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Nicholas Richard-Thompson and Tunde Osazua from the Black Alliance for Peace join Breht to examine the life and legacy of Kwame Nkrumah—anti-colonial revolutionary, Pan-African visionary, and the first president of an independent Ghana. From leading the charge against British colonial rule to his bold attempts to unify the African continent under a socialist banner, Nkrumah's story is one of profound courage, political brilliance, and unfinished dreams. We explore his writings, his revolutionary vision for a liberated and united Africa, and the forces—both foreign and domestic—that sought to dismantle his project. Nkrumah's legacy still burns in the hearts of those fighting imperialism today, and this episode brings his voice back to the forefront of revolutionary memory. Learn more and support Black Alliance for Peace Follow Nicholas on Twitter Follow Tunde on Twitter BAP Chicago's Twitter ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood
Who's to blame for the Thorpe Affair Scandal?This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) welcomes comedian Kiki Andersen to discuss British political icon Jeremy Thorpe, his taboo love affair (at the time) and the very salacious political scandal that ensued. Was the idea of political “perfection” the problem here? Did a societal fixation on the traditional family structure have something to do with it? Or maybe good old fashioned homophobia is to blame for this one. Fact Checker Chris Smith and Producer Clayton Early join the conversation. RIP Rinka the great dane. LIVE SHOW on May 2nd at The Elysian Theater in Los Angeles. Don't miss the fun. Grab your tix HERE!Join our Patreon!Tell us who you think is to blame at http://thealarmistpodcast.comEmail us at thealarmistpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram @thealarmistpodcastFollow us on Twitter @alarmistThe Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/alarmist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why does Vladimir Putin often say that the West is conspiring to weaken Russia? Historian James Crossland traces this narrative back to a British intelligence officer and a failed assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin in 1918. The story is featured in his new book, Rogue Agent, from Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart. James takes us into Lockhart's psyche and lays out how a single moment in the dying days of Czarist Russia helped fuel a century of paranoia and rifts. SPY Artifact Highlight: Trotsky Ice Axe If you liked this episode, check out these links: Sidney Reilly: Master Spy with Benny Morris Accessory to a Mission - Gadgets and Gear For The Well-Dressed Spy SpyCast | Rise of Devils - The Origin of Modern Terrorism with James Crossland Prefer to watch your podcasts? Find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@IntlSpyMuseum/podcasts. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by E-mail at SpyCast@Spymuseum.org. This show is brought to you from Goat Rodeo, Airwave, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie are back to examine the latest headlines and talking points from the world of pro cycling, this week aided by TNT commentator Rob Hatch. The Classics have migrated (slightly) south to the hills of Limburg and the Ardennes, with the Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold kicking off the final phase of the spring season last week. In the former, Remco Evenepoel completed a stunning return from injury to outsprint Wout Van Aert. Amstel saw an even more surprising denouement, with Mattias Skjelmose proving too quick - just - for Tadej Pogačar and Evenepoel. We ponder what this all means for the remainder of the Ardennes Classics, with a detour via Coorevits Corner. There's also a look back at the life and times of British cycling legend Barry Hoban. Sponsored by Laka The Cycling Podcast's coverage of the spring Classics is supported by Laka. Laka offers specialist bike insurance that goes further than you think. It's powered by a collective of cyclists who all have each others' backs. They won't charge a fixed sum, instead, they calculate your monthly contributions – up to a maximum capped amount – based on the collective's claims. There's no excess so you won't be penalised when it comes to making a claim. Laka is back as a proud sponsor of The Cycling Podcast. Listeners can get their first 30 days free by signing up with the code TCP30 at laka.co/tcp Episode sponsor: NordVPN Get NordVPN two-year plan + four months extra ➼ https://nordvpn.com/tcp It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. Follow us on social media: Twitter @cycling_podcast Instagram @thecyclingpodcast Friends of the Podcast Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast at thecyclingpodcast.com to listen to new special episodes every month plus a back catalogue of more than 300 exclusive episodes. The Cannibal & Badger Friends of the Podcast can join the discussion at our new virtual pub, The Cannibal & Badger. A friendly forum to talk about cycling and the podcast. Log in to your Friends of the Podcast account to join in. The 11.01 Cappuccino Our regular email newsletter is now on Substack. Subscribe here for frothy, full-fat updates to enjoy any time (as long as it's after 11am). The Cycling Podcast is on Strava The Cycling Podcast was founded in 2013 by Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie.
Join James Bovard, JimBovard.com, as he unveils the shocking parallels between 1776's tyranny and today's government overreach, revealing why the colonists' defiance still resonates. It's a wild ride through history that'll make you rethink freedom, power, and the cost of compliance! From crippling tariffs and ship seizures to invasive home searches and pine tree eminent domain, the Crown's iron grip pushed colonial farmers to grab their muskets and fight back. If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFor 10% off supplements and books, go to RNCstore.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.
Carl, Josh and, Luca discuss how every party in British politics is diverse, it has emerged that even more police knew about the grooming gangs, and the death of the Pope.
Carl, Josh and, Luca discuss how every party in British politics is diverse, it has emerged that even more police knew about the grooming gangs, and the death of the Pope.
Streamathon 2025: It's about that time of year! Jim and Them STREAMATHON TIME! May 16, 2025! Mark your calendars. Justin Hawkins: The Darkness's Justin Hawkins responds to being called out by Corey during the Corgan interview. Does he give him too much credit? Sally Jessy Raphael: We look back at the birth of a goblin ghoul as we check in on Corey Feldman's appearance on Sally Jessy Raphael from 1990. COREY FELDMAN!, SHOW STOPPER!, LET'S JUST TALK!, DON CHEADLE!, BOOGIE NIGHTS!, JIM AND THEM IS POP CULTURE!, YOU KNOW THAT!, COMEBACK KINGS!, COVER!, TRUE COMEBACK KINGS!, TAKING SKYPE AWAY!, STREAMATHON!, LESS THAN A MONTH!, FIRST SUPER CHAT NAME!, YOKO BUNZ!, DONATIONS!, HOURLY AMOUNT!, SKYPE!, WHO'S ON THE LINE!, INTERNATIONAL!, TIME ZONES!, ANDY SIGNORE!, HONEST TRAILERS!, SEXUAL PREDATOR!, SCREEN JUNKIES!, TEXTS!, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAVES!?, THE BONFIRE!, ANTHONY CUMIA!, BARSTOOL!, TMZ!, COVERAGE!, FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES!, CORGAN!, SOFA!, COCOBAUNZ!, IGNORANCE!, GOBLIN GHOUL!, COREY HOLE!, THE DARKNESS!, JUSTIN HAWKINS RIDES AGAIN!, BRITISH!, DRY!, HUMOR!, APOLOGY!, AHEAD OF THE GOOF!, THE GOOF IS ON YOU!, DIVINE BING BING!, 5D BARS!, GIFTS!, HOCKEY MASKS!, THE SHAPE!, PO BOX!, SHIRT!, LOST BOYS!, ERIK!, CHET MARTIN!, DRUGS!, HEROIN!, WW2!, WAR!, GUNS!, 80S CHILD STAR!, TALK SHOW!, SISTER!, MICKEY MOUSE CLUB!, STAND BY ME!, JERRY O'CONNELL!, KIEFER SUTHERLAND!, LOST BOYS!, MINDY FELDMAN!, DAVE BLUNTS!, EROK!, ROXXY!, BUBBLE!, COVER!, CRYING IN THE KITCHEN! You can find the videos from this episode at our Discord RIGHT HERE!
Robert Fortune's journey was far from over. After infiltrating China in disguise, Fortune now sets his sights on the Wuyi Mountains—steeped in legend, veiled in mist, and home to the most coveted tea in the world: black tea. Guided by his newly appointed servant, the enigmatic Sing-Hoo, Fortune pushes deeper into China's forbidden interior, navigating treacherous paths and even more treacherous politics. But not all goes according to plan. His prized green tea shipment meets an unfortunate fate, while back in India, the impulsive botanist William Jameson jeopardizes the mission with his rash decisions.Yet amid the chaos, Fortune finds unexpected wisdom among Buddhist monks, who not only reveal the secrets of cultivating tea but also teach him how to brew the perfect cup. It's in these sacred temples, not the markets of London, that the future of tea begins to shift.As Fortune's precious tea plants take root in the Himalayan foothills, Indian tea is born—forever altering the global balance of trade. From British agent to American hire, Robert Fortune's legacy would be one of ambition, deception, and botanical revolution. He didn't just steal tea—he transformed it.Join John and Patrick for the thrilling conclusion of Fortune's audacious adventure, as they uncover the spiritual, imperial, and agricultural dimensions of one of history's greatest botanical heists.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review -----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com
Join James Bovard, JimBovard.com, as he unveils the shocking parallels between 1776's tyranny and today's government overreach, revealing why the colonists' defiance still resonates. It's a wild ride through history that'll make you rethink freedom, power, and the cost of compliance! From crippling tariffs and ship seizures to invasive home searches and pine tree eminent domain, the Crown's iron grip pushed colonial farmers to grab their muskets and fight back. If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFor 10% off supplements and books, go to RNCstore.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.
