No One Is Competent is the new premier comedy history podcast that is aiming to convince you that everyone who runs the world - the CEOs, the politicians, the generals, the kings - is incompetent, and none of them have ever been any good at their jobs. Every other week we will bring you a hilarious and stunning episode exposing the weakness of everyone who has been called powerful. It’ll be great - we promise.
Episode 59: War of the 6th Coalition part 2
War of the 6th Coalition Part 1
Episode 56: The Peninsular War part 2
Episode 51: War of the Fifth Coalition
Episode 48: The Peninsular War part 1
Episode 47: Invasion of the River Plate
Episode 45: War of the Fourth Coalition
Third time's the charm right? Surely Britain n' the gang will take down bad boi France this time? Some corrections: - We mentioned when talking about Trafalgar that at this point in time Gibraltar was not yet a British possession. That is incorrect, Britain captured it during the War of Spanish Succession. - We also mentioned that the Allied effort to capture Hanover fizzled out. That's not quite accurate - the Coalition did occupy Hanover, but made little progress elsewhere in the north and was forced to withdraw after Austerlitz. - The member of the Consulate who later helped draft the Napoleonic Code was Cambacérès, not Sieyes.
Emperor Paul was not the worst leader in Russian history. He did not get the most people killed or leave his realm in the worst shape, but he was perhaps the most annoying man to ever lead the country, and they killed him for it.
Today we got one of the OG Billionaire L's lined up for you. It involves slave revolts, fire insurance schemes and a Parthian drum core. What more could you ask for?
Usually it takes a whole presentation to prove that a ruler did a poor job. One must look at battles lost or economic decline or large trends of their reign before making a judgement, but sometimes, just sometimes, the fact that a ruler was laughably bad is blindingly obvious, like if they only last 49 days. This is the story of Liz Truss. Azalea made a movie. Go watch it: https://youtu.be/jbSveTQziTo
In this episode we're taking a look at the struggle of Saint Domingue's revolutionaries that resulted in the eventual collapse of French rule and the conclusion of the most succesful slave revolt in history.
Within the system of France once lied the colony of Saint Domingue, on which existed one of the most demented societies known to man. Today we explain the brittleness of Saint Domingue and how its failure led to the greatest slave revolt in human history, which founded the nation of Haiti.
The third and final part of our look at the US presidents.
We continue our crusade through presidential mediocrity.
Holiday special folks. We're doin all the U.S. presidents, every single one. Sit back, relax and take a drink every time we say "this could be an entire episode", Azalea interrupts Jae or we make a pointless reference you don't understand.
EVE Online is a space-based MMORPG that since 2003 has been host to a dynamic, ever-evolving user-driven world replete with stories of warfare, conquest, and betrayal. In many ways the history of EVE's universe mirrors that of our own, and in any case this is a history worth retelling. On this somewhat unusual episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be diving into the strange and entertaining world of this remarkable video game.
Of all the conflicts throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, perhaps none is more... odd than that of the Second Coalition. From heavily armed academic expeditions to dramatic marches through the Alps, this conflict - and the invasion of Egypt that led into it - had just about everything. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the entirety of the War of the Second Coalition from 1798 to 1801.
The word "baseball" is one that conjures up an array of different images and thoughts. For many the sport that is acclaimed as the "America's national pastime" is associated with tradition and legacy. Plenty of modern fans however think of the game as a game defined by statistics and models. One thing that is common in both views the baseball, however, is cheating. From corking to doping, cheating has a long and fabled history in the game of baseball, one that we'll be delving into on this episode of "No One is Competent."
The relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution has long been a point of discussion amongst those interested in the history of the Revolution. For the early Marxists Napoleon's rise to power served as a cautionary tale as to how a popular military leader could subvert the revolution, yet in Napoleon's own mind he was the revolution. What is certain is that Napoleon was a product of the French Revolution, helped save the French Revolution, and ultimately aided in bringing an end to the French Revolution. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we're taking a look at the early life of Corsican general and his role in the defense and ultimate downfall of the French Directory.
Governors are an often overlooked part of the American political landscape. One can make a fair argument that the lives of most Americans are more directly influenced by the actions of their governor than those of their president, yet many would struggle to describe their state governor beyond simply naming what party they belong to. On this episode we're taking a look at tenure of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who's currently up for reelection this November. As a warning, this is our most directly political episode to date - as in, we're delving into party and electoral politics here, and we have our own opinions. This won't be the norm for us going forward, but we believe this episode was worth making for reasons that we cover throughout its duration.
