Peter Snow & Anne MacMillan On Documents That Changed The World | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "Hammurabi’s code. And the code is really interesting because there are lots of laws that have to do with property and business and family. But the code also lists lots of punishments. And one of them is, for example, if a son hit his father, the son’s hand would be cut off. And then there's also: incest between a mother and son leads to both being burnt to death. However, a father who commits incest is simply banished from the country. Also, another great thing about this is that it's the first sign that lawd, that people have, people were innocent until proved guilty...
When you talk about missing documents, I think something like 20% of the hundreds and thousands of bits of paper that Leonardo jotted his thoughts and drawings on have been found. And they're all in museums except for one. And guess where that is? Bill Gates owns it. And he uses some of the pictures that Leonardo drew in his particular, the papers have been assembled into Bill Gates's book. He uses them as screensavers on his Microsoft products"
Exclusive podcast: Janina Ramirez on extraordinary medieval women - HistoryExtra - "Thomas Carlyle wrote this seminal text in 1840 on heroes, hero worship and the heroic in history. Lovely title, really inclusive isn't it? And in that he makes the suggestion of why great men deserve to be seen as heroes, and to be hero worshipped. This is just one extract, please read it. It's brilliant, have a glass of wine, read it and have a giggle because this is how far things seem to have moved in the last hundred odd years:
‘Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these...
People like Napoleon exemplify the great man theory. Here's another quote:
‘Genius is not the result of compounding talent. How many battalions are the equivalent of a Napoleon? How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? How many run of the mine scientists will do the work of an Einstein?’
*blows raspberry*
It's very, very exclusive, and exclusionary, this way of looking at the past. It's still the case that if you go into a bookshop, you will see a lot of biographies of great war leaders, great kings, great queens, the upper echelons of society. But I think we're after something a bit more now."
How does this fetish for downplaying great men jive with condemning bad leadership, e.g. saying that a battle was lost because of the incompetence of the generals, that the soldiers were lions led by donkeys? Ironically, though in both cases the desire is to valorise the ordinary folk and downplay or condemn the powerful, the results point in opposing directions
Exclusive podcast: Peter Caddick-Adams on whether D-Day could have failed - HistoryExtra - "Our young officer with his beard and his wavy stripes. Now, he has inflicted torture and punishment on probably nearly everybody in this room. Because he then after the war, wrote up his memoirs with a very grim view of humanity. And when he became a novelist, he wrote up his grim view of humanity in the form of Lord of the Flies, and that's some Lieutenant Bill Golding, who was in command of a rocket ship going across the channel, and was off Gold Beach on the morning of D day. JD Salinger is another another novelist who takes part in the D day landings. He's so confident when he lands on Utah Beach in the assault wave that he takes with him the manuscript typed up on pages of paper in his backpack, he takes up the manuscripts of what will become Catcher in the Rye. Now, any aspiring novelist who wants to stride through the surf with his precious manuscript on his back, is, is facing well, in it, possible loss of everything. But it just shows you how much the Allied propaganda or the Allied instilling of final victory, how complete that was...
A young major was busy distributing contraceptives on the landing craft... Sir. I mean, we thought we were fighting the Germans, not doing something else to them. And of course the contraceptives were to put over the muzzle of all the weapons so that they didn't get damaged by seawater. But Hollis in a bit of a huff went to the front of the landing craft, got behind a machine gun and let off two whole magazines at a German bunker he'd spied on the beach that they were heading for. And when they stormed the beach everyone else in the landing craft was most amused to see that he'd actually suppressed the local bus shelter and it wasn't a bunker at all. But for the 50th anniversary, the Green Howards which was his regiment clubbed together to buy the bus shelter, which was a wonderful gesture. But the mayor of Versionnaire didn't quite understand what was required. So he had the bus shelter restored, all the bullet holes patched up, the whole thing repainted, which wasn't quite what the Green Howards had in mind. And they've spent the last 20 years taking it back to its war torn state of 1944"
Everything You Wanted To Know About The Spanish Civil War | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Why couldn't all the leftist factions get their act together?’
‘It is a sort of genetic problem of the left, that the wider view is very rarely seen. I mean, the same question is, why did the German left allow Hitler to come to power? Because the communists were too busy attacking the socialists to unite’...
‘How often would you say it's appropriate to describe either Franco or the nationalist rebel troops as fascist?’