Notes and Links to Alexander Chee's Work Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. A contributing editor at The New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, his essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, The Sewanee Review, and the 2016 and 2019 Best American Essays. He was guest-editor for The Best American Essays of 2022. He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a NEA Fellowship, an MCCA Fellowship, the Randy Shilts Prize in gay nonfiction, the Paul Engle Prize, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Leidig House, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is a full professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont. Buy How To Write an Autobiographical Novel Alexander's Website Book Review for How To Write an Autobiographical Novel from The New York Times At about 2:00, Alexander details his Amtrak residency, later written about in The New Yorker At about 6:00, Alexander outlines some interesting characters that he met during his Amtrak residency At about 12:00, Alexander reflects on a book project inspired by an interesting encounter with a former detective and British and American sensibilities At about 16:30, Pete shares his own Amtrak story, possible fodder for essays and short stories, as Alexander remarks on “immediate friendship” At about 18:50, Alexander talks about upcoming novel and short story projects and the process of picking a title; he recounts how he arrived at his essay collection's title, through a Buzzfeed publication At about 26:30, Alexander highlights Kirkus Review naming How to Write an Autobiographical Novel one At about 27:35, Alexander gives background on his essay collection's cover photo At about 34:10, Alexander talks about the composition of the previous essay collection and his upcoming one, with regards to placement and focuses on his “rose garden”- “The Rosary”-essay's development At about 39:00, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about the order of the essays in the collections and any throughlines-Garnette Cadogan and Naomi Gibbs are shouted out At about 43:40, Alexander talks about a manuscript that he has been working At about 44:45, Pete is complimentary of Alexander's “The Rosary” essay, and Alexander tells a story of an interested and poignant conversation with At about 48:00, Pete shouts At about 49:00, Pete and Alexander talk about the essay collection's first piece, and Alexander talks about being “Alejandro from Oaxaca” for a short time-he references Yiyun Li's powerful essay, “To Speak is to Blunder” At about 55:10, Pete compliments Alexander's powerful advocacy work and asks him about perspective and time, and how Alexander looks back at the essays from the collection so many years later (for some of the essays) At about 1:02:00, In talking about modern protest and activist culture, mutual aid, etc., Alexander shouts out Sarah Thankam Mathews' powerful All This Could Be Different At about 1:04:30, Alexander discusses a dynamic class that he has mentored at Dartmouth At about 1:05:30, Alexander responds to Pete's questions about what fiction allows him to do with his writing At about 1:06:30, Alexander reflects on ideas of catharsis in his writing You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode. Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website this week. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review. Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show. This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 282 with Emely Rumble, a licensed clinical social worker, school social worker, and seasoned biblio/psychotherapist who specializes in bibliotherapy, the use of literature and expressive writing to heal. Pub Day and episode air day are April 29 for her wonderful book, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx.
Part 1 Good Vibes, Good Life by Vex King Summary"Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness" by Vex King is a motivational guide that encourages readers to cultivate self-love, positivity, and a proactive mindset in order to achieve personal growth and fulfillment. Key Themes and Concepts:Self-Love: The core premise of the book is that loving yourself is essential for unlocking your true potential and living a fulfilling life. King emphasizes that self-love is not selfish but rather a necessary foundation for happiness and healthy relationships.Positive Mindset: The book stresses the importance of maintaining a positive mindset. King discusses how negative thoughts can hold you back and explores ways to shift your thought patterns to embrace optimism and positive thinking.Mindfulness and Presence: Vex King introduces concepts of mindfulness, urging readers to live in the moment and appreciate the present. He highlights the power of being mindful in everyday situations to reduce stress and enhance overall wellbeing.Overcoming Adversity: The book shares King's personal experiences with adversity and how he transformed challenges into opportunities for growth. He encourages readers to see setbacks as stepping stones toward greater resilience and strength.Authenticity and Purpose: Vex King urges readers to be authentic and true to themselves. He explores the importance of discovering your passion and aligning your life with your true purpose for deeper satisfaction.Law of Attraction: The book discusses the Law of Attraction, suggesting that your thoughts and attitudes can influence your reality. By focusing on positive vibes, you attract similar energies and opportunities into your life.Gratitude and Appreciation: King emphasizes the power of gratitude as a tool for attracting positivity. He encourages practices like journaling and reflecting on daily blessings to foster an appreciative mindset. Practical Advice:Daily Affirmations: King suggests creating and repeating positive affirmations to reinforce self-love and combat negativity.Healing from the Past: He provides strategies for letting go of past traumas and experiences that hinder personal growth.Surrounding Yourself with Positivity: The importance of surrounding yourself with positive influences, whether through people, books, or environments, is a recurring theme in the book. Conclusion:"Good Vibes, Good Life" serves as both a personal narrative and a self-help manual. Through relatable anecdotes and practical exercises, Vex King offers a roadmap to help individuals cultivate self-love, embrace positivity, and ultimately lead a fulfilling life. The book resonates with anyone looking for inspiration and guidance on their journey toward personal and emotional well-being.Part 2 Good Vibes, Good Life AuthorVex King is a British author, entrepreneur, and social media influencer best known for his book "Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness." The book was published on October 12, 2018. It focuses on themes of self-love, positive thinking, and personal development, offering practical advice and motivational insights that resonate with readers seeking to improve their mental well-being and overall life.In addition to "Good Vibes, Good Life," Vex King has authored other works, including:"Healing Is the New High: A Guide to Overcoming Emotional Turmoil and Finding Freedom" (2020) This book explores the importance of emotional healing and provides guidance on how to overcome personal struggles."Good Vibes, Good Life (Illustrated Edition)" (2021) An illustrated version of his debut book that adds a visual dimension to the original content, making it more engaging and accessible.In terms of popularity and impact, "Good Vibes, Good Life" is considered Vex King's...
With Mickie Kennedy, a PR expert and press release strategist who helps small businesses, startups, and authors get seen and heard. Over 26 years ago, he founded eReleases after witnessing firsthand how many entrepreneurs struggled to afford traditional PR services. His mission is simple: make media access and press release distribution both effective and accessible — with a human touch. Today, he continues to guide thousands of business owners toward greater visibility, credibility, and growth through strategic media coverage.Mickie holds an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University and still writes poetry with a group of fellow misfits in Maryland. His work and expertise have been featured on top business podcasts and media platforms. He lives in Baltimore County with his family and two feuding cats, enjoys British sci-fi, and admits to a serious diet soda habit.Join us in our conversation as Mickie breaks down why being an unknown brand can actually be your biggest PR asset, and how strategic storytelling can turn a press release into a multimillion-dollar opportunity. He shares lessons from his journey, insights into eReleases' partnership with PR Newswire, and tips for entrepreneurs who want to get media attention without breaking the bank. Tune in to learn how the power of a well-crafted press release can transform your business.To listen to the podcast and access the show notes and any other resources mentioned in this episode, visit us at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast.
British fashion designer Hardy Amies applies for a second job as a spymaster as World War 2 begins. Before long, he's sending his men directly into the dangers of Nazi-occupied Belgium, and his guilt threatens to overtake him. Who is the man with the missing finger entrapping British agents?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In episode 146 of the UK Travel Planning Podcast, Tracy delves into one of London's most iconic landmarks: Westminster Abbey. With its rich royal history and stunning Gothic architecture, this working cathedral is a must-visit for anyone exploring the capital.Tracy provides a comprehensive guide to planning your visit, including essential tips on ticket purchasing, the best tours, and must-see sites within the Abbey. From the Coronation Chair to Poets' Corner, discover the treasures that make Westminster Abbey a living history book.Learn about the significance of the Abbey, which has hosted every British monarch's coronation since 1066 and is the final resting place of numerous notable figures. Tracy shares her personal highlights and practical advice to ensure you make the most of your visit, including optimal timing to avoid queues, accessibility options, and the best places to grab a bite nearby. Whether you're a history buff or simply seeking a beautiful space to reflect, this episode is packed with insights to enhance your experience at Westminster Abbey.
Kill Holiday, formed by members of San Diego hardcore band Unbroken, made a surprising shift from aggressive post-hardcore to dreamy shoegaze with their 1999 album Somewhere Between the Wrong and the Right. Released on Revelation Records, the album channels British influences like Ride and The Stone Roses, with shimmering guitars and laid-back, melancholic melodies. Despite its shoegaze and Britpop sound, the album resonates with the emotional core of the emo genre, more in feeling rather than form, standing out as a reflective, genre-crossing record from a label known for hardcore. Songs In This Episode Intro - Somewhere Between the Wrong Is Right 11:49 - Someday You Will Lose and I Will Win 18:21 - Know You Your Friends Are Outro - In Closing (Memorial Day) Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon. Listen to the episode archive at DigMeOutPodcast.com.
Jill and Tom opened the show talking about Jill's recent move. Good news, she's now closer to the studio. Tom went on to discuss British sports-car maker/engineering firm Lotus, which has been owned by a number of carmakers over the years. It appears that Lotus is again up for sale. The hosts also discussed a new round of Tesla Cybertruck price cuts, and the brand's sales share in California, one of its most-important markets. Still in the first segment, Jill shared her impressions of the new-for-2025 Ford Maverick Lobo, a sporty trim level that boasts a number of driving-enthusiast features. In the second segment, the hosts welcome fellow journalist Joel Feder to the Car Stuff Podcast. Joel shared sad news regarding the shuttering of a popular auto-review website, and his insights into a number of topics, including the Subaru Forester redesign and current styling trends. In the last segment, Jill is subjected to Tom's “Subaru!” quiz.
