on the port of Kagoshima with one purpose: to bring Christianity to the islands of Japan. They would be remarkably successful. Within 50 years, hundreds of thousands of Japanese people had been baptized, from lowly fishermen and merchants to powerful noblemen at the center of the shogun's circle....