California’s Century Of Change | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "Many people’s view was that the next hundred years are not gonna be anywhere near as easy as the last 100 years. Because it's, California cannot continue exploiting its landscape in the same way that it has over the last hundred years in the view of, you know, many of the people that I spoke to. One of the things that California has been built on is migration. Migration from elsewhere in the United States, but also migration from elsewhere in the world. And the fact is now more people are leaving California than are settling there. And so for a country that is, for state that is built on migration, I think that poses an existential question."
A New View Of Africa’s Past | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘History ultimately emerged, you know, in as a academic subject in the 18th century as a kind of, as a well known, as an early form of national, nation building. Nationalism, it was a kind of nation, national myth was being created to replace the religious myths which people didn't any longer believe in so much in the era of the Enlightenment, and that national process in this country, for example, and in most of Europe and went with the rise of colonialism, and so went with a certain perception of other parts of the world, which didn't fit with an idea of actually quite thriving dynamic areas of the world with their own independent histories of global interactions and so on. So that element of the past is something which doesn't cohere with the way in which history is a subject has evolved over the last two hundred years. So clearly, that's a tough nut to crack. And a very interesting thing about the African past as well, the way in which the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States has fundamentally changed the way in which that was addressed. So the rise of African History as a discipline coincided with the Civil Rights era in the States in the 60s, with the rise of black studies, as an academic subject, and, and, and the appropriation of certain aspects of the past by important figures in the African American community. And that's changed the way in which Africa and the African past is addressed, and the nature of African Studies and African history as a discipline. So that has changed the way in which I think from, starting in America and then percolating through to the rest of the Western Academy, certainly the English speaking Academy, the way in which Africa is viewed has been viewed. But history itself as a subjects is still, has been a little quite impervious to that, although, although there are, of course, very good historians of Africa in many, in many countries in the West, but they're often they're often still slightly sidelined from the main, the mainstream of the field’...
‘Islam is, you know, clearly one of the major regions or if not the major religion in West Africa, and it was, and its power grew through this period of time, which is quite significant. It was important in the 15th century, but it was largely a religion, a religion for political and trading elites, and it wasn't a popular religion at that time. There, you know, there, there were, there weren't large numbers of Muslims in West Africa, but it certainly grew a lot over this period of time. One of the reasons for that was that it offered, and in a sense it offered, if people converted to Islam, it offered a sort of protection from sla-, from slavery, because Muslims couldn't enslave other Muslims. It also, and it also offerED an opportunity for revenge. And this was something very important by the late 18th and early 19th centuries, where in northern Nigeria, for example, a lot of people converted to Islam and then having been slaves were able to attack the land of the people who had been the slaveowners within, in that, in that part of Africa. So Islam offers an opportunity. It offers a form of protection, and it also offered I think, another important part of the point is they offered a connect, a global connection which didn't come through the Atlantic trade. It offered this connection to North Africa, to Mecca, to Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. And given the disruption, as I've said, which was coming through the Atlantic trade, I think that was also important’"
Where religion retreats, secular religion advances
Phillipe Sands On The Ratline, A Nazi Mystery | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘In 1936, he has fled to Berlin because he has been involved in the killing of the Austrian Chancellor... She eventually turns up in Berlin to discover that he is having an affair with a young German lady called Traute. A few months later, she falls pregnant. They have a child, a daughter, and she says to him, you know what? I'm going to call her Traute in honour of you and your affair’"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Has Zimbabwe lost its way? - "Zimbabwe has lost its way. Our broken nation has moved beyond rage and despair and the occasional fleeting moment of hope. Remember those cheers when Robert Mugabe was finally pushed out, and has now reached the far shore, a place of cynicism and its ugly twin apathy. It wasn't supposed to be like this, of course. Post coup, post Mugabe, Zimbabwe was, we were assured, on the mend. Open for business was the government's smiling new mantra. But today as I write this, eight and a half million people, half the entire population are struggling to feed themselves. Corruption is as bad as ever. We've lost all sense of shame now... there's no grand plan here, just chaos and total impunity"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Al-Shabab's Defectors - "Cleanliness and capitalism. Two reasons that you don't often see ashtrays in Eastern European hotels anymore. The few that do remain in guestrooms and lobbies no longer have microphones hidden in them. 30 years ago, if you were a guest at Hotel Viru, an imposing Soviet built skyscraper puts up during the height of the Cold War in the center of Talinn, then there's a good chance that the receptacle for your cigarette ash really did have a sinister dual function. But it wasn't just wired up ashtrays that were listening in on the conversations taking place among Estonian and foreign hotel guests in the days of the USSR. My guide Marta holds a cheap looking white plate up to me and the dozen or so other mostly elderly Estonians who've crammed into the tiny room. So many secrets, she exclaims in a melancholic tone. Plates like this one, bouquets of flowers, the sauna, the TVs, and obviously the phones. All were bugged. In Soviet times, having sophisticated surveillance systems in the solitary hotel in most Eastern Bloc cities where the tiny trickle of visiting foreigners were permitted to stay was absolutely the norm. Nowhere however, did the authorities leave as many of their secrets behind as at Hotel Viru. Now it's a mid range, somewhat dated hotel. But when it was built, the Viru was the fanciest place in Estonia. Guests could visit the inhouse nightclub and use the well stocked bar, both rare luxuries in the Soviet Union. The one place they couldn't go was the 23rd floor. And why would you want to? The lift didn't stop at this floor and still doesn't, attests Marta. Employees and guests were told it was just full of technical rooms for the ventilation systems. And just in case anyone did get too curious, in a presumably unintentional homage to Rene Magritte, a sign was posted on one door. In both Russian and Estonian it read, there is nothing here. Almost incredibly, it seems that for decades, this was enough to stop hotel staff and visitors, who included Neil Armstrong and the Shah of Iran, from asking any awkward questions. If any of them had pushed the door open, however, they would have found a fully functioning KGB spy station. When the collapse of the Soviet Union came in 1991, the KGB operatives didn't have time to drag all their bulky equipment back to Moscow. They simply fled, trashing the three rooms they occupied, which I am now standing in. It's now open to the public for guided tours. We're looking at the ruined remains of 1980s spying equipments, in a room that still has that uniquely Cold War era aroma of cigarettes, cabbage, old washing and damp."