Yes — Obamacare is before the Supreme Court, again. This time, the case centers on the legality of an advisory task force. Experts worry it could spell the end of an ACA mandate requiring insurers to cover certain preventative care services at no cost. But first: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is caught up in another Signal group chat scandal. Plus, Paul Revere wasn't the only midnight rider to warn that the British were coming.Here's everything we talked about today:"‘An amateur person': GOP Rep. Bacon says Hegseth should go" from Politico"Obamacare returns to SCOTUS, with preventive care on the line" from Politico"Court to hear challenge to ACA preventative-care coverage" from Scotus Blog "Kristi Noem's Purse, With Security Badge and $3,000, Is Stolen" from The New York Times"Paul Revere Wasn't the Only Midnight Rider Who Dashed Through the Darkness to Warn the Patriots That the British Were Coming" from Smithsonian Magazine "April 18, 2025" from Heather Cox Richardson Got a question for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
This is a conversation to kick off the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. Retired U.S. Army Major General and history buff, Bill Rapp, drops some knowledge on how the colonies weren't exactly gung-ho for a full-blown revolution before April 1775. Turns out, they were mostly ticked off and feeling rebellious in response to intolerable British policies. But a tense situation and an itchy trigger finger set it off. The episode covers the action-packed Battles of Lexington and Concord, George Washington taking charge of the Continental Army, the intense Battle of Bunker Hill (which was actually fought on Breed's Hill), and the clever move at Dorchester Heights that sent the British packing from Boston. William “Bill” Rapp is a retired Major General of the United States Army with 33 years of distinguished service which included combat deployments in three wars, two Defense Service Medals, two Bronze Star Medals, Master Parachutist and Ranger tabs. He was not only a respected Army officer, but also a leadership developer who served as Commandant of the Army War College and Commandant of Cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point. In over 42 months in combat, Bill led an airborne engineer company in the first Gulf War, commanded a 3,000-soldier brigade in the Iraq War, served as General Petraeus' personal assistant during the Iraq Surge, and commanded over 17,000 troops supplying all resource needs of the 160,000 U.S. and international force in Afghanistan in 2011-12. He also served as the Army's senior liaison to the U.S. Congress. Bill holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University and is the author of the book about the Boston Campaign of the American Revolutionary War titled Accomplishing the Impossible: Leadership That Launched Revolutionary Change. He now consults and teaches on leadership and is working on his second book on Sioux and Cheyenne leadership at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part of Audacy media network. Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Calvi is found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. The British police call it suicide, but Nicolo finds Antonio Cornacchia, an Italian officer who insists it's murder. Years later, new forensic evidence reopens the case, leading to a trial with Silvano Vittor among the accused. Friends of the Pod get early access to the entire first season of Shadow Kingdom: God's Banker before it drops for everyone else—ads included. Get early access to the full season now by joining Crooked's Friends of the Pod at crooked.com/friends. Hear this episode in Italian by subscribing to Il Banchiere di Dio wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Trump White House re-launched the govenrment's official COVID-19 website on Friday. The revamped site blames the origins of the coronavirus on a lab leak in China while criticizing former President Joe Biden, former top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization. The website is also critical of steps like social distancing, mask mandates and lockdowns. Jimmy and Americans' Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how not even this level of government sanctioned critique of the nation's COVID policy will be sufficient to shake some hopeless deadenders in the media and comedy community who refuse to engage in even the most cursory reexamination of their mistaken views over the pandemic. Plus segments on British political commentator Douglas Murray's savage takedown of… British political commentator Douglas Murray, Trump's all-out assault on academic freedom and Chinese commentators' better understanding of the United States than Americans'. Also featuring Stef Zamorano!
TITANIC OF AIRSHIPS: 3/4: His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne (Author) https://www.amazon.com/His-Majestys-Airship-Largest-Machine/dp/1982168277 From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart.
TITANIC OF AIRSHIPS: 4/4: His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne (Author) https://www.amazon.com/His-Majestys-Airship-Largest-Machine/dp/1982168277 From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart.
TITANIC OF AIRSHIPS: 2/4: His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne (Author) https://www.amazon.com/His-Majestys-Airship-Largest-Machine/dp/1982168277 From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart.
TITANIC OF AIRSHIPS: 1/4: His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine by S. C. Gwynne (Author) https://www.amazon.com/His-Majestys-Airship-Largest-Machine/dp/1982168277 From historian and bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a “captivating, thoroughly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian princess at its heart.
Yes — Obamacare is before the Supreme Court, again. This time, the case centers on the legality of an advisory task force. Experts worry it could spell the end of an ACA mandate requiring insurers to cover certain preventative care services at no cost. But first: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is caught up in another Signal group chat scandal. Plus, Paul Revere wasn't the only midnight rider to warn that the British were coming.Here's everything we talked about today:"‘An amateur person': GOP Rep. Bacon says Hegseth should go" from Politico"Obamacare returns to SCOTUS, with preventive care on the line" from Politico"Court to hear challenge to ACA preventative-care coverage" from Scotus Blog "Kristi Noem's Purse, With Security Badge and $3,000, Is Stolen" from The New York Times"Paul Revere Wasn't the Only Midnight Rider Who Dashed Through the Darkness to Warn the Patriots That the British Were Coming" from Smithsonian Magazine "April 18, 2025" from Heather Cox Richardson Got a question for the hosts? Email makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 21, 2025 is: bodacious boh-DAY-shuss adjective Bodacious is used as an informal synonym of remarkable and noteworthy, as well as sexy and voluptuous. In some dialects of the Southern and Midland US, bodacious is used by its oldest meaning: "outright, unmistakable." // The bodacious decor of the boutique hotel is intended to appeal to the young and the hip. See the entry > Examples: "There's no need to lug in a 6-foot specimen tree to add bodacious botanicals into your home, because even the smallest planters can make a big impact when intentionally pairing striking foliage with a unique vessel." — Kristin Guy, Sunset Magazine, 5 Mar. 2024 Did you know? Some of our readers may know bodacious as a word that figured prominently in the lingo of the 1989 film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Others may recall the term's frequent use in the long-running "Snuffy Smith" comic strip. Neither the creators of the comic strip nor the movie can claim to have coined bodacious, which began appearing in print in the mid-1800s, but both surely contributed to its popularity. The exact origin of the word is uncertain, but it is most likely a blend of bold and audacious, and it may be linked to boldacious, a now-rare British dialect term meaning "brazen" or "impudent."
2:30 April 19th: The Day Tyranny Clashed with Liberty—From 1775 to OKC Bombing Dark Secrets Brace for a journey through history's most explosive moments on April 19th! From Paul Revere's daring 250th anniversary ride and the Revolutionary War's fiery kickoff at Lexington and Concord, where patriots defied British gun grabs, to Santa Anna's ruthless cannon hunt at the Alamo, this date screams resistance against tyranny. Fast forward to the Warsaw Ghetto's heroic stand, Waco's tragic inferno, and the Oklahoma City bombing's shadowy cover-up—with NEW allegations OKC was orchestrated by a rogue government. 34:07 An Unstoppable Revolution That Changed History: The CrossThe resurrection of Jesus Christ, commemorated around the same time as these anniversaries, is hailed as humanity's greatest revolution. Defying pagan philosophies, Christ's message of self-denial, love, and the martyrs (literally witnesses) transformed the world, challenging Roman cruelty and human comfort-seeking. This divine uprising continues to inspire hope and resistance against worldly tyranny. 49:36 The Rebellion Against Distracting Car Touchscreens The obsession with touchscreens, made into a trend by imitation of Tesla has at best, been annoying, at worst a distracting death trap. From fumbling with touchscreens to adjust air vents to navigating nested menus for turn signals, drivers have been screaming for relief. Now, Subaru, Hyundai, and even Volkswagen are ditching these hazardous screens for good old knobs and buttons And Eric Peters points out the striking resemblance between Tesla's ludicrously ugly Cybertruck and the Pontiac Aztek. However, the Aztec was simply ugly and not the sales flop of Cybertruck where the massive price has undergone ludicrous depreciation costing owner over $40k in just the first year alone 1:13:45 LIVE comments from audience 1:17:58 Punishing Those Found “NOT GUILTY” is OK with US CourtsIn a shocking abuse of power, Illinois cops seized a plumbing company's truck after a drunk driver crashed into it—and they've held it for over 15 months without a warrant or explanation! And, as stealing property without even charging people with a crime has become standard practice so has “acquitted-conduct sentencing” where judges ignore NOT GUILTY jury verdicts and punish people for conduct the jury has acquitted — and the Supreme Court allows it to continue! 1:40:05 Tattoos & Trump's Photoshop Fiasco Did Trump know that the picture of fake MS-13 tattoos on an illegal's hand was photoshopped, not annotated? Both sides are embellishing their narrative with lies — so what IS the truth? A look at a discredited corrupt cop and a credible tale of human trafficking, and implications for us all if we let Presidents arbitrarily label people as “terrorists” (as Biden did with J6 and Trump is doing with his “emergency”) 2:32:00 Palantir's Sinister Domestic Biometric Surveillance Plot While Trump boasts of cracking down on illegal immigration, REALID is rolling out and Palantir's rolling out a dystopian “Immigration OS” to track everyone in real-time, fueled by AI and a web of private spy cameras. This isn't just about deportations—it's a sinister scheme to enslave us all in a biometric police state!2:49:30 Afterlife Awakening: Non-Religious Americans Embrace Eternity as Trump's Does a “Bah Humbug” Easter Rant A year ago, Biden ignored Christ's resurrection and worshipped trannies with “Transgender Visibility Day” declaration. Trump's team put together a Christian declaration of what we celebrate but then Trump himself puked all over it with another rage post against those he hates. Nevertheless, a seismic shift is sweeping America as belief in an afterlife surges among non-religious folks. But do they have hope? Will they accept what Christ has done for them? Will it be life after life or death after death?If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFor 10% off supplements and books, go to RNCstore.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.
