Podcasts about Alistair Cooke

How historic are Trump 2.0's first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant, the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It's the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society.Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant:* Historic Transformation: Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement."* Democratic Party Crisis: He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide.* Elon Musk's Unexpected Role: An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk's subsequent endorsement of Trump.* Federal Government Transformation: Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge.* Trump as Revealer, Not Changer: Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America?Nick Bryant: I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict.Andrew Keen: That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.Nick Bryant: It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order.Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II.Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days.Andrew Keen: That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this.Nick Bryant: When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary.J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements.Andrew Keen: The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025?Nick Bryant: Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically.The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into thinking America's forever wars have suddenly ended and Trump has won. The opposition will be back. The resistance will be back.I remember moments in the Obama administration when it looked like progressives had won every battle in America. I remember the day I went to South Carolina, to the funeral of the pastor killed in that terrible shooting in Charleston. Obama broke into "Amazing Grace"—it was almost for the first time in front of a black audience that he fully embraced the mantle of America's first African-American president. He flew back to Washington that night, and the White House was bathed in rainbow colors because the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal across the country.It seemed in that moment that progressives were winning every fight. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. You assumed America's first black president would be followed by America's first female president. But what we were seeing in that summer of 2015 was actually the conservative backlash. Trump literally announced his presidential bid the day before that awful Charleston shooting. You can easily misread history at this moment. Sure, Trump looks dominant now, but don't be fooled. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in two years' time the Republicans end up losing the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections.Andrew Keen: When it comes to progressives, what do you make of the Democratic response, or perhaps the lack of response, to the failure of Kamala Harris? The huge amount of money, the uninspiring nature of her campaign, the fiasco over Biden—were these all accidental events or do they speak of a broader crisis on the left amongst progressives in America?Nick Bryant: They speak of both. There were really big mistakes made by the Democrats, not least Joe Biden's decision to contest the election as long as he did. It had become pretty clear by the beginning of 2024 that he wasn't in a fit state to serve four more years or take on the challenge of Donald Trump.Biden did too well at two critical junctures. During the midterm elections in 2022, many people predicted a red wave, a red tsunami. If that had happened, Biden would have faced pressure to step aside for an orderly primary process to pick a successor. But the red wave turned into a red ripple, and that persuaded Biden he was the right candidate. He focused on democracy, put democracy on the ballot, hammered the point about January 6th, and decided to run.Another critical juncture was the State of the Union address at the beginning of 2024. Biden did a good job, and I think that allayed a lot of concerns in the Democratic Party. Looking back on those two events, they really encouraged Biden to run again when he should never have done so.Remember, in 2020, he intimated that he would be a bridge to the next generation. He probably made a mistake then in picking Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate because he was basically appointing his heir. She wasn't the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump—it was always going to be hard for a woman of color to win the Rust Belt. She wasn't a particularly good candidate in 2020 when she ran; she didn't even make it into 2020. She launched her campaign in Oakland, and while it looked good at the time, it became clear she was a poor candidate.Historical accidents, the wrong candidate, a suffering economy, and an America that has always been receptive to someone like Trump—all those factors played into his victory.Andrew Keen: If you were giving advice to the Democrats as they lick their wounds and begin to think about recovery and fighting the next battles, would you advise them to shift to the left or to the center?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question because you could argue it both ways. Do the Democrats need to find a populist of the left who can win back those blue-collar voters that have deserted the Democratic Party? This is a historical process that's been going on for many years. Working-class voters ditched the Democrats during the Reagan years and the Nixon years. Often race is part of that, often the bad economy is part of that—an economy that's not working for the working class who can't see a way to map out an American dream for themselves.You could argue for a left-wing populist, or you could argue that history shows the only way Democrats win the White House is by being centrist and moderate. That was true of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—all Southerners, and that wasn't a coincidence. Southern Democrats came from the center of the party. Obama was a pragmatic, centrist candidate. Kennedy was a very pragmatic centrist who tried to bring together the warring tribes of the Democratic Party.Historically, you could argue Democrats need to move to the center and stake out that ground as Trump moves further to the right and the extremes. But what makes it harder to say for sure is that we're in a political world where a lot of the old rules don't seem to apply.Andrew Keen: We don't quite know what the new rules are or if there are any rules. You describe this moment as equivalent in historic terms to the fall of the Berlin Wall or perhaps 9/11. If we reverse that lens and look inwards, is there an equivalent historical significance? You had an interesting tweet about Doge and the attempt in some people's eyes for a kind of capture of power by Elon Musk and the replacement of the traditional state with some sort of almost Leninist state. What do you make of what's happening within the United States in domestic politics, particularly Musk's role?Nick Bryant: We've seen American presidents test the Constitution before. Nobody in the modern era has done it so flagrantly as Donald Trump, but Nixon tried to maximize presidential powers to the extent that he broke the law. Nixon would have been found guilty in a Senate trial had that impeachment process continued. Of course, he was forced to resign because a delegation of his own party drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and told him he had to go.You don't get that with the Republican Party and Donald Trump—they've fallen behind him. FDR was commonly described as an American dictator. H.L. Mencken wrote that America had a Caesar, a pharaoh. Woodrow Wilson was maximalist in his presidential powers. Abraham Lincoln was the great Constitution breaker, from trashing the First Amendment to exceeding his powers with the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional—he needed congressional approval, which he didn't have.There's a long history of presidents breaking rules and Americans being okay with that. Lincoln has never been displaced from his historical throne of grace. FDR is regarded as one of the great presidents. What sets this moment apart is that constraints on presidents traditionally came from the courts and their own political parties. We're not seeing that with Donald Trump.Andrew Keen: What about the cultural front? There's talk of Trump's revenge, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., revenge against traditional scientists, possibly closing some universities. Is this overdramatic, or is Trump really taking revenge for what happened between 2020 and 2024 when he was out of power?Nick Bryant: Trump is in a vengeful mood—we always thought Trump 2.0 would be a project of vengeance. Republican presidents have always thought parts of the administrative state work against them, and Trump is dismantling it at warp speed. Elon Musk is going into various government departments acting like he's heading a hostile takeover of the federal government.Reagan launched a rhetorical assault on federal government, which was really a creation of the New Deal years under FDR. That period saw massive expansion of federal government into people's lives with Social Security and the welfare net. We haven't seen this kind of assault on federal government since then. Trump is also trying to dismantle what he regards as America's cultural establishment, which he sees as too white, too elitist, too intellectual. He's trying to remold America, its government, and cultural institutions in his own image.Andrew Keen: You've mentioned Reagan. I came to the U.S. like you—you came as a grad student to study American history. I came in the '80s and remember the hysteria at UC Berkeley over Reagan—that he would blow up the world, that he was clueless, a Hollywood actor with no right to be in politics. Is it conceivable that Trump could be just another version of Reagan? In spite of all this hysteria, might this second Trump regime actually be successful?Nick Bryant: You can't rule out that possibility. The mistake made about Reagan was seeing him as a warmonger when he really wanted to be a peacemaker. That was the point of ending the Cold War—he wanted to win it, but through gambles on people like Gorbachev and diplomatic moves his advisors warned against.There are analogies to Trump. I don't think he's a warmonger or wants to send U.S. troops into countries. He's described some surprising imperial ambitions like taking over Greenland, though Harry Truman once wanted that too. Trump wants to make peace, but the problem is on what terms. Peace in Ukraine, in Trump's view, means a massive win for Vladimir Putin and the sidelining of the Ukrainian people and America's European allies.There wasn't a big cost to Reagan's peacemaking—the European alliance stayed intact, he tinkered with government but didn't go after Social Security. The cost of Trump is the problem.Andrew Keen: The moral cost or the economic cost?Nick Bryant: Both. One thing that happened with Reagan was the opening of big disparities in income and wealth in American society. That was a big factor in Donald Trump's success—the paradox of how this billionaire from New York became the hero of the Rust Belt. When the gulf between executive pay and shop floor pay became massive, it was during the Reagan years.You see the potential of something similar now. Trump is supercharging an economy that looks like it will favor the tech giants and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. You end up worsening the problem you were arguably setting out to solve.You don't get landslides anymore in American politics—the last president to win 40 states was George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan in '84 won 49 out of 50 states, almost getting a clean sweep except for Mondale's home state of Minnesota. I don't think Trump will be the kind of unifying president that Reagan was. There was a spontaneity and optimism about Reagan that you don't see with Trump.Andrew Keen: Where are the divisions? Where is the great threat to Trump coming from? There was a story this week that Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a parasitic illegal immigrant. Is it conceivable that the biggest weakness within the Trump regime will come from conflict between people like Bannon and Musk, the nationalists and the internationalist wing of the MAGA movement?Nick Bryant: That's a fascinating question. There doesn't seem to be much external opposition at the moment. The Democrats are knocked out or taking the eight count in boxing terms, getting back on their feet and taking as long as they can to get their gloves up. There isn't a leader in the Democratic movement who has anywhere near Trump's magnetism or personal power to take him on.Maybe the opposition comes from internal divisions and collapse of the Trump project. The relationship with Elon Musk was something I didn't anticipate in my book. After that assassination attempt, Musk endorsed Trump in a big way, put his money behind him, started offering cash prizes in Pennsylvania. Having lived at Mar-a-Lago during the transition with a cottage on the grounds and now an office in the White House—I didn't anticipate his role.Many people thought Trump wouldn't put up with somebody who overshadows him or gets more attention, but that relationship hasn't failed yet. I wonder if that speaks to something different between Trump 2.0 and 1.0. Trump's surrounded by loyalists now, but at 78 years old, I think he wanted to win the presidency more than he wanted the presidency itself. I wonder if he's happy to give more responsibility to people like Musk who he thinks will carry out his agenda.Andrew Keen: You've been described as the new Alistair Cooke. Cooke was the father of Anglo-American journalism—his Letter from America was an iconic show, the longest-running show in radio history. Cooke was always very critical of what he called the big daddy state in Washington, D.C., wasn't a fan of large government. What's your take on Trump's attack on large government in D.C.? Is there anything in it? You spent a lot of time in DC. Are these agencies full of fat and do they need to be cut?Nick Bryant: Cutting fat out of Washington budgets is one of the easy things—they're bloated, they get all these earmarks, they're full of pork. There's always been a bloated federal bureaucracy, and there's a long historical tradition of suspicion of Washington going back to the founding. That's why the federal system emerged with so much power vested in the states.Reagan's revolution was based on dismantling the New Deal government. He didn't get that far in that project, but rhetorically he shifted America's views about government. He emphasized that government was the problem, not the solution, for four decades. When Bill Clinton became president, he had to make this big ideological concession to Reaganism and deliver Reaganite lines like "the era of big government is over."The concern right now is that they're not just getting rid of fat—they're getting rid of expertise and institutional knowledge. They're removing people who may be democratic in their thinking or not on board with the Trump revolution, but who have extensive experience in making government work. In moments of national crisis, conservative ideologues tend to become operational liberals. They rely on government in disasters, pandemics, and economic crises to bail out banks and industries.Conservatives have successfully planted in many Americans' heads that government is the enemy. Hillary Clinton saw a classic sign in 2006—a protester carrying a sign saying "get your government hands off my Medicare." Well, Medicare is a government program. People need government, expertise, and people in Washington who know what they're doing. You're not just getting rid of waste—you're getting rid of institutional knowledge.Andrew Keen: One of the more colorful characters in these Trump years is RFK Jr. There was an interesting piece in the National Review about RFK Jr. forcing the left to abandon the Kennedy legacy. Is there something symbolically historical in this shift from RFK Sr. being an icon on the left to RFK Jr. being an icon on the libertarian right? Does it speak of something structural that's changed in American political culture?Nick Bryant: Yes, it does, and it speaks to how America is perceived internationally. JFK was always seen as this liberal champion, but he was an arch pragmatist, never more so than on civil rights. My doctoral thesis and first book were about tearing down that myth about Kennedy.The Kennedys did inspire international respect. The Kennedy White House seemed to be a place of rationality, refinement, and glamor. JFK embodied what was great about America—its youth, dynamism, vision. When RFK was assassinated in California, weeks after MLK's assassination, many thought that sense of America was being killed off too. These were people who inspired others internationally to enter public service. They saw America as a beacon on a hill.RFK Jr. speaks of a different, toxic American exceptionalism. People look at figures like RFK Jr. and wonder how he could possibly end up heading the American Health Department. He embodies what many people internationally reject about America, whereas JFK and RFK embodied what people loved, admired, and wanted to emulate.Andrew Keen: You do a show now on Australian television. What's the view from Australia? Are people as horrified and disturbed in Australia as they are in Europe about what you've called a historic change as profound as the fall of the Berlin Wall—or maybe rather than the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the establishment of a new kind of Berlin Wall?Nick Bryant: One of Australia's historic diplomatic fears is abandonment. They initially looked to Britain as a security guarantor in the early days of Australian Federation when Australia became a modern country in 1901. After World War II, they realized Britain couldn't protect them, so they looked to America instead. America has underwritten Australia's security since World War II.Now many Australians realize that won't be the case anymore. Australia entered into the AUKUS deal with Britain and America for nuclear submarine technology, which has become the basis of Australia's defense. There's fear that Trump could cancel it on a whim. They're currently battling over steel and aluminum tariffs. Anthony Albanese, the center-left prime minister, got a brief diplomatic reprieve after talking with Trump last week.A country like Australia, much like Britain, France, or Germany, cannot look on Trump's America as a reliable ally right now. That's concerning in a region where China increasingly throws its weight around.Andrew Keen: Although I'm guessing some people in Australia would be encouraged by Trump's hostility towards China.Nick Bryant: Yes, that's one area where they see Trump differently than in Europe because there are so many China hawks in the Trump administration. That gives them some comfort—they don't see the situation as directly analogous to Europe. But it's still worrying. They've had presidents who've been favorable towards Australia over the years. Trump likes Australia partly because America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia and he likes Greg Norman, the golfer. But that only gives you a certain measure of security.There is concern in this part of the world, and like in Europe, people are questioning whether they share values with a president who is aligning himself with far-right parties.Andrew Keen: Finally, Nick, your penultimate book was "When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present." You had an interesting tweet where you noted that the final chapter in your current book, "The Forever War," is called "Goodbye America." But the more we talk, whether or not America remains great is arguable. If anything, this conversation is about "hello" to a new America. It's not goodbye America—if anything, America's more powerful, more dominant, shaping the world more in the 2020s than it's ever done.Nick Bryant: It's goodbye to the America we've known for the last 70 years, but not goodbye to America itself. That's one of the arguments of the book—Trump is far more representative of the true America than many international observers realize. If you look at American history through a different lens, Trump makes perfect sense.There's always been an authoritarian streak, a willingness to fall for demagogues, political violence, deep mistrust of government, and rich people making fortunes—from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the tech barons of the 21st century. It's goodbye to a certain America, but the America that Trump presides over now is an America that's always been there. Trump hasn't changed America—he's revealed it.Andrew Keen: Well, one thing we can say for sure is it's not goodbye to Nick Bryant. We'll get you back on the show. You're one of America's most perceptive and incisive observers, even if you're in Australia now. Thank you so much.Nick Bryant: Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I still love the country deeply—my fascination has always been born of great affection.Nick Bryant is the author of The Forever War: American's Unending Conflict with Itself and When America Stopped Being Great, a book that Joe Biden keeps in the Oval Office. He was formerly one of the BBC's most senior foreign correspondents, with postings in Washington DC, New York, South Asia and Australia. After covering the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he left the BBC in 2021, and now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American history from Oxford.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year career began to lift off. And about his Farewell Tour which kicks off in the UK in October 2025, a combination of songs and story-telling coloured by two great heroes, Peter Ustinov and Alistair Cooke. This cracking exchange steers by way of Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Helen of Troy, Stalin, Hitler and the Battle of Moscow, the Weeley Festival of 1971, the three songs he always plays, the young Cat Stevens and what he told Paul Simon he should do with the just-composed Homeward Bound. Order Al Stewart tickets here:https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/al-stewartFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year career began to lift off. And about his Farewell Tour which kicks off in the UK in October 2025, a combination of songs and story-telling coloured by two great heroes, Peter Ustinov and Alistair Cooke. This cracking exchange steers by way of Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Helen of Troy, Stalin, Hitler and the Battle of Moscow, the Weeley Festival of 1971, the three songs he always plays, the young Cat Stevens and what he told Paul Simon he should do with the just-composed Homeward Bound. Order Al Stewart tickets here:https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/al-stewartFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 17 year-old Al Stewart played electric guitar in a dance band in Bournemouth in 1963. When he borrowed an acoustic and sang Masters Of War in the break, he heard the sweet sound of applause. The next night he played three Dylan songs and sensed which way the wind was blowing. He talks here about moving to London, playing at Bunjies and becoming the compere at Les Cousins as his now 60-year career began to lift off. And about his Farewell Tour which kicks off in the UK in October 2025, a combination of songs and story-telling coloured by two great heroes, Peter Ustinov and Alistair Cooke. This cracking exchange steers by way of Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan, Helen of Troy, Stalin, Hitler and the Battle of Moscow, the Weeley Festival of 1971, the three songs he always plays, the young Cat Stevens and what he told Paul Simon he should do with the just-composed Homeward Bound. Order Al Stewart tickets here:https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/al-stewartFind out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apalachee High School shooting, Braves stay ahead of Mets, Whit Merrifield mad about beanballs, 1st Pete Poll of the CFB season! best display of CFB pettiness so far this year, Falcons vs Steelers, Kirk Cousins WANTS to be hit, 49ers WR shooting, Belichick joins Instagram?! Penny Hardaway in hot water, Skip Bayless is baaaack, Ludacris Night, White Sox setting new lows of suckitude, boxers punch each other out, Bobby Jones, A.J. Foyt, anniversary of Israeli athletes kidnapped and murdered at Munich Olympics, John McEnroe fined, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Jerry Rice beats Jim Brown, Ky Derby, East Lake Golf Club, Nap Lajoie, Bill Mazeroski statue, Tony Martin, Heywood Hale Broun, Babe Ruth's first homer, Walter Johnson beats Cy Young, Hank Aaron breaks ankle, Joe Morgan, Bill "Spaceman" Lee, "Hate the Yankees Hanky Night" in Cleveland, Cal Ripken Jr ties Lou Gehrig, 1st ever mention of baseball in 1791, Bob Sheppard, plus Pete's Tweets and Baseball quotes from Steve Mura and Alistair Cooke?!

