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As the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches, we walk part of the battlefield across the iconic Mash Valley, visit Ovillers Military Cemetery and walk through Ovillers village to the far end of the valley facing the Pozières Ridge.Alf Razzell discusses the burial of the dead at Ovillers: A Game of Ghosts.Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources of American policy. The book shows how the drive for international reform, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, reflected both America's unusual power and its fears about maintaining its domestic freedoms in a world dominated by arms races and the threat of war. The American desire to reform or to escape from the existing international system reshaped Europe's balance of power from 1914 to 1929, leaving it precarious and unlikely to produce lasting stability. America's power continued to loom globally in the 1930s, as first its isolationism and, after 1938, its open hostility toward Germany and Japan influenced the policies of the West and of Hitler. The coda at the end of the volume analyzes how the United States affected the strategic choices made by Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan from 1939 to 1941 that globalized the conflict. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and political science, especially courses focused on World War II and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Guest: Ross A. Kennedy (he/him), is a Professor of History and Chair at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's Strategy for Peace and Security (2009) as well as numerous other publications on the First World War. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources of American policy. The book shows how the drive for international reform, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, reflected both America's unusual power and its fears about maintaining its domestic freedoms in a world dominated by arms races and the threat of war. The American desire to reform or to escape from the existing international system reshaped Europe's balance of power from 1914 to 1929, leaving it precarious and unlikely to produce lasting stability. America's power continued to loom globally in the 1930s, as first its isolationism and, after 1938, its open hostility toward Germany and Japan influenced the policies of the West and of Hitler. The coda at the end of the volume analyzes how the United States affected the strategic choices made by Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan from 1939 to 1941 that globalized the conflict. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and political science, especially courses focused on World War II and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Guest: Ross A. Kennedy (he/him), is a Professor of History and Chair at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's Strategy for Peace and Security (2009) as well as numerous other publications on the First World War. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources of American policy. The book shows how the drive for international reform, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, reflected both America's unusual power and its fears about maintaining its domestic freedoms in a world dominated by arms races and the threat of war. The American desire to reform or to escape from the existing international system reshaped Europe's balance of power from 1914 to 1929, leaving it precarious and unlikely to produce lasting stability. America's power continued to loom globally in the 1930s, as first its isolationism and, after 1938, its open hostility toward Germany and Japan influenced the policies of the West and of Hitler. The coda at the end of the volume analyzes how the United States affected the strategic choices made by Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan from 1939 to 1941 that globalized the conflict. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and political science, especially courses focused on World War II and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Guest: Ross A. Kennedy (he/him), is a Professor of History and Chair at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's Strategy for Peace and Security (2009) as well as numerous other publications on the First World War. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources of American policy. The book shows how the drive for international reform, beginning with Woodrow Wilson, reflected both America's unusual power and its fears about maintaining its domestic freedoms in a world dominated by arms races and the threat of war. The American desire to reform or to escape from the existing international system reshaped Europe's balance of power from 1914 to 1929, leaving it precarious and unlikely to produce lasting stability. America's power continued to loom globally in the 1930s, as first its isolationism and, after 1938, its open hostility toward Germany and Japan influenced the policies of the West and of Hitler. The coda at the end of the volume analyzes how the United States affected the strategic choices made by Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and Japan from 1939 to 1941 that globalized the conflict. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in history and political science, especially courses focused on World War II and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Guest: Ross A. Kennedy (he/him), is a Professor of History and Chair at Illinois State University. He is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's Strategy for Peace and Security (2009) as well as numerous other publications on the First World War. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy
Next time a vintage aircraft flies overhead there's a good chance it's being propelled by the handiwork of a man from Manakau, an hour north of Wellington. For over 25 years Jeff Fox has created wooden propellers for classic aircraft like tiger moths and sopwith camels. He can put up to 300 hours of work into each handcrafted propeller for clients including First World War aviation buff Sir Peter Jackson. Jimmy Ellingham reports.
This week Johnboy shares the story of the infamous draft dodger who lived a life of gleeful merriment, access and privilege, before the First World War made him a pariah and brought the nation to a reckoning on avoiding war time service!
The parents of a girl who was raped by three strangers have spoken out after the men were found guilty following a trial...A court heard how the child was plied with drugs and assaulted by the group after they came across her in a supermarket car park.Reporter Lauren Abbott has spoken to the victim's parents and joins today's episode of the podcast.Also in this episode, police have told us a 'perfect storm' led to anti-social behaviour in Broadstairs at the weekend.It's thought a number of young people from other parts of Kent headed to the town after the end of GCSE exams which coincided with the hot weather.Fights broke out and footage online shows a restaurant being smashed up. Hear from a shop owner, local councillor and police.Meantime, the podcast has been told antisocial behaviour in Herne Bay has got so bad - there's going to be a public meeting about it tonight.Police and councillors are due to face questions from fed-up residents and business owners.The man who oversees the police in Kent has been giving us an update on how they're tackling so called 'heritage crime'.It's after a high profile theft of two First World War memorial plaques from a church in the Luton part of Chatham last month.Football, and former Gillingham head coach Stephen Clemence has taken on a role at Blackpool.He's joining the backroom staff at league one side Blackpool - joining up with former Gills player Steve Bruce who's manager there.
Sister Inah Canabarro was born in 1908. She was six years old when The First World War began in 1914.艾纳·卡纳巴罗（Inah Canabarro）姐妹出生于1908年。1914年第一次世界大战开始时，她才六岁。The soccer-loving nun from Brazil is believed to be the world's oldest living person at 116 years old.据信，来自巴西足球的修女是116岁那年的世界上最古老的人。LongeviQuest is an organization that keeps records of people over 110 years old around the world. It released a statement on Saturday saying that Canabarro is the world's oldest person having proof of early life records.longeviquest是一个使全球110岁以上人士记录的组织。 它在周六发表了一份声明，称Canabarro是世界上最古老的人，有早期的记录证明。LongeviQuest filmed a video of Canabarro last February. Canabarro can be seen smiling, making jokes and sharing small paintings she used to make of wildflowers. The video also shows her saying a Catholic prayer called the Hail Mary.Longeviquest去年2月拍摄了Canabarro的视频。 可以看到Canabarro微笑着，开玩笑并分享她用来制作野花的小画。 该视频还显示她说的是天主教祈祷，称为冰雹玛丽。“I'm young, pretty and friendly — all very good, positive qualities that you have too,” the nun told visitors to her retirement home in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.“我年轻，漂亮又友好 - 您也拥有非常好的，积极的品质，”修女告诉游客，她在巴西南部城市阿雷格雷（Porto Alegre）的退休之家。Canabarro says the secret to her long life is her Catholic religious belief.卡纳巴罗说，她长寿的秘密是她的天主教宗教信仰。Cleber Canabarro is her 84-year-old nephew. He told The Associated Press that Sister Inah was so thin during childhood that many people worried that she would not live to be an adult.克莱伯·卡纳巴罗（Cleber Canabarro）是她84岁的侄子。 他告诉美联社，伊纳（Inah）姐妹在童年时期很瘦，许多人担心她不会成年。Her nephew spends time with her every Saturday. He has been sending her voice messages between visits to help her feel better following two visits to the hospital that left her weak, with difficulty talking.她的侄子每个星期六都花时间与她在一起。 在两次访问后，他一直在访问两次访问后，他一直在访问之间发出声音信息，以帮助她感觉更好，这使她虚弱，这很难说话。“The other sisters say she gets a jolt when she hears my voice,” he said. “She gets excited.”他说：“其他姐妹们说，当她听到我的声音时，她会震动。” “她很兴奋。”LongeviQuest researchers say Canabarro was born on June 8, 1908, to a large family in southern Brazil. But her nephew said her birth was registered two weeks late and she was actually born on May 27.长寿研究人员说，卡纳巴罗（Canabarro）于1908年6月8日出生于巴西南部的一个大家庭。 但是她的侄子说，她的出生时间晚了两个星期，实际上是在5月27日出生的。
Coming to you LIVE from the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition, with three very special guests: Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley, Luke Turner and Kate Clements. It's another lively live show, exploring war museums and their merch from several angles. How do war museums navigate ‘selling' histories of death and destruction to their visitors? What can replica First World War trench whistles and Panzerfaust soft toys tell us about the changing relationship between the museum, its shop and its visitors? And what happens when museum shops themselves become sites of conflict, as in the recent ‘culture wars' over the National Trust's ‘vegan' scones? This event was recorded live as part of the event series connected to the Cursed Objects in Museum Shops exhibition at the Peltz Gallery. The exhibition is FREE and runs until 26 June, Mon-Fri 10am- 8pm. For more information, see here. (You've still got a few days left to see it!!) Our fabulous guests: Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth-century Britain at the University of Southampton, specialising in questions about empire, politics, culture and identity. She is the author of Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain and the co-author of Is Free Speech Under Threat? Luke Turner is an author and editor. His most recent book Men at War: Loving, fighting, lusting, remembering 1939-1945 explores masculinity and sexuality within the memory of the Second World War. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Luke co-founded the influential music website The Quietus. Kate Clements is the author of Total War: A People's History of the Second World War and The Royal Family in Wartime. She curated the award-winning Second World War Galleries at the Imperial War Museums, and is a former curator of the Churchill War Rooms. Kate is currently Curator of the Tower of London. With thanks to Jade Bailey for her help on the recording. This event was supported by the Centre for Museum Cultures, Birkbeck.
What are the origins of the Irish War of Independence? What impact did the First World War have on Irish efforts for Home Rule? What was the mood in Ireland following the bloody Easter Rising of 1916? And, who was Éamon de Valera, the man who dominated the story of not only Irish politics in the 20th century, but also the entire story of Irish independence? As they launch back into the epic and tumultuous Irish War of Independence, Dominic and Tom are joined once again by historian Paul Rouse, to discuss one of the most important conflicts in the history of Britain. The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members' chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The influenza pandemic of 1918-20 infected about one-third of the world's population at the time, killing at least 50 million people. Occurring during the First World War, what became known as the Spanish Flu spread rapidly as soldiers moved across continents. It overwhelmed hospitals, led to mass graves, and disrupted societies worldwide. But what made the disease so deadly? Was it really Spanish? And what lessons had been learned by the time Covid-19 emerged, a century later? This is a Short History Of The Spanish Flu. A Noiser Production. Written by Nicola Rayner. With thanks to Mark Honigsbaum, a medical historian, and author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You'll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you're on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Our latest questions from listeners range from could Britain have stood back from conflict in 1914 and not been part of the Great War, how accurate was the final dugout scene in the film 1917, what duties did Royal Field Artillery Drivers have on the battlefields of WW1 and what was the story of the Canadian soldiers who rioted in Britain in 1919 while awaiting demobilisation?The Old Front Line Youtube Channel: Old Front Line on YouTube.Recommended novel on 1914: Robert Harris - Precipice (Penguin 2024)Books on The Canadian Riots:The story of the Kinmel Park Camp Riots in 1919 by Julian Putkowski (1989)Riots Death and Baseball - Robert H. Griffiths (2019)Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
Portlander Walter Waters arrived in D.C. at the head of 20,000 disciplined, well-intentioned petitioners to request that First World War vets be paid their service bonus early. Hoover refused to meet with him — a big mistake. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1704d.bonus-army-ended-hoovers-hopes-440.html)
Why do they feel a need for violence to prove their manhood? What’s the connection between an angry Germany after the First World War and what many young men are feeling in 2025? Why do they see equality as deprivation? The post Young Men Are Drawn to Fascism. Why? What Can We Do? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.