Last time we spoke about Operation Nekka, the Invasion of Rehe Province. In 1932, the Kwantung Army eyed Rehe province as vital for Manchukuo's success. General Tang Yulin, ruling Rehe, initially favored Japanese interests due to economic ties, particularly in opium. Tensions escalated after a Japanese civilian was abducted, prompting military actions that led to skirmishes in Shanhaiguan. Amidst growing conflict, Zhang Xueliang mobilized forces against Tang, who eventually conceded. As Japan prepared for invasion, both sides strategized, with Chiang Kai-Shek reluctant to engage directly, fearing Japanese influence over his rivals. Operation Nekka commenced, showcasing the Kwantung Army's efficiency as they swiftly routed Chinese forces in Rehe. By March 4th, key passes were captured, but fierce resistance emerged. General Nishi faced counterattacks, leading to strategic retreats. Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-Shek struggled with internal conflicts while managing the Japanese threat. As the Kwantung Army pushed beyond the Great Wall, logistical issues arose, prompting political maneuvers to secure local warlord alliances. However, plans faltered when Zhang Qingyao, a potential ally, was assassinated. #147 The Battle for the Great Wall of China Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Thus in the previous episode, Operation Nekka had been unleashed. The Kwangtung Army tossed 2 divisions into Rehe province with the intent of forcing its annexation into Manchukuo. They were under strict orders to not extend operations past the Great Wall of China. However they believed it was necessary to seize the main gateways along the Great Wall of China to establish their new borders, and in order to do so this absolutely required going past them. Yet military operations were not the only means to secure their goals. The Japanese forces faced significant logistical challenges, including a shortage of troops, having advanced into Rehe with only 20,000 men. Even the most resolute general in the Kwantung Army doubted that their military strength could prevail against the vast numbers of Chinese troops in the plains of Hubei. As a result, they needed to supplement their military efforts with political strategies targeting regional warlords. The tactic of bribing local elites had proven highly effective during the pacification of Manchuria, and there was no reason to think it wouldn't work in North China as well. All of these actions were carried out without any oversight from Tokyo headquarters. On February 13, 1933, Itagaki Seishiro, who was then the head of the Mukden Special Service Agency, was transferred to the General Staff without any formal announcement of his promotion. He took up a position in Tientsin specifically to initiate political maneuvers in eastern Hubei, leading to the establishment of the Tientsin Special Service Agency. Initially, this agency sought to engage various competing warlords in North China, including Duan Qirui, Wu Peifu, and Sun Chuanfang, but eventually focused on Zhang Qingyao. Zhang had previously been a protégé of Duan Qirui, serving as the civil and military governor of Henan province. He had fought against Zhang Zuolin in 1925 before shifting his allegiance to Wu Peifu. During the second phase of the Northern Expedition, Zhang Qingyao again battled Zhang Zuolin, who was then in control of the National Pacification Army. After the Northern Expedition concluded, he allied with Yan Xishan's forces in Shanxi. So yeah it would seem he was not a man of principles nor loyalties of any kind. The Tientsin Special Service Agency initially aimed to approach Zhang Qingyao in hopes that he could orchestrate a coup d'état against Chiang Kai-Shek. They also hoped to persuade other figures such as Song Queyuan, Zhang Zuoxiang, Fang Chenwu, Xu Yusan, Zhang Tingshu, Sun Tienying, and Feng Zhanhai to join in. If successful, this could lead to a swift takeover of North China as they were advancing towards Peiping after taking the Great Wall. However, on May 7, Zhang Qingyao was assassinated, completely derailing their plans. With Zhang Qingyao dead, the agency concentrated their efforts instead to instigate riots in the Peiping-Tientsin region. They also began encouraging and propping up new political organizations that sought to form an independent northern regime. One scheme they were performing was to form a committee composed of Northern Warlords headed by Lu Zengyu, a banker who had studied in Japan. The idea was to form an anti-Chiang Kai-Shek coalition to carve out north china. The agency received a significant amount of funds to make ends meet. Itagaki alone would spend over 50,000 yen to try and bring about an anti-Chiang regime in the north. Some sources indicated over 3 billion yen being allocated to the IJA to be dished out to various Chinese warlords and elites in the form of bribes. Meanwhile operations in the district east of the Luan River saw attacks formed against the Xumenzhai and Lengkou gateways. On April 1st, the Kwantung Army issued Order 491, seeing the Iwata detachment of the IJA 6th Division storm through the Xumenzhai gate and succeed in securing a supply route behind the great wall to help with the assaults against the other gateways in the region. By April 10th, the IJA 6th Division was making steady progress against the Lengkou gate. The next day they stormed through and captured Qienqangying, pursuing the retreating Chinese to the banks of the Luan River. Meanwhile the IJA 8th Division were facing a much more difficult situation. On the 12th, they captured Xifengkou, but their assault against Quehlingkou was going nowhere. After repeated assaults, the Chinese finally retreated, allowing the Japanese to focus on Taitouying. Thus from the 10th to the 23rd the gateways in northeastern Hubei were all falling into Japanese hands. The Kawahara Brigade was well on its way towards Nantienmen. The Operations within the Great Wall area had been fully authorized by Generals Nishi and Sakamoto. However there still existed limits upon the operations. For example, Operations order 495 issued by General Muto given on the 11th stated "Without specific orders, pursuit by the main force of ground troops is to be limited to the line connecting Hotung, Chiench'angying, and T'ait'ouying; but air units are to be limited to the Luan River." Meanwhile the Special Service Agency in Tientsin had reported that Zhang Qingyao would stage a coup on the 21st and this prompted Song Queyuans troops to prevent the Central Army forces from fleeing towards Peiping. The Agency requested that the Kwantung Army not return to the Great Wall and instead perform a feint attack towards Peiping and Tientsin to scare the Chinese. As the plot was reaching its climax, on the 18th the Kwantung Army chief of staff, General Koiso Kuniaki issued a order for the 8th Division to strike in full force against the Gubeikou area. The Kwantung Army's plan was to bomb Miyun while launching their feint attack in combination with an all out effort to break Gubeikou. However on the night of the 18th, all of these plans changed dramatically. Suddenly General Muto issued Operations Order 498, hastily ordering all forces to withdraw to the Great Wall. Emperor Hirohito had decided to put his foot down. In Tokyo the emperor asked the vice chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Mazaki Jinzaburö, "Has the Kwantung Army withdrawn from the Luan River line?" The vice chief retired from the imperial presence with a sense of guilt and wrote a confidential letter to the commander of the Kwantung Army. It was personally carried by Infantry Captain Katö [Michio] of the General Staff, who on April 19 arrived at the capital [of Manchukuo] bearing an imperial rescript. The vice chief also cabled to the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army a highly confidential dispatch, the main point of which stated, "Withdraw your troops immediately, or an imperial command will be issued." Thereupon the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army directed staff officer Endò Saburò to draft the withdrawal order. Thus as a result, the Kwantung Army began a withdrawal on the 21st, the same day the Peiping coup was to be unleashed. Those around Emperor Hirohito at this time have gone on the record to state it seemed to them, the emperor had hesitated heavily on issuing the withdrawal order. His motivations for giving the order are simply, the Kwantung Army had gone against his decrees, it was an identical situation to what had happened at Mukden in 1931. The Kwantung Army had no choice but to submit to what essentially was him “asking them to stop”. With that, operations east of the Luan River were over, for now. The order was certainly a critical blow to the Agency in Tientsin. How did they react? They doubled down on the coup effort. Likewise Koiso did not stop the 8th Division operation at Gubeikou. Instead the 8th Division was given orders "to maintain a menacing attitude toward hostile forces in North China." In accordance, the 3800 man Kawahara Brigade on direct orders from General Nishi, launched an attack against two Central Army Divisions numbered nearly 30,000 men stationed at Nantienmen. After a brutal week of battle the Kawahara Brigade seized the town. Meanwhile a battalion of 280 men led by Colonel Shimmura Eijiro attacked a central army force around 4000 strong at Xinglong. They suffered a 38% rate of casualties by the night of the 27th. The Battalion was nearly annihilated when suddenly the Chinese withdrew enabling the Japanese to slip by. Meanwhile the Piping coup did not materialize as planned on the 21st. Instead a secondary coup was initiated by Zhang Zuoxiang on the 26, but this misfired greatly. Reports began to emerge that troops led by Zhang Tingxu, Sun Tienying, Feng Zhanhai and Xu Yusan were willing to rebel in response to the failed coup attempts, but this proved completely false. A report issued on the 30th stated troops under Fang Chenwu were rebelling against Chiang Kai-Shek. However in reality Fang Chenwu only advanced his force north on May 10th and it was to join the anti-Japanese forces. From mid April to mid May, the United States, Britain, France and Germany finally entered the fray in North China. It was an extremely chaotic situation for everyone. The Japanese military in Tokyo had no control nor idea what the Kwantung Army was doing, so when they tried to explain their actions to the international community, they continuously were walking over rakes. All the talk from Tokyo seemed incomprehensible to the other great powers. The Chinese were clamouring the entire time for a ceasefire agreement, but lacked the means to force the Japanese to do so. Japan had left the League of Nations, thus was extremely isolated and insecure in regards to foreign relations. Thus if a nation like Britain or the US had actually put their foot down, the Japanese more than likely would have backed off. Another element to this debacle was the stance of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who had made it adamantly clear they had zero intention of fighting off the British or Americans because of their unruly siblings within the Army. However, both Britain and America were too preoccupied with internal strife, mostly the result of the Great Depression, to devote considerable effort to the crisis in China. The League of Nations remained completely useless during the North China incident, similarly to how they were useless with the Manchurian incident. The Lytton Commission had performed an on the spot inquiry, and it did play a role in establishing a ceasefire by the time of the Shanghai incident, but did nothing to really help China. China had begun appealing to the League when Shanhaiguan was attacked and this prompted the nations of the league to rapidly agree to the Lytton Commission report's recommendations. In turn this led Matsuoka Yosuke to walk out on the league. With Japan out of the League, Wellington Koo proposed harsh sanctions upon Japan in response to their invasion of Rehe province. Yet they did nothing. China would continuously make