‘I think that gets us into the whole area of you know, what does fascist mean? I mean, it's like if you're, if people are looking for a quick and easy insult to those on the right, then fascist is your go to term. If you're asking an academic, you know, political theorist, what what constitutes a fascist then you'd have to say Franco isn't. I caused quite a stir in Spain a few years ago when asked this question, and I said Franco wasn't a fascist. Pause. He was something much worse. Now what I, what I meant by that was that you know, I would start from the basis that the only absolutely indisputable fascist leader is Mussolini. The only absolutely indisputable fascist Party is the Partito Nazionale Fascista. The only indisputably fascist regime is Mussolini’s regime. Now, there are so many ways in which Franco is different. So, basically, when I went on, he was something much worse, I went on, he was an Africanista, that's to say, he was, he had the mental furniture, if you like, of the Spanish colonial officer. So basically, he was deeply conservative, had absolutely no qualms about, you know, one of the very first interviews that he does at the beginning of the war, is… I'll soon control all of Spain, this journalist, an American called J. Allen says, but that means you'd have to hoot half of Spain. And he says, if that's what's necessary, that's what will be done. So, now, you know, I don't think Mussolini ever planned on shooting half of Italy. So in that sense. I mean, technically, no. I would say they're not fascists. But, you know, at the time, you know, why did the International Brigaders come to Spain? I mean, everybody who opposed Franco reasonably described themselves as an anti fascist, because, of course, Franco, I mean, so it's a technicality. No, he's not a fascist. But he's so much part of what will be the axis. Well he never actually joined, that's a whole other complicated issue. But he's so close to Hitler and Mussolini and their ambitions, that, the opposition to Franco is, is, especially from those from outside Spain is we have to stop fascism in Spain, because if we don't, next, it will be Paris being bombed. And it will be London being bombed. In that sense, yes, it, it's not so much that Franco was a fascist, but the opposition to him was very much anti fascist.’"
Yet, we are told that Trump is indisputably a fascist
Foreign intervention in a country to stop "fascism" is good if you're an "anti-fascist" - but bad if you're the United States trying to stop the Soviet Union
Africa’s Cultural Liberation With Afua Hirsch | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Ethiopia was never formally colonized. It stands out, really as the only country on the African continent that never had an experience of either settlers or European colonialism… I think it is also important not to reduce the story of African countries, either to their having been colonized or their resistance against Empire. And I think in Europe, we tend to locate ourselves at the center, of these stories of Africa. Even when we're acknowledging African resistance, it's still about Britain or France or and how, how, how that affected the way that Africans think about themselves. And I think that's an important story. But it's also not the only story. You know, African culture existed before Europeans came to Africa, and it continues to thrive. Now reclaiming much of the space that Europeans took away. So I think, I think it is really crucial to engage with that history. But it's also crucial not to almost repeat it, and be colonial in the way we think about how those stories are told now.’"
Since Ethiopia was never colonised, what can its failures be blamed on?
Revisiting The Kindertransport | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘They had this lovely thing, you know, where I was very, you know, I kept saying in the book, I mean, they're not being very respectful and my father who's been through the whole thing says oh I don’t mind, they're alive, they're enjoying themselves. I don't really care. You know, he just didn't, he thought, he thought it was really lovely that young people were smoking and flirting on, on, on, specially at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which, you know, you wouldn't think. I was much more, much more shocked but he really didn't mind’"
Edward The Confessor | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘He's there in Normandy, presumably he's, is he becoming more continental in his, in his demeanor and his, in his approach to things? Is that is that even a concept at the time?’
‘It's difficult to know really, because we've got an international aristocracy who are all related by blood. And we shouldn't think of the channel as a boundary between England and France, we should think it more like a motorway. It was it was quicker to hop over to Normandy by boat than it was to get on a horse and ride up to York, for example. And these people are all related. They often speak multiple languages. A lot of them will speak Latin, also have basic language in common. But it's certainly true that Edward’s, his spoken English will gradually be overlain by, increasingly overlain by French through these years and he would probably have picked up a strong French accent and he would have adopted certain customs and mannerisms, which were, which were more more clearly identifiable as French or Norman than English. So you could talk about him as being Normanised or Francophile, if you like.’...
‘William is obviously adamant in 1066 that he has promised him the throne. But the problem we've always faced as historians is there's no contemporary evidence of this problem before 1066. And you would think that Norman sources would be shouting this from the rooftops. We have contemporary Norman sources which take an interest in the political relations between the English royal family and the Norman Dukes in the 1050s. And none of them mentioned the promise to William. So I remain very skeptical that any such promise would have been made. And I also, going back to the bloodline, think that it was almost inconceivable for, for Edward to promise away the throne to someone who was not of the blood. The blood, the bloodline is fundamental to his own claim to this throne. It's fundamental to him coming back after 24 years to reclaim it. And so it doesn't sit very well with his own, his own theory of kingship, if you like, that he should go offer it to people who aren't of that, of that noble status.’...
