Podcasts about world war one

This week we look at the subject of Army Pay - how were men paid, who paid them and in what currency when On Active Service? We ask why men changed their names when joining up, answer a question about the Ypres Buglers and IWGC Gardeners in WW2, and why were the Germans seemingly allowed to have all the high ground in 1914?Caitlin DeAngelis' podcast War Graves Gardeners is available on all podcast platforms.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

This is episode 198 — and good news! Apple has listed this podcast as one of South Africas five shows they liked in 2024 — and we are also the third most shared podcast in South Africa on all Apple Podcasts. Unvelievable, ongelooflijk, Ngiyamangala, Ke Makatsoa! I am delighted — and indebted to you the listener who has shared this show with friends and family. Thank you everyone! With that unadulterated self adulation out of the way, back to 1853. As you know, this series constantly shuffles between world events of the time, and incidents and events in southern Africa. In China the Taiping Rebellion rolled on— a civil war between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The war had started in 1850 and would only end in 1864. It's believed between 20 and 30 million Chinese died in this war, about the same number who died in World War One. By comparison, the 8th Frontier War which had just ended in the eastern Cape was trifling - unless of course you were one of the 16 000 amaXhosa or 1400 of the British soldiers and settlers who died. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was dreamed up by a prophet just like the 8th Frontier War. In the southern African case, Mlanjeni had fused Christian and amaXhosa cosmology into a generated a cult-like following. In China it was Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka man who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ and who led the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Also in 1853, the first passenger railway in India began running between Bombay or Mumbai as it's now known, and Thana was inaugurated in 1853. In the same year, Manchester was granted city status in the UK, and the first public aquarium opened in London. Yellow Fever killed 8 000 Americans in New Orleans, that's one reason why we get Yellow Fever shots — because yes folks — it kills you as quickly as a vaccine hesitant with spasmodic dysphonia. The Swiss watch company Tissot was founded in 1853 and soon the biggest market for Tisso watches, in those days was … Russia. Ironic, considering Russia and a host of countries had gone to war in the Crimea. A Time to die. The first potato chips, or chips as we call it, were prepared and sold by George Crum in New York. Christian Doppler the Austrian mathematician a physicist died in 1853, famous for his discovery that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. It's called the doppler Effect. Some could argue that there is a doppler effect in historical views, just as the perceived pitch of a wave changes with movement, historical events are viewed differently depending on the distance in time from the event. To stretch this metaphor further, perception is influenced by position, shaped by cultural, geographical and ideological positions. The closer you are to the event, the more intense it is. Thus, the Historical Doppler Effect. The Crimean War kicked off in October 1853. Word of these events, of course, were rippling across the planet, sometimes taking months to reach the furtherest corners. The Boers in South Africa for example were acutely aware of the Crimean war, and that their enemy the English were involved.

This is episode 198 — and good news! Apple has listed this podcast as one of South Africas five shows they liked in 2024 — and we are also the third most shared podcast in South Africa on all Apple Podcasts. Unvelievable, ongelooflijk, Ngiyamangala, Ke Makatsoa! I am delighted — and indebted to you the listener who has shared this show with friends and family. Thank you everyone! With that unadulterated self adulation out of the way, back to 1853. As you know, this series constantly shuffles between world events of the time, and incidents and events in southern Africa. In China the Taiping Rebellion rolled on— a civil war between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The war had started in 1850 and would only end in 1864. It's believed between 20 and 30 million Chinese died in this war, about the same number who died in World War One. By comparison, the 8th Frontier War which had just ended in the eastern Cape was trifling - unless of course you were one of the 16 000 amaXhosa or 1400 of the British soldiers and settlers who died. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was dreamed up by a prophet just like the 8th Frontier War. In the southern African case, Mlanjeni had fused Christian and amaXhosa cosmology into a generated a cult-like following. In China it was Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka man who had proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ and who led the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Also in 1853, the first passenger railway in India began running between Bombay or Mumbai as it's now known, and Thana was inaugurated in 1853. In the same year, Manchester was granted city status in the UK, and the first public aquarium opened in London. Yellow Fever killed 8 000 Americans in New Orleans, that's one reason why we get Yellow Fever shots — because yes folks — it kills you as quickly as a vaccine hesitant with spasmodic dysphonia. The Swiss watch company Tissot was founded in 1853 and soon the biggest market for Tisso watches, in those days was … Russia. Ironic, considering Russia and a host of countries had gone to war in the Crimea. A Time to die. The first potato chips, or chips as we call it, were prepared and sold by George Crum in New York. Christian Doppler the Austrian mathematician a physicist died in 1853, famous for his discovery that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. It's called the doppler Effect. Some could argue that there is a doppler effect in historical views, just as the perceived pitch of a wave changes with movement, historical events are viewed differently depending on the distance in time from the event. To stretch this metaphor further, perception is influenced by position, shaped by cultural, geographical and ideological positions. The closer you are to the event, the more intense it is. Thus, the Historical Doppler Effect. The Crimean War kicked off in October 1853. Word of these events, of course, were rippling across the planet, sometimes taking months to reach the furtherest corners. The Boers in South Africa for example were acutely aware of the Crimean war, and that their enemy the English were involved.

As the seasons change along The Old Front Line we take a winter walk across one part of the Somme battlefields, walking along the tracks from near Courcelette to Thiepval and the Ancre Valley.The WW1 Cemeteries website mentioned can be found here: www.ww1cemeteries.com.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

New York Times bestselling author Doug Brunt joins Single Malt History to discuss his hit new book "The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War One."

PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1343 - Full Version Release Date: November 23, 2024 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Denny Haight, NZ8D, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Rich Lawrence, KB2MOB, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, William Savacool, K2SAV, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX. Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS. Approximate Running Time: 1:40:30 Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1343 Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service 1. FCC: Trump Picks Brendan Carr To Lead The Federal Communications Commission 2. AMSAT: AMSAT OSCAR-7 50th Anniversary – A Testbed For Saving Lives 3. AMSAT: SpaceX Dragon Fires Thrusters To Boost ISS Orbit For The First Time 4. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over 5. WIA: HamVention 2025 Announces Convention Theme 6. WIA: White House Communications Agency Amateur Radio Club On Air 7. WIA: Amazon Receives FAA Approval For MK30 Delivery Drone 8. WIA: Amateur Radio Appears In German Crime Drama On ZDF 9. BBC: Somebody Moved UK's Oldest Satellite, And No One Knows Who Or Why 10. FCC: FCC's Final Moves Under Rosenworcel Hold Weight For Radio 11. ARRL: Committee Proposes Changes To ARRL By-Laws 42 and 46 12. ARRL: Fall Season Section Manager Election Results Announced 13. ARRL: New Video Promoting YouTube Telethon To Benefit Teachers Institute 14. ARRL: The Quarter Century Wireless Association Is Sponsoring A Special Event Station 15. ARRL: Hawaii Is Preparing For The 83rd Commemoration Of The December 7th, 1941, Attack On Pearl Harbor 16. 30th Year Since Voice Of America Went Silent From Ohio Transmitter Site 17. WB4GOV, John Bostic Of SouthCars Net, Silent Key 18. Chinese and Russian Students Begin QSO's On Their CubeSat 19. You Can Work Young Amateurs During Youth On The Air Month 20. ARRL Volunteer Examiner Coordinator Implements Changes 21. 25th Annual SKYWARN Recognition Day December 7th, 2024 22. Amateurs Help New Network In New Zealand Expand 23. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel Announces Resignation 24. Utah DX Association to operate special event station K7S to celebrate the 60th anniversary amateur radio stamp 25. Northern Arizona DX Association Battery Boys donate air compressor to Toys for Tots 26. ARRL: Upcoming conventions and radio sport contests. ARRL holiday closing schedule. 27. WIA: Several amateur radio satellites are nearing the end of life re-entry 28. ARD: VLF transmitter SAQ to transmit CW for its 100th anniversary 29. ARRL: ARRL delegates attended International Amateur Radio Union Region 3 Conference 30. ARRL: NCVEC Question Pool Committee removes two questions from General and Extra question pools 31. ARRL: 2024 ARRL Board of Directors election results are announced Plus these Special Features This Week: * Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News * Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will attempt to answer the question, Why does your wi-fi connection drop out when you are cooking your lunch? * The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with news on DXpeditions, DX, upcoming radio sport contests and more. * Weekly Propagation Forecast from the ARRL * Will Rogers, K5WLR, A Century of Amateur Radio, This week, Will takes us back to the end of World War One to witness the amateurs of the time starting the lengthy process of getting permission to get back on the air. ----- Website: https://www.twiar.net X: https://x.com/TWIAR Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/twiar.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2 Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly) Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly) ----- This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com. Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space! Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.