On Eavesdroppin' comedy podcast this week, Geordie & Michelle look at cults and creepiness… Hidden away in the Italian Alps is an underground temple touted as the 8th wonder of the world. Thing is – it was built by a cult called The Federation of Damanhur and if you visit it, they'll want to convert you. But… Damanhurians say they can time travel! They say they can talk to aliens! They say they can make plants sing! And that they're an ‘ethical cult'. Geordie investigates… Listen now to find out more.Did you know that body snatching is big business? But not all body snatchers steal corpses for money… In Pakistan, Michelle looks at the story of two cannibal brothers who… well, you can guess the rest. She also looks at the time the corpse of Charlie Chaplin was stolen from his grave in Vevey before discussing the dentist-cum-body-snatching-entrepreneur, Michael Mastromarino. His body-snatching ring saw hundreds of bones, hearts, veins, bits of tissue and skin being stolen for cash – including those of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke. Listen now to hear more!So pop on your headphones, grab a brown lemonade and join Geordie & Michelle for this week's episode, plus chit-chat about Carole Bayer Sager, biologics-slash-biopharmaceuticals and more, only on Eavesdroppin' podcast. And remember, wherever you are, whatever you do, just keep Eavesdroppin'!*Disclaimer: We don't claim to have any factual info about anything ever and our opinions are just opinions not fact, sooorrrryyy! Don't sue us!Please rate, review, share and subscribe in all the usual places – we love it when you do!Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/eavesdroppinDo write in with your stories at hello@eavesdroppinpodcast.com or send us a Voice Note!Listen: www.eavesdroppinpodcast.com or https://podfollow.com/eavesdroppinYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqcuzv-EXizUo4emmt9PgfwFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/eavesdroppinpodcast#damanhur #cult #bodysnatchers #charliechaplin #cannibals #pakistan #biologics #italianalps #8thwonderoftheworld #truecrime #reallife #podcast#comedy #comedypodcast #truestories #storytellingpodcast #eavesdroppin #eavesdroppinpodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BrianDOLeary.com   Straight to the email list + our FREE Time Management checklist : BrianDOLeary.com/letter   O'Leary's First Law: Nice is not a virtue.   O'Leary's Inner Sphere : http://OLearyInnerSphere.com   The Vintage Mencken (gathered by Alistair Cooke)     “As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.”  Since we tend to “Serious Content Amidst an Unserious Culture,” we don't believe in linking to anything that isn't worthwhile. We believe in our mission here and we're in the business of keeping our website, emails, and podcasts going. Affiliate commissions do help to cover some associated costs.

In this episode of the CTO Advisor podcast, hosts Alistair Cooke and Keith Kirkpatrick, Research Director at the Futurum Group, delve into the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in cloud-based enterprise applications. The conversation highlights how AI can significantly enhance the functionality of enterprise software, emphasizing the critical importance of data centralization. They explore [...]

The KEEN ON America series is supposed to feature conversations with prominent Americans about the post, present and future of their almost 250 year-old Republic. And while Nick Bryant was born in the UK and now lives in Australia, I think he nonetheless qualifies as an honorary American. The BBC's America correspondent during the Bush and Clinton presidencies, Bryant has been compared with the iconic 20th century British journalist Alistair Cooke for his ability to make sense of the United States. Bryant has a new book about America out this week, THE FOREVER WAR, in which writes about the Republic's “unending conflict with itself”. And so does Bryant think that America can ever come together, or is its 21st century fate to be always on the verge of civil war?During a career spanning almost thirty years, Nick Bryant came to be regarded as one of the BBC's finest foreign correspondents. He has been posted in Washington, South Asia, Australia and New York, where he covered the Trump years. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Monthly and The New Statesman. He broadcasts regularly on the BBC and ABC. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. He now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. His book, When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present, currently resides on Joe Biden's bookshelf in the Oval Office.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Part of the purpose of our new KEEN ON AMERICA series is to (re)discover what it means to be an American. Many of the wisest observers of American life - from De Tocqueville in the 19th Century to Max Weber and Alistair Cooke in the 20th - saw the uniqueness of the American character in its can-do quality, in its hunger to fix the fixable. Christopher Schroeder is an archetype of this type of practical wisdom. As a media executive, tech investor, political insider, start-up entrepreneur and writer, the Washington DC based Schroeder has lived many lives over the last fifty years. What ties together all these accomplished lives is Schroeder's defiantly non-ideological attitude. If it's broken, Chris Schroeder wants to fix it. Maybe we should entrust him with fixing the America of the 2020s. Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. He co-founded HealthCentral.com, one of the nation's largest social and content platforms in health and wellness, backed by Sequoia Capital, Polaris Ventures, The Carlyle Group, Allen & Company and IAC Corporation. The company was sold to the health media publisher, Remedy Health, in January 2012 where Schroeder remained a board advisor.  Previously he was CEO of washingtonpost.newsweek interactive and LegiSlate.com, the b2b interactive platform on US and state legislation and regulation that he sold in 2000. He currently is an active investor in and advisor to top US venture capital funds and over a dozen consumer-facing social/media startups. He has had a career in finance and served in President George HW Bush's White House and Department of State on the staffs of James A. Baker, III and Robert B. Zoellick. He speaks regularly around the globe, and sits on the board of advisors of The American University of Cairo School of Business, the Jordanian incubator Oasis500, the Middle East online entrepreneur information platform and network wamda.com. He was named one of LinkedIn top 50 Influencers. Schroeder is also on the Board of Directors of the American Council on Germany, The Dean's Board of the American University School of International Service, and member of the French American Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations. He graduated with honors from The Harvard Business School, and magna cum laude from Harvard College. Schroeder is married to Alexandra Coburn and has three children.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Do you remember the Letter from America by Alistair Cooke on BBC Radio 4, which was originally the BBC Home Service? In this episode, I read my Letter from England. When I say read, I mean ramble. To be honest, I don't think I'd be any good at emulating Mr Cooke's letter. I also tell you the story of Paula, a homeless girl I met and helped. The dentist, Terry nappies and the clothes hourse... Please, join me this Sunday for a good old chat about times gone by.

Edge is leading the hardware industry into a new era of innovation. In this episode of Utilizing Tech, Stephen Foskett, and co-hosts, Allyson Klein and Alistair Cooke, sit down to dissect this. In the wake of Intel's discontinuation of its NUC product line, a question that is in everyone's mind is, what's next. Intel, and many behemoths like it, have a proud legacy of knowing how to break a stalemate and preserve the churn, and even if that means stepping up and pulling the plug on an old product. It oxygenates the marketplace, welcoming new solutions and keeping the wheel of innovation moving. In the context of the emerging paradigm of edge, this change will likely propel the market towards a new breed of powerful, low-cost, pocket-size hardware that delivers breakthrough energy-efficiency and compute performance with little infrastructure. Hosts: Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter.com/SFoskett Alastair Cooke: https://www.twitter.com/DemitasseNZ Allyson Klein: https://www.twitter.com/TechAllyson Follow Gestalt IT and Utilizing Tech Website: https://www.GestaltIT.com/ Utilizing Tech: https://www.UtilizingTech.com/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GestaltIT Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/UtilizingTech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Gestalt-IT Tags: #UtilizingEdge, #Edge, #NUC, @UtilizingTech, @GestaltIT, @SFoskett, @TechAllyson, @DemitasseNZ,

For almost 60 years, the British journalist and New York resident, Alistair Cooke, recorded a weekly, 15-minute radio commentary entitled Letter from America. As a teenager, I would listen to it, late at night, on the BBC World Service. Cooke had a beautiful speaking voice and a remarkable way with words, as he painted landscapes of American culture and portraits of America's personalities. Letter from America made me feel well-acquainted with this country long before I arrived here. Cooke, of course, had strong opinions based on his own observations. However, he also had a quality of balance – he was not one to be swept up in the latest national obsession but, rather, spoke of his world in a measured way.

Richard Pennell makes a long overdue return to the pod, I am honoured that he decided to favour F&F as the medium to announce the imminent publication of his new book - Grass Routes - a collection of some of his @pitchmarks pieces (https://pitchmarks.substack.com/). Grass Routes Website (pitchmarks.bigcartel.com) Richard has launched a new website (pitchmarks.bigcartel.com) to launch his book, the first edition has a limited run and will undoubtedly be a collectors item in the years to come. Through the medium of words, Richard, has an unrivalled ability to tanatlise the senses in transporting you to first tees, final greens and matchplay battles throughout the golf courses of England, Wales, Scotland and beyond. This is an opus worth investing in. Competition In celebration of Grass Routes publication, Richard has kindly agreed to provide a lucky winner with a signed copy of his new book. All you have to do is to follow either of the links below to Twitter or Instagram, follow the F&F accounts and then successfully name the course where the hole in question is located. F&F Twitter Link (https://twitter.com/firmandfastgolf/status/1674551074412281857) F&F Instagram Link (https://www.instagram.com/p/CuF4ucZtFhh/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) *Grant Books * (https://www.grantbooks.co.uk/) Grant Books (https://www.grantbooks.co.uk/) are publishing Grass Routes (pitchmarks.bigcartel.com) for Richard Pennell, Grant Books (https://www.grantbooks.co.uk/)has been publishing the finest golf books since 1971. Their portfolio includes architectural, historical and club-specific volumes, all produced to the highest standards. Click here (https://www.grantbooks.co.uk/) for more details of their extensive range. The Smell of Rain Towards the end of this episode I completely lost the run of myself :) and challenged RP to write a piece for the F&F listeners on the smell of rain. Alas as the pod dropped the creative juices are still flowing so you will have to wait a little longer to see what he comes up with, as soon as he sends it to me, a link will be posted here to the F&F substack blog! Richard Pennell Esq Richard's First Blog Post via Cookie Jar Golf - Rank Outsiders (https://cookiejargolf.com/rank-outsiders/) Richard Pennell's @pitchmarks Substack Blog (https://pitchmarks.substack.com/) Alistair Cooke Letter from America - Alistair Cooke on BBC Sounds (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b00f6hbp) Harry Rountree Watercolour Prints A link to the sumptuous Harry Rountree Prints from Darwin's Golf Courses of the British Isles can be found here (https://shop.evalu18.com/collections/harry-rountree) F&F Blog - Netherlands pieces #1 - Initial Observations on Dutch Golf (https://shanederby.substack.com/p/initial-thoughts-on-golf-in-the-netherlands) #2 - The Links Valley - a Reversible 9 (https://shanederby.substack.com/p/summer-break-diary-2023-1-the-links) Further pieces are currently being developed (slowly :)) on Utrecht de Pan, Royal Hague, Kennemer, Noordwijk and Hilversum will be released over the coming weeks. If you so desire, you can subscribe to the Firm & Fast Occasional Newsletter at the bottom of all posts. Other content well worth exploring McKellar Journal (https://www.mckellarmagazine.com/) The Golfers Journal (https://www.golfersjournal.com/) Contours Golf (https://contours.golf/) - Will Watt formerly of Caddie Mag The Quadrilateral (https://quadrilateral.substack.com/) - Geoff Shackleford The Albatross (https://thealbatross.substack.com/)- Bill Fields The Duffers Literary Companion (https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3yhN4E2fU4nAAtSfy86k) - Podcast with Stephen Proctor & Jim Hartsell Links for below to some favourite writers, a few of whom are also friends of the F&F pod John Low Concerning Golf (https://evalu18.com/book/concerning-golf/) Bernard Darwin The Golf Courses of the British Isles (https://evalu18.com/book/golf-courses-british-isles/) Playing the Like (https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/playing-the-like/author/bernard-darwin/) Alistair Cooke The Marvellous Mania (https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780713999969/Marvellous-Mania-Alistair-Cooke-Golf-0713999969/plp) Geoff Shackleford Golf Architecture for Normal People (https://www.geoffshackelford.com/) Mike Clayton Preferred Lies (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Preferred-Lies-Other-True-Stories/dp/1743794673) Golf from The Inside (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golf-inside-Mike-Clayton/dp/1920769072) Stephen Proctor Monarch of the Green (https://birlinn.co.uk/product/monarch-of-the-green-2/) The Long Golden Afternoon (https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-long-golden-afternoon/) Jim Hartsell When Revelation Comes (https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Revelation-Comes-Journey-Scotland/dp/1956237097#:~:text=Scottish%20golf%20and%20golf%20writing,of%20Sweetens%20Cove%20(2021).) Roger McStravick All of Rogers' books can be purchased from Fine Golf Books (https://www.finegolfbooks.com/searchResults.php?action=browse&category_id=632) Many thanks for including us on your playlist - if you get a chance, please leave us a review on apple itunes, it would really be appreciated! Happy Golfing! Intro and outro music - _Shoreline Serenade by Dye O _- under license from Epidemic Sound Special Guest: Richard Pennell.

