Podcasts you like

[mongers]

Interesting BBC podcast about the rise of Q Anon and early days of the anti-clinton conspiracies and the part played in the storming of the captial;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001324r/episodes/downloads

QAnon and the plot to break reality.

A year on from the Capitol Insurrection in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Gabriel Gatehouse journeys into the dark undergrowth of modern America. He's looking for the origins of the story that drove the crowds to storm the heart of US democracy. From conspiracy-soaked barrooms in 1990s Arkansas, via spies in hotel rooms in the shadow of the Kremlin, to anarchic chatrooms on the early internet, this is a search for the answer to one big question: did this just happen, or is somebody trying to break reality?

[Darth Wagtaros]

If you like the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia the cast's podcast is interesting and funny.

[Sheilbh]

Oh no

Talking Politics
@TPpodcast_
After six years and more than 300 episodes, we've decided to wind down Talking Politics. It's been fascinating to cover such a tumultuous time in politics, and to have had such wonderful engagement from our listeners. 1/4
There's never a good time to end - we are all very aware that British politics is in the middle of another convulsion - but David, @HelenHet20 and our producer @CatherineECarr are increasingly busy with other projects, and we wanted to finish this podcast on a high note. 2/4
We still have episodes to come on the French presidential elections, on Boris Johnson, and, most importantly, on @HelenHet20's new book, Disorder. Our last episode will be on 3 March, and our website and archive of past episodes will remain accessible for the long term. 3/4
We want to thank our friends at the @LRB for their support and say thank you to our listeners: we do hope you have enjoyed and valued listening to our podcast as much as we've enjoyed and valued creating it. 4/4

I mean they are all busy people with real jobs so it makes sense but this is probably my favourite current podcast. It's incredibly informative and insightful - I loved the History of Ideas series they did and I will be getting David Runciman's book on Hobbes and Helen Thompson's new book.

Also given the last six months or so I think about the number of times over the last few years of listening to this podcast on various subjects Helen Thompson's flagged the energy politics and its implications - which it fees like we're now living out.

[crazy canuck]

I was devastated when I heard them announce it.   

[mongers]

Something for Shelf and other Francophiles here, a new radio series about France and Algeria, starts off with failed wine makers moving to Algeria:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014pt2

The Shadow of Algiers

The Great Seduction
Episode 1 of 5

Sixty years after the Algerian War of Independence - and as France prepares to elect a new President - Edward Stourton presents stories from a colonial past which still cast their shadow over the present. It's a very different colonial story from our own - even more brutal, more complex and more secret.

In the first of five programmes, Edward tells the surprising story of how an ugly bug - a tiny insect called phylloxera - created the climate for the Algerian War. The insect all but wiped out the French wine industry and caused huge numbers of French people to move to Algeria.

The French were initially seduced by the sun, sea and light of Algeria, exoticism captured in Albert Camus' famous novel, 'The Outsider'.

But the love affair quickly turned sour....

[Duque de Bragança]

There is more than phylloxera to explain settlers in Algeria though, not to mention the much later war.

Most wine in Algeria was bad by the way, back then.

[crazy canuck]

The finale of Talking Politics was thoroughly depressing.  Not only is the world losing their political commentary and analysis at exactly the wrong time, but Runciman frankly said - you know how over the last six years I have been arguing against the claim that this is the 1930s all over again, well I was wrong.  And then Thompson corrects him, it is except nobody had nukes in the 30s.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I wish they'd come back

The biggest impact on my thinking from that podcast is that almost any story I read I think "but what's the energy politics angle here" - and there almost always is one

[crazy canuck]

Yep, I am about half way through her book.  She certainly brings a fresh insightful perspective.

Instead of "It's the economy stupid"  we should all have been saying "It's all about energy stupid!"

[Sheilbh]

I need to get it. It sounds very interesting. I want to get Runciman's Confronting Leviathan too - which is based on his first summer of lectures because I really enjoyed them, especially the one on Hobbes.

It's slightly crazy but I have that and then the Bunga boys' The End of the End of History. I'm getting both - which are books by genuine academics in different bits of politics - because of listening to their podcasts which is never how I imagined the whole podcast thing would end up.

But I find those ones that take a step back and try to do some proper analysis so much more interesting than anything by journalists about just what's happening or anything too "newsy". Honestly I've trusted the journalist ones less and less as times goes on just because of the number of controversies that always seem to happen - I think the demands of narrative are higher in podcasts than other forms of journalism and that can get in the way of ethics and facts. But I enjoy more and more the thoughtful/analytical ones from experts or thinkers.