We begin at the Battle of Loos in 1915, looking at the casualty figures for the opening stage of the attack and comparing them to the Somme, we then discuss what units formed in WW1 were still part of the Army in WW2, discuss soldiers and their medals and were there examples of 'stolen valour' and examine collectables of the Great War and discuss fakes and what to collect. 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

PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1342 - Full Version Release Date: November 16, 2024 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Chris Perrine, KB2FAF, Denny Haight, NZ8D, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Will Rogers, K5WLR, Joshua Turner, AA4WX, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX. Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS. Approximate Running Time: 1:36:47 Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1342 Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service 1. HACK: First Microsatellite By Chinese, Russian University Students Launched 2. RW: College Radio Station WKHS Makes International Contact With Amateur Radio 3. AMSAT: Celebrating AO-7 First Earth - Space - Space - Earth Relay Communications 4. AMSAT: Satellite Shorts From All Over 5. WIA: Amateur Radio Pico Balloon Is Heard Over The Antarctic 6. SARL: BACAR Balloon Carrying Amateur Radio Is Launched 7. WIA: Several Amateur Radio Satellites Nearing End Of Life Re Entry 8. RW: FCC Commissioner Carr Says FCC Should Stop Work On Partisan Matters 9. ARD: VLF Transmitter SAQ To Transmit CW For 100th Anniversary 10. FCC: FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel Launches New Podcast Series 11. ARRL: ARRL November Sweepstakes Phone Is This Weekend 12. ARRL: YouTube Telethon To Raise Money For ARRL Teachers Institute On Wireless 13. ARRL: ARRL Delegates Attend International Amateur Radio Union Region 3 Conference 14. ARRL: NCVEC Question Pool Committee Removes Two Pool Questions From Use 15. FCC: FCC Considers Broadcaster Transparency Over Advertisements With AI Generated Content 16. SBE: Jim Dalke W7PB Wins Society of Broadcast Engineers Award 17. IARU: International Amateur Radio Union Youth Excellence Award 18. Rotuma Island DXpedition Is Taken On By A Youth Operator Group 19. CW Club Bug Roundup Is Coming Up 20. Emergency Alert System Upgrades For Three Broadcasters Funded By CPB Grant 21. Facebook Group Combines Life On The Road With Amateur Radio 22. ARRL: 2024 ARRL Board of Directors Election Results Are Announced 23. ARRL: Upcoming Radio Sport Contests and Regional Convention Listing 24. AMSAT: AMSAT AO-7 to celebrate its 50th anniversary in orbit 25. AMSAT: Voyager One spacecraft phones home on an S-Band transmitter that hasn't been used since 1981 26. WIA: Singapore's 4300 kilometer undersea electrical transmission line with Australia clears regulation hurdles 27. Arecibo Science Education Center opening is delayed 28. Scientist researchers find a possible cause of the Arecibo Telescope Collapse 29. Radio independence is the 2025 Hamvention Theme 30. ARRL: 2024 ARRL Field Day results are announced Plus these Special Features This Week: * Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News * Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will talk about a new radio every week. * The DX Corner with Bill Salyers, AJ8B with all the latest news on current and upcoming DXpeditions, DX, upcoming radio sport contests, and more.. * Weekly Propagation Forecast from the solar prognosticator Tadd Cook, K7RA * Will Rogers - K5WLR - A Century Of Amateur Radio - Will returns with another new edition of A Century Of Amateur Radio. This week, Will piles us all into The Wayback Machine to take us back in time to the end of World War One to witness the slow reactivation of amateur radio. The Navy well understood how much it had benefited from all the trained amateurs ready to volunteer for service during the war and the likelihood of needing them again someday. ----- Website: https://www.twiar.net X: https://x.com/TWIAR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari YouTube: https://bit.ly/TWIARYouTube RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2 Automated (Full): https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly) Automated (1-hour): https://www.twiar.net/TWIAR1HR.mp3 (Static file, updated weekly) ----- This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com. Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space! Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.

If you live in Canada, you're probably familiar with Heritage Minutes. Produced by Historica Canada, these sixty-second short films educate viewers on fascinating or little-known stories from Canada's history. Dozens of Heritage Minutes have been released since 1991, and many of them are iconic, like “Doctor Penfield, I can smell burnt toast!” and “You never know, it might be worth something someday” and especially “Both of you know I canna read a word.” The latest short film to join the pantheon of iconic Heritage Minutes tells the story of Mary Riter Hamilton, a brave Canadian painter who ventured into No Man's Land in the aftermath of World War One. She bore witness to the destruction and devastation, painted what she saw, and suffered mentally and physically as a result. The haunting Heritage Minute – which stars Megan Follows (AKA Anne Shirley) as Mary – was written and directed by a Vancouver-based dynamic duo, Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok, whose previous Heritage Minute told the story of Paldi, one of the most successful multicultural communities in our history. In this fascinating episode, get to know this trailblazing but little-known artist from the first half of the 20th century, as well as the dynamic duo who stepped up to tell her story. Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

As the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, the Cambridge University historian Gary Gerstle was one of first people to recognize the collapse of neoliberalism. But today, the real question is not about the death of neoliberalism, but what comes after it. And, of course, when I sat down with Gerstle, I began by asking him what the Trump victory tells us about what comes after neoliberalism.Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his BA from Brown University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of more than ten books.  He is currently the Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, where he is working on a new book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century.  He resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most pivotal broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the pivotal author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two cats, both called Pivot.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. TRANSCRIPT“It's important to recognize that the neoliberal triumph carried within it not just the triumph of capitalism, but the triumph of freedom. And I think the that image of the wall coming down captures both. It's people wanting to claim their freedom, but it also paves the way for an unregulated form of capitalism to spread to every corner of the world.” -Gary GerstleAK: Hello everybody. As we try to make sense of the aftermath of the US election this week, there was an interesting headline today in the Financial Times. Donald Trump apparently has asked, and I'm quoting the F.T. here, the arch-protectionist Robert Lighthizer, to run U.S. trade policy. You never know with Trump, he may change his mind tomorrow. But nonetheless, it suggests, and it's not a great surprise, that protectionism will define the Trump, presidency or certainly the second Trump presidency. And it speaks of the structural shift in the nature of politics and economics in the United States, particularly given this Trump victory. One man who got this, I think before anyone else, is the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle. He's been on the show a couple of times before. He's the author of a wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. It's a profound book. It's had an enormous impact on everybody. And I'm thrilled and honored that Gary is back on the show. This is the third time he's been on the show. Gary, is that important news? Have we formally come to the end now of the neoliberal order? GARY GERSTLE: I think we have, although there's an element of neoliberalism which may revive in the Trump administration. But if we think of a political order as ordering political life so that all participants in that order have to accept its ideological principles, we have moved out of that order. I think we've been out of it for some time. The critical election in this case was 2016, and the critical move that both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders made in 2016, the two most dynamic presidential candidates in that year, was to break with the orthodoxy of free markets, the orthodoxy of globalization, the orthodoxy of a world without borders where everything was free to move and the market was supreme. And the only role of government in the state was to ensure as full access to markets as was possible in the belief that if governments got out of the way of a private capitalist economy, this would spur the greatest growth for the greatest number of people everywhere in the world. This was governing orthodoxy, really from the time of Reagan until 2016. Trump broke it. Sanders broke it. Very significant in this regard that when Biden came into office, he moderated some of the Trump tariffs but kept the tariffs on China substantially in place. So there's been continuity for some time, and now we're going to see an intensification of the protectionist regime. Protectionism used to be a dirty word in American politics. If you uttered that word, you were excluded from serious political discourse. There will be other terms that are used, fair trade, not just because protectionism has a negative connotation to it, but we are living in an era where governments assert the right to shape markets as they wish to in the interests of their nation. So, yes, we are living in a different era, although it must be said, and we may get into a discussion of this at some point, there are sectors of the Trump coalition that want to intensify deregulation