“we had breakfasted” [CHAS]    For all the meals we hear about in the Sherlock Holmes stories – not to mention Mrs. Hudson having a good idea of breakfast – what were some of the regular morning comestibles?   Come to think of it, there weren't many breakfasts mentioned in the Canon aside from one very consequential one. Can you think of others? It's just a Trifle.   If you have a suggestion for a Trifles episode, let us know at trifles @ ihearofsherlock.com. If you use your idea on the air, we'll send you some Sherlockian goodies.   Our Patreon supporters can listen to our shows ad-free and every one of them is eligible for our monthly and quarterly drawings for Baker Street Journals. Join our community of patrons today. Have you left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts yet? You don't need to own an Apple device, and every review helps more people find the show.    Links / Notes This episode: ihose.co/trifles330 Alistair Cooke's Letter From America: Don't Name It, Cure it - 12 July 2002 Dining with Sherlock Holmes by Julia Carlson Rosenblatt and Frederich Sonnenschmidt SoundCloud playlist: Food Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube Email us at trifles @ ihearofsherlock.com Listen to us ad-free on Patreon and become eligible for our regular giveaways.   Sponsor The Baker Street Journal   Music credits Performers: Uncredited violinist, US Marine Chamber Orchestra Publisher Info.: Washington, DC: United States Marine Band Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0        

CONTENT Our guest today is the Cognitive Marine a serving USMC officer.  On this episode we are going to be discussing the future structure of the USMC, why we fail to learn from past conflicts, leadership responsibilities, advice for young marines, service self harm and suicide, war in Ukraine and use of social media to educate your command.  All opinions expressed on the podcast are those of our guest and not the USMC.  Follow him on Instagram at The Cognitive Marine.    DESERT ISLAND DITS On Desert Island Dits our guest's choice of film was Shawshank Redemption and his book choice was Gates Of Fire by Steven Pressfield.  The teams book choices this week are Letters From America by Alistair Cooke and A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré by Tim Cornwell. SOCIAL MEDIA Check out our blog site on word press Unconventional Soldier Follow us on social media and don't forget to like, share and leave a review. Instagram @the_unconventional_soldier_pod. Facebook @lateo82.  Twitter @TheUCS473. Download on these and other platforms via Link Tree. Email us: unconventionalsoldier@gmail.com.  This episode brought to you in association with ISARR a veteran owned company.      

  Several people have told me that, of my 38 episodes, this is their favorite.  See if you agree.   It is all about the question Hiss could never answer:  how, if Hiss is innocent, did the 64 Typed Spy Documents get typed on his home typewriter.  You may recall that Hiss first told The Grand Jury that Chambers broke into his house in 1938 and typed them on it himself when no one was looking.  That didn't work.  Second, Hiss told the jury at the second trial that Hiss gave the Typewriter to the Catlett Kids in late 1937; they put it in the back room where they had their non-stop dance party; then Chambers found it there and typed up The Typed Spy Documents himself on it as the conga line snaked past.  That didn't convince, either.  Third — and this is the subject of this Podcast — in a Motion for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered Evidence, Hiss' new lawyer speculated that Chambers in 1948 had made a fake typewriter, which typed just like The Hiss Home Typewriter, and had typed up The Spy Documents on it; then Chambers found where the real Hiss Typewriter was (in the nightwatchman's home, you remember), stole it and planted his fake there, and waited for someone to find the fake and for everyone to assume it was the real Hiss Home Typewriter.  Quite a frame-up, if true.  But did that really happen?  Is it even plausible?  Podcast #35 explores this theory, which Hiss stuck to till his dying day (with numerous variations as each old one failed).   FURTHER RESEARCH   The best dissection of The Forgery by Typewriter Theory is Chapter 2 (titled “Chambers”) in “Ex-Communist Witnesses:Four Studies in Fact Finding” by Professor Herbert L. Packer of Stanford University Law School (Stanford University Press 1962) at 21-51.  Others are Cornell/Georgetown/Minnesota Law School Professor Irving Younger's article “Was Alger Hiss Guilty?” in Commentary Magazine's August 1975 issue, available at https://www.commentary.org/articles/irving-younger/was-alger-hiss-guilty-2/; and the Appendix to professor Weinstein's book, titled “‘Forgery by Typewriter':  The Pursuit of Conspiracy, 1948-97,” at pages 624-30, 632-34, 645-47.  The version of Alistair Cooke's book (“A Generation on Trial:U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss”) that was published in 1952 has a few new pages at the end, 347-54, describing Hiss's Motion for a New Trial and the Court hearing about it.  Judge Goddard presided, and Cooke notes (at 348) that the audience included “leisured and unidentified old ladies who appeared at all Hiss hearings with the ritual fatalism of the annual pilgrims to Valentino's grave.”  Cooke writes (at 348) that “several excellent lawyers were dumbfounded by the claims that the defense now put forward.”  After describing Judge Goddard's dismissal of those claims, Cooke ends his book with the following words.  “Four years had passed since the names of Hiss and Chambers shook the nation.  Now there was another Presidential campaign, and the Democrats were in full fling at their convention in Chicago.  Judge Goddard's word, perhaps the last, about Hiss was lucky to earn a few lines at the bottom of the inside pages of newspapers.  In most it earned none.  Hiss had passed into shame and into history.”   Here is my list of the people who, Hiss defenders have speculated over the decades, masterminded or participated in the framing of Hiss (in most cases involving forgery by typewriter): Whittaker and Esther Chambers, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Ambassador William C. Bullitt, Jr., Richard and Pat Nixon, the Democratic financier and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, President Truman's Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, the Dulles Brothers, supporters of the Chinese anti-communist dictator Chaing Kai-Shek, a Nazi sympathizer who owned a typewriter store in New York City, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, and a private detective named Horace Schmahl.   If you are interested in the broader question of why people believe highly implausible stories, I recommend Michael Shermer's book “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time” (St. Martin's Griffin 2002); and a delightful article by the Brandeis University Professor Jacob Cohen, “Will We Never Be Free of the Kennedy Assassination?,” published in the December 2013 issue of Commentary Magazine and available at https://www.commentary.org/articles/jacob-cohen/will-we-never-be-free-of-the-kennedy-assassination/.   Questions:  Here are two questions I have asked myself for years but never answered satisfactorily.  Can you help me?   (1) In his Motion for a New Trial, Hiss claimed that Chambers did the forgery all by himself, or with the help of Communist friends.  This seems plainly ridiculous.  Chambers had neither the time, the tools, nor the talents to forge a typewriter and, by 1948, no Communist friends to help him.  My question:  why was it only years later that Hiss claimed that Hoover and the FBI had committed the forgery?  The FBI was obviously the only organization in the US that even arguably had the necessary time, tools, and talents.  What prevented Hiss from aiming, from the start, at such an obvious target?   (2). Hiss publicized his Forgery by Typewriter theories for decades, and his supporters have carried the torch in the decades after his death.  They are articulate people, they have occasionally had generous funding, and they know lots people in the nation's media who would love another story of an innocent gentleman framed as a Commie the early Cold War years.  But if you Google “Famous Conspiracy Theories” or “Top 25 Conspiracy Theories of All Time,” you will not find Hiss's Forgery by Typewriter Theory.  Why?  Why has Hiss's conspiracy theory not achieved the popularity of the theories about the assassinations of JFK and RFK, or of the alleged landings at Roswell and the alleged non-landings on the Moon?  Is his theory too implausible or too complicated for a large audience, and/or is Hiss too cold a fish to be sympathetic?  

Alger Hiss is taken to prison   Alger Hiss's conviction — technically for perjury, but effectively for treason — was a major event.  It was a disaster for The Establishment, especially liberal Democrats, and vindication for Republicans and populist Democrats.  The 18 month labyrinth of HUAC hearings, depositions in Hiss's libel suit, grand jury proceedings, and two criminal trials were the long, long overture to the so-called McCarthy Era.  Senator McCarthy, in fact, gave his famous “I have a list . . .” speech just weeks after Hiss's conviction.  This Podcast gives an overview of the many and complex reactions to the guilty verdict.  Everyone, it seems, accepted the factual correctness of the verdict.  But many liberals could not help making up excuses for Hiss, or damning Chambers for being fat and melodramatic.  And many conservatives and populists could not help painting all liberals and Harvard graduates with the black pitch of Hiss's treason.  Most interesting and encouraging to me, a significant number of liberals and Democrats were sufficiently mature and morally alive to engage in genuine introspection and self-criticism, to admit they had ‘blown it big time' when it came to Soviet traitors in our midst, and to resolve to fashion a liberal anti-communism that was just as vigorous as what Republican conservatives had been offering for decades.     FURTHER RESEARCH    The McCarthy Era, although sparked by this Case, is an oceanic subject beyond the scope of these Podcasts.  If you want to read about it, among the best conservative books are George H. Nash's “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945” (Basic Books 1976), esp. 84-130; and Richard Gid Powers' “Not Without Honor:  The History of American Anticommunism” (Free Press 1995), esp. 191-272.See also Professor Harvey Klehr's essay “Setting the Record Straight on Joe McCarthy,” https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/setting-record-joe-mccarthy-straight-harvey-klehr/.   Among the far more numerous, totally anti-McCarthy books are David Caute's “The Great Fear:The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower” (Touchstone 1979), esp. 56-62; Fred J. Cook's “The Nightmare Decade:The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy” (Random House 1971); Victor Navasky's “Naming Names” (Viking 1980) (especially the early pages); I.F. Stone's “The Truman Era: 1945-52” (Little Brown 1953) (Stone was himself a secret agent of the Soviet Union); and James A Weschler's “The Age of Suspicion” (Random House 1953).  I must note that it was a stroke of genius for the minimizers of Communist treason to name the era after anti-Communism's most irresponsible big name.  This is as if racists had succeeded in labeling the civil rights movement The Al Sharpton Movement.     Concerning the impact of the Hiss verdict in particular, Dean Acheson, in his autobiography “Present at the Creation:  My Years at the State Department” (Norton 1987), titles his pertinent chapter (at 354) “The Attack of the Primitives Begins.”  Alistair Cooke (at 340) also saw nothing good coming from Hiss's conviction.  A more mature view, at page 267 of Walter Goodman's “The Committee:The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1968), is that the Hiss-Chambers Case “whip[ped] up a storm which did not last long but left ruins in its wake.”  Other more realistic analyses of the Case's impact on America are in Weinstein at 529-47 (chapter titled “Cold War Iconography I:  Alger Hiss as Myth and Symbol”); the best single essay on this Case in my opinion, Leslie Fiedler's “Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of Innocence” at 3-24 of his “An End to Innocence:  Essays on Culture and Politics” (Beacon Press 1955) and Diana Trilling's essay “A Memorandum on the Hiss Case,” first published in The Partisan Review of May-June 1950 and re-published at 27-48 of Patrick J. Swan's anthology of essays on this Case, “Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul” (ISI Books 2003).  The latter two essays I highly recommend.   Questions:  If you had been adult when Hiss was convicted, what would have been your reaction to his conviction?  ‘Justice at long last,' ‘a miscarriage of justice,' ‘guilty but a fair trial was impossible,' ‘technically guilty but with an excuse,' or something else?  Would your reaction have been purely emotional/political/tribal, or would you have cited one or more facts to support your reaction?  Would you have been totally certain that your reaction was the right one, or would you have harbored some doubts?

Prosecutor Thomas F. Murphy  In this Podcast, we hear the closing speeches, and the verdict of the second jury.  In a mirror image of the first trial, this time it was Hiss's lawyer Claude Cross who was quiet, even plodding, and it was Prosecutor Murphy (like Hiss's barrister Stryker at the first trial) who delivered the barn-burner.  Then — after a year and a half of HUAC hearings, Hiss's libel suit, the Grand Jury proceeding, and two trials — finally comes the jury's verdict.   Further Research:-  Alistair Cooke (at 335) described Mrs. Hiss after the guilty verdict was uttered as “a flushed and now ageless little gnome.”  Hiss wrote that the jury's verdict stunned him.  (“Recollections of a Life” at 157.). I read elsewhere that he and his defense team had planned a victory press conference to be followed by a victory lunch.  I have read in an unpublished biography of Hiss that, as he and his wife walked and then drove away from the courthouse, a few people yelled “Traitor!” but no one blocked his path or attempted physical harm.   At sentencing several days later, Claud Cross was the only speaker who showed emotion. The verdict must have been crushing for him.  He must have known that, despite his excellent reputation as a trier of complex corporate cases in the Boston area, fifty and a hundred years hence the only thing anyone would remember about Claud Cross was that he lost the Hiss Case.  Stryker got a hung jury, but Cross lost.  It must have added to his gloom that he went to his grave (in 1974) believing Hiss innocent.   Alistair Cooke (at 339-40) had strong feelings at the sentencing:    “It is a moment when all the great swirling moral abstractions are blacked out in a crisis of the flesh.  The principles we try to live by . . . . dissolve into a formal ceremony . . .  The defendant stands alone, the lawyers look through a glaze at their papers, the judge says:  ‘to run concurrently.'. . . .  People who had craved the confirmation of Hiss' guilt sighed and looked palely miserable.  Mr. Murphy . . . had been suddenly overcome with a rheumy blur of speech that could have come from the onset of a cold but most likely did not."   Cooke recalled being at the sentencing in 1939 of Jimmy Hines, a monumentally corrupt and gangster-affiliated politician who had been unsuccessfully defended by Lloyd Paul Stryker.  “[I]n that moment neither the crime nor the personality condemned is clear.  You do not respond as you might expect to the case resolved or the victim labeled, or the fox run to ground.  The defendant becomes a symbol of the alternative fates possible to all our characters.. . . .  The man about to be sentenced is suddenly at the center of the human situation; and because he is totally disarmed he takes on the helpless dignity of the lowest common denominator.”   Cooke, sad to say, never expressed the slightest sympathy for Chambers.  As I wrote earlier, maybe Chambers was too much the ‘Red Hot American,' unlike anything the very British Cooke had ever experienced.    Questions:  Do you agree with the second jury's verdict?  If you had been the judge, would you have sentenced Hiss to more or less time in prison?  If you were Hiss speaking to the judge just before sentencing, would you have been tempted to confess, said that you had been a naive and ignorant intellectual in the depths of The Great Depression, and hoped for a lighter sentence?  