pleas, but it was to no avail. Rather than rely upon the League, the Chinese began secret talks with Japanese officials aiming first for a ceasefire. Tang Erho, Lee Shuzheng and Wang Komin attempted talks, but failed. Then Chen Yi the political vice minister of military affairs, secretly spoke with Nemoto Hiroshi, an army attache at the Shanghai legation on April 27th. They established negotiations with Nemoto speaking on behalf of the Kwantung Army and Chen Yi on behalf of Ho Yingqin. The Chinese were clearly more eager than the Japanese for a ceasefire, but the Japanese no longer had a rationale to continue their operation. Regardless the Japanese took the victors stance and demanded the Chinese withdraw from the battlefield as a prerequisite to further Japanese advances. In the first meeting, Nemoto told Chen that the Kwantung Army had already withdrawn from the area east of the Luan River to give Ho Yingqin an opportunity to consider a ceasefire. He described the action as a friendly gesture and suggested the Chinese reciprocate it by withdrawing their troops. Chen countered this by claiming Ho Yingqin had shown his own sincerity at the battle of Nantienmen by ordering his troops to withdraw to a second line of defense, hoping this would allow the Japanese to pull away from Nantienmen. However by May 1st, the Japanese claimed they had captured and secured Nantienmen, so Nemoto informed Chen the Chinese forces north of the Great Wall should withdraw to a line connecting Miyun, Pinkou, Yutien and the Luan River. On May 2nd, the Chinese sent a reply to this, completely ignoring the line idea and instead referred to the recent battle at Xinglong and explained the local commander there was eager for a victory and refused to withdraw despite being asked twice to do so. The Chinese also notified Nemoto that a Political affairs council headed by Huang Fu was being established at Peiping, and it should be through that body that further negotiations were held. The Japanese welcomed this development. Just as it seemed the Shanghai talks were paving a way to a ceasefire, the leadership of the Kwantung Army abandoned their political maneuvers in favor of a settlement. On April 30th the Tientsin Special Service Agency insisted to their Japanese colleagues, the Chinese were just buying time and not sincere in their actions. That same day the Army General Staff and Foreign Ministry suddenly refused to initiate a ceasefire on the grounds the Chinese had agreed to an armistice only to save face. Lt Colonel Nagatsu Sahishige, the army attache at Peiping urged the 8th Division to rapidly strike southwards as far as Miyun to annihilate He Yingqin's planned counteroffensive. Such an action would immediately threaten the Peiping-Tientsin region. To push the envelope, the Japanese could toss a new Division into the mix and force further negotiations when the Chinese withdrew south of Miyun. Clearly the Japanese had their eyes set on Miyun now. As such General Nishi was secretly told to capture it without any direction from Tokyo HQ, nor from most of the Kwantung Army leadership. The Operations department of the Kwantung Army also independently elected to move troops east of the Luan River again. They argued "the enemy again advances east of the Luan River and persists in its defiant attitude. Therefore we must again deal them a crushing blow." The IJA 6th Division had been evacuated to the Great Wall back on April 23rd and along the way were closely pursued by Chinese forces. General Sakamoto sent a plan to the Kwantung Army headquarters "to again drive the enemy west of the Luan River,". A lot of chaos was reigning within the Japanese military because they were in echo chambers and not relaying information to another. When the Kwantung Army Operations department suddenly proposed a new advance east of the Luan River, on May 2nd a heated exchange took place between them and the Kwantung Army Intelligence Section: “INTELLIGENCE SECTION: The defiant attitude of the enemy is a matter of degree. While it is indisputable that some of their forces continue defiant, their main force is still stationed west of the Luan River. Therefore, a defiant attitude on the part of the enemy is not sufficient reason to deal them a crushing blow. The Kwantung Army withdrew from the Luan River line only ten days ago. As we understand it, the purpose was to comply with the imperial wish. If the army begins operations on a flimsy pretext at this time, inviting intervention by the central leadership, how can the honor of the commander in chief be maintained? What we should now attack are rather the enemy forces facing the 8th Division. For this, we should employ additional strength. By dealing a severe blow to the Chinese Central Army forces in this area, we can threaten Peiping and the operation should be all the more effective. OPERATIONS SECTION: Due to the limitations of our supply capacity, we cannot use more than a certain level of forces against the enemy facing the 8th Division. Since the enemy east of the Luan River maintains a defiant attitude, they must be punished regardless of their strength. INTELLIGENCE SECTION: Since the seizure of Nant'ienmen the 8th Division lacks the capability of pursuing the enemy. This is an unavoidable consequence of the small strength of its force from the outset of the operation. Isn't the First [Operations] Section uncertain that the enemy can be defeated even by the main force of the 8th Division, and doesn't it intend ultimately to deploy the 6th Division southward in concert with action by the 8th Division? If this is the case, it is understandable, and this section is not necessarily against it. OPERATIONS SECTION: That is not what this section is considering. INTELLIGENCE SECTION: In that case, there is no clear justification for launching the operation. The objective of the operation must be plainly spelled out to all concerned, from His Majesty at the top down to the lowest private. There must not be the slightest doubt about it.” After this conversation the Intelligence department debated amongst themselves before relaying another response at midnight, ultimately not approving it. The next day the Operations department sent a telegram to the negotiations team in Peiping: “1) Under present conditions, the Kwantung Army has no intention of accepting a cease-fire proposal for the time being, particularly because there are signs suggesting intervention by third countries in the matter. 2) Previously the Kwantung Army suggested the Miyun-Yiit'ienLuan River line as the retreat line for the Chinese army; but this did not mean it was to be their front line after a cease-fire. It rather indicated a line to which the Chinese army should immediately and voluntarily retreat as evidence of their sincerity. In other words, a cease-fire cannot be negotiated until they retreat to this line and abandon their provocative attitude, and until this is confirmed by the Kwantung Army. Their mere retreat to the indicated line, in today's circumstances, is not sufficient reason for us to respond to the cease-fire proposal. According to Peking telegram 483 [not identified], it appears that the intentions of our army have been somewhat misunderstood. Even if the Chinese retreat to the indicated line and display the sincerity of their intentions, we may possibly demand a retreat line farther south. We believe negotiations in this region should be handled by the central leadership in Tokyo rather than by the Kwantung Army. Act on this understanding.” So after this message, the Intelligence department accused the Operations department of trying to find any excuse to renew the advance and sent a wire to Nemoto on April 29th "If the Chinese suddenly perceive their mistake, . . . we will not make war for the fun of it." However the Intelligence department was suddenly overruled by Colonel Kita who cabled the negotiators that the Operations department now had full approval from Kwantung Army vice chief of staff Okamura Yasuji. When General Muto received this notice he questioned "This draft order, states that the enemy has moved into the region east of the Luan River and is showing a provocative attitude. I did not receive such a report from the Second [Intelligence] Section before my departure from Hsinching. Does this mean there has been a subsequent change in the situation?" After being informed more so, Muto simply stated he wished to wait until the chief of staff could speak to him. Obviously Muto was getting wet feet and did not want to perform any actions not in accordance with Tokyo HQ, as Emperor Hirohito had put his foot down. On May 3rd, General Koiso and Operations Department staff officer Endo Saburo spoke with Muto, indicating they had approval of Tokyo HQ general staff and even the Emperor. So Muto relented for a second advance and issued Order 503 on May 3rd to the IJA 6th and 8th Divisions. Now the Army General Staff were dragged into the Kwantung Army's debacle fully. So they drew up an emergency draft plan for measures in North China. To this aim: “Through continuing pressure by the military might of the Kwantung Army, applied in concert with various political measures in North China, the Chinese forces in North China are to be compelled to make a substantia] surrender or to dissolve, thereby resulting in the withdrawal of the Chinese army along the China-Manchukuo border and in the establishment of peace in this area”. Added to this the General Staff suggested a large counteroffensive be driven along the Great Wall and a formal truce agreement should be concluded once three conditions had been met: “(a) that Chinese forces had retreated voluntarily south and west of a line connecting Hsuanhua, Shunyi, Sanho, Yüt'ien, Luanchou, and Lot'ing; (b) that anti-Japanese activities had been controlled; and (c) that the preceding had been verified by the Japanese army”. Under immense pressure from the renewed Japanese advance, the Chinese government on May 3rd, had pushed for a new body to tackle the North China situation. That was the Peiping Political Affairs Council. It was composed of 22 members, headed by Huang Fu. Huang Fu was notably a pro-Japanese official, having been a graduate of the Tokyo Land Survey department training institute and had served early as a minister of foreign affairs. Since China had zero faith anymore in the League of Nations and believed if they failed to resolve the North China issue, this all might see a new civil war break out between Chiang Kai-Shek and Wang Jingwei. Thus everyone felt the time for active resistance was over and they must place all their effort into negotiations. Chiang Kai-Shek placed a great amount of authority upon Huang Fu and trusted the man. Huang Fu began his new task by speaking with all the political and financial leaders from both sides of the conflict to see how a real ceasefire could be met through dealmaking. Meanwhile on May 6th the IJA 6th Division unleashed a new offensive south of the Great Wall and were followed by the 8th Division on the 11th. General Muto at this time made public statements blaming the Chinese for the renewed hostilities, making it seem the Japanese had intended to stay within the Great Wall area. The 6th Division swept across the sector east of the Luan River and by the 11th the Chinese defensive line collapsed. On the 12th the 6th Division crossed the Luan River, pursuing Yu Xuechengs 51st Army. In turn this threatened He Yingqin's main force who were facing the 8th Division. In the previous battles, Yu Xuechengs men had performed quite poorly and now even under direct command of He Yingqin were proving themselves helpless against the 6th division. Additionally Itagaki's agency over in Tientsin were using radio facilities to dispatch false directives from Chinese high command, ordering the forces to retreat from the front battle line. Two to three Chinese divisions were neutralized by these fake radio messages and in turn the Chinese became very demoralized at their lines. The 8th division had driven into the Gubeikou area on the 11th and it took them only a day to dislodge the Chinese from their line near Xuxiachen. By the 13th Xuxiachen had fallen completely. On the 11th and 12th, Japanese aircraft began flying over Peiping, as a demonstration of the terror they could deliver to the city at any moment. These developments altogether were pushing the Chinese civilians to demand of their politicians and generals that they appease the Japanese. Huang Fu proposed to Nemoto on the 12th that all Chinese troops could be withdrawn from Miyun to a line extending from Shunyi to Yutien and Tangshan. This was an enormous concession and nearly mirrored the line the Japanese had demanded. The Japanese however, rejected the concession. To make matters worse for the Chinese, He Yingqin had been notified of the large concession proposal in advance and expected the Japanese to take it. Thus he had refrained from operating in strength at Miyun and did not significantly defend the path towards Peiping. It was the belief of the Japanese commanders, if they performed a full-scale attack towards Peiping now, He Yingqin would have no choice but to withdraw towards Shunyi. With this in mind the Japanese made a proposal on the 14th: “1) According to the reports of the Peiping military attaché, the 8th Division should be prepared to advance in a single sweep to the southern limit of Miyun, if it is deemed necessary. Preparations for this attack should be expedited. 