in the domestic market, that want to rollback government. And so I expect in the new Trump administration, there is going to be tussles between the protectionists on the one hand and those who want to, at least domestically, restore free trade. And by that I mean the free operation of private capital without government regulation. That's an issue that bears watching.AK: Is that a contradiction though, Gary? Can one, in this post-neoliberal order, can governments be hostile to regulation, a la Elon Musk and his association with Trump, and also be in favor of tariffs? I mean, do the two—can the to go together, and is that the outline of this foggy new order coming into place in the second quarter of the 21st century?GARY GERSTLE: They can go together in the sense that they have historically in the past gone together in the United States. In the late 19th century, the US had very high tariffs against foreign goods. And domestically, it was trying to create as free a domestic market as possible. What was known as the period of laissez-faire domestically went along with a commitment to high tariffs and protection of American laissez-faire against what we might call global laissez-faire. So it has been tried. It did work at that time. But I think the Republican party and the constituencies behind Donald Trump are divided on this question. As you noted, Elon Musk represents one pole of this. He certainly wants protection against Chinese imports of electric cars and is probably going to get that because of all the assistance he gave Trump in this election. But domestically, he wants no government interfering with his right to conduct his capitalist enterprises as he sees fit. So that's going to be one wing. But there's another wing of the Republican Party under Trump that is much more serious about industrial policy that says we cannot leave the market to its own devices. It produces too many human casualties. It produces too many regions of America left behind, and that we must use the government to help those people left behind. We must structure free enterprise industry in a way that helps the ordinary working-class man. And I use the word “man” deliberately in this context. Interestingly, JD Vance, the vice president, embodies both these tendencies, sees, on the one hand, a creature of venture capital, Silicon Valley, close to the Musks and Peter Thiels of the world. On the other hand, he has talked explicitly, as in his vice-presidential acceptance speech, about putting Main Street over Wall Street. And if he's serious about putting Main Street over Wall Street, that's going to involve a lot of government intervention to displace the privileged position that finance and venture capital now has in the American economy.AK: Gary, you're a historian, one of the best around, you're deeply versed in the past, you bring up Vance. He presents himself as being original, even has a beard. But I wonder whether his—I don't know what you would call it—a Catholic or Christian socialism, or at least a concern with the working class. Is it in any way new, for you, historically? I mean, it certainly exists in Europe, and there must be analogies also in American history with him.GARY GERSTLE: Well, if he is a convert to Catholicism, I don't know how well-versed he is in the papal doctrines of years past. Or decades. Or even centuries passed. But there was a serious movement within the Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th century to humanize capitalism, to declare that free market capitalism produced too many human casualties. Too many ordinary Catholic workers and workers who are not Catholic were hurt by unemployment, poverty, being thrown out of work in the troughs of business cycles, having no social welfare to fall back on, as a result of injury or misfortune in life. And so there was a profound movement within Catholic churches, in the United States, and in Europe and other parts of the world as well, to humanize capitalism. Whether this very once important Catholic tradition is an active influence on Vance, I don't know, because he's a recent convert to Catholicism, and I don't know how deeply has imbibed its history or its doctrine. But there is a rich tradition there. And it's possible that this is one of the sources that he is drawing on to shape his contemporary politics.AK: We were talking before we ran live, Gary, I said to you, and I think you agreed, that this use of the word "fascism" to describe Trump isn't always particularly helpful. It reflects a general hysteria amongst progressives. But I wonder in this context, given the way in which European Catholicism flirted, sometimes quite openly, with fascism, whether the F-word actually makes a little more sense. Because after all, fascism, after the First World War, was a movement in the name of the people, which was very critical of the capitalism of that age and of the international market. So, when we use the word fascism now, could it have some value in that context as a kind of a socioeconomic critique of capitalism?GARY GERSTLE: You mean fascism offering a socioeconomic critique of U.S. capitalism?AK: Yes. For better or worse.GARY GERSTLE: I'm reluctant to deploy the term fascism, since I think most people who enter the conversation or who hear that word in the United States don't really know what it means, and that's partly the consequence of historians debating its meaning as long as they have, and also suggesting that fascism takes different forms at different times and in different places. I prefer the term authoritarianism. I think that tendency is clearly there and one can connect that to certain traditions within the church. The United States once had a intense anti-Catholic political tradition. It was unimaginable in the 19th century. AK: Yeah, it drove the KKK. I mean, that was the Klan hated the Catholics probably more than they hated the Jews.GARY GERSTLE: It drove the Klan. And the notion in the 19th century—I'm not remembering now whether there are 5 or 6 Catholics who sit on the Supreme Court—but the notion in the 19th century that 5 or 6 Catholics would be the chief custodians and interpreters of America's most sacred doctrine and document the Constitution was simply unthinkable. It could never have happened. There was a Catholic seat. As for a long time, there was a Jewish seat on the Supreme Court, but understood that this would be carefully cordoned off and limited and that, when push came to shove, Protestants had to be in charge of interpreting America's most sacred doctrine. And the charge against Catholics was that they were not democratic, that they vested ultimate power in God and through an honest messenger on Earth, who was the pope. John F. Kennedy, in 1960, became the first Catholic president of the United States. Biden is only the second. Vance is the first Catholic vice president. Before in the campaign that Kennedy was running in 1960, he had to go in front of thousands of Protestant ministers who had gathered in Houston so he could persuade them that if he became president, he would not be handing America over to the pope, who was seen as an authoritarian figure. So for a long time, Catholicism was seen as a carrier of authoritarianism, of a kind of executive power that should not be limited by a human or secular force. And this promoted, in the United States, intense anti-Catholic feeling, which took the country probably 200 years to conquer. Conquered it was, so the issue of so many Catholics on the Supreme Court is not an issue. Biden's Catholicism is not an issue. Vance's Catholicism is not an issue. But Vance himself has said, talking about his conversion, that of his granny—I forget the term he uses to describe his granny—were alive today, she would not be able to accept his conversion because she was so deeply Protestant, so evangelical, so—AK: A classic West Virginian evangelical. So for me, the other contradiction here is that Vance is unashamedly nationalist, unashamedly critical of globalization. And yet, by embracing Catholicism, which is the most international of face, I don't quite understand what that suggests about him, or Catholicism, or even history, that that these odd things happen.GARY GERSTLE: Well, one thing one can say in history is that odd things happen and odd couples get together. I don't know myself how fully Vance understands his Catholicism. I believe Peter Thiel led him to this. Vance is still a young man and has gone through a lot of conversions for a young man. He was—AK: Well, he's a conversion expert. That's the narrative of his life, isn't it?GARY GERSTLE: Yes. Yes. And he began as being a severe anti-Trumper, almost a Never-Trumper. Then he converted to Trumpism. Then he converted from Protestant to Catholicism. So a lot of major changes in his life. So, the question you just posed is a fascinating one. Does he understand that the church is a catholic church, meaning small c catholic in this case, that it's open to everyone in the world? Does he really understand that? But I would extend my puzzle about religion beyond Catholicism to ask, for all the evangelical supporters of Trump: where is Jesus's message of peace and love? Where did that go? So there are puzzles about the shape of Christian religion in America. And there's no doubt that for its most devout supporters in the United States that has taken a very hard nationalist turn. And this is true among Protestants, and it is true among many Catholics. And so, I think the question that you posed may be one that no one has really confronted Vance with.