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, New protests in Hong Kong - "In 1847, he got a position at the obstetrics department at Vienna's venerable General Hospital. He was responsible for two maternity wards. The first was staffed by doctors and medical students, and the other was staffed by midwives. Dr. Semmelweis noticed a strange and deeply troubling phenomenon. More mothers were dying in the first ward where the doctors worked than in the second. Women admitted to hospital would beg not to be put into the notorious first clinic. Child bed fever, what we would call sepsis killed up to 18% of women who’d had their babies delivered by doctors and just 2% of the women delivered by midwives... his breakthrough came when one of his fellow physicians died after cutting himself with a scalpel used in a post mortem on a woman who'd had child bed fever. Midwives, Dr Semmelweis realised, didn't do post mortems. The doctors and their students did. If they went straight from handling dead bodies to delivering a baby were they perhaps carrying some decaying matter from the corpses and infecting the mothers? Dr. Semmelweis began insisting that his team of doctors and students wash their hands in a solution of chloride of lime before they dealt with women in labour, especially if they’d just touched the corpse. The effects were dramatic. Within months, the mortality rates in the first clinic dropped to around 2%. And when Dr. Semmelweis started washing medical instruments, the death rate dropped further. Simple hygiene had helped to conquer child bed fever. But while younger doctors recognised the importance of Dr. Semmelweis’s discovery, senior staff did not. Partly because the science of bacteria was not yet fully developed or understood. At the time, many physicians believed disease was spread by bad smells… his book was criticized for being unfocused and badly written. He then had a breakdown. In 1865, he was admitted to a Vienna asylum, where, in a cruel irony, he died of sepsis after a wound on his hand became infected"
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, New Orleans - From Katrina to Corona - "In another echo of the post Katrina moment, there has been a certain amount of victim blaming. Some observers from outside are saying the city became a virus hotspot because of the authorities’ failure to cancel Mardi Gras. In fact, Fat Tuesday occurred three weeks before President Trump declared a national emergency. The city cherishes its otherness, its cultural difference from the rest of the country. And the city pays for it"
Amazing how 'victim blaming' has now crossed over into describing a defiance of Mother Nature. Apparently it's not just BLM riots that are exempt from covid lockdowns
Liberal logic: Trump was irresponsible for not declaring a national emergency even though it was obvious he should have. But at the same time if others (including other politicians) ignored the threat (or even told people to go to Chinatown, or assured them taking the subway was riskless), they have no culpability
BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Sri Lanka After the Bombings - "While the government has introduced unprecedented measures, including closing down the capital Tbilisi and three other cities, the doors of every church in the country remain open. For several weeks now, the Orthodox Church has defiantly refused to comply with a state of emergency introduced at the end of March. First, the authorities banned public gatherings of more than 10 people. The following day, thousands attended Sunday services. TV channels broadcast Holy Communion. TV channels broadcast Holy Communion from Tbilisi's main cathedral, worshippers lining up to receive the body and the blood of Christ. Bread soaked in wine taken with a shared spoon… Instead of supporting the government's drive to get people to stay home and recognizing the severity of the disease, the church has peddled its own theories about Coronavirus. The same Sunday service that would broadcast included a sermon from one of the church’s most senior clerics. Bishop Schiele Moojiri [sp?] suggested that the virus was punishment from God for worldly sins, such as abortion and sodomy. The Church has vehemently defended the practice of Holy Communion using a shared spoon. One priest said that the wine is in fact an antiseptic and that it purifies the spoon. If it was chacha, the local vodka, he might have had a point. But since most wine is less than 15% proof, he's on scientifically shaky ground"