2) In conjunction with the above, front-line aircraft should take actions implying that a major Japanese offensive is about to begin. 3) In Tokyo, it should be announced publicly, in liaison with the Foreign Ministry, that the security of Jehol province cannot be guaranteed as long as the Chinese army remains in Miyun. Furthermore, every so often Japanese aircraft should make demonstration flights over the Shunyi-T'ungchou area.” Confronted with this, the Chinese were pretty screwed. The Chinese negotiations team were frantically searching for any way to force a ceasefire. Then the secretary of the Shanghai legation, Suma Yakichiro showed up to Peiping, which the Chinese viewed as a golden opportunity. The Chinese complained to him that the Kwantung Army had resumed their offensive and that a political agency in Tientsin were trying to enact coups. Suma bluntly told them the Japanese actions were backed fully by Tokyo and despite the Chinese belief that this was false or that Japan was facing a major financial deficit, this was all untrue. While the dialogue continued to go nowhere, the 6th division had pursued the Chinese forces to the vicinity of Fengjun. Muto believed this had gone to far so he issued orders on May 13th limiting operations to the area north of a line connecting Miyun, Pingkou, Fegjun and Yungping. Now the 6th and 8th divisions were to assemble around Xuxiachen and Zunhua. Two days later he issued this statement to the public "If the Chinese army immediately abandons its hitherto provocative attitude and withdraws some distance from the border, our army will quickly return to the line of the Great Wall and pursue its regular task of maintaining security in Manchukuo." Likewise Muto ordered the Tientsin group to inform the Chinese that the Kwantung Army would return to the Great Wall if the Chinese forces retreated to the Shunyi-Yutien-Tangshan line. Nemoto forwarded all of this to Chen Yi. On May 15th He Yingqin ordered the withdrawal of the Chinese forces to a line between Malanyu, Linnantsang and Pamencheng. With what seemed a imminent ceasefire at hand, the Kwantung Army HQ ordered the 6th and 8th divisions to take up positions strategically favorable for the negotiations to finally begin in ernest. On the 17th a draft ceasefire plan was drawn up. It envisioned the withdrawal of the Chinese forces to the Shunyi-Yutien-Tangshan line and in return the Japanese would pull back to the Great Wall area. Huang Fu was on his way back to Peiping from Shanghai for probably the 10th time in two weeks, when the Japanese captured Fengjun and Zhunhua, routing the Chinese across the Qi Canal to the right bank of the Pai River. The 6th Division then advanced towards Yutien and Xumenchen as the 8th division stood around Xuxiachn. When the Chinese began retreating from Miyun on May 18th, the 8th division suddenly converged upon Miyun. Muto was of course delighted by their new advantageous position and even briefly began talking to his colleagues about the prospect of just marching upon Peiping. Instead he decided to sweep through Miyun, Pingku and the Qi Canal, going even further west than he had stated he would back on the 13th. With these new orders in hand, the 6th Division quickly captured Qixien on the 19th and further pursued retreating Chinese forces to Sanho. The 8th Division entered Miyun and two days later began advancing to Huaijou. By the 23rd Huaijou had fallen as the 6th Division reached the Qi Canal. These advances threatened the Peiping-Tientsin region. Both Japanese divisions halted on the 25th as the ceasefire was issued. With that last strike Muto felt he had significantly increased their poker hand going forward. Meanwhile Itagaki's team at Tientsin were still trying to bring about a coup. In tandem with the 8th Divisions attack on Miyun, the agency tried to engineer a revolt by the militia troops led by Song Queyuan, Fang Chenwu, Sun Tienying, amongst others. The idea was for these forces to occupy Peiping while wrecking havoc upon the Chinese central army within th region. The agency had attempting recruiting Wu Peifu, but the old jade marshal was unwilling, so they turned to this former protege, the chairman of Hubei, Yu Xuecheng. However he also declined. Yu Xuecheng was also approached by Hu Hanmin, looking to form an anti-Chiang Kai-Shek campaign in cooperation with Han Fuqu and Feng Yuxiang. To this Yu Xuecheng declined as well. Itagaki kept searching for disgruntled warlords, and then turned to Li Qiashan and Xu Yusan. Xu Yusan was a former ally to Feng Yuxiang with a history of anti-Chiang Kai-Shek actions. If they got the backing of his personal army, roughly 10,000 men strong at Tangshan they could do some real damage. On May 16th Xu Yusan declared independence and took up the Manchukuo 5 color flag in direct opposition to the Kuomintang. He began issuing the slogan “Hubi for the people of Hubei” as his army marched west along the Peiping-Shanhaiguan railway. His force reached the vicinity of Tangu whereupon they had increased to 30,000 and rumors emerged they would occupy Tientsin. This began a mass panic. . . for literally a day. His army collapsed into nothing more than a rabble as now had the stomach to actually fight their fellow countrymen. Despite this grand failure, the Tientsin group continued with other plots. At 8 pm on May 19th, a Peiping bound train from Tangu, carrying Chinese soldiers was bombed around Tientsin station. The Japanese love bombing trains as we all know. This resulted in small incidents involving Japanese and Chinese officials, giving precedent for 600 Japanese troops led by Lt General Nakamura Kotaro to reinforce Tientsin on May 23rd. There were a few other incidents were supposedly Chinese agents were tossing grenades at Japanese officials. One of these officials was Major Mori Takeshi of the Japanese Army General Staff who was working in Tientsin. However the grenade thrown at him was a dud, and before the Japanese could seize it, some local Chinese grabbed it, finding a stamp on it bearing “Tokyo Artillery Arsenal”, oops. These numerous incidents influenced the Chinese who feared Japan was trying to force an invasion into North China. To these rumors, He Yingqin insisted they mount a proper defense of Peiping, but many were arguing they had to further retreat. Meanwhile the Tientsin agency was told to stop performing incidents and instead secure northern warlords to their future cause. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The battle for the Great Wall of China was coming to a bitter end for the Chinese forces. The Japanese were using every deceptive measure to edge further and further into China proper. It seemed clear to the Chinese, nothing would stop Japanese encroachment upon their nation, while the rest of the world simply watched on doing nothing.
2:30 April 19th: The Day Tyranny Clashed with Liberty—From 1775 to OKC Bombing Dark Secrets Brace for a journey through history's most explosive moments on April 19th! From Paul Revere's daring 250th anniversary ride and the Revolutionary War's fiery kickoff at Lexington and Concord, where patriots defied British gun grabs, to Santa Anna's ruthless cannon hunt at the Alamo, this date screams resistance against tyranny. Fast forward to the Warsaw Ghetto's heroic stand, Waco's tragic inferno, and the Oklahoma City bombing's shadowy cover-up—with NEW allegations OKC was orchestrated by a rogue government. 34:07 An Unstoppable Revolution That Changed History: The CrossThe resurrection of Jesus Christ, commemorated around the same time as these anniversaries, is hailed as humanity's greatest revolution. Defying pagan philosophies, Christ's message of self-denial, love, and the martyrs (literally witnesses) transformed the world, challenging Roman cruelty and human comfort-seeking. This divine uprising continues to inspire hope and resistance against worldly tyranny. 49:36 The Rebellion Against Distracting Car Touchscreens The obsession with touchscreens, made into a trend by imitation of Tesla has at best, been annoying, at worst a distracting death trap. From fumbling with touchscreens to adjust air vents to navigating nested menus for turn signals, drivers have been screaming for relief. Now, Subaru, Hyundai, and even Volkswagen are ditching these hazardous screens for good old knobs and buttons And Eric Peters points out the striking resemblance between Tesla's ludicrously ugly Cybertruck and the Pontiac Aztek. However, the Aztec was simply ugly and not the sales flop of Cybertruck where the massive price has undergone ludicrous depreciation costing owner over $40k in just the first year alone 1:13:45 LIVE comments from audience 1:17:58 Punishing Those Found “NOT GUILTY” is OK with US CourtsIn a shocking abuse of power, Illinois cops seized a plumbing company's truck after a drunk driver crashed into it—and they've held it for over 15 months without a warrant or explanation! And, as stealing property without even charging people with a crime has become standard practice so has “acquitted-conduct sentencing” where judges ignore NOT GUILTY jury verdicts and punish people for conduct the jury has acquitted — and the Supreme Court allows it to continue! 1:40:05 Tattoos & Trump's Photoshop Fiasco Did Trump know that the picture of fake MS-13 tattoos on an illegal's hand was photoshopped, not annotated? Both sides are embellishing their narrative with lies — so what IS the truth? A look at a discredited corrupt cop and a credible tale of human trafficking, and implications for us all if we let Presidents arbitrarily label people as “terrorists” (as Biden did with J6 and Trump is doing with his “emergency”) 2:32:00 Palantir's Sinister Domestic Biometric Surveillance Plot While Trump boasts of cracking down on illegal immigration, REALID is rolling out and Palantir's rolling out a dystopian “Immigration OS” to track everyone in real-time, fueled by AI and a web of private spy cameras. This isn't just about deportations—it's a sinister scheme to enslave us all in a biometric police state!2:49:30 Afterlife Awakening: Non-Religious Americans Embrace Eternity as Trump's Does a “Bah Humbug” Easter Rant A year ago, Biden ignored Christ's resurrection and worshipped trannies with “Transgender Visibility Day” declaration. Trump's team put together a Christian declaration of what we celebrate but then Trump himself puked all over it with another rage post against those he hates. Nevertheless, a seismic shift is sweeping America as belief in an afterlife surges among non-religious folks. But do they have hope? Will they accept what Christ has done for them? Will it be life after life or death after death?If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFor 10% off supplements and books, go to RNCstore.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.