“What we have to think about in regard to Trump is, will they take on projects that will threaten the constitutional foundation of the United States in order to achieve their aims? What does Musk represent, and what does part of Trump represent? It represents unbounded executive power, unconstrained by Congress, to promote conditions of maximum freedom. And the freedom they have in mind is not necessarily your personal freedom or mine.” -Gary GerstleAK: And I would extend that, Gary. I think that the most persistent and credible critics of Trump also come from the religious community. Peter Wehner, for example, former—I don't know if you're familiar with his work. He writes a lot for the Times and The Atlantic. Very religious man, is horrified—worked in the Bush and the Reagan administrations. Let's go back to—I was looking at the cover of the book, and obviously authors don't pick the covers of their books—GARY GERSTLE: I did. I picked this.AK: Okay. Well, when you look at the—GARY GERSTLE: This is this is not the original cover.AK: Right, so, the book I'm looking at, and for people just listening, I'm going to describe. The dominant picture is of the Berlin Wall being knocked down in the evening of November 1989. It's odd, Gary, isn't it, that...for the rise and fall of the neoliberal order, which is an economic order in a free market era, you should have chosen the image of a political event, which, of course, Fukuyama so famously described as the end of history. And I guess, for you as an economic historian who is also deeply interested and aware of politics, is the challenge and opportunity to always try to disentangle the economics and politics of all this? Or are they so entangled that they're actually impossible to disentangle, to separate?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I think sometimes you need to disentangle them, sometimes they move in different directions, and sometimes they move in the same direction. I think to understand the triumph of the neoliberal order, we have to see that politics and economics move in tandem with each other. What makes possible the neoliberal triumph of the 90s is the fall of communism between 1989 and 1991. And no picture embodies that better than the taking down of the Berlin Wall. And that connotes a message of freedom and escape from Soviet and communist tyranny. But the other message there is that tearing down of those walls opens the world to capitalist penetration to a degree that had not been available to the capitalist world since prior to World War One, prior to the war, and most importantly, to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. And where communists came to power everywhere, they either completely excluded or sharply curtailed the ability of capitalist business to operate within their borders. Their message was expropriate private property, which meant expropriate all corporate property. Give it over to the state, let the state manage it in the interest of the proletariat. This was an extraordinary dream that turned into an awful tyrannical outcome. But it animated the world, as few other ideas did in the 20th century, and proposed a very, very serious challenge to capitalist prerogative, to capitalist industry, to free markets. And so the collapse of communism, which is both the collapse of a state—a communist state, the Soviet Union—but perhaps more importantly, the collapse of the belief that any governments could structure the private economy in ways that would be beneficial to humankind. It's what opened the way in the 1990s to the neoliberal triumph. And it's important to recognize that the neoliberal triumph carried within it not just the triumph of capitalism, but the triumph of freedom. And I think the that image of the wall coming down captures both. It's people wanting to claim their freedom, but it also paves the way for an unregulated form of capitalism to spread to every corner of the world. And in the long term—we're in the mid-term—that was going to create inequalities, vulnerabilities to the global financial and economic systems, that were going to bring the global economy down and set off a radically different form of politics than the world had seen for some time. And we're still living through that radically different form of politics set off by the financial crash of 2008/2009, which, in my way of thinking, was a product of untrammeled capitalism conquering the world in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's and communism's collapse.AK: Yeah, and that's the other thing, isn't it, Garry? I mean, it goes without saying that the bringing down of the war fundamentally changed the old Soviet economy, the East European economies, Poland, Hungary, eastern part of Germany. But what no one—I think very, very few people imagined in '89 was that perhaps the biggest consequence of this capitalist penetration wasn't in Warsaw or Moscow or the eastern part of Berlin, but back in West Virginia with guys like JD Vance. How did the bringing down of the wall change America, or at least the American economy? I've never really quite understood that.GARY GERSTLE: Through the mass exporting of manufacturing to other countries that—AK: Wasn't that before? Wasn't that also taking place before '89, or did it happen particularly in the '90s?GARY GERSTLE: It began before 1989. It began during the Great Recession of the 1970s, where the first districts of manufacturing in the U.S., places like Buffalo, New York steelmaking center, began to get hollowed out. But it dramatically intensified in the 1990s, and this had to do with China permitting itself to be a part of this global free market. And China was opened to capitalist penetration from the United States and Europe. And what you saw in that decade was a massive shift of manufacturing to China, a shift that even intensified in the first decade of the 21st century with the admission of China in 2001 to the World Trade Organization. So China was a big factor. Also, the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which rendered the northern half of the Western Hemisphere one common market, like the European Common Market. So, enormous flight of jobs to places like Mexico. And the labor costs in places like China and Mexico, and then East Asia already leaving Japan for Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, parts of the South Asian subcontinent. The flight of jobs there became so massive, and the labor costs there were so cheap, that American industry couldn't compete. And what you begin to see is the hollowing out of American industry, American manufacturing, and whole districts of America just beginning to rot. And no new industries or no new economies taking the place of the industries and the jobs that had left. And this America was being ignored, largely in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, in part because the ideology of neoliberalism said, we understand that this global free market is going to increase inequality in the world, it's going to increase the distance between rich and poor, but the distance between rich and poor is okay because all boats will rise. All people will benefit. This is not just an American story, this is also the story of other parts of the North Atlantic economy. Britain certainly, Germany was a partial exception, France, other places, and this was the ideology...growth would benefit everyone, and this was not the case. It was a fallacy. But the ideology was so strong that it held together until the financial crash of 2008/2009. After that crash, it became impossible to make the point that all boats were rising under the neoliberal regime. And this is when the forgotten Americans and the forgotten Brits of the northern part of the of Great Britain. This is when they began to make their voices heard. This is when they began to strike a very different note in politics. And this is where Donald Trump had his beginnings with these forgotten, angry people who felt ignored, left behind, and were suffering greatly, because by the early decades of the 21st century, it wasn't just jobs that were gone, but it was healthy marital life, divorce rates rising, rampant drug use. Two Cambridge economists wrote a book called Depths of Despair.AK: Yeah, that book comes up in almost every conversation. I once went down to Princeton to interview Angus Deaton. Like your book, it's become a classic. So let's fast forward, Gary, to the last election. I know you're writing a book now about politics in our time of authoritarianism, and you're scratching your head and asking whether the election last week was a normal or an apocryphal one, one that's just different or historical. And I wonder, in that sense, correct me if I'm wrong, there seems to have been two elections simultaneously. On the one hand, it was very normal, from the Democrats' point of view, who treated America as if it was normal. Harris behaves as if she was just another Democratic candidate. And, of course, Trump, who didn't. My interpretation, maybe it's a bit unfair, is that it's the progressives. It's certainly the coastal elites who have become, implicitly at least, the defenders of the old neoliberal order. For them, it kind of works. It's not ideal, but it works and they can't imagine anything else. And it's the conservatives who have attacked it, the so-called conservatives. Is there any truth to that in the last election?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I think the Democrats are certainly seen by vast sectors of the population as being the defenders of an old order, of established institutions controlling the media, although I think that's less and less true because the legacy media has less and less influence and shows like yours, podcasting and rogue Fox Television and all kinds of other outlets, are increasingly influential. But yes, the Democrats are seen as a party of the establishment. They are seen as the party of the educated elite. And one of the factors that determines who votes for who now is now deeply educational in the sense of, what is your level of educational achievement? If you are college educated, you're much more likely to vote Democratic, regardless of your income. And if you're high school educated or less, you're much more likely to vote Republican. I don't think it's fair to say that the Democrats are the last protectors of the neoliberal order, because Biden broke with the neoliberal order in major, consequential ways. If the defining characteristic of the neoliberal order is to free the market from constraints and to use the state only to free up market forces—this was true, to a large extent, of Obama and of Clinton—Biden broke with that, and he did it in alliance with Bernie Sanders, set of task forces they set up in 2020 to design a new administration. And his major pieces of legislation, reshoring CHIPS manufacture, the biggest investment in clean energy in the country's history. $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the biggest infrastructure project since the interstate highway system of the '50s, and arguably since Roosevelt's fabled New Deal. These are all about industrial policy. These are all about the government using its power and resources to direct industry in a certain way so that it will increase general happiness, general welfare, general employment. So this represents a profound change from what had come before. And in that way, the Biden administration can't be seen as the last defenders.