In a Trench Chat special we speak to the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre Commemorations team - otherwise known as 'The MOD War Detectives' - who work to recover and identify the dead on the former battlefields of the Great War. Thanks to the Ministry of Defence for their help in making this possible, and special thanks to Rosie Barron, Nichola Nash and Alexia Clark who all appear in this episode. The images used are Crown Copyright.Discover more about the Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre Commemorations team and visit their Facebook page.Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
Update for listeners, and happy Father's Day wishes; excerpt from latest patron-only lecture on Italy between unification and the entry into the First World War. Please sign up on Patreon to hear the latest lecture and all patron-only materials! -- https://www.patreon.com/posts/italy-nation-war-131082248 Podcast website: www.historiansplaining.com Image: The Paderno D'Adda hydroelectric power plant, Lombardy, 1895-8 Music: "Nel Blu, Dipinto di Blu" / "Volare," by Domenico Modugno
Assassin's Creed Rogue takes us back to a time when the troubles of royal houses in Europe violently affected the lives of people across the Atlantic Ocean. When the Old World and the New World violently collided in the French-Indian War. But that was just one part of a clash of empires. Professor Emma Hart joins Dan Snow to explain the complex causes and events of an 18th century conflict that was so huge, it might truly claim the title of the first world war: the Seven Years' War.Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Hosted by: Dan SnowEdited by: Michael McDaidProduced by: Robin McConnellSenior Producer: Anne-Marie LuffProduction Manager: Beth DonaldsonExecutive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen BennettMusic by Elitsa AlexandrovaIf you liked this podcast please subscribe, share, rate & review. Take part in our listener survey here.Tell us your favourite Assassin's Creed game or podcast episode at echoes-of-history@historyhit.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Our listeners have a few intriguing questions: Is there still live ordnance in the moat at the Ypres Ramparts? What exactly was the role of Inland Waterways Transport during the First World War? How would the French portrayal of the Last Hundred Days differ from the traditional British narrative? And finally, if you could take any piece of modern military technology back to the Great War, what would it be, and why? You can watch the Old Front Line Youtube Channel here and remember to Like and Subscribe! Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
On this week's Mentioned in Dispatches podcast, historian Nick Jenkins discusses the British League of Help and its efforts to support the reconstruction of French towns devastated during the First World War. His research reveals how communities across Britain came together to aid their French counterparts, shedding light on a little-known chapter of post-war humanitarian work. Nick spoke from his home in West Yorkshire.
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Catholics and Protestants, farmers and city dwellers, industrial workers and the middle classes. Focusing on its religious, regional, and ethnic reverberations, Chickering also examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of domestic conflict. Providing multiple lenses with which to view the German Empire, Chickering's survey examines local and domestic experiences as well as global ramifications. The German Empire, 1871-1918 provides the most comprehensive survey of this restless era available in the English language.
Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years.Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants. Tobias Brinkmann is Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University's Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. https://huji.academia.edu/GeraldineGudefin * Mentioned in the podcast: Mary Antin, From Plotzk to Boston (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1899). Abraham Cahan, Bleter fun mein Lebn (New York: Forverts, 1926-1931). Todd Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Semion Goldin, The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914-17: Libel, Persecution, Reaction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Bernard Horwich, My First Eighty Years (Chicago: Argus Books, 1939). John D. Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Eugene Kulischer, Jewish Migrations: Past Experiences and Post- War Prospects (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1943). Eugene Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). Joel Perlmann, America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (Oxford: Littman, 2001). Mark Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration since 1800 (Philadelphia: JPS, 1948). Polly Zavadivker, A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024). 1921 cartoons in YIVO Library collection: “Nowhere Can One Set a Foot Down” and “If the statue of liberty were a living person.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years.Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants. Tobias Brinkmann is Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University's Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. https://huji.academia.edu/GeraldineGudefin * Mentioned in the podcast: Mary Antin, From Plotzk to Boston (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1899). Abraham Cahan, Bleter fun mein Lebn (New York: Forverts, 1926-1931). Todd Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Semion Goldin, The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914-17: Libel, Persecution, Reaction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Bernard Horwich, My First Eighty Years (Chicago: Argus Books, 1939). John D. Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Eugene Kulischer, Jewish Migrations: Past Experiences and Post- War Prospects (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1943). Eugene Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). Joel Perlmann, America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (Oxford: Littman, 2001). Mark Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration since 1800 (Philadelphia: JPS, 1948). Polly Zavadivker, A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024). 1921 cartoons in YIVO Library collection: “Nowhere Can One Set a Foot Down” and “If the statue of liberty were a living person.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years.Between Borders: The Great Jewish Migration from Eastern Europe tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants. Tobias Brinkmann is Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Sundays at Sinai: A Jewish Congregation in Chicago. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University's Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. https://huji.academia.edu/GeraldineGudefin * Mentioned in the podcast: Mary Antin, From Plotzk to Boston (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1899). Abraham Cahan, Bleter fun mein Lebn (New York: Forverts, 1926-1931). Todd Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Semion Goldin, The Russian Army and the Jewish Population, 1914-17: Libel, Persecution, Reaction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Bernard Horwich, My First Eighty Years (Chicago: Argus Books, 1939). John D. Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Eugene Kulischer, Jewish Migrations: Past Experiences and Post- War Prospects (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1943). Eugene Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). Joel Perlmann, America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (Oxford: Littman, 2001). Mark Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration since 1800 (Philadelphia: JPS, 1948). Polly Zavadivker, A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024). 1921 cartoons in YIVO Library collection: “Nowhere Can One Set a Foot Down” and “If the statue of liberty were a living person.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Author and financial expert, Chris Whelan, joins Keith as they explore the intricacies of the housing market's potential future. Chris drops an intriguing prediction of a possible 20% price correction. They dive deep into the complex world of real estate, examining the pandemic's significant impact on mortgages and economic trends. The conversation reveals the behind-the-scenes challenges of the housing market, from government interventions to the nuanced effects of interest rates and forbearance programs. They unpack the struggles in commercial real estate, particularly highlighting the unique challenges in markets like New York's rent-controlled properties. Chris's new book "Inflated: Money, Debt, and the American Dream" promises an insightful journey through America's economic transformation, tracing how the nation evolved from an agrarian society to a global economic powerhouse. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/556 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, what's the state of the housing market for the next five years, and could what's happening in the foreclosure market affect it? I see relative housing market price stability. My guest sees cracks. This could be somewhat of a debate today, then two great new cash flow and real estate markets in the same state that we're helping your portfolio with on get rich education, mid south home buyers, I mean, they're total pros, with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider. Their empathetic property managers use your ROI as their North Star. So it's no wonder that smart investors just keep lining up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone. They're headquartered in Memphis and have globally attractive cash flows and A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and now over 5000 houses renovated. There's zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate, while their average renter stays more than three and a half years. Every home they offer has brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter, remember that part and in an astounding price range, 100 to 180k I've personally toured their office and their properties in person in Memphis, get to know Mid South. Enjoy cash flow from day one. Start yourself right now at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid south homebuyers.com. Corey Coates 1:56 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 2:12 Welcome to GRE from Edison, New Jersey to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I am today, and across 188 nations worldwide, I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are back for another wealth building week on get rich education. Today's guest came to me recommended. It came from a guest that we've had on the show here before, Jim Rickards and his daughter Ally Rickards. His name is Christopher Whelan. He has a distinguished background. Comes from a prominent family, and he's the author of a new book that just published a few weeks ago. His father, Richard Whelan, was the biographer of Joe Kennedy, and was advisor to presidents and Fed chairman and today's guest, his son there, Chris. He has done a lot of work in DC. He lives just north of New York City today. So I guess coming recommended from Jim Rickards and learning a few things about today's guest helped me want to host him on the show. So though I'm just meeting him for the first time right here on the show, as it turns out, I learned that he has mentioned on other channels that real estate prices could correct down 20% and fall back to 2020 levels. I absolutely don't see how that's possible in any way. I'm going to bring that up with him, so we'll see. This could turn into somewhat of a debate. Like I said last week, I believe that significantly falling housing prices. That's about as likely as grocery store prices falling back to 2020 levels. Yes, I am in Edinburgh, Scotland today. It's my first time here. My mom, dad and also my brother's entire family came over from the US to meet up. It's been great. We're taking in all the best sites, Edinburgh Castle, other castles, the Scottish Highlands, Loch Ness, though I don't believe in any Loch Ness monster at all. I mean, come on, what a hoax. And we're seeing some other sites, though it didn't really interest the others, which I could understand. I visited the home where Adam Smith once resided, and I might put my video about that on our get rich education YouTube channel, so you could check that out over there. Of course, Adam Smith is considered the father of modern day economics for his work on supply versus demand and the GDP concept, the invisible hand, concept, much of that work conveyed in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 as for the present day, let's meet this week's guest, including me, meeting him for the first time. I'd like to welcome in a first time guest. He's the author of a widely acclaimed new book. It's named inflated money, debt and the American dream. It just released, and the book couldn't be more timely with the multitude of challenges related to inflation, many involving the housing market in his earlier books, he's been known, frankly, for just telling his readers the truth. He's worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in politics and as an investment banker for more than 30 years. Today, he runs Whalen Global Advisors. You've seen him on CNBC in the Wall Street Journal, and now you're hearing him on GRE Welcome to the show. Chris Whalen. Chris Whalen 5:43 Thank you, Keith, appreciate your invitation. Keith Weinhold 5:45 Whalen is spelled W, H, A, l, e, n, if you're listening in the audio only, Hey, Chris, we're in a really interesting time in the economic cycle. We all know the Fed has a dual mandate, high employment and stable prices. What's interesting to me is, late last year, they cut rates by a full 1% and this is despite inflation being above target. Makes me wonder if they care more about high employment and they're rather willing to let inflation float higher. What are your thoughts? Chris Whalen 6:18 I think historically, that's been the case. You know, the dual mandate Humphrey Hawkins, that drives the Fed's actions today was a largely socialist compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats wanted to guarantee everybody a job after World War Two, the legislation was really about soldiers and people who had served their country in many, you know, places around the world, for a long time, and then you would have the depression. So you had a whole generation or more of people that were looking for help when they came home. And that's what this was. But today, you know, there's another mandate, which is called keeping the treasury bond market open. We saw it was during COVID in 2020 President Trump got up, declared that people didn't have to pay their rent or their mortgages, and then didn't do anything. There was no follow up. At the time, folks in mortgage industry kind of looked at each other funny for about 60 days and said, What's going to happen? Because they have to advance principal, interest, taxes and insurance to protect the house. The first rule in mortgage finances protect the asset. But it all worked because the Fed dropped interest rates to zero and we had a boom. We refinanced two thirds of every mortgage in the United States, and that cash flow allowed the finance forbearance for millions of Americans. Now the unfortunate part, of course, was home prices went up double digits for six years. So why we had no affordability today? So, you know, it helped, but it certainly didn't help in some ways, Keith Weinhold 7:48 mortgage loan forbearance back in the COVID era about five years ago, where you could basically just skip your mortgage payment and then they increase the overall duration of your loan period. Chris Whalen 8:00 That's right. So you know, your government market, your conforming market, were falling. They also had various schemes, state forbearance for non agency loans. Nobody thought at all about the multifamily sector and the developers that didn't get paid for two years. And we're feeling the impact of that. Of course, today, that's probably the biggest pain point in US economy today is commercial real estate and multi family real estate, and neither one of them involves a consumer. So it gets no attention at all. You read about it in the specialty press, but that's about it. Keith Weinhold 8:34 And by talking about multi family not affecting the consumer, you're just talking about who's on the owner side there? Chris Whalen 8:40 precisely if all of the consumers have problems, you'd hear about it, and you do, especially in some of the blue states. I live in New York, so we have some of the more aggressive rent stabilization, rent control laws in the country. And they go back to World War Two. They go back almost a century, Keith Weinhold 8:58 right? It's those people in the one to four unit space in residential real estate investing that really got the help there. Chris Whalen 9:06 Well, at least, you know, the world didn't end. Imagine if all of those people had gone to foreclosure. The industry wouldn't have done that. Of course, they would have thrown up their hands and cried for help. But the point is, they made it work. But the cost of making it work that zero interest rate regime that the Fed put in place is still being felt today. If you look at banks which typically have prime large mortgages on their books, the loss given default is zero. Home prices are so high that if somebody actually goes to foreclosure, they sell the house, they pay off the loan easily, and there's usually a large residual left, which would go to the homeowner. So today, you know, if somebody gets in trouble, we do a short sale, we do a deed in lieu, and off they go. And that's why the stats don't show you the pain that many American families are feeling today, because about 60% of all payoffs of one to four family mortgages are people who. Are exiting the market, they're not going to buy another house. So what that means is that the cost of home ownership, or whatever other factors are involved, has made them make the decision not to go to another home mortgage. Keith Weinhold 10:13 Yes, we have this historically low affordability that's beginning to be reflected in the home ownership rate. It's trended down from about 66 to 65% recently, we continue to be in this environment here, Chris in the one to four unit space, where those existing homeowners are in really good shape. They have record high equity levels of over 300k A lot of them have their home paid off. About 40% of American homeowners own their home free and clear, and of the remainder, those borrowers, 82% still have a mortgage rate of under 5% and of course, that principal and interest payment stays fixed. So even if there's economic hardship, it's pretty easy for people to make their payments and stay in their homes. Chris Whalen 11:02 Well, it certainly is for most of the marketplace. If you look at the bottom 20% the FHA market, also the VA market, there's a little more stress there. There's still an awful lot of people who are in various types of forbearance in that market. That's going to end in October. So the Trump administration is pushing most of the rules back to pre COVID approaches for delinquency, for example, what we call the waterfall. And what that basically means is that if an FHA borrower gets in trouble, they'll have one shot at a modification where they lower the loan cost and stick part of the loan out the back to be paid off when the house is sold. If that doesn't take, if they don't re perform, then they're going to go to a foreclosure. We just ended another program for veterans. You know, they had three weeks notice, so now you're going to see a lot of veterans going to foreclosure. Unfortunately. Keith Weinhold 11:56 yes, this administration is basically making sure that people are responsible or resume their payments. We've seen that student loan repayments needing to resume as well. Most foreclosure rate types are still pretty low, but yes, FHA foreclosure rates are higher than those for conventional loans. Chris Whalen 12:15 Yeah, the interesting thing is, the veterans delinquency rate is half of the FHA rate, and even though people in uniform don't make a lot of money, they pay their bills. Yeah, it's quite striking. Keith Weinhold 12:25 Why don't you talk to us more about areas where you see distress in the housing market before we talk about more inflation? Chris, the Chris Whalen 12:34 key areas of housing stress at the moment are commercial real estate that has become underutilized. COVID drove a lot of this, but also the fact that industries could change their work practices. It could have people work from home. Look at housing. We sent everybody home in 2020 while we increased headcount by a third to address a surge in lending volume. It was insane. I gotta tell you, we were hiring people that we didn't see for months that changed the business model assumptions for a lot of industries. A lot of them moved out of blue states and went down to Florida and Texas. In the mortgage industry particularly, and so we have a lot of older real estate particularly, that is suffering. It has dropped in terms of appraised values. You also have higher interest rates and higher cap rates, that is to say the assumption of returns on the part of investors. So that hurdle has made a lot of these properties impaired, essentially. And then the other subclass is older multifamily properties. Think about those beautiful old apartments in the middle block up on the east side or the west side of Manhattan. They're not big enough to be viable, and so they have become this kind of subprime asset class, much in the way if you recall the signature bank failure, they typically bank these sorts of real estate properties, and now there's nobody that wants them. I think you're going to see some very specific pain coming out of HUD, and also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because they bank some of these smaller properties that really aren't bankable by commercial banks. That's what it comes down to. If you're going to read about this and hear about it a lot in the commercial market over next several years. And again, you know, the losses on bank owned multifamily properties today are averaging 100% so that means that there are a lot that have more expenses than simply losing the full loan amount. And you know, if you want to have a bank loan, they're not taking these properties. They don't want them, right? So the bank, REO rate, if you look at the data from the FDIC, is zero. And what that tells you is that they can't sell the properties they don't want them, because if they take ownership, the city's not going to let them abandon the property. They'll have to keep it and maintain it. It's a tough situation. This is. Has evolved over the last 20 years or so, because consumer incomes have been kind of stagnant in real terms. But the cost of operating a property in New York City is not going down. It's going up quite a lot, and the legislation we've seen from Albany doesn't allow owners to recapture expenses, doesn't allow them to renovate apartments. So if I have a rent stabilized apartment, I'll use a real example, in a beautiful building on Central Park South right, to renovate a unit that's been occupied for 20 years, new kitchen, new bathroom, sir, everything services. That's $150,000 so if I'm the owner and I can't recapture that cost. What do I do? I lock the door, I gut the apartment, and I lock the door, and I hope that the laws will change in the future, because I can't rent it, my insurance underwriter will not allow me to rent out an apartment that's not brought up to code. That's New York law, but the folks in Albany don't care about that. We have some really unreasonable people in positions of authority, unfortunately, in some of these states, and you talk to them about these issues, and they don't care. They just pander to consumers, regardless of whether or not it makes sense or not. And that's just the way it is. Keith Weinhold 16:15 Those evil landlords, quote, unquote, most right evil. They're just mom and pop investors that are trying to beat inflation with real assets, and they have real expenses. Rent Stabilization basically just being a genteel term for rent control, which gives no one an incentive to improve a property for sure Chris Whalen 16:35 and it reduces the availability of housing ultimately, because nobody builds. You see that in New York right now the home market is pretty tight, up to the conforming limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so you figure a million, 1,000,002 here in New York. But above that, it's quieted down quite a lot. There's compression in some of the higher end homes. And you know, if you go down south, you see a different problem, which is over building. They didn't want to build here, so they went down to the Carolinas and Texas and Florida. There's a huge amount of both multi family condo type developments and single family homes too. But above that average price level way above half a million dollars. Keith Weinhold 17:15 Sure, it's made this dynamic where things have been flip flopped in the Northeast and Midwest, where the populations aren't growing very fast, those markets have been appreciating more than those in the high growth southeast, all coming back to supply. They're not bringing on enough new supply in the Northeast and Midwest, Chris has just laid out a few reasons for that, due to this high regulation. And then in the southeast, a high growth area, even though that's where people are moving, we're not getting much appreciation there, because you're able to build and that supply is able to keep up with demand. Well, Chris and I are going to talk more about the housing market and about inflation. When we come back, you're listening to get rich education. Our guest is Chris Whelan, the author of a great new book. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold. the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your pre qual and even chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lendinggroup.com. That's Ridge lendinggroup.com. You know what's crazy? Your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back. No weird lockups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds just sitting there doing nothing, check it out. Text family to 66866, to learn about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund again. Text family to 66866. Kathy Fettke 19:45 this is the real wealth network's Kathy Fettke, and you are listening to the always valuable get rich education with Keith Weinhold. Keith Weinhold 20:00 You welcome back to get rich education. We're talking with the author of a great new book, Chris Whelan, it's called inflated money, debt and the American dream. Chris, I see the residential housing market and their price points as being resilient. I'm kind of looking around and seeing if you have any places where you think that there are any cracks in that? I've heard you talk elsewhere about a housing price correction. Were you talking in the one to four unit space? And how do you think that could happen? Chris Whalen 20:31 I didn't come up with that idea. I did a biography of my good friend Stan middleman, who's the founder of freedom mortgage. It's a real rags to riches story of a successful entrepreneur, a great guy, by the way, is a beloved man in the mortgage industry. And so what he believes is that cycles are about a decade in terms of human behavior. And he says misery on the eights, which is kind of a cute way of saying it. And what Stan is basically saying is you eventually see so much price appreciation that affordability goes to zero. You run out of buyers, is another way to put it. And then once the Fed gooses it, he thinks we see an interest rate decline this year next year, perhaps you get rates to run a little bit. You get volumes to jump the way they did last summer. You remember, in the third quarter, we had great volumes in the mortgage industry, carried everybody through to the end of the year, and then after that, he says, we get a price correction, maybe back down to 2020 21 levels. So we're talking about a 20% price correction, and we're talking about the loans that have been made in the last few years being underwater. That's something we haven't talked about in a long time. We haven't talked about that since 2008 so I think that Americans inevitably have to see some kind of a correction. What the Fed did was wrong, what they did was excessive. I write about that in the end of my book, but unfortunately, the