The War of the First Coalition was fought over a course of 5 years and involved almost all of Europe's great powers. The events of this conflict shaped the course of the French Revolution and set the stage for the future Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts. Yet few today know much of this war, allowing for misconceptions to make their way into the popular understanding of it. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the entirety of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1797.
Few events in western history are as well-studied yet commonly misunderstood as the French Revolution. In this episode we hope to clear things up and lay the groundwork for future episodes by covering both the political developments within France from 1789 to 1794 and the military campaigns of the War of the First Coalition from 1792 to 1794.
The French Revolution is arguably the most studied event in western historiography alongside the World Wars. Perhaps no other upheaval has had so much of an influence on the way we think about politics and society. Yet the Revolution was not a predestined affair, instead it was the result of both the structural problems of the Ancien Regime and the decisions of the Bourbon monarchs who failed to address the issues facing France. Today we are looking at life of the most infamous Bourbon of them all, King Louis XVI.
The story of military history is full of brilliant technological innovations. From the recurve bow to the main battle tank, humans have continued to come up with increasingly efficient ways of killing one another. Yet for every great invention there are dozens of duds - technological dead ends, creations ahead of their time, and all-round bad ideas. Today we're looking at one of those more ignominious creations, a submarine that killed more of its own crew than the enemy: the Confederate States of America's H. L. Hunley.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 remains one of the most famous events in naval history, yet the fate of England's equally disastrous attempt at seeking revenge on Spain the year afterwards has largely faded from popular memory. In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering we are covering the English Armada, one of the greatest defeats in the history of England's navy.
While history is full of famous battles and campaigns, only a few naval actions have managed to remain widely known long after they took place. The Spanish Armada of 1588 ranks near the top of that select group of events. In England it's cast as a critical moment in the development of the Royal Navy, the institution that more than any other would be responsible for asserting the might of the British Empire across the globe in the subsequent centuries. Elsewhere the defeat of Spain's "Invincible Armada" is remembered as a prime example of military failure. In reality, the events of 1588 were arguably less decisive and certainly far more complicated than what is commonly remembered. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be covering the history of the Spanish Armada and its fateful voyage.
Prohibition is perhaps one of the strangest and most misunderstood episodes in American history. The entire nation turned their back on their most beloved vice - or at least, that's what was supposed to happen. Instead, the 18th Amendment, brought about by intentions both good and bad, led to 13 years of organized crime and lawbreaking on vast scale and an increase in police authority that remains with us to this day. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we're talking about the rise and fall of the failed experiment that was prohibition.
Rome at the dawn of the first century AD was an empire on the rise. As the civil wars of the late Republican period faded into the past, the new government of Augustus Caesar looked set to assert its will on an ever-growing amount of territory and peoples. Yet in 9 AD the Roman Army suffered a defeat so total that it permanently altered the fate of Roman expansion on an entire frontier. On this episode of No One is Competent we're discussing one of the most important battles in European history, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
According to many of Silicon Valley's brightest minds the "cloud" is the future of just about everything. So why not let consumers use it to play console video games, freeing them of the need to actually buy those bulky devices themselves? That certainly was a part of the thought process behind Google's Stadia service... but as it turns out, it seems as if the market quite wasn't on the same page as Google itself. On this slightly more light-hearted episode of No One is Competent, we're taking a look at Google Stadia and the history of cloud gaming.
People around the world are used to expecting a certain level of corruption from their leaders. Greed and self-interest are a part of the universal human experience. What most people aren't used to, however, is the idea that the leader of their country may be subservient to a shadowy religious figure that has been manipulating their life for over three decades. Join us for this episode of "No One is Competent" as we go over the Park Geun-hye scandal, one of the most intriguing and bizarre events in South Korean politics.
America's presidential elections are notoriously byzantine in their complexity, with thousands of counties all counting votes to report to states that then select electors that themselves vote for the president in a process dating back to the late 18th century. In spite of all of this complexity, for the most part elections end up, well, working. Every now and then, though, the system throws up a result that is close or questionable enough that the power to decide the next President of the United States ends up being thrown into the hands of the other two branches of government. In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be discussing the 2000 American presidential election, one of the most infamous elections in recent memory.