“The question is, will they be able to get further than past generations of Republicans have by their willingness to break things? And will they go so far as to break the Constitution in the pursuit of these aims?”AK: And let me jump in here, Gary, there's another really important question. There was a very interesting piece, I'm sure you saw it, by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker about Bidenomics and its achievements. You talked about the New Deal, the massive amount of investments—it was post COVID, they took advantage of the historical crisis. Trillions of dollars have been invested in new technologies. Is Bidenomics new in any way? Or is it basically just a return to the economics, or the political economy, of FDR?GARY GERSTLE: Well, it certainly draws inspiration from FDR, because at the core of the New Deal was the conviction that you could use government to direct industry to positive uses that would benefit not just the corporations, but the population as a whole. But there was nothing like the Green Energy Project in the New Deal. The New Deal, except for hydroelectric projects, was primarily about prospering on a cheap fossil fuel economy. The New Deal also was very comfortable with accepting prevailing gender and race conceptions of the proper place of women and African Americans in American life in a way that is unacceptable to Bidenomics. So there are redirections under Bidenomics in ways that modify the New Deal inspiration. But at its core, Bidenomics is modeled on the New Deal conviction that you need a strong federal government to point industry in the right direction. And so in that sense, there's a fundamental similarity in those two progressive projects. And I think people in the Biden administration have been quite conscious about that. Now, the particular challenges are different. The world economy is different. The climate crisis is upon us. So, it is going to take different forms, have different outcomes. But the inspiration clearly comes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal.AK: Well, let's go over to the other side and Trump. You scratching your head and figuring out whether this is unusual. And of course, it's the second time he's won an election. This time around, he seems to be overtly hostile to the state. He's associated with Musk, who's promised to essentially decimate the state. In historical terms, Gary, is there anything unusual about this? I mean, certainly the opponents of FDR were also very hostile to this emergent American state. As a historian, do you see this as something new, the pleasure in essentially blowing the state up, or at least the promise of blowing the state up?GARY GERSTLE: That impulse is not new. There have been members of the Republican party who have been talking this language since the New Deal arrived in America in the 1930s and '40s during the '50s and '60s and early '70s, they were marginal in American politics. And then with the neoliberal order coming into being in the '70s and with Reagan as president, their voice has gained enormous traction. One of Reagan's key advisors in the 1980s and 1990s, one of his favorite lines was, “I want to shrink the size of the federal government until we can drown it in the bathtub.” It's a wonderful image and metaphor, and captures the intensity with which conservative Republicans have wanted to eliminate the strong centralized state. But they have not been able to do it to a degree that makes that have satisfied them. It turns out that Americans, for all their possible ideological opposition to big government like big parts of it, like Social Security, like Medicare, like a strong military establishment that's gonna protect the country, like clean air, clean water. So it's proved much more difficult for this edifice to be taken down than the Reaganites had imagined it would be. So, the advocates have become more radical because of decades of frustration. And what we have to think about in regard to Trump is, will they take on projects that will threaten the constitutional foundation of the United States in order to achieve their aims? What does Musk represent, and what does part of Trump represent? It represents unbounded executive power, unconstrained by Congress, to promote conditions of maximum freedom. And the freedom they have in mind is not necessarily your personal freedom or mine, as the abortion issue signifies. What they have in mind is corporate freedom. The freedom of Elon Musk's companies to do whatever they want to do. The freedom of the social media companies to do whatever they want to do. The question is, will they be able to get further than past generations of Republicans have by their willingness to break things? And will they go so far as to break the Constitution in the pursuit of these aims? Peter Thiel has said, very forthrightly, that democracy no longer works as a system, and that America has to consider other systems in order to have the kind of prosperity and freedom it wants. And one thing that bears watching with this new Trump administration is how many supporters the Peter Thiel's and the Elon Musk's are going to have to be free to tear down the edifice and the institutions of the federal government and pursuit of a goal of a reconfigured, and what I would call rogue, laissez-faire. This is something to watch.AK: But Gary, I take your point. I mean, Thiel's been, on the West Coast, always been a convenient punchbag for the left for years now, I punched him many times myself. I wanted to. But all this seems to be just the wet dream of neoliberals. So you have Musk and Thiel doing away with government. Huge corporations, no laws. This is the neoliberal wet dream, isn't it?GARY GERSTLE: Well, partly it is. But neoliberalism always depended on a structure of law enforced by government that was necessary to allow free markets to operate in a truly free and transparent manner. In other words, you needed elements of a strong government to perfect markets, that markets were not perfect if they were left to their own devices. And one of the dangers of the Elon Musk phase of the Trump administration is that this edifice of law on which corporations and capitalism thrives will be damaged in the pursuit of a radical libertarianism. Now, there may very well be a sense that cooler heads prevail in the Trump administration, and that this scenario will not come to fruition. But one certainly has to be aware that this is one of the possible outcomes of a Trump administration. I should also say that there's another very important constituency in the Republican party that wants to continue, not dismantle, what Biden has done with industrial policies. This is the other half of JD Vance's brain. This is Tom Cotton. This is Marco Rubio, this is Josh Hawley, senator from Missouri. And they want to actively use the government to regulate industry in the public interest. And there's a very interesting intellectual convergence going on between left of center and right of center intellectuals and policymakers who are converging on the importance of having an industrial policy, because if Elon Musk is given his way, how is the abandoned heartland going to come back?AK: It's cheering me up, Gary, because what you're suggesting is that this is a fairly normal moment. You've got different wings of the Republican Party. You've got the Cottons and the Rubios, who were certainly not revolutionary. Why should we believe that this is a special moment then?GARY GERSTLE: January 6th, 2021. That's the reason. Trump remains the only president in American history to authorize an attack on the very seat of American democracy. That being: Congress sitting in the Capitol. And once he authorized the attack, he waited for three hours hoping that his attackers and his mob would conquer this building and compel the legislators inside to do—AK: And I take your perspective. I'm the last person to defend that. But we're talking about 2024 and not 2021. He won the election fairly. No one's debating that. So, why is 2024 a special election?GARY GERSTLE: Well, here's the key. Well, maybe it's a special election in two ways. It may signify the reconfiguration of a genuinely populist Republican party around the needs of ordinary working-class Americans. And we should say, in this regard, that Trump has brought into his coalition significant numbers of Latinos, young blacks. It has the beginning of a look of a multiracial coalition that the Democrats once had, but now appear to be losing. So it may be an epochal moment in that regard. The other way in which it may be an epochal moment is: what if Trump does not get his way in his term in office for something he really wants? Will he accept that he is bound by the Constitution, that he is bound by the courts? Or will he once again say, when he really wants something, no constitution, no law, will stand in my way? That's how January 6th, 2021, still matters. I'm not saying he's going to do that, but I think we have to understand that that is a possibility, especially since he has shown no remorse for the outcome of the last election. If I read into your comments, I hear you saying: he won this time. He doesn't have to worry about losing. But Trump is always worried about losing. And he is a man who doesn't really know the Constitution, and the parts that he knows and understands he doesn't especially like, because his dream, along with Elon Musk's dream, and this is one reason why I think they are melding so tightly, at the apex of American government should be unbounded executive power. This is not how the country was set up. And as Congress and as the courts begin to push back, will he accept those limits, that there must be bounds on executive power? Or will he try and break through them? I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it's something that we have to be concerned about.AK: I wonder, again, wearing your historical cap you're always doing, the more you talk, the more Trump and Trump's Republican party is Nixonian. This obsession with not being responsible for the law. The broadening of the