The Boiled Leather Audio Hour

This is our 200th episode. Of course we wanted to do something special. George R. R. Martin asked us if he could guest host, but we were too busy, so we settled on doing the Red Wedding. We hope that’s ok.

We’re back again! With Jim McGeehin, I talk about the founding of not one but two German states. We’ll have a look at why we’re creating two states instead of one and how these two shape out. You might want to reference the following two diagrams, but it’s not essential. We keep it light on the legalese.

After 11 months, we’re back talking the history of the divided Germany! After looking at western Germany last time round, this time, we’re taking the deep dive into East Germany 1946 to 1948 and ask ourselves how to succesfully build socialism in Germany.

The season finale is here! Sean and I have a slightly different view about it, but as is our wont, we agree on a lot, and the show stays superb even though Sean left a bit disappointed.

There’s a lot of dragons this episode, and we’re comparing the show to Better Call Saul, The Americans and Halt and Catch Fire, because that makes a lot of sense - as you’ll learn listening!

Three days, and there’s good news (even earlier if you’re a Patreon!): HotD is STILL one of the best things on TV right now. This episode, characters, actors and dialogue writing are front and center, and the scenes are so damn good we cannot shut up about if for an hour.

“House of the Dragon” continues to be excellent in this laid-back but still incredibly rich and textured episode. We discuss shot compositions, nightmares, thin places and politics, all in one podcast!

The dragons danced and died, but Stefan skipped town. Yet Sean is not flying solo! Friend of the show Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed horror novelist behind Manhunt and Cuckoo, joins the Illustrious Co-host for a conversation about the most spectacular, violent, important episode of House of the Dragon yet. Join the ol’ Cut to Black team as they discuss this fantasy landmark!

This may just be the best episode of a great show yet. Sean and I discuss why in exhaustive and euphoric detail. Also, more detail than you wanted about full-frontal blowjobs, but the show started it.

Now we’re in episode 2. Who won? Ser Arryk or Ser Erryk? We’re not confused. Because we care about themes.

You didn’t think we’d miss this, right? Weekly episodes, from now on, on the regular channel! Listen to us how we discuss the most important thing in season 2: the new title sequence. And some other stuff, like child murder.

We finally did it and continue the “Best of ASOIAF” series. It’s a crowd pleaser, Daenerys’ “Dracarys” moment, which also marked a turning point for Emilia Clarke in the series. But we are digging deeper: why is it such a crowd pleaser, and what does it mean? What does it portend for Dany? Follow us into the deep dive and fry some slavers.

In a special, political episode, I talk with political operative Frank Spring about the upcoming presidential elections. If you don’t want politics from me, stay away from this episode :) You have been warned. 

Sean has written a list of the top ten TV shows of 2023 ( https://decider.com/2023/12/29/sean-t-collinss-top-10-tv-shows-of-2023/ ), and we’re here to talk about it. Take it as your to-do-list, nod along or vehemently disagree!

Oppenheimer has been released on BlueRay. Having missed it in cinema and after covering Barbie with Sean, I’ll now took BLAH veteran and nuclear deterrence expert Tim Westmyer to debate why Oppenheimer is such a good movie, to clear up some of the technical questions and to have a deeper look at the genesis of nuclear weapons as portrayed by Christopher Nolan.

Ridley Scott’s new epic “Napoleon” sure is divisive and polarizing. It takes two historians to get the definitive judgement on the movie, and it’s greatly helped that we are in agreement: this movie is either way too short or way too long. Either one.

With Zero Hour dealt with, we’re looking at how the Western Allies laid the foundations for the democratization of Western Germany. From the foundation of parties to the Marshall Plan, the Allies were not exactly on the same page.

In a crossover with Javi Marcos, you’re getting an episode in which he interviews me.

Jim and I started a new subseries in our ongoing coverage of German history. This time, we will cover the divided Germany after World War II up until reunification. In our first installment, we set the scene in 1945, directly after the war. How did Germany look, and how was its outlook? And what is the myth of Zero Hour?

With board game designer Bryan Kromrey, I talk about the adaptation of the famous RTS “Company of Heroes”, how the modern Kickstarter economy works and how his process for a second edition went.

Origin stories are a Hollywood trope. Oftentimes, they’re rote and uninteresting, but if done right, they can recontextualize and enrich characters you never thought would rise above mid-level anti-hero-badassery. Case in point: the Hound, who gives the speech of a lifetime to Sansa in “A Game of Thrones”.

Finally, we’re in the home stretch. From the peace of Brest-Litovsk to the Kaiserschlacht offensive to the breakdown of the Central Powers and the winding down of the war in the fall, we’re doing the whole picture.

In the next installment of our ongoing series, we talk about Bran’s Dream from AGOT, Bran III. It’s a testament to Martin’s abilities as a gardener as well as to our ability to constantly reinterpret the source text.

We continue into the year 1917! This time, our focus is not on tactics, strategy, weapons and stuff but on the epochal events of the Russian Revolution and the American entry into the war.

We’re continuing the story of World War I with the year 1916. The battles of Verdun and the Somme are the most famous, and we’re giving them the space they deserve, but the Romanian campaign, the Brusilov offensive and the Battle of Jutland also get their share. To top it off, we delve into the politics of the year, which may surprise you in how consequential they were.