Edith Murray   This is a short podcast, describing a last-minute rebuttal witness for The Prosecution.  Into court came a black woman named Edith Murray.  Alistair Cooke (at 299) found her “lively.”  She testified that, at times in 1935 and 1936, she had been the household servant (cleaning and cooking) for Whittaker and Esther Chambers.  She knew them as the Cantwells and was told that Mr. Cantwell was home so seldom because he was a traveling salesman.  The Cantwells, Mrs. Murray testified, had no social life except for one young white married couple from Washington whose female half she knew as “Miss Priscilla.”  Guess who Mrs. Murray pointed at when she was asked if the young couple was in the courtroom.  Some problems with her came out on cross-examination.  But her testimony, if believed, showed the kind of close relationship between the families that the Chamberses alleged and the Hisses denied.  Most damaging to Hiss, Mrs. Murray remembered Miss Priscilla staying overnight in the Chamberses' apartment (in a seedy part of Baltimore) taking care of their baby when both Whittaker and Esther Chambers had to be elsewhere.  How many people would you do that for?  Also, this overnighter occurred in 1936, long after the Hisses swore they had got the deadbeat Chamberses/Crosleys out of their lives.  Thus, the major testimonies at the second trial end on a bad note for Hiss.   FURTHER RESEARCH:  Remarkably, the pro-Hiss book by John Chabot Smith does not mention Mrs. Murray.  Hiss, in his book “In the Court of Public Opinion,” (at 313-17, 325-26, 328, 334, 344, 366, 385-87, 396-97) mentions her at length, alleging unfair surprise, heavy-handed coaching by the FBI, and evidence against her that he didn't have time to gather and present to the second jury.   Weinstein describes Mrs. Murray's testimony at 504.  Alistair Cooke writes that, when Mrs. Murray, on the witness stand, recalled both Hisses visiting the Chamberses in the latter's Baltimore apartment, she chuckled at the contrast between the two couples, presumably because the elegant Hisses were slumming.  “And of course I could see the difference of the two couples, and right away I take notice . . .   And when I see him I seen the difference in the two of them, and naturally I noticed.”(Cooke at 299, Second Trial at 4415.)   Chambers (at 358-59, 393-94) describes a long and very friendly relationship between his family and Mrs. Murray.  Interesting to me is Chambers' unease (at 357-58) at an underground Communist family hiring a household servant.  But almost every white family in Baltimore had one in those days, Chambers writes, and we decided that Mrs. Murray's cleaning and cooking made her a worker as dignified and worthy as any man on a factory assembly line.  The Chamberses paid her more than most whites paid their black help and, after she made dinner for the family in the evenings, Mrs. Murray sat at the table with them and had dinner with them as one of the family.  To Chambers (at 358), the Communist requirement that blacks be treated as equals shows “the impact of Communism wherever it coincides with humanity and compassion, especially when the outside world denies them.”  All human beings who work, even black servants, have human dignity.  “Thus, by insisting on acting as Communists must, we found ourselves unwittingly acting as Christians should.  I submit that this cuts to the heart of one aspect of the Communist appeal.”   Equally interesting is the story of how the FBI found Mrs. Murray 12 years after she stopped working for the Chamberses.  The Chamberses remembered her working for them, but recalled only her first name.  Searches for “Edith” at all the Baltimore employment agencies for servants and in the Chamberses' old neighborhood proved fruitless.  Then Mrs. Chambers found in the attic a miniature portrait that she had painted of Mrs. Murray.  The FBI made many photocopies of it and FBI agents fanned out into Baltimore's black ghetto and asked people if they knew about the person in the miniature.  Eventually, someone recognized Mrs. Murray and the FBI found her alive and well.  She was delighted to be brought back in touch with The Cantwells because they had treated her so well and she liked the idea of working for them again.  (Chambers at 359; Cooke at 300; Weinstein at 161-62; FBI FOIA Documents, https://archive.org/details/foia_Hiss_Alger-Whittaker_Chambers-NYC-53/page/n251/mode/2up?view=theater circa page 250.)  This is one of several instances in this Case where the marvelous work of the FBI agents in the field contrasts to the ham-handed activities of J. Edgar Hoover (described in Podcast #37).   Questions:  Do you believe Mrs. Murray?  If she is making it all up, her just-quoted recollections and those of the Chamberses, Mrs. Chambers' miniature painting, and all the FBI FOIA documents (first made public in the 1970s) must have been fabricated in the 1940s.  How likely is that?  Assuming that Mrs. Murray is telling the truth, could the nice young white lady from Washington she remembered as “Miss Priscilla” be anyone other than Priscilla Hiss?   On the whole, do you think the three witnesses who testified at the second trial but not the first helped The Prosecution or The Defense?  If you had been one of the four members of the first jury who voted Not Guilty because you just didn't believe Chambers, would the three new witnesses at the second trial have given The Prosecution enough new support to change your vote?

Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Binger This Podcast presents the testimony of an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger.  He opined that Whittaker Chambers suffered from a mental illness, called “Psychopathic Personality,” which causes its sufferers to make false accusations that they sincerely believe to be true.  Dr. Carl Binger was supposed to be, to use a baseball metaphor, The Clean-Up Hitter of The Hiss Defense.  The Defense had loaded the bases with Hiss and his wife (we barely knew Chambers/Crosley), the character witnesses (Alger is a fine upstanding man), and the Catletts (we had The Typewriter when The Spy Documents were typed).  Binger was supposed to bring all those runners and himself across home plate by answering a question so obvious that Hiss was asked it at his first HUAC appearance: why is Chambers lying?  Chambers had no rational motive to lie, but . . . . maybe an irrational one. Chambers' greatest fan would admit that his life was a target-rich environment of off-the-beaten-path behaviors.   Prosecutor Murphy fought to the bitter end to keep Binger's opinion from reaching the jury's ears.  But he had a good Plan B.  His cross-examination of Dr. Binger has been called the most destructive cross-examination of a psychiatrist in history.  The conventional opinion of scholars is that when Murphy was through with Binger, there was nothing left, not even mincemeat.  To many, Binger's testimony seemed a failed attempt to smear an honest man who was merely strange. See if you agree.   FURTHER RESEARCH   About Binger's testimony, see Cooke at 304-13; Smith at 386-93, saying (at 391) that “Murphy cut the poor psychiatrist into ribbons” and (at 393) that “the psychiatric evidence turned out to be a boomerang”; and Weinstein at 510-16.   One interesting aspect of this Case is the peek it gives into the morals and standards of this country's Establishment in the late 1940s.  Psychiatry had ceased to be new and frightening and had become, among many of the finest minds, almost a religion displacing Judaism and Christianity.  Forward-looking thinkers ranked Freud with Aristotle, Copernicus, and Einstein as one of the giant pioneers of human thought.  (Today, most see him as a great, brave pioneer but dismiss his all theories and techniques.). Alistair Cooke was so worshipful of psychiatry that he could not fathom Prosecutor Murphy questioning Dr. Binger's opinion.  Cooke seems to have thought Murphy outrageous when he demanded that the exalted expert make sense to the jury.   More broadly, at the time of the Hiss trials, the range of proper behaviors was much narrower than it is today.  Men worked and women stayed home to run the house and raise the kids; a web of laws and customs held blacks in inferior positions; swarthy-complected immigrants from Southern Europe, such as Italians, were barely considered to be white people; left-handed people were considered handicapped; people rarely married outside their religious denominations; homosexuality was a mental illness; proper citizens wouldn't dream of going outdoors not in a coat and tie; and you could tell much more about people's economic and social status by their clothing than you can today.  Any deviation from these norms might prompt wrinkled noses, raised eyebrows, and even suspicions of mental illness.  The latter was unfathomable and would bar you from decent society forever.  The Hiss Defense tried to use such limits on propriety and decency to make Chambers unbelievable and despicable.  The Defense failed because of Chambers' articulateness and his cool under fire, and because of the cross-examination of Dr. Binger.  And as Alistair Cooke wrote (at 312), the magician Binger could pull strange and frightening objects from his top hat, but he could not make the documents disappear.   Questions:  As you hear Dr. Binger's direct testimony, do you think to yourself “My God, he's got Chambers to a T.  Thank God we have modern psychiatry to explain rare mental illnesses like Chambers'”?  Or do Binger's words strike you as modern witchcraft concealed behind two Harvard degrees?  Psychiatry has changed hugely since 1949.  If you have any knowledge of it, what would a mainstream psychiatrist (if there is such a thing any more) say of Chambers today?  One said to me, “Probably neurotic, but not psychotic by any means.”   Concerning procedure, do you agree with Prosecutor Murphy that merely allowing the jury to hear the 65-minute long question listing all of Chambers' strange acts was itself unfair to Chambers and The Prosecution, and that the judges should have ruled on the admissibility of psychiatric testimony before?      

Hede Hassing, a key witness in the 2nd trial The second trial: new Judge (an elderly Republican), a new jury (seven women!), a new lawyer for Hiss (Boston's distinguished, quiet Claude Cross), a new strategy by each side, and a lot more witnesses.  The next three Podcasts bring you three witnesses who did not testify at the first trial, but did at the second.     One journalist wrote that the minor characters in this Case contained the raw material for a shelf of unwritten novels.  You've already met Julian Wadleigh.  Now meet Hede Massing, a Viennese actress, thrice married and twice divorced, and secret Communist operative (like her first two husbands) in four countries.  She testifies that she saw Alger Hiss (and even had a memorable chat with him) in Washington's Soviet underground in the mid-1930s.  The FBI document expert Feehan gave expert corroboration for Chamber's accusations.  If you believe Massing, she gives Chambers eyewitness corroboration.  But she may have been weakened by Claude Cross's cross-examination, which left her “visibly flustered.”(Alistair Cooke wrote at 292.)     FURTHER RESEARCH:    Massing's autobiography, “This Deception,” published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in New York in 1951, is available on Amazon and eBay.  She describes her encounter with Hiss at pages 173-75.     Massing led a life of adventure, and paid the price.  Much of her secret life was incredibly boring, establishing new identities in place after place and then waiting weeks or months for a real assignment.  Her earlier testimony to The Grand Jury also makes clear the painful psychological struggles facing ex-Communist spies in the West.  There is the obvious guilt about having betrayed your country to serve another country that turned out to be worse than you dreamed possible.  There is also damage done to others.  Massing told The Grand Jury how she recruited a State Department economist to spy for the Soviet Union.  In 1948, the economist had just skipped over to the other side of The Iron Curtain and spent the rest of his life there.  Massing, in front of The Grand Jury, suddenly broke down crying and asked for a glass of water and a recess.  Later, she explained that she felt personally responsible for the economist's ruined life.  (I think she was being too hard on herself.  What he did was his responsibility.) She also begged the U.S. Attorney's Office to keep her identity and testimony secret, for two reasons.  First, she and her husband had found jobs but had not disclosed their past crimes, and she was terrified that they would be exposed and become unemployable.  Second — and this is something several former Soviet operatives corroborated — she said that when you have lived for years under false names, sleeping by day and working by night, moving from country to country and city to city at the KGB's whim, “it takes all your gumption and guts to try to live an average life as I am trying to do.”  (Grand Jury Transcript at 3697-98.). Being a secret agent, in reality, is not like the James Bond movies.   Questions:  Judge Kaufman excluded Massing's testimony at the first trial.  Judge Goddard allowed it at the second.  Was one Judge clearly right and the other clearly wrong?  Do you think Massing helped The Prosecution on the whole, or was she too damaged on cross-examination?  Does the sudden flight of the State Department economist lend credibility to her story?     As you hear more about how the second trial differed from the first, ask yourself what caused the different verdict at the latter.  There are many possible explanations.  The Cold War had gotten substantially colder by the second trial.  Hiss chose a new lawyer, whom few would say was the equal of Lloyd Paul Stryker.  Prosecutor Murphy was trying the case for a second time and did much better than at the first.  There were the three new witnesses (and more testimony allowed by the repeat witnesses).  The Judge was a Republican appointee.  There were more women on the second jury.  Take your pick.

Episode: 2741 Frederic Tudor: Ice King.  Today, ice heads south.