This week Justin talks with Emanuele Midolo. Manu is a journalist based in London and writing for The Times and The Sunday Times. His work has appeared in Forbes, Wired UK, and publications across the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Today he's here to discuss his new book, which he co-authored with Peter Gillman. It was just published last month and is the story of the previously unsolved murder of British journalist David Holden, who was killed just hours after arriving in Cairo to pursue a story in December, 1977. Emanuele and Peter pursued this story relentlessly and found not only several different possible motives and murderers, but also that David had been keeping many secrets of his own. Connect with Emanuele:Twitter/X: @manumidoloBlueSky: @manumidolo.bksy.socialCheck out the book, Murder in Cairo, here.https://timesbookshop.co.uk/murder-in-cairo-9781785907029/Connect with Spycraft 101:Get Justin's latest book, Murder, Intrigue, and Conspiracy: Stories from the Cold War and Beyond, here.spycraft101.comIG: @spycraft101Shop: shop.spycraft101.comPatreon: Spycraft 101Find Justin's first book, Spyshots: Volume One, here.Check out Justin's second book, Covert Arms, here.Download the free eBook, The Clandestine Operative's Sidearm of Choice, here.History by MailWho knew? Not me! Learn something new every month. Use code JUSTIN10 for 10% off your subscription.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show
A treasure trove of counter-culture! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Phil Hine and Rodney Orpheus about Delinquent Elementals, a massive book collecting the best material from Pagan News, the zine they ran from 1988-1992. As Pagan News' existence paralleled and lampooned the UK Satanic Panic, we talk quite a lot about that. Also on tap: a general look at the British occult scene, how pre-internet zines anticipated the internet, comic books, RPGs and the logic of invoking invoking Star Trek's Spock instead of some 16th century demon when you need a magical solution for a computer problem. * * * Delinquent Elementals is out now. Check out Phil's site and Rodney's site for more about their various projects. * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter! That's where all the cool kids are now! Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place! Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast! Edited by the one and only R. Alex Murray. Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com. Available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients. The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter. Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!
On today's show we are looking back in history for the lessons of failed conquests. Napoleon attempted to economically cripple Great Britain by closing European ports to British goods. He believed this would destroy Britain's trade and force its surrender.Britain's powerful navy and widespread smuggling operations undermined the blockade. The system hurt the economies of France and its allies, leading to resentment and a desire to trade with Britain. Napoleon sometimes underestimated the resolve and capabilities of his opponents, particularly the Spanish resistance and the Russian winter.When a nation takes aim at a single adversary, it can trigger a cascade of alliances which the aggressor didn't foresee.The current trade actions by the White House are accelerating the drive to form new alliances. If doing business with the US is more difficult, then countries that are dependent on exports will aim to find new customers and business elsewhere. It's not as if the US is the only customer in the world for products. The liberation day announcement which called out more than 180 countries as enemies of the United States likely has the unintended consequence of stimulating countries that have been staunch supporters of the United States into forging new alliances. Whether these new alliances will merely augment their relationship with the US and act as a plan B contingency, or whether they will outright replace the US as an ally remains to be seen. ------------**Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1) iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613) Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com) LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce) YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734) Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso) Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com) **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com) Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital) Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)
In today's episode, we're diving into one of the most under-appreciated but fascinating corners of British military history: the Waziristan campaign of 1936–1937. It's a tale of Gurkhas, armoured cars, tribal lashkars, and the infamous Faqir of Ipi—all set against the harsh, unforgiving terrain between British India and Afghanistan. Jon Pick and I will be talking sniping, ambushes and mountain warfare. You'll hear about heroic stands, and questionable decisions. And if you enjoy this kind of thing—well then keep in touch and stay up to date with my newsletter by heading over to redcoathistory.com/newsletter and signing upIt's where all the best stories march first. Jon's military book business is excellent and can be found here - https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/yorkmilitarybooks
Pets aren't just animals, they're family. Did you know that India's pet industry doubled to $3.6 billion in just five years? Or that British households now own 38 million pets, half as many as the human population? Welcome to Adept English, where we help you learn https://adeptenglish.com/company/learning-system/ English through fascinating real-world stories like this one."In a world where you can be anything, be kind—especially to animals." Ellen DeGeneresNow, full disclosure—I've always been a cat-and-dog person (despite my cat Ivan's grumpy interruptions!). But today's episode isn't just about pets; it's about what they reveal, why societies dote on "fur babies," how laws now treat pets like sentient beings, and even… pet prenups? (Yes, that's a thing!)By the end, you'll master key vocabulary (grooming, custody, stray dogs) and cultural insights—from Turkey's stray dog crisis to Spain's groundbreaking animal welfare laws. So if you're ready to practise English while uncovering the surprising world of pet ownership, let's begin. Press play—your fluency https://adeptenglish.com/english/fluency/ journey just got fluffier.- Check our Subscription FAQ: https://adeptenglish.com/faq/subscription-faq/If you like this podcast then you will love Course One Activate Your Listening, which includes 5 hours of 'Listen & Learn' material. It's like the podcasts but more in depth. Find out more here: https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/course-one-activate-your-listening/
British flags fly at half mast after the colonies take control of the drivers championship. The parma
The much venerated charge of the light brigade at the battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War was one of the biggest military blunders of all time. The poor decisions made that day had much to do with the personalities of the British high command.Sources:Aldrete, Gregory S. History's Great Military Blunders and the Lessons They Teach. The Great Courses, 2015.Figes, Orlando. Crimea. New York, Picador, 2012.
Described as 'perhaps the greatest British theologian of all time', John Owen was far more than a theoretician. As a pastor-scholar, Owen showed that his great concern was to promote holiness in his hearers and readers, to the glory of God and their lasting joy. This week's episode constitutes an introduction to Owen and many of his chief works which, it is hoped, will be of help to those new to him, as well as to confirmed and seasoned appreciators of this humble, profound Christian teacher. Featured Resources: – 'John Owen: A Defeated Puritan?', Ian Hamilton, Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 711 (December 2022). – 'John Owen on Spiritual-Mindedness', J. I. Packer, Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 620 (May 2015). – 'Some Thoughts on Reading the Works of John Owen', Sinclair B. Ferguson, Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 152 (May 1976). – Three testimonies about reading John Owen, Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 57 (June 1968). From the Pen of Owen: The Works of John Owen (Goold edition, 16 volumes). Please note each volume can be purchased separately. Owen's Exposition of Hebrews (Goold edition, 7 volumes). Please note each volume can be purchased separately. Apostasy from the Gospel: Nature and Causes (Puritan Paperback, 176 pages, abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law) Communion with God (Puritan Paperback, 224 pages, abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law) The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (Large paperback, 440 pages, introduction and analysis by J. I. Packer) Duties of Christian Fellowship (Puritan Paperback, 96 pages, modernized) The Glory of Christ (Puritan Paperback, 184 pages, abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law) Gospel Life (Puritan Paperback, 256 pages, modernized) Gospel Ministry (Puritan Paperback, 208 pages, modernized) The Holy Spirit (Puritan Paperback, 216 pages, abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law) Indwelling Sin in Believers (Puritan Paperback, 176 pages, abridged and made easy to read) The Mortification of Sin (Puritan Paperback, 144 pages, abridged and made easy to read by Richard Rushing) Searching Our Hearts in Difficult Times (Puritan Paperback, 160 pages, abridged and made easy to read) The Spirit and the Church (Puritan Paperback, 208 pages, abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law) Temptation Resisted and Repulsed (Puritan Paperback, 128 pages, abridged and made easy to read by Richard Rushing) Explore the work of the Banner of Truth: www.banneroftruth.org Subscribe to the Magazine (print/digital/both): www.banneroftruth.org/magazine Leave us your feedback or a testimony: www.speakpipe.com/magazinepodcast
Will Bain looks at how the all-inclusive holiday has became a British favourite. And with tariff talks rattling the markets, what does it mean for US tourism?