Republican party. Certainly the Republican party under Nixon was less singularly white than it became later. Isn't, in some ways, Trump just a return to Nixon? And secondly, you're talking about the law and Trump ransacking the law. But on the other hand, everything he always does is always backed up by the law. So, he has a love hate relationship with the law himself. He could never have accomplished anything he's done without hiring all these expensive lawyers. I don't know if you saw the movie this year, The Apprentice, which is built on his relationship with what's with Roy Cohn, of course, who schooled him in American politics, who was McCarthy's lawyer. So, again, I'm not trying to defend Trump, but my point is: what's different here?GARY GERSTLE: Well, a key difference from Nixon is that when push came to shove, Nixon submitted to the rule of law, and Trump did not. Nixon did not unleash his people on Congress when a group of senators came to him and said you're going to be impeached if you stay in office, you should resign. He resigned. So the '70s was a moment of enormous assertion of the power of Congress, and assertion of the power and authority of the Constitution. That is not the story of Donald Trump. The story of Donald Trump is the story of the Constitution being pushed to the side. If you ask, is there anything new about Americans and politicians trying to manipulate the law in their favor? There's nothing new about that. And Trump, having made his fortune in New York real estate, knows there's no such thing as perfect markets, knows that judges can be bought and corrupted. And so, he has very little regard for the authority of courts. Everything's a transaction. Everything can be bought and sold. So, he understands that, and he has used the law to his advantage when he can. But let me bring you back to his first inauguration speech. There was no mention of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in what he had to say that day. I think we'd be hard pressed to find another inaugural speech that makes no reference to the sacred documents having to do with the founding of the American Republic. And so I think in that way, he is something new and represents, potentially, a different kind of threat. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it's certainly possible. And let me add one other element that we have to consider, because I'm suggesting that he has a fondness for forms of authoritarian rule, and we have to recognize that hard rights are on the march everywhere in the world right now. The social democratic government of Germany has just fallen. Britain may soon be alone in terms of having a left-center party in control and upholding the values of liberal democracy. The world is in a grip of an authoritarian surge. That is not an American phenomenon. It is an international phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon I understand well enough, but if we're to understand the kind of strongman tendencies that Trump is exhibiting, the appeal of the strongman tendencies to so many Americans, we have to understand the international context in which this is occurring. And these movements in these different countries are fully aware of each other. They draw strength from each other's victories, and they get despairing from each other's defeats. So this is an international movement and an international project, and it's important, in that regard, to set Trump in that historical context.AK: Final question, Gary, there's so much here, we'll have to get you back on the show again in the new year. There's certainly, as you suggested, a great deal of vitality to conservatives, to the Cottons, the JD Vances, the Steve Bannons of the world. But what about on the left? We talked earlier, you sort of pushed back a little bit on the idea that the progressive elites aren't defenders of the neoliberal order, but you kind of acknowledged there may be a little bit of truth in that. In response to this new conservatism, which, as you suggested, is in some ways quite old, what can and should progressives do, rather than just falling back on Bidenomics and reliance on a new deal—which isn't going to happen now given that they had the opportunity in the COVID crisis to spend lots of money, which didn't have any impact on this election, for better or worse. Is there a need to re-architect the progressive politics in our new age, the age of AI, a high-tech age? Or do we simply allow the Bernie Sanders of the world to fall back on 20th-century progressive ideas?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I'm not sure where AI is taking us. AI may be taking us out of democracy altogether. I think one of—AK: You're not giving it any chance, if that's the case.“What if Trump does not get his way in his term in office for something he really wants? Will he accept that he is bound by the Constitution, that he is bound by the courts? Or will he once again say, when he really wants something, no constitution, no law, will stand in my way?”GARY GERSTLE: Well, there are different versions of AI that will be coming. But the state of the world right now suggests that democracy is on the defensive, and authoritarianism is is on the march. Those who predict the death of democracy have been wrong in the past. So I'm not predicting it here, but we have to understand that there are elements of life, technology, power in in private hands today, that make democracy much harder to do effectively. And so, this is a period of reflection that groups who care about democracy at all points on the political spectrum have to be thinking very seriously about. As for the here and now, and politicians don't think in terms of 10 or 20 years—or you have to be a leader in China, where you can think in terms of 10 or 20-year projects, because you never have to face any election and being tossed out of office—but in the here and now, I think what Democrats have to be very aware of, that the party that they thought they were is the party that the Republican Party has become, or is becoming: a multiracial, working-class party. And if the Democrats are to flourish—and in that regard, it's very significant—AK: It's astonishing, really.GARY GERSTLE: It is astonishing. And it's important to to note that Trump is the first Republican nominee for president since George W. Bush in 2004 to get a majority of votes. And the only person to do it before him in the last 30 years was his father, George H.W. Bush, in 1988. Kamala Harris came within 200,000 votes of becoming president of the United States. That's not well enough understood yet. But if 200,000 votes had changed in three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would be the president elect of the United States. However, she would have been the president elect while losing the popular vote. And one has to go very far back in history to find the Democrats being the beneficiaries of the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. And I think the fact that they lost the popular vote for only the third time in the last 50 years, maybe? I mean, when they elected someone...has to suggest that they have to do some serious thinking about how to reclaim this. Now, Bernie Sanders is coming out and saying, they should have gotten me on the public stage rather than Liz Cheney, that going after suburban Republican women was the wrong route. You should have stuck with me. We had a left/center alliance that worked in 2020. We could have done it again. But that's not my reading of the situation. My reading of the situation is that Bernie-style politics is distinctly less popular in 2024 than it was in 2020. The Democrats have to figure that out, and they have to figure out what they have to do in order to reclaim majorities in American life. And in order to do that, I think their economic programs are actually on the right track, in that respect, under the Biden administration. I think they probably have to rethink some of their cultural policies. There were three issues in this election. The economy was number one. The immigration issue was number two. And then, the trans issue was number three. The Republicans ran an estimated 30,000 ads declaring that the Democratic party was going to take your children away by turning them from boys to girls or girls to boys. The Democratic party has to do some hard thinking about how to have a progressive policy on immigration and how to have a progressive policy on issues of trans matters without losing a majority of the American people, who clearly are, at this moment, not with them on those important issues.AK: It's an astonishing moment, Gary. And I'm not sure whether it's a revolutionary moment or just surreal.GARY GERSTLE: Well, you've been pressing me, on a number of occasions, as to whether this is just the normal course of American politics, and if we look in that direction, the place to look for normality is...incumbents always do badly in high-inflationary times. And Ford and Carter lost in the 1970s. Every incumbent during COVID and during the inflationary period in Europe seems to have lost a recent election. The most normal course of politics is to say, this is an exceptional moment having to do with the enormity of COVID and what was required to shut down the economy, saved people, and then getting started up again, and we will see something more normal, the Democrats will be back to what they normally do, in 2028. That's a possibility. I think the more plausible possibility is that we are in the midst of some pretty profound electoral realignment that is giving rise to a different kind of political order. And the Democrats have to figure out if that political order is going to be under their direction, what they have to do to pull that off. AK: And maybe rather than the neoliberal order, we're talking about, what, a neo-authoritarian order? Is that—GARY GERSTLE: Well, the Trump forces are maybe neo-authoritarian, but we don't have a name for it. Pete Buttigieg—AK: Well, that's why we got you on the show, Gary. Don't you have a name for it?GARY GERSTLE: No. You know—AK: We're relying on you. I hope it's going to be in your next book.GARY GERSTLE: Well, I have till January 20th, 2025, to come up with the name. Pete Buttigieg called it the Big Deal rather than the New Deal. I don't think that cuts it. And there's some other pundits who are arguing about