  Podcast #28 recounts the testimonies of three black Washingtonians named Catlett.  Claudia Catlett, the Hisses' household servant, had only one memory of Chambers being in the Hiss house.  She'd likely have seen him more if he'd been coming by regularly to pick up spy documents.  Two of her sons, teenagers when the alleged spying occurred, did handyman jobs for the Hisses and received The Hiss Home Typewriter from the Hisses as part payment for helping them move within Georgetown, maybe in December 1937.  If the Catlett Kids had the Typewriter in early 1938 (the dates of The Typed Spy Documents), obviously The Typed Spy Documents were typed when the Hisses no longer had the Typewriter.  That exonerates Hiss, doesn't it?  Unfortunately for Hiss, the three Catletts proved very weak on cross-examination, changing their stories often and in ways that hurt Hiss.  Their changes are excellent proof of the value of cross-examination.  And if the Typewriter was in the Catlett's house when The Spy Documents were typed on it, how could Chambers have found it there and done the typing himself?  Can you picture Chambers sneaking into a black household and typing 64 pages of documents?  Wouldn't someone notice a smelly white guy, missing half his teeth, banging away at the Typewriter for hours?     FURTHER RESEARCH    Two journalists who covered the trials and were sympathetic to the Hisses gave remarkably unfavorable accounts of the Catletts' testimonies.  Alistair Cooke (at 183) describes Mrs. Catlett as “a big comfortable . . . simple, intelligent woman, a devoted servant and friend of the Hisses with a happy memory of her work with them and a grateful memory for many favors.”  Cooke, however, describes (at 187) one of her sons as embodying the extreme low point of human articulateness.  John Chabot Smith, who believed Hiss innocent, concedes (at 373) that the Catletts “didn't remember the details very clearly” and “were too vague to stand up under Murphy's cross-examination.”  Murphy, says Smith (at 374), shot down their story about the Typewriter “easily, and there was no way for the defense to repair the damage.”  One Catlett Kid “became more and more confused and resentful” as his cross-examination wound on.(Smith at 374.). “It was all very confusing and fatiguing, and by the time it was over there wasn't much left of Hiss's main line of defense.” (Smith at 377.)   The aforementioned Catlett Kid complained about his treatment by one FBI agent, and Prosecutor Murphy later had the agent testify that he had treated young Catlett fairly.  Lloyd Paul Stryker's cross-examination of the FBI agent was a masterpiece, according to Cooke.  Over 40 minutes Stryker “insinuate[d] the sort of terrorism that would throw an illiterate colored [sic, remember we're back in the 1940s] family into more kinds of confusion than a forgetfulness about dates.”  He tried to make the FBI's appearance and interrogations resemble an afternoon with the KGB or The Spanish Inquisition.It was “a bravura performance . . . that probably few modern lawyers could rival, in this age of the bureaucrat and the corporation lawyer sticking prosily to his brief.  . . .  [Stryker loosed] an ack-ack crackle of insinuation that had the court reporter's good right hand shuttling like a piston” (Cooke at 233) and “squeez[ed] every simple answer for some diabolical F.B.I. intent.”  (Cooke at 236.)     Questions:In evaluating the Catletts' testimonies, ponder a few variables.  First, what weight do you give their very friendly association with the Hisses?  (The Hisses attended a Catlett family wedding in the 1940s and paid the Catletts money to help them find the Typewriter.). Second, can you expect anyone to remember with precision the month of an event that occurred 10 to 15 years before and that was unremarkable at the time?  Third, the Catletts were black people at a time of segregation, hundreds of miles from home and surrounded by powerful white men asking them skillfully shaded questions.  Even if it's understandable that they gave varying answers, does that leave you able to believe with confidence any of their answers, whether favorable or unfavorable to Hiss?   This completes The Hiss Defense.  Has it (a) convinced you that Hiss was not guilty, (b) raised a reasonable doubt in your mind about Hiss's guilt, or (c) been such a mess that, added to The Prosecution's evidence, it strengthened the case that Hiss was guilty?  I know of a federal ex-prosecutor who says that more defendants should say absolutely nothing, put on no defense, and insist that the government has not proved its case, as it must, beyond a reasonable doubt.  He says he always rejoiced when a defendant mounted a big defense because almost always, in cross-examining the defendant's witnesses, he proved things that were essential or helpful to The Prosecution's case.  Do you think Prosecutor Murphy proved much with his cross-examination of Hiss's witnesses?  On the whole, did Hiss's witnesses help or hurt Hiss?  

In Podcast 26, Alger Hiss takes the stand!  In the courtroom corridor, Hiss said: “I have been waiting for this a long time.”  (Smith at 383.). Lloyd Paul Stryker walked him through his golden resume, emphasizing all the times he had been trusted with secrets and remained loyal (as far as anyone knew).  Hiss denied every bad act of which Chambers had accused him and ended by telling the jury that he was not guilty.   If you were cross-examining Hiss, you might be tempted, given his charm and rhetorical skills, to ask him just a few questions and then let him go.  You could prove his many changes of story and his rococo accounts of his financial dealings with “Crosley” by reading Hiss's HUAC testimony in to the record and introducing into evidence all the business records darkening or disproving what he said about the Ford with the sassy little trunk, the $400 loan, and the rug.  But Nixon, the only man who had cross-examined Hiss, warned Murphy not to do this.  Nixon got word to Murphy ‘Hiss makes a very good first impression, and you can't let that be the impression he leaves the jury with.  You've got to get down in the pit and wrestle with him.'  See who you think won the wrestling match.     FURTHER RESEARCH:   John Chabot Smith's pro-Hiss version of the trial covers Hiss's testimony at pages 379-85.  He describes Hiss as calm and careful.  Smith observes that Hiss's precision on the witness stand contrasted sharply with his hesitant and ever-changing testimony to HUAC.  Hiss said that since HUAC he'd had more time to remember what happened, but Smith worries that a hostile listener might think Hiss was now emitting carefully memorized lies and sticking to them for dear life.  Smith (at 383) describes Murphy's cross-examination as calm and methodical.  Professor Weinstein (at 475) describes Murphy's cross-examination as rapid-moving and unfocused (which may have been intentional, to throw Hiss off guard) and Hiss as remaining “almost unflappable.”  Weinstein writes (at 480) that Hiss left the witness stand “a bit battered,” but that he, like Chambers, “had held firmly to his basic story.”  Alistair Cooke writes (at 196) that Hiss “walked over to the witness stand . . . with the same nimble grace and compact charm” with which he had presided over the founding of the UN.  Cooke (at 200) describes Prosecutor Murphy, during Hiss's direct testimony, as “mentally tapping his teeth” and (at 208) describes Hiss under cross-examination as “superlative.”  Cooke (at 213) describes Murphy as ever more frustrated and husky as the cross-examination wound on.  Hiss's calm, graceful deportment, according to Cooke (at 209, 211), encouraged his admirers and infuriated his detractors.  Cooke wrote (at 196) that if Hiss was innocent, his “serenity could be only the deep well of security in a character of great strength and purity.  In a guilty man, . . . his detachment would be pathological in the extreme.”   Questions:  Are you one of Hiss's encouraged admirers or infuriated detractors?  Do you think he could have done any better on direct examination?  Would it have hurt him to describe a few times in his life when he had done wrong, or had just shown imperfect judgment?  Might such an admission have made him more human and perhaps likable?  Do you think Hiss survived Prosecutor Murphy's cross-examination without a scratch?  Or did he take one or two torpedoes?  Or did Murphy reduce Hiss to a smoking ruin?  

PART 01: The Fed has to taper faster because consumer prices (i.e. motor fuel, automobiles) rose faster than it expected. It didn't have the moxie to stare down the CPI increase and explain why QE (i.e. 'money') had nothing to do with CPI. Maybe they're not really a central (money) bank.PART 02: The US consumer price index increased by 6.8% year-over-year for the month of November. Inflation, right? Undisputed, incontrovertible evidence of inflation! Step right up and watch the amazing Harry Houdini of Macroeconomics escape this box of inflation and call it "not inflation".PART 03: Headline US wholesale inventories AND sales look incredible—Hallelujah! But if we exclude petroleum products? Inventory growth is outpacing sales growth—Humbug! And if we exclude motor vehicle parts and petroleum? Inventory growth is materially ahead of sales growth—Bah Humbug!----EP. 178 REFERENCES----Taper Rejection: https://bit.ly/3maMRFsThe Higher The CPI, The Less For Inflation: https://bit.ly/3p2XZpnSure, Tomorrow the CPI But Future CPI's In Today's Inventory?: https://bit.ly/3258EHCAlhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-------SHOW SPONSOR-------Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a Alistair Cooke, a/k/a Alistair Cookie) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bank for International Settlements, George Friedman, J.P. Koning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Liberty Street Economics, Lyn Alden, Maroon Macro, Matt Stoeller, Michael Pettis, Myrmikan, Perry Mehrling, Robert Breedlove, Rohan Grey, Velina Tchakarova and yes, even Jeff Snider.-----SEE ALL EPISODES-----Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL----HEAR ALL EPISODES-----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr---------THE TEAM---------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments. Illustrations by David Parkins, myth maker. Audio and video editor, The Terence. Logo design by pixelist Lisa Jiang. Master of ceremonies, Emil Kalinowski. Musical intro/outro is "Our Christmas" by The Snowy Hill Singers feat. Sam Shore found at Epidemic Sound.------FIND THE TEAM-------Jeff: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIPJeff: https://alhambrapartners.com/author/jsnider/Emil: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowskiEmil: https://www.EuroDollarEnterprises.comDavid: https://DavidParkins.com/Terence: https://www.VisualFocusMedia.comLisa: http://Lisa-Jiang.com/Lisa: https://twitter.com/@Nylonnerves

  Each side in this Case had a male homosexual secret.  Remember that we're in 1949, when conservatives thought that male homosexuality was a sin and a crime and enlightened liberals thought that gay men were tragic mistakes of nature, mentally ill, women trapped in men's bodies, but fortunately there was talk therapy, shock treatment and, if all else fails, lobotomies.  (Homosexual men were subjected to lobotomies until recently in Communist Cuba.)   Chambers, during his years in the Communist underground, had had gay sex with men he met in public places.  And Hiss's stepson (Mrs. Hiss's son by her first marriage) was gay and had been discharged from the Navy in 1945 on psychological grounds, which was a polite way of eliminating gay sailors.  The precise dimensions of each side's gay secret, how it was concealed, and how it was hinted at publicly and used covertly, is the subject of this Podcast.   Further Research:   Robert Stripling, HUAC's Chief Investigator and Nixon's partner in the first phase of the Case, said that it was whispered around the hearing room from Day One that Chambers was “a queer” — Stripling's word, not mine.  He also said that, whenever an ex-Communist testified, within hours rumors began that he or she was an alcoholic or drug addict, had been to see a psychiatrist, or was a “sex pervert” — again, Stripling's words, not mine.   The liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote discreetly that the “anti-Chambers whispering campaign was one of the most repellent of modern history.”  George H. Nash, “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945” at 100 (Basic Books 1976).  Alistair Cooke used equal delicacy when, in his inventory of ‘secret explanations' of what happened between Hiss and Chambers, he wrote “one or two other theories . . . went the rounds of Washington and New York [that] . . . so mercilessly intrude into other people's lives that the incompleteness of this report appears a small price to pay for giving everybody so slandered the benefit of a large doubt.  The reader who is most prurient to know about such theories will be the one most apt to hit on them.”  Cooke at 334.  Dr. Weinstein, in his definitive book on this Case, deals with Chambers' homosexual acts at 112-13, 129-30, with Hiss's stepson's gayness at 424-25, and with Hiss's use of Chambers secret gay life to ‘explain' his mentally ill lies about Hiss at 405-08 and 639-41 (section 4, titled “Chambers as Paranoid:  The Revenge Motif” in an appendix titled “Six Conspiracies in Search of an Author, 1948-1996”).    I have never seen any indication that the two sides in this Case formally agreed not to smear each other with their gay secrets.  Nor have I ever had any reason to believe that Alger Hiss was in the slightest degree gay.   Questions: If you were one of Hiss's lawyers and the prejudices of 1949 were still widespread today, would your ethics deter you from smearing Chambers as gay (and therefore mentally ill or evil)?  Don't you have an ethical obligation to defend your client vigorously??  If you were Prosecutor Murphy, and if you feared testimony by Hiss's stepson, would you use your gay smear on the same grounds?  On the whole, which side do you condemn more for its use of the other side's ‘gay secret'?   Here is a poem, titled “Lothrop, Montana” that Whittaker Chambers wrote. It was published (under Chambers' real name) in The Nation magazine — to this day, the media headquarters of the Hiss side — on June 30, 1926, at page 726:   The cottonwoods, the boy-trees, Imberle — the clean, green, central bodies Standing apart, freely, freely, but trammeled; With their branches inter-resting — for support, Never for caressing, except the wind blow. And yet, leaning so fearfully into one another, The leaves so pensile, so tremulously hung, as they lean toward one another; Unable to strain farther into one another And be apart; Held back where in the earth their secret roots Wrap one about another, interstruggle and knot; the vital filaments Writhing in struggle; heavy, fibrous, underearthen life, From which the sap mounts filling those trembling leaves Of the boy-trees, the cottonwoods.   Is it reading too much between the lines to see in there a description of wrestling (Chambers' college sport) by two young gay men, ending as each one's ‘sap mounts' within their ‘secret roots' and ‘trembling leaves'?

PART 01: You've heard that when the US Treasury yield curve inverts it is a recession warning for the United States. What about when the Eurodollar futures curve inverts? That is a warning too. A monetary red alert for the entire world economy. On December 1st the Eurodollar curve inverted.PART 02: When the US Treasury yield curve inverts it's a recession warning for the United States. What about when the Eurodollar futures curve inverts? That's a warning too; a monetary Red Alert for the entire world economy. On December 1st the Eurodollar curve inverted. Welcome to Hades.PART 03: Since 2008 the pace of purchases, sales - and everything in between - has not affected the price of bond yields. Indeed, bond yields seem to go the opposite way of they're 'supposed' to act. But what about the stock of purchases? Is there a total, that once reached, becomes critical?----EP. 175 REFERENCES---This Is A Big One (no, it's not clickbait): https://bit.ly/3oeNNKfIf Not ‘Flow', Then Has ‘Stock' ‘Rigged' The Flattening Curve In QE's Favor?: https://bit.ly/32Ijkf9Alhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-------SHOW SPONSOR-------Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a Alistair Cooke, a/k/a Alistair Cookie) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bank for International Settlements, George Friedman, J.P. Koning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Liberty Street Economics, Lyn Alden, Maroon Macro, Matt Stoeller, Michael Pettis, Myrmikan, Perry Mehrling, Robert Breedlove, Rohan Grey, Velina Tchakarova and yes, even Jeff Snider.-----SEE ALL EPISODES-----Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL----HEAR ALL EPISODES-----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr---------THE TEAM---------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments. Illustrations by David Parkins, myth maker. Audio and video editor, The Terence. Logo design by pixelist Lisa Jiang. Master of ceremonies, Emil Kalinowski. Music is "Silent Night" by One Man Quartet, "O Christmas Tree" by The Evergreen Trio, "What Child Is This" by The Evergreen Trio and "Saint Nick" by Nbhd Nick, all found at Epidemic Sound.------FIND THE TEAM-------Jeff: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIPJeff: https://alhambrapartners.com/author/jsnider/Emil: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowskiEmil: https://www.EuroDollarEnterprises.comDavid: https://DavidParkins.com/Terence: https://www.VisualFocusMedia.comLisa: http://Lisa-Jiang.com/Lisa: https://twitter.com/@Nylonnerves

This Podcast is the closest the trials get to high comedy.  Dreamy, arrogant State Department economist, Henry Julian Wadleigh, worked in the same area as Hiss (several levels below Hiss).  Wadleigh testifies that he passed State Department documents to Chambers in 1937 and 1938 without authorization.  He thus corroborates Chambers' testimony that Chambers was the hub of a spy ring in State in those years.     But might he also help Hiss?  Could it have been Wadleigh who gave Chambers all those documents?  How might Hiss make a case that it was Wadleigh who passed the papers that Chambers said he got from Hiss?  Would Chambers have any reason to falsely accuse Hiss if he could truthfully accuse Wadleigh?     Lloyd Paul Stryker's cross-examination succeeded in making Wadliegh look like a ridiculous head-in-the-clouds dreamer.  (Just like Chambers, Stryker hints, all these commies are weirdoes unlike the solid, respectable Alger.). Wadleigh made such a fool of himself that, when once Murphy objected to Stryker's cross-examination, Judge Kaufman couldn't rule on the objection because he was laughing so hard that he had hidden his face in his papers.   FURTHER RESEARCH:  Back at the Grand Jury, there was a dramatic scene in the room where all the witnesses sat before being summoned to the presence of the Grand Jury.  When Wadleigh and Hiss saw each other, they exchanged pleasantries and then Wadliegh told Hiss “The F.B.I. came to see me and I got sort of panicky and told them that I had given some documents to Chambers.”  Hiss purported to be “astounded.”  (Hiss at 187.). I would love to have ten great actors perform Hiss being astounded — reactions all the way from “My God, there was a spy ring in State.  Horrors!”  to “You, too, Julian?!”  See also Grand Jury Transcript at 3949; Weinstein at 298.   Alistair Cooke wrote that Hiss might have been “a greater Wadleigh.”  Rebecca West, in her review of Cooke's book, says that this view “speaks of chaotic moral and intellectual values.”  She supports this opinion in her memorable prose.  1950 University of Chicago Law Review at 672-73, available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=uclrev    The Baltimore Sun newspaper interviewed Wadleigh shortly before he testified in the second trial.  By then he was disgraced and destitute.  The newspaper described Wadleigh as “[p]ossessed of a self-esteem amounting almost to self-deification” and “look[ing] pityingly on the remainder of humanity, . . . distressed when it so often fails to respond to his guidance from a self-erected mountain.”  Thomas O'Neill, “Wadleigh Set for New Role,” The Baltimore Sunday Sun, Nov., 27, 1949, page 5, col. 1.   Questions:  No one has ever suggested that Wadleigh was lying.  Can you think of any reason he would lie to corroborate Chambers?  After you've listened to this Podcast, do you agree with me that, after all was said and done, Wadleigh helped the Prosecution and damaged Hiss?  At the second trial, Wadleigh told the jury in detail how he, a mild Socialist and not a Communist, gave information to the Soviet Union because he wanted to help fight fascism, not to promote Communism.  He thought he was helping his country in the long run, not hurting it.  Do you have sympathy for Wadleigh's intentions and/or acts?      