result is home prices that have galloped along, and eventually you got to reset it. Part of its supply coming online. Part of it is simply, like, I say, you run out of buyers, and when it's simply that purchase buyer who is either all cash or happens to have the deposit, and that's all you have. And there's no flexibility for people that want to get into the market. You know, that's tough. I could recall Paul Volcker years ago, we were talking about that in the book too. He ratcheted down home prices. He raised interest rates so much that home prices went down, and a lot of builders went out of business who had had a lot of snls go out of business, and, you know, the previous decade. So that was a tough time. We didn't even start to do that this time around, because they were afraid to the Fed is worried about keeping the Treasury market open, so they are afraid of deflation, which unfortunately means you don't get those opportunities to get into the market. I remember my parents, when I was very young, they would buy busted homes in Washington, DC. It was a great way to make a lot of money, and in five years, the House would double. That's the kind of market Washington was Keith Weinhold 23:05 in my opinion, I don't see how there could be any substantial residential home price correction. Historically that happens when there's a wide swath of homeowners that get into financial trouble, like I was talking about earlier, the homeowner is in great financial shape today. In fact, since World War Two, we've only seen home prices drop substantially during one period. That was that period around 2008 and that's when we had conditions that are opposite of what they are today. We had loans underwritten with liar loans. We had an over supply of homes, like I was saying earlier, inflation can't touch one's principal and interest payment. We're still under supplied with homes. Most experts don't think we'll get that into balance for at least five years. I really don't see how home prices could fall substantially. I also don't see how they could rise substantially, like, say, 10% due to that low affordability, but I expect continued stability in prices? Chris Whalen 24:02 Well, we'll see. I'm not as sanguine about that, because a lot of people feel house rich on paper, but when the bottom of the stack is really hurting as it is now, FHA delinquency rates really are in probably the mid teens. You don't see that yet in the middle with the 727, 40 FICO type borrowers. But I think over time you could, and if, again, it depends on the economy and some other factors, but I'll tell you right now, you're already seeing a correction in the hyad the bottom half, no. And there's a supply problem here, which I agree with you on. It's going to keep those home price is pretty firm. And even where I am in New York, for God's sake, Keith, there's no construction here. So we just had a house across the street from me go from million one. I live in Sleepy, hollow New York, and you know, this is typically around the conforming limit for prices for most of these homes, and it went for 150 $1,000 over the ask, it was crazy. Went in two weeks now, during COVID, we saw this sort of behavior, and we thought, Well, okay, you had zero interest rates. I got a 3% mortgage, by the way, awesome. But here we have a situation when markets cooled down a lot, and yet the lack of availability is really the driver. So in that sense, I agree with you, but I do think the high end could correct rather substantially. Keith Weinhold 25:24 And of course, in multi family apartments, that's different. That's where values in a lot of markets have been depressed by more than 30% they were subject to those interest rates being jacked up, and we're still going to see balloon loans mature and people default on those in apartments. The pain is not over with air, but at some point that's going to bottom out, and that'll be a buyer opportunity in apartments. Chris Whalen 25:47 Well, the thing is, new stuff is going fine. It's what happens is when the new gets built, the older assets down the road get discounted. That's really what's going on. People love new as you know, these kids love a new house, as opposed to an older house. Keith Weinhold 26:02 Yes, that'll help reset the prices in the new market when you can compare those to what existing values are. Well, Chris, talk to us more about your new book and what the overall thesis of the book is in these critical times. Chris Whalen 26:16 Inflated is meant to help people understand how our country went from agrarian, sleepy, isolationist America in the 1900s to being the dominant economy in the world and the provider of global money. We talk about how we got here. We talk about Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and many other characters. Obviously, we had to talk about Andrew Jackson, who is now embodied in our president, Donald Trump. We try and frame how this is all going to evolve in the future. And my thesis is basically the global currency role is something you get during or after a war. We took the baton from Great Britain after the First World War, and then by the end of World War Two, everybody in the world was broke, except for us. It was last man standing. And so rebuilt the world. We let everybody take advantage of us, and now President, who's saying, Nope, we got to change this. I think if it wasn't Trump, it would be somebody else. To be honest with you, Americans are tired of high inflation. They're tired of some of the other costs that come along with being the global reserve currency, so we try and frame all of this in an understandable way. And I particularly talk about housing during COVID and how that all really, I think, changed things for many Americans. Home ownership has been one of the basic ways we create wealth in this country, and the fact that we didn't have an opportunity for people to get in cheap with a fixer upper or a house that was foreclosed. You know, I think it's unfortunate, but the system just can't tolerate it. We've gone in 2008 and then in 2020 through two very significant crises when the government bond market stopped working. So we talk about that as well. Keith Weinhold 28:03 I don't predict interest rates. I think it is really difficult to do you mentioned earlier about the prospect for lower interest rates coming. Everyone wants to know about coming. What's your outlook for the future of interest rates and inflation for just say the next five years? Chris, Chris Whalen 28:19 I think interest rates will drop. That is to say what the Fed controls, which is short term interest rates. In the next year or so, we'll have a little bit of a boom as a result. But I think the concern about the federal deficit and US debt, the volatility caused by President Trump's trade strategy, and just general I think a sense of uncertainty among investors is going to keep long term interest rates higher than we saw during COVID And really the whole period since 2008 the Fed bought a lot of duration and took it out of the market, so they kept rates low. They're not going to do that as much in the future. I don't think they'll buy mortgage securities again, they are very chastened by that experience. So if they don't buy mortgage backed securities, and if the banks don't become more aggressive buyers, and I don't think they will, then you know, the marginal demand that would drive mortgage rates down is just not going to be there. Banks have been holding fewer and fewer mortgages and mortgage backed securities on their books for 35 years. If you look at the growth in the industry, the dollar amount of one to four family mortgages hasn't changed very much. So when you look at it that way, it's like, you know what's wrong? Two things. They want to only make mortgages to affluent households. They want to avoid headline risk and litigation and fines and all of that. And I think also, too some of the Basel capital rules for banks discourage them from holding mortgages and mortgage servicing rights, which is an area I work in quite a lot. Keith Weinhold 29:55 It seems to me, like increasingly, the powers. It be the United States government just won't let the homeowner fail. They want to do so much to promote home ownership over the long term, we see relative ease with getting a mortgage. We've seen lower down payment requirements during other times, including COVID. We see the government jump in with things like mortgage loan forbearance and an eviction moratorium for renters. They just don't want to let people lose their homes. It just seems like there's more propensity to give homeowners a greater safety net than ever. Well, Chris Whalen 30:29 we've turned it into an entitlement. Yeah, and Trump is changing that at the federal level. The states, the blue states, are going to continue to play that game at the state level, and they can even have state moratoria. But what's going to happen, and I think sooner rather than later, is you may see the federal agencies start to tier the states in terms of servicing fees, simply to reflect the cost. It takes over 1400 days to do a foreclosure in New York. Gosh, that is a big problem. You can lose the lien in New York now, it takes so long. So I think that, you know, from an investor perspective, from a developer perspective, it's not an attractive venue. That's just the reality. Then you even California is as progressive and as activists as it is, you can still get a foreclosure done very quickly using the trustees. It's just a totally different situation. If there are complications, you can get into a judicial foreclosure, which will take longer. But still, California works. New York is deliberately dysfunctional. We have people in the state legislature who are in foreclosure themselves, and they keep passing these laws. So, you know, I think at the federal level, you're going to see it roll back to pre COVID, but I will say that forbearance, both with respect to the agency and conventional market and private loans, is kind of the rule. Now we work with the borrower much more than we would in the past. It's it is really night and day. Keith Weinhold 32:00 Chris, your new book has gotten a lot of acclaim. Let us know anything else that we should know about this book, and then if we can get it in all the usual places Chris Whalen 32:10 you can buy it at Barnes and Noble Amazon. I have a page on my website, RC, waylon.com, with all the relevant links. But the online is the best way to get it. Most of the sales are on Kindle anyway, but well over 90% are online, so we don't have to worry about physical books. I think we'll be doing some book signings in the New York area. So we'll definitely let you know about that. Keith Weinhold 32:33 One last thought is that the rate of inflation means more to a real estate investor than it does to a layperson, maybe five times as much or more, because when we borrow for an income property, our asset floats up with inflation. That part's really just a hedge on inflation. Our debt gets debased by inflation, which is really a mechanism for profiting from inflation over time. And then, thirdly, our cash flow tends to go up even faster than the rate of inflation, since our principal and interest stays fixed, so real estate investors can often be the beneficiary of inflation. It's sort of strange to go root for a force like inflation that can impoverish so many people. But what are your thoughts with respect to real estate investors and inflation? Chris Whalen 33:19 Well, you know, it's funny when Jerome Powell at the Fed says that they have a 2% inflation target, my response is, well, we better have at least 2% inflation if we're going to make commercial real estate work. Commercial real estate went up for 75 years after World War Two. I can remember when I was in the rating business at Crowell bond ratings going to see some of the banks here in New York, their multifamily books had only seen the equity underneath the asset go up and up and up. In other words, the land ended up being 90% of the value, you know, 1520, years after the purchase and the improvements were almost worthless simply because the land appreciated so much. Now that has changed since COVID. A lot of commercial real estate, particularly has gotten under a bit of a cloud. You've seen falling prices. However, in parts of the country that are growing where you have a positive political environment, positive economic environment, you're still seeing fantastic growth in both commercial and multifamily markets. So I think being very careful and patient in doing your homework in terms of picking venues is more important now than ever before. You know, I'll give you an example. Down in Florida, we're building new malls every day. The mall down the road that's 15 years old. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's 15 years old. And so the price discounts that you're seeing for existing assets are rather striking. Same thing down in the Carolinas, down in, you know, Atlanta, and going down to the Texas growth spectacle, I'm always astounded by what's going on in Texas. They built so much in that whole area around South Lake, out by the airport. It, they're going to basically subsume used it. So, you know, in those markets, you have great opportunities, but you also have over building. And so we're going to see some cycles where they're going to be deals out there for projects that maybe were a little too ambitious have to get restructured, and astute investors can come in and do very well on that Keith Weinhold 35:20 like we often say around here, in real estate investing, the market is typically even more important than the property itself. The name of Chris's new book, again, is inflated money, debt and the American dream. It has an awful lot of intersections with real estate investors and how they can play inflation. Uh, Chris has been a terrific conversation about the real estate market and larger market forces. It's been great having you here on the show. Chris Whalen 35:47 Thank you, Keith. Let's do it again. Keith Weinhold 35:49 Yeah, some good insights from Chris, a smart guy. And gosh, what a really sad state for rent stabilized apartments in New York City, where landlords of some of those properties, they would have to spend sometimes hundreds of 1000s of dollars in order to bring them up to code, but then they couldn't charge enough rent to offset those expenses due to government intervention and price fixing, so landlords just lock up the property vacant. And this sort of harkens back to when we were talking about some of this last year, when we had documentary film maker jen siderova on the show with her film called shopification, and it was about how rent control slowly makes neighborhoods fall into disrepair. All right, Chris and I had some difference of opinion there on the prospects for a home price correction. I think I made most of my points. He did, though, talk about running out of home buyers. If I have him back, maybe I'll pick up right there. More buyers are baked into the demographics, like I think I shared with you one time the US had its highest ever birth rate years between 1990 and 2010 more than 4 million births per year for a lot of those years. Just to review this with you, you might remember that 2007 was the US is peak birth year. Add 38 years to that for the average first time homebuyer age, and that housing demand won't even peak until 2045 and it will continue to stay high for a few years after that. So that's where the demand is just going to keep coming from, just piling on. And when I say that loan conditions have eased for American homeowners, like I did there during the interview, of course, what I'm talking about is the long term. I mean, lending conditions got more rigid after 2008 and with the adoption of Dodd Frank. What I'm talking about is, before the Great Depression, it was most common to have to make 50% to 60% down payments on property, and you had to repay the entire note in five to 10 years. I mean, can you imagine how that would hurt affordability today and then later, by 1950, 15, year loans were the common one. I mean, even that would impair affordability today. Today, 30 year loans are the common one, and you can put as little as 3% down on a primary residence. A lot of people don't know that either. It does not take 20% on a primary residence. So that's what I mean about the relative ease of credit flow today. Now, Chris has knowledge about other parts of the real estate market that I don't for his work inside DC and in other places like the foreclosure market. We talked about some of that right after the interview. For example, He was letting acronyms like NPL roll off his tongue, and I had to ask him what that meant. That's a non performing loan. Check out Chris's new book. Again, it's called inflated money debt in the American dream. And again, his website is RCwhalen.com and Chris also has a great sense of history, which we didn't get into, longtime real estate guys radio show co host Russell gray and I will discuss monetary history here on the show soon. Like I said, I'm coming to you from Edinburgh, Scotland this week, even if you don't see great sites, you know, it's interesting just walking the historic streets here, if you're an American that's visited here before, you surely know what I mean. And I told you that I'd let you know, the current real estate transaction I'm involved in is paying $650 a night for the hotel here in Edinburgh. Yes, that's a lot. I've actually paid less for fancier places in Dubai, but this hotel here is on the Royal Mile. Of course, I could have found less expensive accommodations elsewhere. Speaking of less expensive, here's an announcement. And we have new investment property providers at GRE marketplace, two of them, the markets are both in Oklahoma, and they are Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma as a state, is known for landlord friendly eviction processes and legal systems, kind of the opposite of New York. So this makes your property management more predictable. Now, when we look at this city, OKC has the lowest priced new single family rentals. I can think of it under 160k Yes, that really puts the exclamation point on inexpensive and favorable rent to price ratios often exceeding 1% which is obviously attractive for cash flow, meaning a 150k single family rental could yield over $1,500 in rent. There's high rental demand in certain sub markets. We have scouted out those exact places for you in the OKC metro, like Edmond Moore spelled M, O, O, R, E, and Midwest City, all supporting consistent rent income, though it was once really oil dependent, OKC has diversified economically, reducing your risk tied to commodity cycles and ok sees local economy that's supported by industries including aerospace, energy, health care and logistics. Then there's Tulsa. Tulsa has the highest cash flowing new build duplexes, perhaps anywhere in the US that I know about. On the single family rental side, a lot of Tulsa investors can find properties under 150k with monthly rents again exceeding 1% of the purchase price, clearly ideal. So yes, both Oklahoma City and Tulsa are now on GRE marketplace. You can either visit the pages and see them there, or one of our qualified, experienced GRE investment coaches. Meet with them. They can help guide you to the very best deals and show you the specific property addresses available right at this time for whatever best meets your needs. If you're looking to either start or expand to another market and you seek cash flow, you really need to consider Oklahoma. Yes, it is free to have a strategy session with an investment coach, whether that's for Oklahoma or other investor advantage regions. I often like to leave you with something actionable. You can start at GREinvestment coach.com start book a meeting for a free strategy session remotely. That's at GREinvestment coach.com, until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream. Dolf Deroos 42:51 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Advice, opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC exclusively. Keith Weinhold 43:14 You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access and it's got pay walls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers. It's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read, and when you start the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now. Just text gre to 66866. While it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text, gre to 66866. The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com.
Today, we are exploring a topic that doesn't get talked about much — the British tanks that ended up serving with the Red Army during the Second World War. We often think about the Soviet Union producing huge numbers of its own tanks like the T-34, but in the early years of the war—and even before it—the Soviets were looking abroad for armoured vehicles to strengthen their forces. Britain, with its long history of tank development stretching back to the First World War, was one of the countries they turned to. Joining me is Peter Samsonov, who's spent a lot of time researching Soviet armoured warfare and is the author of 'British Tanks of the Red Army'. patreon.com/ww2podcast
Do you feel you have to push yourself every day just to stay on top of your work? Well, this week I'm looking at why this happens and what you can do to prevent it. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2025 Summer Sale Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 372 Hello, and welcome to episode 372 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. If you have ever watched a Formula 1 race, it can be easy to believe that from the moment the lights go out and the race starts, the cars go flat out until the end of the race. Ah, as if it were that simple. The truth is if a team tried to do this, they would be guaranteed to lose the race. Even though a race may only last ninety minutes, during the race the teams will need to conserve their tyres and fuel. Going flat out to the finish would degrade the tyres too quickly, which would mean they lose essential grip in the corners, and running out of fuel would be game over for a team. You are like that Formula 1 car. When you start your day you have a limited amount of energy and your ability to focus needs to be managed through the day. It's not physical energy. Your body has a way to utilise your fat reserves to help keep you out of danger when necessary, physically. It's your mental energy. That is limited. And it's a lack of mental energy that results in you making mistakes, procrastinating and being unable to make a decision about what to work on next. It your mental energy that requires careful management each day. Getting home exhausted each day won't do very much for your relationships. You won't be in the mood to do very much, and having a conversation with your partner or kids won't be a top priority. Yet, your family may have been waiting for you to get home to talk with you, play and just have some quality time. The good news is it doesn't have to be that way. There are things you can do to preserve your mental energies so you arrive home feeling relaxed, fulfilled and ready to engage with your family. However, before we get to how to do that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question. This week's question comes from Matt. Matt asks, Hi Carl, do you have any ideas on how to stop feeling constantly tired and using the weekends just to recover before doing it all again on a Monday? Hi Matt, thank you for your question. If you are constantly feeling tired, my first advise would be to go see your doctor. A constant feeling of fatigue or tiredness could have an underlying reason and it's better to get that checked out first. If, your doctor reports there are no underlying illnesses, then it's time to look at your lifestyle. As I wrote in Your Time, Your Way, there are three areas you need to keep in balance. These are the foundations of any productive life. They are: Sleep, movement and diet. Are you getting enough sleep for you? We are all different when it comes to the amount of sleep we require. Some of you may work well on six hours, while others may require eight or nine hours sleep. If you want to operate at your best each day, finding out how much sleep you need would be a first step. For years I thought I only needed six hours of sleep. Yet when I did the test that Matthew Walker, the sleep doctor, suggested, I discovered I actually needed seven hours twenty minutes. What is that test? I hear you ask. What you do is sleep with no alarm for seven days and calculate how much sleep you slept each night. Then you add the total number of hours you slept and divide that number by seven. That will give you roughly the number of hours of sleep you need. I did this experiment while I was on holiday—when I didn't have to wake up at any particular time. That way I had no anxiety about not waking up on time. Now I make sure I get seven hours at a minimum. Movement does not mean you have to go to the gym or out running. If you look back to a time when fewer people were overweight, the 1950s for instance, there were very few gyms—and the gyms then were centred on specialised bodybuilding or competitive sports people. You didn't see people jogging round parks either. Instead, people moved more. They walked, took the stairs, manually cleaned their houses and were more active in general. The statistics are shocking. In the 1950s, around 10% of the adult US population were classified as being overweight. That number was 6% in the UK. In 2020, those numbers had increased to over 40% in the US and 38% in the UK. While I know convenience is wonderful, it's also destroying our health. Humans were designed to move. We are not designed to spend as much as fifteen hours a day sitting down. Your brain needs movement. This is why often you will find you come up with solutions to difficult problems when walking down a street or exercising. Movement does so much more for you. It gives your brain a chance to reset, relax and more importantly these days, gets your eyes off the screen. And then there is diet. I am sure you re familiar with how you feel after a lunch high in carbohydrates. You feel drowsy, sluggish and sleepy. It even has a name; the afternoon slump. If your diet is a mess—full of highly processed foods, sugars and carbohydrates, you are going to struggle to focus. You'll always be feeling tired, sluggish and exhausted. Switching your diet to a healthier one, will do wonders for your overall productivity and mental energies. So, get those three basic fundamentals of a productive day sorted first and you will see a significant improvement in your productivity and focus. Next, though, is how we apply ourselves each day. In other words, how we manage our workloads. Constantly switching your attention between designing a presentation or trying to figure out how to ask Chat GPT the right prompts so it gives you the answers you are looking for while a the same time responding to Slack or Teams messages will leave you completely wiped out in no time at all. Your brain was not designed to be switching contexts in that way all day. It's called cognitive overload and while, perhaps, in the moment you don't recognise it, what you are doing is rapidly depleting your brain's capacity to make decisions, and remain focused on the job at hand. It's the most inefficient way to go about your work. The danger is it becomes addictive. I've seen in recent years this called “dopamine addiction”. This is where you have become addicted to the drama of urgent deadlines, the sound of another notification and constant buzz of distractions from breaking news and short videos with flashing lights and rapid changes in context. It destroys your focus, mental energy and leaves you feeling worn out and exhausted at the end of the day. To improve your focus and better manage your mental energies, look for ways to group similar work together. For example, if you find that you focus better in a morning, try to avoid having meetings at that time. Instead, perhaps start your day with a two hour session of work on a particularly difficult project or task. One that requires a fair bit of creativity or skill. Then give yourself thirty minutes or an hour before you attempt to do another mentally challenging task. I've found that when I suggest to clients that they use these gaps between periods of deeper focused work to get up move around and use their phones to reply to messages using the dictation feature, or return phones calls, they get an instant boost in their energy levels. If you think about it physiologically, you've gone from hardly moving at all—sitting down and focusing on something—to getting up and moving and suddenly your blood is surging again, in a positive way. More importantly, you're not context switching in a mentally depleting way. A quick tip I can share with you here is to keep the first thirty minutes of your work day free. Use that time to get a heads up on your day. Clear your email inbox, have a chat with your colleagues or hold a quick team meeting to discuss the objectives for the day. What this does is prevents that sense of FOMO (the fear of missing out). It settles your mind, gets you focused on your objectives and gives you time to deal with any unknown emergencies before you settle down to doing some difficult work. I', currently reading a book called “In Search of C. The Biography of Mansfield Cumming”. Mansfield Cumming was the founder of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. The British version of the CIA. The service was founded in 1909—five years before the start of the First World War. The majority of the UK's workforce at that time were employed either in factories or in service. In service meant people who worked for the aristocratic landed gentry in their large mansions and palaces. Very few people worked in offices. Those that did, didn't work a nine till five job. It was far more flexible than that. Often the day was spent travelling between meetings. And given that most transport at that time was horse and cart, you can imagine how slow that was. Then there was large liquid lunches, often taking up to three hours. It was in the evenings that any work managed to get done. Mansfield Cumming, for example, would spend most of his evenings replying to letters and reading documents. One time, when Cumming was ill and bed ridden, his superiors send over a typist so he could stay on top of his correspondence. 