building from the middle out. That doesn't cut it.AK: That sounds terrible. That sounds like—GARY GERSTLE: This is part of Biden's—AK: Designing political parties by committee. It's like an American car.GARY GERSTLE: This is part of Biden's problem. You can't name, effectively, in a positive way, what he's done. One thing that's going to happen—and this may be a sign that things will continue from Biden to Trump, in terms of industrial policy. Do you have any doubt that Trump is going to plaster his name on every computer chips plant, every battery factory? Trump brought this to you, he's got to be there for every opening. He's not going to miss a beat. He'll see this as a grand publicity tour. I think there's a good chance he will take credit for what Biden has started, and that's going to upset a lot of us. But it may also signify that he may be loath to abandon many of these industrial policies that Biden has put in place, especially since the Biden administration was very clever in putting most of these plants, and chip plants, and battery plants, in deep red Republican districts.AK: Well, Gary, I know you're not particularly cheerful. I don't suppose most of our audience are, but you actually cheered me up. I think things are a little bit more normal than some people think. But we will get you back on the show after January—what did you say—January 25th, when you'll have a word to describe the New World Order?GARY GERSTLE: Well, I said after January 20th, 2025, you can expect me to have a name. I probably should—AK: Gary, now, we'll have you back on the show. If you don't have a name, I'm going to report you to Trump.GARY GERSTLE: You'll have to bury me.AK: Yeah. Okay. Well, we're not burying you. We need you, Gary Gerstle, author of Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, a man who makes sense of our present with historical perspective. Gary, as always, a pleasure. Keep well and keep safe. And we'll talk again in the not-too-distant future. Thank you so much.GERSTLE: Thank you. A pleasure talking with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Keith discusses the current state of the US economy, noting that while it is considered strong by conventional measures, there are four major threats on the horizon that the country is not doing enough to address. He's joined by our guest, macroeconomic expert, Richard Duncan to discuss these topics. Richard proposes a solution that could strengthen the US's competitive position against China. Shifting from Capitalism to Creditism. Also, hear about the risks facing the real estate and stock markets in the near-term, such as the historically high wealth-to-income ratio and the ongoing quantitative tightening by the Federal Reserve. Learn more about Richard's work through his video newsletter, Macro Watch. Use discount code GRE for 50% off at: RichardDuncanEconomics.com Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/527 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching:GREmarketplace.com/Coach 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 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  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   Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, per conventional measures, today's us. Economy is strong, but there are four vicious threats on the horizon, and we're not doing enough about them. Our macroeconomist guests will discuss that with us today. How alarming is it, and what's the solution to our crises, this week on get rich education,   Speaker 1  0:27   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, who delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Corey Coates  1:12   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  1:28   Welcome to GRE from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Fort Lee New Jersey and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are back inside get rich education. We've been here for you, every single week since 2014 coming off of an election last week, this spurs more macroeconomic thought, monetary and fiscal policy, and more than that. And you know, one thing that I'm always looking for are signs of inflation versus deflation, because we live in a long term inflationary world. Well, you wouldn't keep a million bucks under a mattress because it would only be worth 300k in a few decades. But in deflation, you would flip your strategy and actually be a saver. You might keep millions out of the mattress, because deflation would actually increase the purchasing power of every single one of your dollars. Now, I've got a pretty unpopular take for you here at some point, probably now you've got to give the Fed credit for a soft landing. And what does a soft landing mean? Exactly. It means bringing down inflation without putting the economy into a recession. Well, inflation is down to about 2% now, unemployment is still low, near 4% and GDP growth for last quarter came in at 2.8% okay, yes, I sure understand that those benefits are distributed unevenly, but at this point, how much more of a soft landing Do you really want? And by the way, this sure doesn't mean that I love the Federal Reserve. I mean, they get no credit from me for not jumping on inflation sooner, when it peaked two and a half years ago, or even before that point, well, those high consumer prices as a result of that are still with us, and that's a problem, and they got that part wrong. We're about to talk with our global macroeconomic expert, really. He is one of the foremost authorities in the entire world today. We're going to talk about four major catastrophes the US economic future faces. One of those four is our ballooning national debt and deficit. And to review that for you, first, the debt is our overall accumulation of debt over the years now at 36 trillion. And when it comes to these awful, dreadful debt and deficit issues, I will ask our guests the question, when is it game over? Where is that tipping point? What would need to happen and the deficit? Okay, that refers to the annual shortfall, the annual thing, that shortfall that our bloated government keeps coming up with at the end of every year, all right, so therefore revenue minus spending equals deficit. Another way to say that is income minus expenses equals a deficit when the expenses are greater than the income. Well, that figure is near $2 trillion we're spending 2 trillion more than we raise in revenue each year. And here's an example. I'll use real world numbers rounded off to the nearest trillion. So if the government's annual revenue is only 5 trillion and you have to subtract out spending, which is 7 trillion, that could. Gives us an annual deficit of 2 trillion, pretty simple stuff, and that more or less gets added onto our overall debt of 36 trillion. Another major problem is this growing competition from China. Yes, I know that people like to discuss their demographic problems, but still, their population is more than four times the US population, and you learn about what other advantages they have over us and what we direly need to do to catch up. In our guests opinion, these issues incur some rather detailed explanations. So I'm really going to let our guest expert takeover for a while today, this weekend, I will be in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio is an uptrending real estate market because they are really a beneficiary in distribution with their proximity to Mexico in the near shoring movement that's taking place. And then I will be in Austin, Texas, for a few days, Austin is one of the few major US metros that have seen rents substantially decline recently. I'll bring you next week's show from Austin, where I might talk more about that. Then, from the 20th to the 24th of this month, I'll be in New Orleans at the famed New Orleans investment conference, where they're pulling out all the stops at the 50th anniversary of the event, and that is the longest running investment event in America and perhaps the world. I hope to meet some of you there in New Orleans, just like I do each time I'm at the event. Let's talk about the bigger picture economy that your real estate and investments float within next.   This week's guest is the author of four books analyzing the crises that brought the global economy to the brink of collapse in recent decades. One of the books forecast the 2008 global financial crisis with great accuracy. We're going to discuss future crises here today, before we're done, he has worked as an equities and Investment Analyst, and then he went on to hold some rather esteemed roles at the World Bank in DC and as a consultant to the IMF in Asia. He joins us from Thailand today. He now publishes a video newsletter called macro watch, and long time listeners know that today's guest was also this show's very first guest that was back on GRE podcast episode seven, only 10 years ago now, in November 2014, and he's really become quite the friend of the show, and we've looked out for each other ever since. It's terrific to have back global macro economist Richard Duncan   Richard Duncan  7:46   Keith, hey, thank you for having me back. It's great to speak with you again.   Keith Weinhold  7:50   Oh, it's so good to have you here an entire decade of our lives. And as times change, economies are surely dynamic, and you're so good at spotlighting crises and explaining them in a way to people that they can understand. So Richard, why don't you talk to us now about risks facing the nation? Yes, I'm talking about the United States.   