PART 01: Jay Powell has been nominated by President Biden to serve another term as the Federal Reserve chair. Though his nomination has not even been heard by the US Congress, another group of people has already passed judgement on the second term: the bond market (and they say it'll be a failure!).PART 02: The Federal Reserve, and other central banks, buy tremendous amounts of government securities and this should impact bond prices. Should, but doesn't. That's because there's an even more powerful force than the Fed, the bond market itself. We review the 2007-19 evidence.PART 03: The nominal value of Chinese imports of iron ore, German exports and Japanese exports all look pretty, pretty good. But the unit volume is pretty, pretty awful. There are fewer units being utilized! This is an economic warning that is presently hidden behind hire prices (value = unit * price).----EP. 168 REFERENCES----#continuity The Least Useful Person: https://bit.ly/3r4k8VNSorry Jay, Curve(s) #continuity Is Not A Good Thing: https://bit.ly/3DP5XYnNo, The Fed Does *Not* Rig The Bond Market And It Only Takes Five Seconds To Debunk This Myth: https://bit.ly/3CLJMRuHow the Fed Rigs the Bond Market: https://on.wsj.com/3p0eC3VThe ‘Growth Scare' Keeps Growing Out Of The Macro (Money) Illusion: https://bit.ly/3cM2j5tAlhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-------SHOW SPONSOR-------Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a Alistair Cooke, a/k/a Alistair Cookie) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bank for International Settlements, George Friedman, J.P. Koning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Liberty Street Economics, Lyn Alden, Maroon Macro, Matt Stoeller, Michael Pettis, Myrmikan, Perry Mehrling, Robert Breedlove, Rohan Grey, Velina Tchakarova and yes, even Jeff Snider.-----SEE ALL EPISODES-----Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL----HEAR ALL EPISODES-----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr---------THE TEAM---------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments. Illustrations by David Parkins, myth maker. Audio and video editor, The Terence. Logo design by pixelist Lisa Jiang. Master of ceremonies, Emil Kalinowski. Podcast intro/outro is "Turquoise Waves" by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist found at Epidemic Sound.------FIND THE TEAM-------Jeff: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIPJeff: https://alhambrapartners.com/author/jsnider/Emil: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowskiEmil: https://www.EuroDollarEnterprises.comDavid: https://DavidParkins.com/Terence: https://www.VisualFocusMedia.comLisa: http://Lisa-Jiang.com/Lisa: https://twitter.com/@Nylonnerves

Photo: http://www.spartacus-educational.com Now comes the witness who, in my opinion, dooms Alger Hiss.  He gives expert testimony supporting Chambers' claim that the typed spy documents were passed to him by Alger Hiss after Mrs. Hiss typed them on the Hiss home typewriter.  Lloyd Paul Stryker did not ask this witness a single question on cross-examination.  Listen to this Podcast to learn who was the witness and how he formed his expert opinion.  After the witness left the stand, all ears waited to hear Hiss explain how dozens of documents, obviously prepared for espionage, got typed on his home typewriter but he is still innocent. FURTHER RESEARCH: As one scholar put it, you wouldn't want to hang a man based  on the testimony of Whittaker Chambers and nothing more, but how could you disbelieve Chambers plus 64 pages of typewritten spy documents that had been typed on the Hiss home typewriter?  Herbert L. Packer, Ex-Communist Witnesses:  Four Studies in Fact Finding (Stanford Univ. Press 1962) at 22. The next witness is Raymond Feehan, sometimes called Ramos Feehan — a great multi-cultural name, perhaps only possible in 1949 in New York City.  Mr. Feehan was an FBI employee and a member of the profession of The Examination of Questioned Documents.  I have been unable to find a photo of him or any other information about him — which makes him the perfect dispassionate expert.  Alistair Cooke describes him as “a vigorous, dark-haired F.B.I. expert, . . .strictly a laboratory man . . . [who] appeared quite untouched by the emotions of the case . . . . [and had] all the basking pride of a travel lecturer much in demand.”  Alistair Cooke, A Generation on Trial (1952) at 168-69. Mr. Feehan opined that the typed spy documents and another bunch of documents, which everyone agreed had been typed on the Hiss home typewriter, had been typed on the same typewriter.  This opinion, wrote Alistair Cooke (at 168), “provoked quick intakes of breath from many casual spectators.” It is often misstated that this Case turned on a typewriter.  That's not true.  Mr. Feehan formed his opinion before the typewriter that everyone agreed was the Hiss home typewriter had been found.  Mr. Feehan based his opinion instead on a comparison of two sets of documents — the typed spy documents and the so-called Hiss Standards, which everyone had agreed had been typed on the Hiss home typewriter.  It is as if you proved that the fingerprints on a certain glass were my fingerprints by comparing them not to my fingers, but to a fingerprints (say, in the files of the FBI) that everyone agreed were my fingerprints.  The Prosecution's evidence, the evidence that convicted Alger Hiss, would have been exactly the same if no typewriter had ever been found. Concurring in Mr. Feehan's opinion was the founder of the profession of The Examination of Questioned Documents, one Ordway Hilton.  Ordway Hilton, Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents (Revised Edition) (Elsevier Science Publishing Co. 1982) at  224-25, 232. Questions:  How will Hiss explain how the typed spy documents got typed on his home typewriter?  His Explanation #1, to the Grand Jury, that Chambers snuck into the Hiss house and typed them up himself when no one was looking, didn't work.  He'll need a damned good Explanation #2, won't he?  You'll have to wait for Podcast #26 to hear it.  In the meantime, can you think of a way that Chambers (or someone with more time and resources) could make a ‘fake' typewriter and produce typewritten documents that looked exactly like documents that had been typed on the real Hiss home typewriter?  For that, you'll need to wait for Podcast #35.

PART 01: America's September 2021 Treasury International Capital data corroborates dis/deflationary indications observed across various sources, the vast majority of which imply there's not enough money, and/or it's inadequately distributed, for the global economy to achieve permanent recovery.PART 02: Beijing reconfirmed what was made clear in 2017, during the 19th National Party Congress: the economic boom was over and it is time to prepare for it. If anyone in the West would care to listen, the Central Committee is referring not only to China but the entire global economy.PART 03: M1 and M2 once informed central bank decisions. But the monetary aggregates were so narrowly defined that they were, in effect, mere keyholes that offered policymakers an unsatisfactory, and often-enough misleading, peek into the great monetary hall.----EP. 164 REFERENCES---TIC: Consistent, Coherent, Corroborated, Inflation Never Had A Chance: https://bit.ly/3cDfqpOChinese Ice Cream: https://bit.ly/3kPgTO4We Can't Depend On the Ms, Which Only Produce Bad Vs: https://bit.ly/3wZexRAIs M2 The Money Behind Inflation? If Not, What Is (Or Isn't)?: https://bit.ly/3DAH5n1Alhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-------SHOW SPONSOR-------Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a Alistair Cooke, a/k/a Alistair Cookie) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bank for International Settlements, George Friedman, J.P. Koning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Liberty Street Economics, Lyn Alden, Maroon Macro, Matt Stoeller, Michael Pettis, Myrmikan, Perry Mehrling, Robert Breedlove, Rohan Grey, Velina Tchakarova and yes, even Jeff Snider.-----SEE ALL EPISODES-----Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL----HEAR ALL EPISODES-----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr---------THE TEAM---------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments. Illustrations by David Parkins, swine satirist. Audio and video editor, The Terence. Logo design by pixelist Lisa Jiang. Master of ceremonies, Emil Kalinowski. Podcast intro/outro is "Different Days" by Chill Cole found at Epidemic Sound.------FIND THE TEAM-------Jeff: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIPJeff: https://alhambrapartners.com/author/jsnider/Emil: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowskiEmil: https://www.EuroDollarEnterprises.comDavid: https://DavidParkins.com/Terence: https://www.VisualFocusMedia.comLisa: http://Lisa-Jiang.com/Lisa: https://twitter.com/@Nylonnerves

Robert Stripling & Richard Nixon  Everyone always asks about the topic of this Podcast #21: “What was in the secret State Department documents?”  These are the 126 pages that Chambers introduced as the last documents that Hiss gave him.  State Department men authenticated them as copies (or summaries or excerpts) of actual State Department documents, many marked CONFIDENTIAL and all dated between December 31, 1937, and April 1, 1938.  The documents concern many subjects, but they generally share two characteristics.  First, they had little or nothing to do with Hiss's job, which was trade between the US and other countries.  Second, they had a lot to do with two subjects about which the US knew a lot and about which the Soviet Union knew little through its own efforts but was intensely interested in at that time.  Those subjects were what was going on in Germany and Japan, two aggressively expansionist countries bordering the Soviet Union and sworn to its destruction.  Get ready for a deep dive into what mattered to the Soviet Union in those years; and into The Robinson-Reubens Affair, an “international incident” between the US and the Soviets in early 1938 that provoked what may be the “smoking gun” document in this Case.   FURTHER RESEARCH    Episode 21:  Chambers says little about the content of the documents.  I doubt he had time to read them when he had them — they had to be photographed and returned promptly to their sources.  On his way to the photographer, on a street car in Washington or a train to Baltimore, Chambers wouldn't want to be seen perusing State Department papers marked CONFIDENTIAL.  He did read some, however.  Of them he wrote (in Witness at 426): “I concluded that political espionage was a magnificent waste of time and effort — not because the sources were holding back; they were pathetically eager to help — but because the secrets of foreign offices are notoriously overrated.  There was little about political espionage, it seemed to me, that an intelligent man, who knew the forces, factors, and general direction of history in our time, could not arrive at by using political imagination, backed by a careful study of the available legitimate facts.”   Hiss addresses the documents in his first book, In the Court of Public Opinion (at 251-86).  He notes (at 252) that one of The Pumpkin Papers — a document on a roll of film Chambers produced, all of whose pictures were taken on one day — was a ‘working' or (I think) carbon copy.  Hiss says that his office received the original, so he cannot have been the source of that paper or any other papers in that roll.  This misses the possibility that Hiss could have decided to pass the paper to Chambers after the original had passed from Hiss's control.  It would have been easy for Hiss to pilfer papers from other men's offices or from central files.  The State Department was, by our standards, incredibly lax in security up to our entry into World War II in 1941.  The British spy Kim Philby, after he skipped over the Iron Curtain in the 60s, wrote “it is nonsense to suppose that a resolute and experienced operator occupying a senior post in the Foreign Office can have access only to the papers that are placed on his desk in the ordinary course of duty.  . . .  I gained access to the files of British agents in the Soviet Union when I was supposed to be chivvying Germans in Spain.”  Kim Philby, My Silent War (Grove Press 1968) at 214.   Other analyses of the documents are in John Chabot Smith's “Alger Hiss:The True Story” at 331-54 and in the 1952 edition of Alistair Cooke's ‘Generation on Trial' book at 161-67.  Rebecca West, in her critical review of Cooke's book at pages 666-67 of the 1950 University of Chicago Law Review, makes some fun of Mr. Cooke's analysis.  The only lengthy analysis of all the documents Chambers produced (those introduced in the trial and those that were not) is in Professor Weinstein's book (2013 edition) at 255-81.   Lloyd Paul Stryker found the documents so boring that, as they were being read word by word to the jury, he was outside in the corridor smoking a cigar.  Cooke at 164.  I'm sure the jury envied him.     Questions:  If you were the Prosecution, could you have done more to make the presentation of the documents less narcolepsy-inducing?  If you were Mr. Stryker, might you have stayed in the courtroom, yawned and otherwise tried to make them seem trivial?  (Maybe that was his point in leaving the courtroom.) If you were on the jury, would you have, despite being bored, been impressed at the volume and seriousness of the documents?     If they were not passed to Chambers by Hiss, who else could have passed them to him?98% of them crossed Hiss's desk in the normal course of business.  If there was a conspiracy hatched to frame Hiss in 1948, how much work and talent would it have taken, in that year, to find the originals of all the decade-old documents?  And how about the effort of photographing the Pumpkin Papers with an old camera on old film and typing up copies on a 20 year old typewriter on 20 year old paper and with a 20 year old typewriter ribbon?  

PART 01: Around the world data shows consumer prices are accelerating like we haven't seen in years, even decades. Why? Is it because politicians are wantonly giving away money? Are gluttonous central bankers printing cash? Is it a supply/demand imbalance? Is this the 1970s Great Inflation?PART 02: The "landmine" has been part of each of the four global/regional dollar squeezes of the past 14 years (2007-09, 2011-12, 2014-16, 2018-20). The "landmine" is when US Treasury Bond yields decline precipitously and signal that economic potential has been seriously maimed. Where are we in 2021? PART 03: The last time the Federal Reserve tapered its QE program the central bank spent HOURS and HOURS and HOURS and HOURS on determining which adjective to us. Adverbs. Dangling participles, onomatopoeia, clauses, subject and object. What was NOT discussed? Money. Credit. Collateral.---------SPONSOR----------Macropiece Theater with Emil Kalinowski (a/k/a Alistair Cooke, a/k/a Alistair Cookie) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from: Adam Smith, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bank for International Settlements, George Friedman, J.P. Koning, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Liberty Street Economics, Lyn Alden, Maroon Macro, Matt Stoeller, Michael Pettis, Myrmikan, Perry Mehrling, Robert Breedlove, Rohan Grey, Velina Tchakarova and yes, even Jeff Snider.-----SEE EPISODE 157------Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL-----HEAR EPISODE 157----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr----EP. 157c REFERENCES---What Does The Rest of the Market Think About The ‘Epic' CPI (TIPS, breakevens, even consumers themselves): https://bit.ly/30dfJ8hHow Can A CPI Now Above Six Price Like This?: https://bit.ly/3c1ScsXLandmine Review: The Big One: https://bit.ly/3EXXEJYLandmine Lurking, Gotta Make Tantrum Happen Before It's Too Late (again): https://bit.ly/3wBZ3miWhat Does Taper Look Like From The Inside? Not At All What You'd Think: https://bit.ly/3C77qYfAlhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-----------WHO-------------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments and Emil Kalinowski. Art by David Parkins, lipstick lampoonist. Podcast intro/outro is "Moonshiner's Turn" by Martin Landström found at Epidemic Sound.

