Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The last campaign personally led by Oliver Cromwell. The Saints against the Elect.  It’s a crazy war, purges, persuasion and propaganda.  Can the English really conquer Scotland? Maybe if Oliver Cromwell is involved.  With Camie we discuss Oliver’s death and final religious crisis, where much like Christ himself and Mother Theresa he is...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The English Civil War seems to be over, the king is dead.  We chopped the bloody man’s head off.  But Charles II shows up in Scotland under the thumb of the Covenanters.  It really is a self-perpetuating autocracy.  The Irish Civil War has been going on since 1641 and it is time to put an end to it.  When you have a big job to do, two bi...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is the 2nd in the 4part Oliver Cromwell arc (though he has appeared as an important figure since episode 45) This episode we look at the brutal fact that insane courage is what it took to win in the Age of Shot and Pike.  And the sons of nobles and gentry would have it, or completely lose their self conception.  This was a huge adva...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Oliver Cromwell lived life on a different plane from most other people.  He established a reputation that enabled him to put in place a crazy and impractical plan to win the Civil War.  He was trusted by both the godly and the political radicals, a group with much more overlap than you might think.  Episode 53 focuses on his early life a...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is the long promised Jonathon Scott episode.  Featuring some real curve balls thrown at me by Joltin’ Joe. This is a deep dive into social and political history with exploration of the strong Anglo-Dutch connection. And Dutch jokes, who knew there were so many? The conceptual revolution of the 1649-1702 period see the beginnings of...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Will you marry me? That's what Cromwell asked the Dutch.  A proposal!  Just out of the blue.   What did the Dutch think?  Then they sent Blake to ask again, more forcefully, less romantically, this time. We look at the decision of the English to emulate (totally copy) the Dutch.  And the Dutch are monopolizing large parts of world t...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Diggers were early communists and Ranters feel like hippies.  Do it in the road.  It’s all good because it’s all god. Quakers and Baptists.  These were the big winners.  The Quakers seemed to attract supermen to their cause, and they are simply given the hugest colonial land grant in America.  Their influence is still with us today.   Ra...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. What part of history did Rowling mine for ideas?  This part. Muggles, Grindletonians, Ranters, Diggers, Quakers, oh my.  This episode explores ideas common to the lower class radical heretical sects.  We cover the Muggletonians in considerable depth with Raoul Sunset and with Camie.  Lollards and the Family of Love also.  The rest will b...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Honest administration of government?  Getting there, we get rid of 90% of the corruption. Cheap, abundant food.  The Malthusian limits are broken.  How?  The introduction of capitalism to agriculture, better techniques and investment followed and there was improved transportation. The Diggers try to go the other direction, but Parliament...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. A Second English Civil War and a 3rd Scots invasion?  Are the royalists nuts?  Aren't they tired of war? The New Model Army still exists, it wiped the floor with the Royalists last time and this time it is no different.  The defeat of the Scots and Royalists is so complete it brings Napoleon’s destruction of the Prussians after Jena...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This one is heavy on narrative history and lighter on analysis and theory.  We cover the Scots intervention in the Civil War in 1643 .  Then we wrap up the end of the war with Charles’ surrender to the Scots.  The negotiations are covered with perspectives from several historians provided.  The attempted disbandment of the New Model Army...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Arctic Acoustic is back as we explore the reluctant beginnings of the Civil War and take it up to the creation of the New Model Army.  This episode has more Norwegian than is typical of English history podcasts.  That’s OK, a minimally murdery Civil War demands unusual coverage. We cover the period leading up to the Civil War, the key in...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Coverage of the constitutional issues that plagued the Stuarts in what looks like an attempt at Bourbon style despotic rule.    Seems  like the crown could have succeeded with the combo of Ship Money and the Army being organized in Ireland.  But the Scottish intervention blows the whole enterprise.   We discuss the tensions that result f...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Which war god came down to Earth in 1625 to lead the Stuart military adventures?  Was it Jehovah, Odin, Tyr or Thor?  Nope, it was a blind war god many have never heard of, Hod. The 30 Years War is the masterwork of the blind war god. We discuss Sweden’s role as Odin’s favorite child.  After dealing with this aspect of Stuart rule, we to...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We look at economic and social progress and some of its obstacles, mainly self-inflicted obstacles.  A Joseph Ardennes episode.  We discuss new industries and coal.  Newcastle is the new Peru.  The limited rights of the poor within a context where even small farmers had a lot of rights under common law, but the necessity of paying for la...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. James as diplomat.  A Nightrider episode. The narrative takes us to James' death.  But first James attempts to hear cases like Daenerys Stormborn, knights cuts of beef, gives knighthoods to those who don’t want them and fines those who refuse them, raises money through forced “donations,”  commits a classic diplomatic blunder  and a...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. James Stuart VI of Scotland becomes James I of England after the death of Elizabeth.  We discuss the causes of the English Civil War and some of the ways the Stuart kings may have contributed to that upheaval.  A Valkyrie episode.  This is mainly a narrative history of James I reign in England though we do spend some time with his grand...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The double episode concludes with  Galileo, Descartes and Newton.

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We take a look at the birth of science in the first of a two part double episode.  Both starring Charlie's Angel.   We look at the beginning of the concept of discovery as a deliberate activity kicked off by the voyages of discovery. Then we look at issues of the birth of science through the Copernican Revolution to Newton and the P...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This one is really strong, Attila The Bun's demon metaphor is a good one. We conclude with Fallacy 5        When the underlying economic conditions are changing your ideas about regulation are incoherent.  Too many moving pieces to get right,  Many examples are given, starch making, chapmen, malt vinegar, woad growing to indicate th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Largely revised January 2021 , boy sometimes you get carried away with the ideas and don't realize the presentation and organization are crap.  This is much better. The Apples of Caernarvon Fallacy is the first of 4 covered this episode.  2 more fallacies to be covered next episode.  An Attila the Bun episode with Charlie's Ang...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. How did new Industries develop to allow Tudor England to catch up to the continent and later surpass it?  The Leisure Larry episode.  The Marshmallow Test provides framing for a discussion of cultural evolution in England.  England becomes a society able to pass the Marshmallow Test as sexual selection operates differently at this time. ...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The conclusion of the Pirate Arc.  4th of the Elizabethan era.  Thermopylae or Agincourt? We begin with the story of the Revenge captained by Grenville.  A legendary charge at 55:1 odds that ended with 10 Spanish ships sunk, after God’s intervention the next day and defeat for their elite marines again and again.  Who would ever want to...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 2nd of the 3 episode Pirate arc.  The Bygdøy episode.  Revised for sound.  We cover 3 pirate voyages.  Drakes 1585 expedition to the New World, Drakes 1587 raid on Cadiz and its effects on the Armada and George Clifford’s raid on the Azores in 1589.   Clifford's Vikings had every experience, capturing a port by flying a false fl...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. It takes a few minutes to get to pirates, but the descriptions of Drakes voyages are good. A Quokka episode.  The first of 3 pirate episodes.  The greatest of Elizabeth’s Sea Dogs was Francis Drake, we cover two of his voyages this episode.  But what was Francis Drake really?  Will you figure it out before Camie does?  We also cover witc...