120 years ago, people recognised the dangers of letting correspondence get out of control on the efficiency of getting work done. And don't be fooled into thinking things were very different then. Not only did they get an equivalent number of letters as we do emails, they also got telegrams—the equivalent of Slack or Teams messages today. It might not have been digital, but the volume was very similar. Today, we allow ourselves to neglect staying on top of our correspondence and admin. When we do that it creates a low level of anxiety draining our energies. The fear of not knowing what is waiting for us. And the fear that we might be missing something important. To avoid this, find some time each day to dedicate specifically to dealing with your messages. Try to do this as late in the day as you can. This avoids you getting trapped in email ping pong. That's were when you reply you give the receiver time to reply to you the same day. That just doubles up the time you need to spend dealing with your messages. Slowing down your response times, gives you space to get back to doing the work you have identified as being important. So there you go, Matt. If you want to have the energy to do a days work and have enough left in the evening to spend doing the things you want to do, then first make sure you are taking care of the basics, tough sleep, movement and a healthy diet. Then avoid getting trapped by context switching. Protect time on your calendar for doing specific types of work that is similar in nature, and allow sufficient flexibility between these sessions for moving and dealing with the inevitable message load. I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. Oh and one more thing. Yesterday, saw the launch of my summer sale. If you would like to pick up a course, or a bundle of courses, or perhaps join my coaching programme, you can now save up to 25%. All you need to do is visit my Summer Sale page and get all the details. I will put the link in the show notes. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
What happens when a controversial real-life figure becomes the centre of one of the BBC's most politically charged wartime dramas? In this episode, we revisit The Monocled Mutineer (1986), Alan Bleasdale's adaptation of the story of Percy Toplis — alleged ringleader of the 1917 Étaples mutiny. The four-part series drew huge audiences but quickly became a flashpoint in debates over historical accuracy, media bias, and the BBC's role in shaping national memory. We unpack the drama's reception, the historical evidence (or lack thereof) behind Toplis's role in the mutiny, and how the show explored themes of class, power, and military discipline in the First World War. References:Emma Hanna, The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain (2009) John Buchan, The 39 Steps (1915) William Hussey, The Boy I loved (2025) Boys from the Black Stuff (1982) Dope Girls (2025) The Crimson Field (2014) Hornblower (1998-2003) Masters of the Air (2024) Sharpe (1993-2008)
In this episode we travel to the Arras Memorial to the Missing, where we explore the powerful story of over 35,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave. In this episode, we uncover the personal histories of men from the British Army, Royal Naval Division, and Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force, whose names are etched into the stone. We then walk through the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery, visiting notable graves—including those of soldiers Shot at Dawn. Discover the human stories behind the statistics in this compelling look at remembrance, sacrifice, and the legacy of the First World War.On the Old Front Line YouTube Channel: The Arras Memorial to the Missing.Articles on Identity Discs are found here: A Guide to Identity Discs by Dave O'Mara and Military Identification: Identity Discs and the Identification of British War Dead, 1914-18 by Dr Sarah Ashbridge.Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.6mcpeqwsSend us a textSupport the show
While the British lost 14 ships and over 6,000 personnel, compared to Germany's 11 ships and 2,500 personnel, the strategic outcome of the Battle of Jutland favoured ...
In this enlightening episode of History Rage, host Paul Bavill reunites with historians and co-authors of "Ring of Fire," Alex Churchill and Nicolai Eberholst, to explore the often-overlooked narratives of the First World War. Together, they challenge the traditional Western-centric perspectives and delve into the complexities of the war's global impact, particularly focusing on the Eastern Front and the contributions of lesser-known nations. Revisiting the Great War:- Alex and Nicolai discuss their motivations for writing "Ring of Fire," aiming to provide a more balanced account of the war that includes the significant events and actors often omitted from mainstream narratives. Unpacking the Myths:- The duo passionately critiques the oversimplified narratives that dominate First World War literature, highlighting how the war's origins and battles in the East are frequently ignored. Global Perspectives:- Discover the surprising roles played by countries such as Japan and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the impact of colonial forces in Africa and Asia, challenging the notion that the war was solely a European affair. The Human Cost:- Alex and Nicolai share harrowing accounts of ordinary soldiers and civilians, illustrating the brutal realities of war and the emotional turmoil experienced across various fronts. Challenging Neutrality:- The conversation also touches on the complexities of neutrality, with insights into how countries like Denmark and Sweden navigated their positions amidst the chaos of war. Join us as we unravel the multifaceted narratives of the First World War, shedding light on the stories that deserve to be told. "Ring of Fire" is available for purchase, and can be bought below:Buy the Book: Ring of Fire: A New Global History of the Outbreak of the First World Warhttps://uk.bookshop.org/a/10120/9781035903429Don't miss the chance to catch Alex at the Chalke History Festival, running from 23rd to 29th June and tickets are available from:Tickets: https://www.chalkefestival.com/Connect with Alex and Nicolai on Social Media:- Follow the guys on X, Instagram and Bluesky: Alex at @Churchill_Alex and Nicolai at @PikeGrey1418.Support History Rage:If you enjoy the show, consider supporting us on Patreon for exclusive content, early access, and the iconic History Rage mug. Subscribe at patreon.com/historyrage.Stay informed, stay passionate, and most importantly, stay angry! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only: We review the diplomatic landscape of Europe on the eve of war in the summer of 1914—and then trace the dizzying cascade of events that followed after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. We get a handle on the ensuing crisis that ricocheted through embassies, banquet halls, and barracks all across Europe, and plunged all the great powers of the continent into a war that soon spread around the world. Suggested further reading: Christopher Clark, “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914”; Margaret MacMillan, “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914”; Barbara Tuchman, “The Guns of August.” Image: Photograph of nine kings (George V of Britain seated, center; Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany standing, in red), at Windsor, for funeral of Edward VII of Britain, May, 1910. Please sign up to hear all patron-only lectures, including recent series on the Dead Sea Scrolls & the Epic of Gilgamesh: https://www.patreon.com/c/user?u=5530632
Not So Quiet On The Western Front! | A Battle Guide Production
In this episode we take our study of the French Army into the final, decisive Allied offensive of 1918. How did the French army finally weather the storm of the German spring offensives, and how did it turn the tide at the Second Battle of the Marne? James Book Recommendations: Doughty, Robert A. 2008. Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goya, Michel. 2018. Flesh and Steel during the Great War: The Transformation of the French Army and the Invention of Modern Warfare. Translated by Andrew Uffindell. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. Greenhalgh, Elizabeth. 2014. The French Army and the First World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krause, Jonathan. 2013a. Early Trench Tactics in the French Army: The Second Battle of Artois, May-June 1915. Farnham: Ashgate. Join Our Community: https://not-so-quiet.com/ Use our code: Dugout and get one month free as a Captain. Support via Paypal: https://battleguide.co.uk/nsq-paypal Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! E-Mail: nsq@battleguide.co.uk Battle Guide YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BattleGuideVT Our WW2 Podcast: https://battleguide.co.uk/bsow If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of what the team at Battle Guide have been getting up to, why not sign up to our monthly newsletter: https://battleguide.co.uk/newsletter Twitter: @historian1914 @DanHillHistory @BattleguideVT Credits: - Host: Dr. Spencer Jones & Dan Hill - Production: Linus Klaßen - Editing: Hunter Christensen & Linus Klaßen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Good Sunday morning to you,I am just on a train home from Glasgow, where I have been gigging these past two nights. I've had a great time, as I always seem to do when I go north of the wall.But Glasgow on a Saturday night is something else. My hotel was right next to the station and so I was right in the thick of it. If I ever get to make a cacatopian, end-of-days, post-apocalyptic thriller, I'll just stroll through Glasgow city centre on a Friday or Saturday night with a camera to get all the B roll. It was like walking through a Hieronymus Bosch painting only with a Scottish accent. Little seems to have changed since I wrote that infamous chapter about Glasgow in Life After the State all those years ago. The only difference is that now it's more multi-ethnic. So many people are so off their heads. I lost count of the number of randoms wandering about just howling at the stars. The long days - it was still light at 10 o'clock - make the insanity all the more visible. Part of me finds it funny, but another part of me finds it so very sad that so many people let themselves get into this condition. It prompted me to revisit said chapter, and I offer it today as your Sunday thought piece.Just a couple of little notes, before we begin. This caught my eye on Friday. Our favourite uranium tech company, Lightbridge Fuels (NASDAQ:LTBR), has taken off again with Donald Trump's statement that he is going to quadruple US nuclear capacity. The stock was up 45% in a day. We first looked at it in October at $3. It hit $15 on Friday. It's one to sell on the spikes and buy on the dips, as this incredible chart shows.(In other news I have now listened twice to the Comstock Lode AGM, and I'll report back on that shortly too). ICYMI here is my mid-week commentary, which attracted a lot of attentionRight - Glasgow.