PART 01: The 'debate' in the US Congress about the debt 'ceiling' prevented the US Treasury Dept. from issuing UST Bills, the ultimate risk-free asset. This put serious stress on the Chinese currency. Now, with the 'debate' tabled till December, Beijing (and the world) are safe... for now.PART 02: The US Treasury yield curve IS NOT inverted and, therefore, is not signaling a recession warning. But IT IS warning that the Federal Reserve's reasoning to "taper" its quantitative easing program (i.e. economic recovery/health) is unfounded. We saw this in 2018. And 2014. And 2005.PART 03: A review of transcripts and recordings from the 1970s reveals that monetary and political authorities were unable to identify the source of inflation (international liquidity creation). The authorities didn't understand money in the 1970s, and they still don't.---------SPONSOR----------Macropiece Theater with Alistair Cooke (i.e. Emil Kalinowski) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from George Friedman, Lyn Alden, Daniel Oliver, Michael Pettis, the Bank for International Settlements and yes, even Karl Marx.-----SEE EPISODE 136------Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL-----HEAR EPISODE 136----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MReason: https://bit.ly/3lt5NiHSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr----EP. 136 REFERENCES---While The Fed Chases The Unemployment Rate, TIC's Eurodollar Deflation Case Is Unusually Unambiguous: https://bit.ly/3G8RgkrThe Curve Is Missing Something Big: https://bit.ly/3jm0lNaThe Power of Money Lurks In the Shadows: https://bit.ly/30EPSFPAlhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-----------WHO-------------Jeff Snider, head of global investment research for Alhambra Investments with Emil Kalinowski, Trevor Something listener. Art by David Parkins, coloured-pencil pamphleteer. Show produced by Terence, focused visuals. Podcast intro/outro is "Aurora Borealis" by Chill Cole found at Epidemic Sound.

PART 01: The US dollar is rising in value against a collection of currencies (except one). It's disconfirming evidence of sustainable economic recovery; it implies strained USD-funding. And there's still that one key, stable currency - unusually stable; suspiciously stable.PART 02: We review palladium, copper and iron ore - all metals and minerals that peaked in value in May (lumber too).  Some commodities continue to rise in value, specifically energy.  How do we reconcile the deflationary/disinflationary former to the inflationary latter?  Also, US auto sales.PART 03: "Despite some eerie echoes, the past is not the best guide to the present," writes The Economist. Jeff Snider agrees, but for entirely different reasons. Stagnation? Yes, definitely. But NOT inflation - despite the clear price increases! Wait, what?---------SPONSOR----------Macropiece Theater with Alistair Cooke (i.e. Emil Kalinowski) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things, why not listen and hear what they have to say? You could do worse things with your time (i.e. Bloomberg, CNBC, et cetera). Recent readings include thoughts from George Friedman, Lyn Alden, Daniel Oliver, Michael Pettis, the Bank for International Settlements and yes, even Karl Marx.-----SEE EPISODE 122------Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL-----HEAR EPISODE 122----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr----EP. 122 REFERENCES----More Dollar Bull: https://bit.ly/3iGt2UJ(Urjit Patel) Emerging markets face a dollar double whammy: https://on.ft.com/3mr6F6EWhat's The Real Downside To Some of These Key Commodities?: https://bit.ly/3oVIsZdIs the world economy going back to the 1970s?: https://econ.st/3BmDat5Alhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wWlinRealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7-----------WHO-------------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments and Emil Kalinowski. Art by David Parkins, myth spinner. Podcast intro/outro is "Knight's Templar" by Adriel Fair found at Epidemic Sound.

PART 01: US Treasury Bonds have lost a lot of value since August, and especially in the last weeks of September. Is it a taper tantrum? Are foreigners selling lousy Uncle Sam paper? Is it Armageddon (again)? No, this happens—incredibly—'every' August. But why?PART 02: Since 2011, the US Treasury 10-year bond peaks in value during the summer-to-autumn transition. Ignoring the economic context, whether positive or negative, bonds lose value. They lose value whether central banks are hawkish or dovish. Why? We offer five theories.PART 03: Financial collateral is indispensable to the modern monetary system. Unfortunately the most pristine collateral, the US Treasury Bill, is in short supply because of the political debt ceiling drama. So, we identify seven warning indicators for acute collateral shortage.---------SPONSOR----------Macropiece Theater with Alistair Cooke (i.e. Emil Kalinowski) reading the latest essays, blog posts, speeches and excerpts from economics, geopolitics and more. Interesting people write interesting things. Recent readings include thoughts from George Friedman, Lyn Alden, Daniel Oliver, Michael Pettis, the Bank for International Settlements-----SEE EPISODE 115------Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3royEmil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL-----HEAR EPISODE 115----Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPnApple: https://apple.co/3czMcWNDeezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPEiHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cITuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2ZCastro: https://bit.ly/30DMYzaGoogle: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48MSpotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mYPandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3QgBreaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFOCastbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQPodbean: https://bit.ly/2QpaDghStitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GBPlayerFM: https://bit.ly/3piLtjVPodchaser: https://bit.ly/3oFCrwNPocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdtSoundCloud: https://bit.ly/3l0yFfKListenNotes: https://bit.ly/38xY7pbAmazonMusic: https://amzn.to/2UpEk2PPodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr----EP. 115a REFERENCES---Finally The Taper Tantrum, Or What's Wrong With August?: https://bit.ly/2XXJoRbMaybe More Autumn Than Strictly August: https://bit.ly/3D01IbtSome Next Steps To Watch For Scarce Collateral: https://bit.ly/3l3xGxH-----------WHO-------------Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments and Emil Kalinowski.  Art by David Parkins, licensed to killustrate. Bass-y James-Bond-style podcast intro/outro is "The New Black" by Mary Riddle found at Epidemic Sound.

Republican members of the House un-American  Activities Committee (HUAC). (Library of Congress)  Sandwiched between the drama of the Commodore Hotel (last week's Podcast) and the equally sensational televised confrontation of Hiss and Chambers (next week's), this Podcast #12 is a backgrounder on the political climate of 1948, the setting which was shaken to its foundations by this scandal.  There were four views of the world.  Old-style conservatives wanted to return to isolationism and viewed domestic Communists as minor nuisances.  Ultra-left intellectuals saw The Century of the Common Man dawning and thought, incredibly in retrospect, that the Soviet Union under Stalin was some kind of human progress.  American capitalists thought that capitalism, tempered by some kind of safety net and led by the USA, was the wonderful and unopposed future of the human race.  The capitalists, like the isolationists, dismissed domestic Communists as a minor problem.  Fourth and last, fearful conservatives (including ex-Communists like Chambers) saw domestic subversion — traitors in our midst — as an unsolved crisis for the country; and they saw Communism on the march as a disaster-in-the-making for the whole world. This Case vindicated this last group, educated the old isolationists and the triumphant capitalists, and disgraced the ultra-left intellectuals. Further Research:  Episode 12:  Two works are cited by name in this Podcast.  Harold Laski's book — ‘Faith, Reason, and Civilization:  An essay in historical analysis' — was published by Viking in 1944.  Vintage copies are available on Amazon (thank you, Mr. Bezos).  Henry Luce's famous essay, ‘The American Century,' is available on the Internet at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mlassite/discussions261/luce.pdf (not secure).   Also on the Internet, the essay is debated to this day.  For more on the political climate of 1948, I recommend reading roughly the pages cited above in the above-cited works of Alistair Cooke, Leslie Fiedler, Walter Goodman, and  Murray Kempton.  Most books about the politics of this era, sad to say, fall into two extreme camps.  One says there were secret Commies everywhere (FDR and Truman may have been in on it).  The other says there were no Commies; but if there were, they never did any harm; but if they did harm, their hearts were in the right place; and if their hearts were black, they were all victims of political persecution.  The single best broad view of the political climate of 1948 is James F. Nagle's '1948:  The Crossroads Year,' most recently published in 2007 by BookSurge. Questions:  Was there factual evidence supporting each of the four groups identified in this Podcast?  Which group, in your opinion, got the most right and the least wrong?  Which one got the least right and the most wrong?  Does the fluid climate of 1948 remind you of America's decade-long ‘holiday from history' after the fall of Communism and before 9/11?  Do you remember “The End of History”?  Had you heard of Usama Bin Laden before 9/11?    

 Pic: Library of Congress In Podcast 11, Nixon and Stripling pull off another tactical masterstroke.  They bring Hiss and Chambers together, to the surprise of both of them, in a hotel room in New York City.  Despite the locale, it's a formal hearing of Nixon's HUAC Subcommittee and there is a transcript (not to mention half a dozen memoirs).  Nixon asks Hiss, once and for all, if Chambers is the man he knew as George Crosley 10-15 years before.  What happened next has been called “bizarre and even incredible” and “a bit like a Henry James story, . . . full of subtleties and ambiguities.”  Hiss and Stripling were both there and, although they agreed on very little, each in his memoir used the exact same phrase to describe what happened — “something out of a dream.” Further Research: Episode 11:  The descriptions of the scene in Suite 1400 of the Commodore Hotel in New York City in the principals' memoirs are Chambers at 599-615 (at 603 “I felt what any humane man must feel when, pursuing an end he is convinced is right, finds himself the instrument of another man's disaster”), Hiss at 81-99 (at 99, “I resented the Committee's callous and ruthless procedures.  . . .  [T]he Committee and I were now at war.”), Nixon (Six Crises at 31-37, (RN at 61-63 (at 61), “I do not think that I have ever seen one man look at another with more hatred in his eyes than did Alger Hiss when he looked at Whittaker Chambers.”), Stripling at 126-32 (at 128, when Chambers entered the hotel sitting room where Hiss was, “Hiss did not turn around, did not change his expression.  I suppose I expected him to leap up, wheel around, and demand why this man — whom he had testified he did not know — had made these astounding charges against him.”).   See also Weinstein at 45-49 and  Alistair Cooke (at 73-84) describing (at 74) the scene as one that “began circumspectly enough and ended in a naked and desperate scramble for reputation.” Hiss brought along a friend, Mr. Charles Dollard, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.  Chambers writes (Witness at 603) that Dollard “hovers at the edge of the ensuing scene like the ‘first attendant, friend to the Duke' in a Shakespeare play.  Most of the time he  lurked in one corner of the room . . . with a curiously fixed smile on his face, which Hiss's loftier jibes turned incandescent with amusement.  . . .  I am not alone in supposing that this by-play was intended to convey the sense that these two beings were native to another atmosphere, were merely condescending, a little impatiently, to the summons of the earthlings in the room.”   Dollard later told Hiss's attorneys that “Alger behaved very badly.”  (Weinstein at 49 (footnote).) Questions:  Do you think, as I do, that when Hiss asked to speak with Chambers' dentist, he was just trying to abort the hearing, to close down the scene because he had no idea what to do — ‘get me the hell out of here,' ‘beam me up, Scottie!'  Do you sympathize with Chambers, who wrote that “I felt somewhat like a broken-mouthed sheep whose jaws have been pried open and are being inspected by wary buyers at an auction”?  (Chambers at 606.)       

Above, Elizabeth Bentley, who gave evidence at the first HUAC hearing. Pic: Library of Congress In 1948, Whittaker Chambers is Time Magazine's Senior Editor.  He is forced against his will to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee about his past in the Communist underground.  He names seven names, but the Committee zeroes in on one of them — Alger Hiss.  With this begins the doom of both men, major climate change in American politics, and the career of a future President. Further Research: Episode 5:  The best book about the colorful House Un-American Activities Committee is Walter Goodman's “The Committee:  The extraordinary career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1968).  Goodman was a liberal, mildly mocking of HUAC, but even he had to admit that 1948 was HUAC's “Vintage Year.”  Pages 247-67 concern the Hiss-Chambers hearings.   Chambers' account of his testimony is at pages 535-50 of the 1980 Regnery Gateway edition of “Witness.”  Other accounts are in Alistair Cooke (1952) at 55-59 and Weinstein (2013) at 13-18.    A lacerating review of Alistair Cooke's book (the 1950 edition) was written by the great British feminist and essayist Rebecca West, was published in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1952, and is available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=uclrev.  I commend Mr. Cooke's book especially for the narration of the trials, which I believe he covered for The Manchester Guardian.  His verbal sketches of the courtroom scenes — the judges, lawyers, and witnesses — are almost worthy of Henry James.  Unfortunately, however, Mr. Cooke retained so much of his English detachment that he fell for Hiss's pose as an honorable gentleman; and Cooke simply does not get the red-hot Chambers.  Cooke's courtroom descriptions are wonderful, but my opinion is that Ms. West's criticisms are correct.  By the 1952 edition of his book, which covers Hiss's claims of “forgery by typewriter” (Podcast #25), Cooke seems to have concluded that Hiss was guilty. Richard Nixon, though he was almost silent during Chambers' first testimony, recorded his impressions of Chambers in the first chapter of his 1962 book “Six Crises” (“Never . . . was a more sensational investigation started by a less impressive witness.”).  The transcript of most of HUAC's 1948 Communist hearings was published in 2020 by Alpha Editions.  “Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q(2)).”  Chambers' first testimony is at 563-84.  I find these transcripts fascinating because you see HUAC's members first believe Chambers, then Hiss, and then slowly conclude that Hiss  is, as Representative Hebert said, the greatest actor that America has ever produced. Questions:  Imagine you are Whittaker Chambers.   You are forced in 1948 to testify about your underground  Communist past.  Do you talk about the chat group only, or the spy ring, too?  The first was silly, the second was a crime.  Do you name names, including the brilliant man who was your only friend in those years? About naming the names of your co-conspirators, you had less than 24 hours notice before your testimony.  There was no time to reach out and call them.  Maybe they reformed shortly after you did and are leading upstanding lives like you are. Before Congressional committees, there are no rules of evidence.  Any question may be asked and any answer may be given.  What questions can you anticipate?  If you testify only about the chat group and you are asked point blank about spying, what answer will you give?  Reveal the crime of spying, or commit perjury?  How do you say something, something to alert the government and the public to the truth, without ruining your life and your friends' lives? Based just on this first testimony, do you find Chambers generally believable?  Totally believable?  Do you fear that, while telling the truth most of the time, he may succumb to the temptation to brighten pastel shades into primary colors to make his story more dramatic?  What is his motive to tell the truth?  What is his motive to lie?  Does he seem a reluctant witness?  Do you have a feeling that, once he got the subpoena, he thought to himself, “OK, let ‘er rip.  There's gonna be a big scene and I want to be the star”?  Do the questions and comments of the HUAC members and staffers, especially Chief Investigator Stripling, give you confidence in HUAC as a finder of fact?  What is your impression of the Acting Chairman, Karl Mundt, and of Hiss's chief defender, the racist, anti-Semite, Democrat, and ardent New Dealer from Mississippi, “Lightnin' John” Rankin?   