‘He gets called the Confessor, down the track, what does that actually mean? What does it mean to be called the Confessor. What's the significance of that?’
‘It's a rank that's accorded one of three different types of saints recognized by the, the Catholic Church. You've got martyrs who die for the faith, confessors, who don't die for the faith, but who demonstrate their faith by their holy life, and virgins, of course, who abstain from sexual relations... Contemporaries knew him as Edward the Good'"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Fighting Temeraire - "'He began, I think, to realize that he could make that subject to kind of elegy for the Nelson era and for the age of sail and for sort of heroic age of Fighting Ships. And he could also introduce the idea of, on the one hand, the ending of an era. And then, perhaps, the movement into a new one, because after all, the Temeraire was towed up river by steam tugs. So you have the Age of Sail on the one hand and the new Age of Steam on the other. So you have this kind of transition from the old to the new, and you could celebrate a great past, a great history and, and create a kind of image of mortality in a way because the ship in the picture has an almost human quality'...
‘He's fascinated by Imperial decline. That's why he's painting, these paintings of ancient and modern Rome. And I think he's, he's doing something very similar in this painting. He's saying that Britain does dominate the seas, but it's, this is not guaranteed to last forever.’"
Which Jobs Will Come Back, and When? (Ep. 420) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "DOLEAC: “Ban the Box” is a policy that aims to help people with criminal records get their foot in the door with employers and get a job, and it works by prohibiting employers from asking job applicants if they have a criminal record until relatively late in the hiring process... If you remove information about who has a criminal record, which presumably employers are worried about, then they might try to guess who has a criminal record.
Because guessing is faster and cheaper than running a criminal-background check on every applicant.
DOLEAC: And then they might simply discriminate against the entire group that contains people who are more likely to have criminal records.
So Doleac’s concern was that banning the box would not only not help former prisoners, but that it might hurt other applicants who happened to share demographic traits associated with former prisoners...
DOLEAC: So we found that, on average, across the U.S., in places that ban the box, employment fell by 5 percent for young black men who didn’t have a college degree and by 3 percent for young Hispanic men who didn’t have a college degree. And so the next question is, who are they hiring instead? And we found, on average, the people who benefited were older men of color. So if you’re trying to avoid people who are actively involved in crime, older people are a pretty good bet. Criminal activity tends to decline with age.
DUBNER: And what about young under-educated white potential employees?
DOLEAC: For young white men who had the same level of education, we saw employment increase for that group. What seemed to be happening was that employers were substituting from young men of color to young white men...
“Ban the Box” has been repealed everywhere — no. Unfortunately, we got a lot of pushback. By the time we had enough years of data to actually test the hypotheses and put out studies that we’re really confident in, there was a really established “Ban the Box” lobby. And so at this point, there are organizations that are very wedded to not helping people with criminal records get employment, but passing “Ban the Box” laws... most people who are on the ground working on the policy aren’t thinking necessarily about what’s next? How do people then respond to this new set of incentives? And that’s what economists are trained to think about."
How to Prevent Another Great Depression (Ep. 421) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "Wozniak, in fact, has written a paper about the influx of men into nursing over the past few decades — it’s been a tenfold rise since 1960.
WOZNIAK: In boom times, we saw men going into R.N. work in greater numbers. People make big changes when times are good, when there’s a safety net to fall into in that you could go back to your old job and everything will be fine. You do not tend to make these big shifts when the sky is falling."
Introducing "No Stupid Questions" (Ep. 422) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "DUCKWORTH: One of the findings from marriage research is that so many married couples with children fear the empty-nest syndrome. But actually, on average, people tend to be happier once they’ve sort of gotten over the initial crying of your last kid being dropped off to college. I think there are other explanations, though...
“Okay, look, there’s this U-shaped happiness curve, but nobody really knows for sure what’s going on.” I want to suggest that when you’re in the beginning of life — and this is what I think might account for the downward slope in happiness until you reach your late 40s — you are striving, you are trying to attain goals maybe that you’re not reaching.And if you think about what happiness is, it’s the achieving of the goals that you’ve set. And there are two ways to do that, right? One is to achieve those goals, and the other one is to have lower goals. So maybe the higher expectations that we have for what we hope for in life earlier, that accounts for why we’re downward sloping until a certain point, and then we reckon with what’s possible. And then, we’re happier...
I can choose to either think of all the things that happened that were good or I can choose to think about things that were bad. And if I make no choice at all, the default is to actually think of negative things. And that is why one of the most reliable interventions to increase happiness is called the “three blessings exercise.”"