(NB I haven't included references here. Needless to say, they are all there in the book. And sorry I don't have access to the audio of me reading this from my laptop, but, if you like, you can get the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. The book itself available at Amazon, Apple Books et al).How the Most Entrepreneurial City in Europe Became Its SickestThe cause of waves of unemployment is not capitalism, but governments …Friedrich Hayek, economist and philosopherIn the 18th and 19th centuries, the city of Glasgow in Scotland became enormously, stupendously rich. It happened quite organically, without planning. An entrepreneurial people reacted to their circumstances and, over time, turned Glasgow into an industrial and economic centre of such might that, by the turn of the 20th century, Glasgow was producing half the tonnage of Britain's ships and a quarter of all locomotives in the world. (Not unlike China's industrial dominance today). It was regarded as the best-governed city in Europe and popular histories compared it to the great imperial cities of Venice and Rome. It became known as the ‘Second City of the British Empire'.Barely 100 years later, it is the heroin capital of the UK, the murder capital of the UK and its East End, once home to Europe's largest steelworks, has been dubbed ‘the benefits capital of the UK'. Glasgow is Britain's fattest city: its men have Britain's lowest life expectancy – on a par with Palestine and Albania – and its unemployment rate is 50% higher than the rest of the UK.How did Glasgow manage all that?The growth in Glasgow's economic fortunes began in the latter part of the 17th century and the early 18th century. First, the city's location in the west of Scotland at the mouth of the river Clyde meant that it lay in the path of the trade winds and at least 100 nautical miles closer to America's east coast than other British ports – 200 miles closer than London. In the days before fossil fuels (which only found widespread use in shipping in the second half of the 19th century) the journey to Virginia was some two weeks shorter than the same journey from London or many of the other ports in Britain and Europe. Even modern sailors describe how easy the port of Glasgow is to navigate. Second, when England was at war with France – as it was repeatedly between 1688 and 1815 – ships travelling to Glasgow were less vulnerable than those travelling to ports further south. Glasgow's merchants took advantage and, by the early 18th century, the city had begun to assert itself as a trading hub. Manufactured goods were carried from Britain and Europe to North America and the Caribbean, where they were traded for increasingly popular commodities such as tobacco, cotton and sugar.Through the 18th century, the Glasgow merchants' business networks spread, and they took steps to further accelerate trade. New ships were introduced, bigger than those of rival ports, with fore and aft sails that enabled them to sail closer to the wind and reduce journey times. Trading posts were built to ensure that cargo was gathered and stored for collection, so that ships wouldn't swing idly at anchor. By the 1760s Glasgow had a 50% share of the tobacco trade – as much as the rest of Britain's ports combined. While the English merchants simply sold American tobacco in Europe at a profit, the Glaswegians actually extended credit to American farmers against future production (a bit like a crop future today, where a crop to be grown at a later date is sold now). The Virginia farmers could then use this credit to buy European goods, which the Glaswegians were only too happy to supply. This brought about the rise of financial institutions such as the Glasgow Ship Bank and the Glasgow Thistle Bank, which would later become part of the now-bailed-out, taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).Their practices paid rewards. Glasgow's merchants earned a great deal of money. They built glamorous homes and large churches and, it seems, took on aristocratic airs – hence they became known as the ‘Tobacco Lords'. Numbering among them were Buchanan, Dunlop, Ingram, Wilson, Oswald, Cochrane and Glassford, all of whom had streets in the Merchant City district of Glasgow named after them (other streets, such as Virginia Street and Jamaica Street, refer to their trade destinations). In 1771, over 47 million pounds of tobacco were imported.However, the credit the Glaswegians extended to American tobacco farmers would backfire. The debts incurred by the tobacco farmers – which included future presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (who almost lost his farm as a result) – grew, and were among the grievances when the American War of Independence came in 1775. That war destroyed the tobacco trade for the Glaswegians. Much of the money that was owed to them was never repaid. Many of their plantations were lost. But the Glaswegians were entrepreneurial and they adapted. They moved on to other businesses, particularly cotton.By the 19th century, all sorts of local industry had emerged around the goods traded in the city. It was producing and exporting textiles, chemicals, engineered goods and steel. River engineering projects to dredge and deepen the Clyde (with a view to forming a deep- water port) had begun in 1768 and they would enable shipbuilding to become a major industry on the upper reaches of the river, pioneered by industrialists such as Robert Napier and John Elder. The final stretch of the Monkland Canal, linking the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas, was opened in 1795, facilitating access to the iron-ore and coal mines of Lanarkshire.The move to fossil-fuelled shipping in the latter 19th century destroyed the advantages that the trade winds had given Glasgow. But it didn't matter. Again, the people adapted. By the turn of the 20th century the Second City of the British Empire had become a world centre of industry and heavy engineering. It has been estimated that, between 1870 and 1914, it produced as much as one-fifth of the world's ships, and half of Britain's tonnage. Among the 25,000 ships it produced were some of the greatest ever built: the Cutty Sark, the Queen Mary, HMS Hood, the Lusitania, the Glenlee tall ship and even the iconic Mississippi paddle steamer, the Delta Queen. It had also become a centre for locomotive manufacture and, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, could boast the largest concentration of locomotive building works in Europe.It was not just Glasgow's industry and wealth that was so gargantuan. The city's contribution to mankind – made possible by the innovation and progress that comes with booming economies – would also have an international impact. Many great inventors either hailed from Glasgow or moved there to study or work. There's James Watt, for example, whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. One of Watt's employees, William Murdoch, has been dubbed ‘the Scot who lit the world' – he invented gas lighting, a new kind of steam cannon and waterproof paint. Charles MacIntosh gave us the raincoat. James Young, the chemist dubbed as ‘the father of the oil industry', gave us paraffin. William Thomson, known as Lord Kelvin, developed the science of thermodynamics, formulating the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature; he also managed the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.The turning point in the economic fortunes of Glasgow – indeed, of industrial Britain – was WWI. Both have been in decline ever since. By the end of the war, the British were drained, both emotionally and in terms of capital and manpower; the workers, the entrepreneurs, the ideas men, too many of them were dead or incapacitated. There was insufficient money and no appetite to invest. The post-war recession, and later the Great Depression, did little to help. The trend of the city was now one of inexorable economic decline.If Glasgow was the home of shipping and industry in 19th-century Britain, it became the home of socialism in the 20th century. Known by some as the ‘Red Clydeside' movement, the socialist tide in Scotland actually pre-dated the First World War. In 1906 came the city's first Labour Member of Parliament (MP), George Barnes – prior to that its seven MPs were all Conservatives or Liberal Unionists. In the spring of 1911, 11,000 workers at the Singer sewing-machine factory (run by an American corporation in Clydebank) went on strike to support 12 women who were protesting about new work practices. Singer sacked 400 workers, but the movement was growing – as was labour unrest. In the four years between 1910 and 1914 Clydebank workers spent four times as many days on strike than in the whole of the previous decade. The Scottish Trades Union Congress and its affiliations saw membership rise from 129,000 in 1909 to 230,000 in 1914.20The rise in discontent had much to do with Glasgow's housing. Conditions were bad, there was overcrowding, bad sanitation, housing was close to dirty, noxious and deafening industry. Unions grew quite organically to protect the interests of their members.Then came WWI, and inflation, as Britain all but abandoned gold. In 1915 many landlords responded by attempting to increase rent, but with their young men on the Western front, those left behind didn't have the means to pay these higher costs. If they couldn't, eviction soon followed. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, women – now in the majority with so many men gone – organized opposition to the rent increases. There are photographs showing women blocking the entrance to tenements; officers who did get inside to evict tenants are said to have had their trousers pulled down.The landlords were attacked for being unpatriotic. Placards read: ‘While our men are fighting on the front line,the landlord is attacking us at home.' The strikes spread to other cities throughout the UK, and on 27 November 1915 the government introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level. The strikers were placated. They had won. The government was happy; it had dealt with the problem. The landlords lost out.In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, more frequent strikes crippled the city. In 1919 the ‘Bloody Friday' uprising prompted the prime minister, David Lloyd George, to deploy 10,000 troops and tanks onto the city's streets. By the 1930s Glasgow had become the main base of the Independent Labour Party, so when Labour finally came to power alone after WWII, its influence was strong. Glasgow has always remained a socialist stronghold. Labour dominates the city council, and the city has not had a Conservative MP for 30 years.By the late 1950s, Glasgow was losing out to the more competitive industries of Japan, Germany and elsewhere. There was a lack of investment. Union demands for workers, enforced by government legislation, made costs uneconomic and entrepreneurial activity arduous. With lack of investment came lack of innovation.Rapid de-industrialization followed, and by the 1960s and 70s most employment lay not in manufacturing, but in the service industries.Which brings us to today. On the plus side, Glasgow is still ranked as one of Europe's top 20 financial centres and is home to some leading Scottish businesses. But there is considerable downside.Recent studies have suggested that nearly 30% of Glasgow's working age population is unemployed. That's 50% higher than that of the rest of Scotland or the UK. Eighteen per cent of 16- to 19-year-olds are neither in school nor employed. More than one in five working-age Glaswegians have no sort of education that might qualify them for a job.In the city centre, the Merchant City, 50% of children are growing up in homes where nobody works. In the poorer neighbourhoods, such as Ruchill, Possilpark, or Dalmarnock, about 65% of children live in homes where nobody works – more than three times the national average. Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show that 85% of working age adults from the district of Bridgeton claim some kind of welfare payment.Across the city, almost a third of the population regularly receives sickness or incapacity benefit, the highest rate of all UK cities. A 2008 World Health Organization report noted that in Glasgow's Calton, Bridgeton and Queenslie neighbourhoods, the average life expectancy for males is only 54. In contrast, residents of Glasgow's more affluent West End live to be 80 and virtually none of them are on the dole.Glasgow has the highest crime rate in Scotland. A recent report by the Centre for Social Justice noted that there are 170 teenage gangs in Glasgow. That's the same number as in London, which has over six times the population of Glasgow.It also has the dubious record of being Britain's murder capital. In fact, Glasgow had the highest homicide rate in Western Europe until it was overtaken in 2012 by Amsterdam, with more violent crime per head of population than even New York. What's more, its suicide rate is the highest in the UK.Then there are the drug and alcohol problems. The residents of the poorer neighbourhoods are an astounding six times more likely to die of a drugs overdose than the national average. Drug-related mortality has increased by 95% since 1997. There are 20,000 registered drug users – that's just registered – and the situation is not going to get any better: children who grow up in households where family members use drugs are seven times more likely to end up using drugs themselves than children who live in drug-free families.Glasgow has the highest incidence of liver diseases from alcohol abuse in all of Scotland. In the East End district of Dennistoun, these illnesses kill more people than heart attacks and lung cancer combined. Men and women are more likely to die of alcohol-related deaths in Glasgow than anywhere else in the UK. Time and time again Glasgow is proud winner of the title ‘Fattest City in Britain'. Around 40% of the population are obese – 5% morbidly so – and it also boasts the most smokers per capita.I have taken these statistics from an array of different sources. It might be in some cases that they're overstated. I know that I've accentuated both the 18th- and 19th-century positives, as well as the 20th- and 21st-century negatives to make my point. Of course, there are lots of healthy, happy people in Glasgow – I've done many gigs there and I loved it. Despite the stories you hear about intimidating Glasgow audiences, the ones I encountered were as good as any I've ever performed in front of. But none of this changes the broad-brush strokes: Glasgow was a once mighty city that now has grave social problems. It is a city that is not fulfilling its potential in the way that it once did. All in all, it's quite a transformation. How has it happened?Every few years a report comes out that highlights Glasgow's various problems. Comments are then sought from across the political spectrum. Usually, those asked to comment agree that the city has grave, ‘long-standing and deep-rooted social problems' (the words of Stephen Purcell, former leader of Glasgow City Council); they agree that something needs to be done, though they don't always agree on what that something is.There's the view from the right: Bill Aitken of the Scottish Conservatives, quoted in The Sunday Times in 2008, said, ‘We simply don't have the jobs for people who are not academically inclined. Another factor is that some people are simply disinclined to work. We have got to find something for these people to do, to give them a reason to get up in the morning and give them some self-respect.' There's the supposedly apolitical view of anti-poverty groups: Peter Kelly, director of the Glasgow-based Poverty Alliance, responded, ‘We need real, intensive support for people if we are going to tackle poverty. It's not about a lack of aspiration, often people who are unemployed or on low incomes are stymied by a lack of money and support from local and central government.' And there's the view from the left. In the same article, Patricia