We tend to think of big wars as turning points in the history of nations. Battles and campaigns are picked apart at length, and how and why one side wins or loses is subject of much discussion. What comes after these wars, however, is often overlooked. The Civil War is a famous turning point in American history, as its outcome determined whether the nation would exist as a whole or remain split in two, yet the period that followed the surrender of the South was just as important in determining how our society looks and operates. "Reconstruction" was meant not only to bring the Confederacy back into the Union but to remake its society in a more fair, more equal manner. The failures Reconstruction would instead ensure the continued existence of system based entirely on white supremacy, the effects of which continue to be felt to this day.
Of all the ills to spring up in the aftermath of the first world war, perhaps none were as ruinous as the ideology known as fascism. As political extremism spread throughout Europe like a plague, fascist parties, often with the cooperation of traditional conservative and business interests, threatened numerous governments and in some cases successfully gained power for themselves. Yet across the Atlantic America remained relatively safe from fascism, her democratic ideals safeguarded by centuries of constitutional democracy. Or so the story goes - but how true is that story? In this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll look at one of the strangest events in American political history, the "Business Plot" of 1933, and examine both the historical context of this supposed scheme and the evidence for and against its significance.
For over half a century Boeing dominated the commercial aviation industry. Boeing's jet airplanes have carried billions of people in almost every country, and in the process the company built a reputation for safety and solid engineering. It was thus a shock to the world when not one but two of Boeing's latest airliner crashed in a matter of months in late 2018 and early 2019. A look at the decisions that lead to these tragedies reveals how a shifting corporate culture that put profit above engineering and a regulatory body that ceded authority to those that it was meant to be regulating combined to result in the deaths of 346 people. Join us on this episode of "No One is Competent" as we discuss the Boeing 737 MAX.
The year is 1204 AD. Over 800 years after its consecration, the great city of Constantinople, the wealthiest and largest metropolis in all of Europe, lies in ruins. Flames burn through its streets as men in armour pick through its palaces, churches, and even tombs searching for plunder. Constantinople was medieval Europe's greatest connection to its ancient past, a city where much of the knowledge and art of classical Greece and Rome lived on, a wealth that its new masters view as mere prizes to be converted into coinage or shipped off to Italy, France, and beyond. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll be talking about the decline of the Eastern Rome and the Fourth Crusade, two stories which would intersect one another in a violent, brutal manner and end up nearly destroying one of Eurasia's oldest empires.
Trust the plan. The great awakening. Where we go one, we go all. All of these slogans and more came to represent one of the most conspiratorial and insidious political movements in American political history: QAnon. In the first "No One is Competent" episode on Q, we discussed the conditions that lead to the creation of this movement. In this second part, we'll go over the history and evolution of QAnon itself, and what effects it has had on both its most ardent believers and the rest of society.
The US Capitol Building. 175,170 square feet that house the seat of legislative branch of the most powerful nation on Earth. For over two centuries the Capitol has stood as a symbol of American law and governance. For it to be breached and desecrated in a time of peace is almost unimaginable, yet on January 6th, 2021, that is exactly what happened. Join us on this special bonus episode of "No One is Competent" as we dive into the series of bad decisions and faulty assumptions that led to the most serious assault on the Capitol in 207 years.
Q. A single letter that represents an entire movement, one that unites both the fringes of the far-right militia movement and the most conspiratorial sections of the internet with mainstream conservative sentiment. We could spend ages talking about the many outlandish and ultimately incorrect predictions credited to the supposed "QAnon," but it's worth looking at just where this movement came from and what conditions have allowed it to flourish in modern American society. In many ways the story of QAnon spans decades and involves countless actors, from Barry Goldwater to Christopher Poole. On this first part of the "No One is Competent" look at QAnon we'll be exploring the origins of QAnon.
"Stalingrad." The mere name of the place evokes imagery of violence, death, and grim desperation. From August 1942 through February 1943 over a million soldiers and civilians would be killed, wounded, or captured in one of the largest battles in human history. At the end of the day, however, the Soviet Union stood triumphant, having inflicted upon Nazi Germany their greatest defeat at that point in the war. On this episode of "No One is Competent" we'll follow up our discussion on Operation Barbarossa by looking at the decisions and events that resulted in the destruction of German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII, codename Operation Barbarossa, was the single largest military operation in human history. On the morning of June 22 well over a hundred Wehrmacht divisions smashed into the USSR. This same army that had spent the previous years overrunning Poland, Denmark, France, Norway, etc had its sights set on the expanses of the east. Things, however, did not exactly go according to plan. What was meant to a quick lightning war would turn into one of the most brutal, slogging campaigns in human history, and one which would see the eventual defeat of those who launched it. Join us on "No One is Competent" as we examine the first 6 months of the Eastern Front and the decisions that led to it.
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