Photo: Craig Whitehead on Unsplash The backdrop of this case is American Communism — infatuation with it and disillusionment with it.  Communism predicted a violent upheaval that would produce a better life.  In actual practice, it produced only drab, poverty-stricken dictatorships that killed and starved millions.  Around 1935, the American Communist Party stopped acting revolutionary and posed as “liberals in a hurry.”  It got a few hundred Americans to join the Communist underground and work secretly for the Soviet Union.  The issue is whether Hiss was one of those people.   Further Research Episode 4:  Podcast 4:  The great book of Communism is Das Kapital, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  I've always found it impenetrably dense and boring; to follow it you have to know a lot about 19th century factories.  The best short (and readable) works expounding Communist theory and action plans are two by Marx, The Communist Manifesto and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.  Among the many works from the Soviet Union describing Communism, the best short ones, in my opinion, are Lenin's “What Is To Be Done?” and Stalin's “The Foundations of Leninism.”   The best books about the reality and results of Communism are the short “Communism: A History,” by Richard Pipes and the long “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,” by Stephane Courtois and others. Two excellent descriptions of what it felt like to live in the 1930s and lose faith in laissez-faire Capitalism, and perhaps briefly to fall for Communism, are (1) Alistair Cooke's book about the Case, "A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss" (Knopf 1950 and 1952), the first Chapter, titled "Remembrance of Things Past: The 1930s," and (2) Murray Kempton's essays about the radicals of the 1930s, "Part of Our Time: Some Ruins & Monuments of the Thirties" (Simon & Schuster 1955 and The Modern Library 1998), the first chapter, titled "A Prelude." All these books are available on Amazon. Questions:  What do you think was the appeal of Soviet Communism in the 1930s?  What did Communism have that fascism, socialism, and The New Deal lacked? If you came to believe in Communism, what would make you lose your confidence in it?  The obvious lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, the American Party's slavish adherence to every 180 degree change in the Party line from Moscow, the purge trials of 1936-38, and Stalin hopping into bed with Hitler in their 1939 Non-Aggression Pact?  Does Communism sound like a secular religion — with its all-encompassing philosophy, sacred texts, worshipped founders, and martyrs? Might part of Communism's appeal in the 1930s, compared to conventional religion, be that (1) it claimed to be rational, even scientific, (2) it promised paradise here on earth in just a few years (you don't have to wait for heaven), (3) you don't have to work for it (it's on the inevitable ‘timetable of history'), and (4) it frees the individual from any sense of personal sin? If you devoted your life to Communism and the Party and became disillusioned, what would you do?  Decide you had a bad picker when it came to politics and move on to baseball or real estate?  Remain a Marxist but not a Party member — hope another group will form and be “real Communists”?  Become a Socialist, or ‘get real' and join the Republicans or the Democrats?  Or, like Chambers and a few others, make anti-Communism the mainspring of the rest of your life?  

Welcome to "Between the Cracks" (or "the ones who got away").  Even though Community Keyboards has chatted with many organ and keyboard world celebrities, many more have avoided the probing questions of your host!  With the kind permission of THE ESSEX ORGAN MUSEUM (http://www.essexorganmuseum.com/links-Interest.html) we present an A to Z of those who never made it, for whatever reason, to the programme. William Arthur Davies was born at Bolton, Lancashire, on June 25 1921. At the age of seven he began taking piano lessons, and by the time he was 11 he was learning the organ with his uncle, who played at the local Methodist Chapel. William was soon to be found practicing on the local Lido and Odeon cinema organs. At the age of 18 he joined the RAF, and served in Ceylon. Davies's professional career began at the Gaumont cinema, Wolverhampton, in 1946. By late 1947 he was playing at the Gaumont, Finchley. He then moved to the West End of London. There, after a short spell at the Metropole, Victoria, he spent 18 months at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road. In 1950 he moved towards arranging and composition, and began writing for the BBC Light Music Unit. He then embarked on his long association with the popular radio program, Friday Night is Music Night, as conductor, arranger and featured piano soloist. In 1956 Davies joined British Lion at Shepperton Studios and scored several films for them. By the 1960s he was Musical Director for Southern Television, and in 1972 he provided the music for Alistair Cooke's epic radio series Letter from America. In 1975 Davies worked with Alan Bennett on his television play Sunset Across the Bay, and three years later wrote the score for the film The Last Tasmanian. Throughout this time Davies could be heard on the BBC Theatre organ in London. He also played at various cinemas including, in 1960, the first organ broadcast in stereo, from the Trocadero at Elephant & Castle. In the 1970s Davies provided the backing for Gracie Fields. He later did a series of 15-minute programs for BBC Radio 2, At the Piano. He was still working in the 1990s, and in 1992 he wrote a completely new score for Ernst Lubitsch's German film from 1919, The Oyster Princess. Davies played the organ in his local church, first at Stoke Poges, and then at Sutton, Surrey. He was also connected with the Carmelite Priory in Kensington, where he played the organ for special Sunday services, religious holidays and at Christmas. Bill Davies married Eileen Watts in 1943. The marriage ended in 1987. In 1991 Davies married Felicity White. William Arthur Davies died 2nd March 2006. Bill Davies plays a selection of tunes M-R on the Compton Organ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/communitykeyboards/message

「英語が聞こえない」と悩んでいる方もたくさんいます。それは、日本語と英語に発音の違いがあるからです。 その違いを理解したうえで正しい練習をすることで、正確に聞き取れるようになりますし、何より発音が上手になります。 今回は、英語を発音する際のコツをお伝えします。 英語名言：A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. (Alistair Cooke) ●テーマのリクエストや番組へのご感想もお待ちしています！ https://ws.formzu.net/fgen/S96749064/ ●毎日配信ボキャブラリーブースターのご登録 http://www.jay-toeic.com/ ●ブログ「英語モチベーション・ブースター」 https://ameblo.jp/jay-english/ MP3 シェア用コードを表示

「英語が聞こえない」と悩んでいる方もたくさんいます。それは、日本語と英語に発音の違いがあるからです。 その違いを理解したうえで正しい練習をすることで、正確に聞き取れるようになりますし、何より発音が上手になります。 今回は、英語を発音する際のコツをお伝えします。 英語名言：A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. (Alistair Cooke) ●テーマのリクエストや番組へのご感想もお待ちしています！ https://ws.formzu.net/fgen/S96749064/ ●毎日配信ボキャブラリーブースターのご登録 http://www.jay-toeic.com/ ●ブログ「英語モチベーション・ブースター」 https://ameblo.jp/jay-english/

Interview with Alistair Cooke Central Coast Veteran Spearo Alistair Cooke lays out some diamonds in this chat. We talk hunting techniques for bluewater, attitudes to equipment (+ saving money on some items), getting lost at sea and the worst octopus ever cooked by a spearo. This ones got plenty of nuggets throughout! Listen in. Full shownotes and pictures at https://wp.me/p53L7v-21z A bit more about Alby (from a CCS member); Former Club President of the Central Coast Sealions (CCS) Coffs Harbour Blue Water Classic Winner (2016 or 2017??) Competitive spearo, freedive competitor and instructor Well-traveled spearo who has dived all over the world from the USA, Mexico, NZ, Coral Sea and all over Oz He also makes an incredible effort for the Juniors in the Club and often sacrifices his own ability to get good fish in a comp to chaperone new divers and juniors around to teach them safely how to dive Quick Interview Times Guide 03:45 Alby Introduction. Spearfishing background and the Central Coast Sealions 09:30 Early Obstacles | Equipment and Prioritizing the Important Stuff 15:00 Finding good ground for spearfishing 19:20 From humble beginnings to winning competitions: The Secret! Flashers Burley (Chum) Body Language 35:00 Most Memorable Fish Taken 43:30 What is one of the toughest situations you have had out on the ocean and what did you learn from it? 54:00 Veterans Vault: How to Take Noobs Diving 72:50 Funniest Moment 77:00 Alistair Cooke Divebag | Deluxe chat on Spearfishing Equipment 87:00 Spearo Q&A Central Coast Sealions Club Name of club: Central Coast Sealions Club Location: Breakers Country Club, Dover Road Wamberal (Meetings 4th Thursday of every Month at 7:30pm) Contact details: Size: 30-40 Active Members Summary of club activity: The Sealions are a very sociable club and participate is a large range of fun and social activities with about 30-40 active members.  Whether you are new to Spearfishing or snorkelling we would be happy to show you how to dive and spearfish safely. We also host one of the oldest spearfishing competitions in Australia, the Annual Canada Cup out of Terrigal every February as well as monthly Club competitions. We offer Social Memberships for those who are more interested in the social aspect of diving. Noob Spearo Partners + some spearfishing discounts . Use the code NOOBSPEARO save $20 on every purchase over $200 at checkout. . Listen to 99 Tips to Get Better at Spearfishing Subscribe to the best spearfishing magazine in the world. Use the code noobspearo to save $20 on the full Penetrator Spearfishing Fin Range . How to Spearfish : use the code NOOBPEARO to save! Spearo Immersion Online freediving classes @ 28-day Freediving Transformation. Want to increase your bottom time? Want to lower your comfortable operating depth?  Want to increase your breath hold? In 4 weeks you can transform your physiology to improve your performance as a freediver.  Learn the proven strategies competitive freedivers use to strengthen their performance. Equalization Masterclass.  If you are freediver who struggles to equalize your ears in the 15-30 ft range this course is the answer. 14 videos discuss every equalizing problem and coach you through the difficulty. Say goodbye to Valsalva and hello to Frenzal and make equalizing easy. Tuesday Ted Talks Freediving. 19 one hour live Instagram episodes where I discuss a variety of freediving topics and answer peoples question live on Instagram. Free online courses – How to take a 20-30% bigger breath and how to make the mammalian dive reflex work for you.  – Free online safety resource. View all of Ted’s online freediving classes @ 

LOOK OUT! It’s only Films To Be Buried With! Join your host Brett Goldstein as he and his guest go deep into the subject of mortality via cinema, and this week he is joined by the incredibly funny comedian and improviser from Australia, it’s STEEN RASKOPOULOS!A lovely episode, as Brett and Steen get into it like good old fashioned pally pals from the get go. It also helps that Steen is a very warm and friendly presence, which you will certainly enjoy throughout the episode! A great chance to get to know him, and most definitely to get to know his film favourites (and non-favourites), and hear about all of it, the whole story which includes his watching of many, many films on places (flying back and forth to Australia, see - you can cram in a ton), the resulting AALS (Altitude Adjusted Lachrimosity Syndrome - that is, crying easily at films on planes), his cricketing past which includes bowling out Alistair Cooke, his drinking sprees in those early cricketing days (ohh, those out of hand cricketers!), his very generous death scenario, skating accidents, how to make it through a horror film successfully, playing sports to playing theatre sports, the correct pronunciation of ‘Bowie’ (you may be surprised), and how films get invented and how tough that is. It’s got it all, people. You shan’t be disappointed.EPISODE LINKS:• STEEN on TWITTER!• STEEN ONLINE!• STEEN's IMPROV GROUP 'THE BEAR PACK'!• BRETT GOLDSTEIN on TWITTER!• BRETT on INSTAGRAM!• BRETT on PATREON!• 'SUPERBOB' - Brett's 2015 feature film!• 'CORNERBOYS' with BRETT & SCROOBIUS PIP!• DISTRACTION PIECES NETWORK on FACEBOOK• DISTRACTION PIECES NETWORK on INSTAGRAM See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As one of the Guardian's first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, from Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to Watergate, the Gdansk shipyard strikes to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised by her mother who, in March 1939, put her on a Kindertransport train to Britain to escape the Nazis. Her mother was able to follow her to England a few months later and Hella spent her formative years in the Lake District. After reading Politics at London School of Economics, she worked as commercial editor of a London-based weekly publication called West Africa. After she left, she offered her services to The Guardian – and spent the next 35 years or so with the paper. While UN correspondent, she worked alongside Alistair Cooke in New York and subsequently held posts as European Integration correspondent, Washington correspondent, Eastern Europe correspondent, and diplomatic editor before retiring in the mid-1990s. Since leaving The Guardian, she has nurtured a new career as a writer, publishing a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and a book about Austria's post-war history.BOOK: Scorn by Matthew Parris LUXURY: Recliner armchair FAVOURITE TRACK: Mozart's Marriage of FigaroPresenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

As one of the Guardian’s first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, from Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to Watergate, the Gdansk shipyard strikes to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised by her mother who, in March 1939, put her on a Kindertransport train to Britain to escape the Nazis. Her mother was able to follow her to England a few months later and Hella spent her formative years in the Lake District. After reading Politics at London School of Economics, she worked as commercial editor of a London-based weekly publication called West Africa. After she left, she offered her services to The Guardian – and spent the next 35 years or so with the paper. While UN correspondent, she worked alongside Alistair Cooke in New York and subsequently held posts as European Integration correspondent, Washington correspondent, Eastern Europe correspondent, and diplomatic editor before retiring in the mid-1990s. Since leaving The Guardian, she has nurtured a new career as a writer, publishing a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and a book about Austria’s post-war history. BOOK: Scorn by Matthew Parris LUXURY: Recliner armchair FAVOURITE TRACK: Mozart's Marriage of Figaro Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

The founder of The Ian M Hassett Foundation, Stefanie Hassett stops by the podcast as a proxy for her son Ian, who passed away in 2012 from Mediastinal Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, to talk about having adult conversations with him at three years old, clothes that coordinate, his legendary senior photo, emulating Alistair Cooke and Gustav Klimt, his first watercolor sailboat, playing with trucks and doing Barbie's hair, having two kids with cancer, being an avid Googler, loving your kids equally, his goodbye letter, producing art in the midst of pain, chalk on velvet, form over function, Ianisms, the "I'm Only Three" defense, the Ian M Hassett Memorial Art Scholarship, being remembered, The Artist Exchange, Unseen No More, and Central Coast Live Read.   Find The Ian M Hassett Foundation online at: http://ianmhassett.com

American historian David Blight explores the legacy of the American Civil War - especially regarding the issue of race-relations. He joins the dots between events from 150 years ago through to the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to more recent protests in the US cities of Baltimore and Ferguson.