[Sheilbh]

Big and pretty positive write up of a podcast I love - Know Your Enemy:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/04/marx-buckley-know-your-enemy-podcast-conservative-history-socialists-left-right-00005345

It's really interesting especially if you have any geekish interests in the weird, complicated history of the American right. I wish there was anyone as interesting and informed willing to take the British right as seriously in a podcast - sadly I can't think of anyone who could make this point so it's all just, at best, shallow:

"Our premise is not some, like, liberal fantasy of bipartisanship, but I do think that just rejecting the conflation of a deep understanding with cooperation as the goal is a feature of the podcast," Adler-Bell said. "Once you give up on the idea that taking your political opponents seriously means that you sympathize with what they want to do, it opens up your intellectual horizons quite a lot."

[mongers]

Interesting BBC podcast about the rise of Q Anon and early days of the anti-clinton conspiracies and the part played in the storming of the captial;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001324r/episodes/downloads

QAnon and the plot to break reality.

A year on from the Capitol Insurrection in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Gabriel Gatehouse journeys into the dark undergrowth of modern America. He's looking for the origins of the story that drove the crowds to storm the heart of US democracy. From conspiracy-soaked barrooms in 1990s Arkansas, via spies in hotel rooms in the shadow of the Kremlin, to anarchic chatrooms on the early internet, this is a search for the answer to one big question: did this just happen, or is somebody trying to break reality?

This proved to be an excellent series, I now have a firm grasp about it's origins, evolution and how it was wepaonised by some key republican operatives.

[Sophie Scholl]

If there are any X-Men fans here, CEREBROCast (https://www.connorgoldsmith.com/cerebro) is absolutely amazing. The host, Connor Goldsmith, brings on a different guest each week and they break down a character's full story. I've enjoyed the heck out of it and caught up on the missing time between Claremont, a brief return for Morrison, and Krakoa via these episodes. The guests are all super passionate about the characters and there are a ton at this point to pick and choose any that appeal to you as they aren't super order dependent or necessary to listen to them all.

[Sheilbh]

I've been enjoying Unclear and Present Danger. It's Jamelle Bouie of the NYT and John Ganz who's a left-wing journalist talking through the thrillers of the 90s - or as Bouie called them "boomer dad films". Like me, they have a deep affection for a lot of these films. But they're also looking at trying to view the politics of them in the context of the 90s and America's quest for another adversary, plus how that relates to today largely from a left-wing perspective (particularly with Ganz).

They've got a master list but have so far talked about:
The Hunt for Red October
Patriot Games
Clear and Present Danger
No Way Out
The Package
The Fourth War
By Dawn's Early Light
Hidden Agenda
The Russia House
Going Under

As I say they've got a master list - and I can't wait until they get to Arlington Road. But if, like me, this is a "genre" you like then I recommend it.

There is a very particular political thriller genre that I think died in the 90s with the erotic thriller and the serial killer thriller (plus the Grisham adaptations). They weren't all great but as a chunk of work I quite like those genres and slightly miss them - I wonder if it's just the decline of mid-budget Hollywood?

Edit: Though I far prefer Bouie's contributions to Ganz

[mongers]

New bbc Radio 4 series / podcast telling the stories of historians down the ages:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00159rj

The Dawning of History
Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped The Past by Richard CohenEpisode 1 of 10

Richard Cohen examines the storytellers of the past, how they worked and how their writings still influence our ideas about history.

Who were the historians who changed the way history is written? How did their biases affect their accounts? Is there such a thing as objective history?

The series explores lives and works from the Greek historian Herodotus, through the great Roman historians Tacitus and Livy, with their great epic stories of war and plagues, all of them inventing stories to be more reader friendly, and then moving through Arab and Islamic writings, to the medieval historians like Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth – the latter famous for his economy with the truth, in other words, making it all up.

The great Italian Niccolo Machiavelli became a historian by accident, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon changed the way history was written, breaking away from a God centred universe. Then there's the Red historians from Marx (always in debt and crippled by boils on his skin) to Eric Hobsbawm, the emergence of female historians, and false accounts of history.

Episode 1
The lives and works of the earliest historians, the Greek Herodotus in 450 BC , indulging his curiosity about the habits of his neighbours (for example, descriptions of the sexual habits of the Egyptians) and his successor Thucydides, who shaped his material to enthral his readers. The great Romans Tacitus and Livy, with their epics of plagues and wars, embellishing the truth whenever it took their fancy. Livy was the tabloid journalist of his day.

Incidentally it's starting on FM Radio 4 now, 12.30gmt