Happy Easter! In honor of the Easter Season we covered "Easter Bunny Massacre" from 2021. This one's a British slasher and we had so much fun picking it apart. Sorry for our terrible accents. It's the story of a group of friends who start out celebrating graduation, but end up trying to cover up a murder. The crime comes back to haunt them a year later in the form of someone dressed as a deranged Easter Bunny with a hammer and a bad attitude. Let us know what you think!Follow us on Instagram @SlashU_PodcastEmail us at SlashUPodcast@gmail.comCheck out the Facebook page too: SlashU PodcastClick any of the Amazon links at SlashUPodcast.com to support the showThanks to ZapSplat.com for our Sound FX Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Enjoy nine free minutes from our Patreon-exclusive episode about the pilot of the American Office. Hear the full thing by subscribing at https://patreon.com/loadbearingbeams for $5/month. Matt and Wade go through the pilot episode of the American Office. They compare their personal fandoms of the show and how deep their knowledge runs, and then briefly discuss how the show was adapted from the British series created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, its rocky first season and slow ascent into a megahit, and its lasting cultural legacy. And as for the pilot itself, which is generally not well regarded, Matt is surprised at how solid it is, how good a job it does at setting up the series, and how fully formed the main characters already are. The Office was created by Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant, and developed by Greg Daniels. It stars Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, and Jenna Fischer The pilot is directed by Ken Kwapis & written by Greg Daniels (adapted from a teleplay by Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant) Original air date: March 24, 2005 Source: The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene (2020) - https://amzn.to/4juDN9i Hear Wade's incredible album WHO SAID THAT? on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever else music is streamed. Or you can purchase the album from Bandcamp. Follow Wade on Instagram: @wadealready Music credit: "Never Trust a Bat" by Rural Route Nine. Listen on Spotify (https://bit.ly/3QBjavP), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/49PunSv), or YouTube (https://youtu.be/o7SivxabpYI). Live cover of The Office theme song by Better By Design, one of Wade's bands. Watch it in full: https://youtu.be/y4gVPgdVWY4
Welcome to a new episode of the My Sporting Hero podcast, part of Nutmeg FC. The home of brilliant football stories – made in Scotland.So far this month, Nutmeg FC subscribers have enjoyed....* Brian Lee's article on the fascinating connection between fans of Morton and Serie B outfit Reggiana* Daniel Gray's latest Slow Match Report on Rangers' heroic draw with Athletic Bilbao in the Europa League quarter-finalAnd still to come....* The exclusive column from our tactics guy Adam Clery comparing Lewis Ferguson with Liam HendersonOnly paid subscribers to Nutmeg FC get every piece we produce straight to their inbox.This time on My Sporting Hero, our guest is Michael O'Neill.Portadown-born Michael played as a midfielder for several British clubs, including ones in Scotland where he is best remembered for spells at Dundee United and Hibernian. As a young man he set top-flight Newcastle ablaze with a stunning opening season. He moved to Tannadice and eventually fell out with notoriously thrawn United managerial legend Jim McLean. He also played over 30 times for Northern Ireland.Michael started out in management at Brechin City, made Shamrock Rovers Irish champions and led them into Europe, before taking the reins at Northern Ireland. He achieved the nation's first-ever qualification for the European Championship and progression to the second round of the finals in France in 2016. He also rescued Stoke City from relegation danger when he first joined the Potters.Michael is currently enjoying his second spell as Northern Ireland manager.His sporting hero is ‘Superbrat' and all-round tennis genius/guru John McEnroe.Nutmeg FC | Substack This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nutmegfc.co.uk/subscribe
Widespread Microsoft Entra lockouts cause by new security feature rollout Malware delivered through diplomatic wine-tasting invites British companies told to hold in-person interviews to thwart North Korea job scammers Huge thanks to our sponsor, Dropzone AI Growing your MSSP client roster while your alerts are multiplying? Dropzone AI works alongside your team, investigating alerts just like your best human analysts would. Our AI SOC Analyst cuts investigation time from an hour to minutes while handling five times more alerts per analyst. Unlike complex SOAR solutions, Dropzone deploys quickly and adapts to your environment without the need for playbooks or coding. Eliminate backlogs, reduce false positives, and deliver the detailed investigations your clients expect. Ready to scale your MSSP without scaling your team? Meet us at booth ESE-60 at RSA. Find the stories behind the headlines at CISOseries.com.
So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.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. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. 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
Download ELSA for free + get 7 days premium membership for free: https://bit.ly/ELSAxTHINKINGINENGLISH Get exclusive ELSA discounts: https://elsaspeak.com/inf/promo-code-thinking-in-english/?promocode=THINK85 What was the most important moment in English history? What event had the biggest consequences and most influential impact? Today I want to look at a few moments in the past 1000 years that have massively changed England and English culture. We'll discuss these events, learn about British history, and practice our English comprehension at the same time! Transcript - https://thinkinginenglish.blog/2025/04/21/335-the-most-important-moment-in-british-history-english-vocabulary-lesson/ AD Free Episode - https://www.patreon.com/thinkinginenglish My Links Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/thinkinginenglish Thinking in English Bonus Podcast - https://www.patreon.com/collection/10513 YOUTUBE Channel!!! - https://www.youtube.com/@thinkinginenglishpodcast INSTAGRAM - thinkinginenglishpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/thinkinginenglishpodcast/) Borough by Blue Dot Sessions Contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to advertise on Thinking in English. Thinking in English is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Vocabulary List Monarch (n.): A king or queen who rules a country. Conquest (n.): The act of taking control of a country or territory by force. Reformation (n.): A religious movement in the 16th century that led to the creation of Protestant churches and reforms in the Catholic Church. Consequences (n.): The results or effects of an action or decision, often negative. Protestant (n./adj.): A member of a Christian group that separated from the Catholic Church during the Reformation. Industrialisation (n.): The process of developing industries, factories, and large-scale production in a society.
World news in 7 minutes. Tuesday 22nd April 2025.Today: Pope dies. France Kardashian trial. Colombia yellow fever. El Salvador US congress. US Hegseth chat. DRC boat disaster. South Sudan capture. Yemen bombing. Israel admits wrongdoing. And elderly smartphone users.SEND7 is supported by our amazing listeners like you.Our supporters get access to the transcripts and vocabulary list written by us every day.Our supporters get access to an English worksheet made by us once per week.Our supporters get access to our weekly news quiz made by us once per week.We give 10% of our profit to Effective Altruism charities. You can become a supporter at send7.org/supportContact us at podcast@send7.org or send an audio message at speakpipe.com/send7Please leave a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify.We don't use AI! Every word is written and recorded by us!Since 2020, SEND7 (Simple English News Daily in 7 minutes) has been telling the most important world news stories in intermediate English. Every day, listen to the most important stories from every part of the world in slow, clear English. Whether you are an intermediate learner trying to improve your advanced, technical and business English, or if you are a native speaker who just wants to hear a summary of world news as fast as possible, join Stephen Devincenzi, Ben Mallett and Juliet Martin every morning. Transcripts, vocabulary lists, worksheets and our weekly world news quiz are available for our amazing supporters at send7.org. Simple English News Daily is the perfect way to start your day, by practising your listening skills and understanding complicated daily news in a simple way. It is also highly valuable for IELTS and TOEFL students. Students, teachers, TEFL teachers, and people with English as a second language, tell us that they use SEND7 because they can learn English through hard topics, but simple grammar. We believe that the best way to improve your spoken English is to immerse yourself in real-life content, such as what our podcast provides. SEND7 covers all news including politics, business, natural events and human rights. Whether it is happening in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas or Oceania, you will hear it on SEND7, and you will understand it.Get your daily news and improve your English listening in the time it takes to make a coffee.For more information visit send7.org/contact or send an email to podcast@send7.org
Christian Schwochow is one of the most distinguished and well-known directors from Germany. In addition to several movies, he has shot the series “The Tower”, “Bad Banks” and several episodes of the British hit series “The Crown.” Schwochow is currently in Victoria to film an Australian thriller series about which we only know the title at this point: “The Dispatcher.” - Christian Schwochow ist einer der profiliertesten und bekanntesten Regisseure aus Deutschland. Neben etlichen Kinofilmen hat er unter anderem die Serien "Der Turm", "Bad Banks" und einige Folgen der britischen Hit-Serie "The Crown" gedreht. Schwochow ist zur Zeit in Victoria, um hier eine australische Thriller-Serie zu drehen, über die man bisher nur den Titel weiß: "The Dispatcher".
Get ready for a deliciously trashy dive into "Footballers' Wives," the iconic British TV drama that defined early 2000s excess and gave us the legendary Tanya Turner. We're unpacking the outrageous storylines, the jaw-dropping fashion, and the sheer audacity of this series that took us inside the scandalous lives of Premier League wives and girlfriends. From catfights to conspiracies, no topic was off-limits in this must-discuss cult classic.Footballers Wives TV show, British drama, WAGs, Tanya Turner, early 2000s TV.
(Airdate: 4.21.25) Hollywood might have finally broken our brains — rumor has it Kim Kardashian is being seriously considered to star in a Bodyguard remake. Yes, the role that Whitney Houston made legendary is now supposedly being "tailored" for Kim K, because apparently you don't need to sing if you can serve enough duckface drama. We'll break down who's laughing harder: Taylor Swift or literally everyone else. Wendy's took a spicy jab at Katy Perry after her space trip — and they're NOT sorry. (Frosty machine's working and the shade machine is fully operational.) Elizabeth Hurley and Billy Ray Cyrus went Instagram official — and if you didn't have "British bombshell dates mulleted cowboy" on your 2025 bingo card, you're not alone. It's chaos, candy, and Kardashians — and it's all happening today on The WCN And @HalleBerry Listen to the daily Van Camp and Morgan radio show at: https://vancampandmorgan.com/stations buy us a coffee
Welcome to Season 3 of Texture Talks!