Ferguson, the Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Maryhill, also declared a belief in government regeneration of the area. ‘It's about better housing, more jobs, better education and these things take years to make an impact. I believe that the huge regeneration in the area is fostering a lot more community involvement and cohesion. My real hope is that these figures will take a knock in the next five or ten years.' At the time of writing in 2013, five years later, the figures have worsened.All three points of view agree on one thing: the government must do something.In 2008 the £435 million Fairer Scotland Fund – established to tackle poverty – was unveiled, aiming to allocate cash to the country's most deprived communities. Its targets included increasing average income among lower wage-earners and narrowing the poverty gap between Scotland's best- and worst-performing regions by 2017. So far, it hasn't met those targets.In 2008 a report entitled ‘Power for The Public' examined the provision of health, education and justice in Scotland. It said the budgets for these three areas had grown by 55%, 87% and 44% respectively over the last decade, but added that this had produced ‘mixed results'. ‘Mixed results' means it didn't work. More money was spent and the figures got worse.After the Centre for Social Justice report on Glasgow in 2008, Iain Duncan Smith (who set up this think tank, and is now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) said, ‘Policy must deal with the pathways to breakdown – high levels of family breakdown, high levels of failed education, debt and unemployment.'So what are ‘pathways to breakdown'? If you were to look at a chart of Glasgow's prosperity relative to the rest of the world, its peak would have come somewhere around 1910. With the onset of WWI in 1914 its decline accelerated, and since then the falls have been relentless and inexorable. It's not just Glasgow that would have this chart pattern, but the whole of industrial Britain. What changed the trend? Yes, empires rise and fall, but was British decline all a consequence of WWI? Or was there something else?A seismic shift came with that war – a change which is very rarely spoken or written about. Actually, the change was gradual and it pre-dated 1914. It was a change that was sweeping through the West: that of government or state involvement in our lives. In the UK it began with the reforms of the Liberal government of 1906–14, championed by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, known as the ‘terrible twins' by contemporaries. The Pensions Act of 1908, the People's Budget of 1909–10 (to ‘wage implacable warfare against poverty', declared Lloyd George) and the National Insurance Act of 1911 saw the Liberal government moving away from its tradition of laissez-faire systems – from classical liberalism and Gladstonian principles of self-help and self-reliance – towards larger, more active government by which taxes were collected from the wealthy and the proceeds redistributed. Afraid of losing votes to the emerging Labour party and the increasingly popular ideology of socialism, modern liberals betrayed their classical principles. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd George said ‘the partisan warfare that raged around these topics was so fierce that by 1913, this country was brought to the verge of civil war'. But these were small steps. The Pensions Act, for example, meant that men aged 70 and above could claim between two and five shillings per week from the government. But average male life- expectancy then was 47. Today it's 77. Using the same ratio, and, yes, I'm manipulating statistics here, that's akin to only awarding pensions to people above the age 117 today. Back then it was workable.To go back to my analogy of the prologue, this period was when the ‘train' was set in motion across the West. In 1914 it went up a gear. Here are the opening paragraphs of historian A. J. P. Taylor's most celebrated book, English History 1914–1945, published in 1965.I quote this long passage in full, because it is so telling.Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state, who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913–14, or rather less than 8% of the national income.The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries,from working excessive hours.The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the Second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.Since the beginning of WWI , the role that the state has played in our lives has not stopped growing. This has been especially so in the case of Glasgow. The state has spent more and more, provided more and more services, more subsidy, more education, more health care, more infrastructure, more accommodation, more benefits, more regulations, more laws, more protection. The more it has provided, the worse Glasgow has fared. Is this correlation a coincidence? I don't think so.The story of the rise and fall of Glasgow is a distilled version of the story of the rise and fall of industrial Britain – indeed the entire industrial West. In the next chapter I'm going to show you a simple mistake that goes on being made; a dynamic by which the state, whose very aim was to help Glasgow, has actually been its ‘pathway to breakdown' . . .Life After the State is available at Amazon, Apple Books and all good bookshops, with the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe
In this episode we discuss the improvised gas masks used by British and Commonwealth soldiers in 1915, the advancement in medical treatment during the Great War, whether soldiers were told in advance about the explosion of mines on the battlefield and the use of soldiers packs in WW1.Our episode on Gas Warfare in WW1 is available here: Gas! Gas! Gas!JD Hutt's YouTube Channel: The History Underground.Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
Tonight sees the 70th Ivor Novello awards taking place at Grosvenor House in London. They are coveted in the UK music industry because they specifically celebrate songwriting. Singer-songwriter Lola Young leads the nominations this year including one for 'best song musically and lyrically' for her breakthrough hit Messy, which spent a month at number one in the UK earlier this year. Does this spell good news for women in the music industry? Anita Rani is joined by Linda Coogan-Byrne to discuss. If you've ever had the bad luck of getting a UTI - or Urinary Tract Infection - you'll know how painful they can be. It's a bacterial infection which can affect the bladder, urethra or kidneys and give a burning or stinging sensation when you urinate. Yesterday, in a powerful parliamentary session, the Labour MP Allison Gardner spoke through tears as she described her experiences of chronic UTIs. The MP for Stoke on Trent is now hoping to launch a cross-party parliamentary group to look at chronic UTIs - Allison joins Anita, as does the GP Ellie Cannon. A major new exhibition opens this week at The Imperial War Museum in London. Called Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Conflict, it looks at the atrocities inflicted during war and conflict from the First World War until the present day. Helen Upcraft is the exhibition's lead curator and Sara Bowcutt is the Managing Director of Women for Women International, one of the NGOs working in the field of sexual violence in conflict, who've also contributed to this exhibition. They join Anita in the studio.Women and listening... how do women listen? How good a listener are you? Two books out this month focus on listening, from listening to sounds to listening more deeply to other people. Anita speaks to writers Alice Vincent, and Emily Kasriel.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones
In this lecture from the Mises Institute's recent Conference on War Revisionism, McMaken looks at how classical liberals' pro-peace foreign policy was defeated by a century of war propaganda beginning with the First World War. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off
In this lecture from the Mises Institute's recent Conference on War Revisionism, McMaken looks at how classical liberals' pro-peace foreign policy was defeated by a century of war propaganda beginning with the First World War. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at https://Mises.org/RadioRothbardRadio Rothbard mugs are available at the Mises Store. Get yours at https://Mises.org/RothMug PROMO CODE: RothPod for 20% off
Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Japan emerges as a major player among world powers as their ambassadors helped finalize the postwar treaties and create a new international body meant to stop large-scale wars before they began: The League of Nations. However, trouble continued brewing on the Korean Peninsula as a new mass movement for national liberation took to the streets.Higher Listenings: Joy for EducatorsA new podcast from Top Hat delivering ideas, relief, and joy to the future of teaching.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show My latest novel, "Califia's Crusade," is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Bookshop.org, and many other online platforms!
In this episode we start a look at some of the Forgotten Memoirs of the First World War, starting with Percy Croney's 'Soldiers Luck' published in the mid-1960s. Croney was a 1914 volunteer who served with the Essex Regiment and Scottish Rifles at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, being wounded several times and taken prisoner in March 1918. We ask what the value of memoirs like this are to our understanding of the Great War. Percy Croney - Soldier's Luck on Open LibraryGot a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.Send us a textSupport the show
In the decade before the First World War over ten thousand Russian Jews travelled across the Atlantic but instead of alighting in New York, where a large Jewish diaspora community was established, they came to Galveston, Texas. Galveston was not the final destination for most of the new arrivals, many travelled across the USA and settled in its rural and urban centres. In this episode of the Explaining History podcast we speak with author Rachel Cockerell, who traces the story of the Galveston Jews and the activities of her Great Grandfather David Jochelmann, who was the driving force behind the Galveston Movement. *****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if that's your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here:Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Friends of the Rosary,Today, May 13, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, or Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Fátima (Nossa Senhora de Fátima).This feast commemorates the Blessed Virgin Mary's first of six appearances to three Portuguese shepherd children in 1917.During the apparitions, Mary revealed herself as Our Lady of the Rosary and conveyed messages about the importance of prayer and penance.The message of Fatima includes a call to conversion of heart, repentance from sin, love and trust in God, and a dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially through the daily prayer of the Rosary.On May 13th, 1917, the siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged 9 and 7 respectively, with their cousin Lucia Dos Santos, aged 10, saw inside a cloud the figure of a woman dressed in white who bore in her hand a rosary.Our Lady of Fatima asked them to return to that place in the following months, always on the 13th day.At those meetings, Our Lady of Fatima revealed startling facts to the children who were to attend, such as the end of the First World War and the threat of a second war, which was even more terrible. Other revelations concerned the political order of the world and the advent of Communist Russia.Mary also exhorted the three shepherd children: “Pray, pray very much. Make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to hell, because no one is willing to help them with sacrifice.”“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph,” she reassured the children.In 1930, the Catholic Church recognized the supernatural nature of Our Lady of Fatima's apparitions. In her honor, a sanctuary was erected, and faithful worldwide still visit it as a pilgrimage destination.Today is also the traditional commemoration of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Saint Peter Julian Eymard gave this title to our Blessed Mother in May 1868 to honor her relationship to the Holy Eucharist and to place her before us as a model in our devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.Ave Maria!Jesus, I Trust In You!Come, Holy Spirit, come!To Jesus through Mary!Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will. Please give us the grace to respond with joy!+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New York• May 13, 2025, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Rubina Raja, professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University in Denmark.First, we go back to May 2015, when the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria was about to fall to Jihadist fighters and how of a group of men risked their lives to preserve the world-famous archaeology.Plus, the entrepreneur and engineer Yoshitada Minami and his wife Fumiko Minami who came up with a way to liberate women from two to three hours of housework a day through the invention of the rice cooker in 1955.Then the story of the sinking of the Lusitania, the British ocean liner sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland during the First World War.Also, celebrating 80 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe we dive into the BBC archives to listen to correspondents capturing the scenes of joy across London on VE day in 1945.Finally, how in 2000, keen cricketer Paul Hawkins wanted to turn his passion into innovation when he created the technology we now known as ‘HawkEye'.Contributors: Khalil Hariri - archaeology expert who worked at Palmyra's museum Rubina Raja - professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University in Denmark Aiji Minami - son of Yoshitada and Fumiko Minami Margaret Hague Thomas – passenger on the Lusitania Leslie Morton – merchant seaman on the Lusitania Paul Hawkins – founder of ‘Hawkeye'(Photo: Palmyra. Credit: PHAS / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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