Richard Duncan  8:15   A lot of podcasts focus on all the problems the United States is facing, and it is certainly true that the United States is facing very serious risk. So I'd like to start off this conversation telling you what I think the greatest risk facing our country are. There are four main things I'd like to hit on. The first is something you mentioned to me before in our exchange of emails, is that the US government does have a very high level of government debt relative to GDP, and the budget deficits are large. So that's problem number one. Problem number two, in my opinion, looking at this from where I live in Asia, is that the United States is at risk of being conquered by China in the not too distant future. Risk Number Two. Risk Number three, we have very serious domestic political divisions within the United States. Risk Number four is that our post capitalist economic system, which I call creditism, must have credit growth to survive. If credit contracts, then our economy will spiral into a Great Depression that will be probably worse than the one of the 1930s so those are the big four problems that we have, and it doesn't do anyone any good just to talk about our country's problems if you don't offer a solution to them. So in my opinion, all of these problems can be overcome by accelerating economic growth in the United States, while all of these problems would be made very much worse by anything that causes us economic growth to slow down. The way to make the US economy grow much faster is to have the US Government finance a very, very large investment in the industries and technologies of the future over the next 10 years, starting immediately. The alternative austerity would cause the economy to spiral down into deflation. We'd like your listeners to think of austerity when they hear the word austerity. I'd like them to think of the word death. It's austerity is equal to death. Yeah, the US doesn't have to be a declining power. The first American Century doesn't have to be the last. It can be the first of many. The solution for driving the US economy to grow much more rapidly and solving all four of the problems that I mentioned above is a US sovereign wealth fund. Thank heavens. Both parties now support the establishment of a US sovereign wealth fund. On September 5, former President Trump came out in support of establishing a US sovereign wealth fund, and on the following day, the Biden administration said, then working on this for months and had a plan that they were developing. So this is fantastic news for the United States. It offers great hope for solving all of our greatest problems. And I'd like to spend, you know, a few minutes explaining to your listeners what a US sovereign wealth fund is, yes, urgently necessary, and why both parties have now come to understand why this is important to establish.   Keith Weinhold  11:27   Yeah, please tell us why you think the US sovereign wealth fund is so urgently needed, and what it is because for even longer than the 10 years since you were first here, for about 15 years now, you have championed and promoted this US sovereign wealth fund. You discussed it on CNBC Squawk Box and all over the place. Last year, you presented about it in a speech in DC to 15 members of the House, Ways and Means Committee. So tell us about the US sovereign wealth fund and why you think it's urgently needed.   Richard Duncan  11:56    Let's begin with, what is a sovereign wealth fund? Well, effectively, a sovereign wealth fund is where a country invest in individual companies or even in startups. There are sovereign wealth funds all around the world. Norway has the largest, Singapore has two very effective ones called gdic and Temasek, which had been enormously profitable and successful, and it made the people in Singapore much richer. So a sovereign wealth fund in the United States would be an investment bond financed by the United States government with the US. This investment fund would take stakes in existing companies and also in startup companies, hopefully on a very large scale. Now, some people have asked, Why is this framework necessary? Why do we need a sovereign wealth fund to do that when the government is already making investments in the military, for instance, and funding some R and D research? Well, the difference between what the government is doing now and a sovereign wealth fund is with a sovereign wealth fund, the government would actually keep equity stakes in these companies that they invest in, meaning that when these companies they invest in become enormously profitable, the profits would be owned by every American. The Americans would have the equity stakes in all of the investments that this sovereign wealth fund makes. And it would be a situation where the government provides the financing, but the private sector manages the companies. The government just finances these companies in new industries and new technologies, and the government has the ability to invest on a very much larger scale than the private sector does. For example, The United States has a lot of great companies in the private sector that have accomplished really, truly great things in recent years and long past as well. But these private sector companies cannot invest on the same scale that the Chinese government can. The Chinese government is investing on a much larger scale than any of the American companies could ever dream to invest on. And that's explains why China is overtaking us now technologically, and if they continue to invest at a rapid rate that they're doing currently, then before long, there are going to be far ahead of us technologically and therefore economically, and more worryingly, militarily, the US government has the ability to invest truly on a multi trillion dollar scale over the next decade in new industries and technologies, things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, nanotech, biotech, genetic engineering and developing energy sources like fusion, and it has the ability to do this on such a large scale that it would be certain to succeed. And once these companies start creating cancer vaccines or fusion, for instance, they would be enormously profitable, and they could be listed on. NASDAQ at multi trillion dollar valuations, and the American public would own equity stakes in these companies, and would then would directly reap the rewards of these profits that these companies would generate. That is what a sovereign wealth fund is, why it's desperately needed, is, well, first of all, we should do it, because we can easily afford to do it. And the results, the breakthroughs, the technological breakthroughs and medical miracles that these sorts of companies would produce, would we really have the shot of curing all the diseases and radically extending life expectancy, developing sources of limitless energy that would bring down the cost of energy radically. Just across the board, it would induce a technological revolution that would turbo charge us economic growth, create UNDRIP wealth, and at the same time, shore up US national security in the face of this growing threat from China. So for all of those reasons, it is urgently necessary. In my opinion.   Keith Weinhold  16:04   both Norway and Singapore have had similar models to this. US sovereign wealth fund, and we certainly think of those two nations as prosperous places, tell me more about why it's a success so the government finances it does that incentivize companies to therefore take more risk?   Richard Duncan  16:25   It allows them to invest more. It allows them to invest on a much larger scale than that. Could if they have to rely on their own funding sources. Rather than investing millions of dollars, they could invest billions of dollars or 10s of billions of dollars. For instance, at the moment, the National Cancer Institute in the United States, this annual budget is $6 billion a year. $6 billion a year is not curing cancer. If we look back a few years ago, the Fed was creating $120 billion a month through quantitative easing per month. So with just 5% of one month of QE, you could double the National Cancer Institute's budget. Now that's not what this sovereign wealth fund would do. That just illustrates the scale. How much greater the scale would be that the government could invest on relative to what is currently being invested at the moment by the government and by the private sector combined.   Keith Weinhold  17:28   Do any critics ever ask about Wait? Is this too much government intervention into the free market? Is this a move away from capitalism? What do you say to those sort of critics?   Richard Duncan  17:38    I say to them that capitalism died in World War One. It certainly didn't survive the 20th century. Now the government. In the 19th century, we had capitalism. The government had very little involvement in the economy then and gold was money. But now gold is no longer money. The Fed creates some money. Government spending is something like nearly $7 trillion out of a GDP. That is around just not quite $30 trillion yet. So the government has been directing the economy going back at least since World War Two. This hasn't been capitalism for a very long time. Under capitalism, the private sector made investments, and some businessmen would make profits from their investments, and they would save that profit as capital and reinvest that capital. That's how capitalism grew. That's why they called it capitalism. It was based on capital accumulation and investment. But that's not how our economic system has worked for decades. Our system now is not driven by investment and saving by the private sector. It's driven by credit creation and consumption and more credit creation and more consumption and our economies has now been transformed from capitalism. It has evolved into creditism, with the government playing the directing role. So total credit in the United States, just last quarter blew through $100 trillion for the first time. By what I mean by total credit is the same thing as total debt. Total credit is equal to total debt. So this is all the debt of all sectors of the economy, the government sector, the household sector, the corporate sector, the financial sector, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all the sectors of the economy, it just went through $100 trillion and Breda ism has created very rapid growth, especially all around the world, not only in the United States, because it has allowed the US economy to grow so rapidly and to import so much from other countries that this is why The Asian miracle occurred. I've lived through the Asian miracle because the US has been running massively large trade deficits since the early 1980s and all these countries in Asia have been running massively large trade surpluses, and all this spending that the Americans have been doing has been fueled by this rapidly. Radically expansion of credit. Total credit first went through $1 trillion in 1964 now it's $100,000,000,000,000. 60 years later. Now our system is not capitalism. The government is very involved. Anytime there's any problem with the economy, the government steps in. In 2008 the government prevented a new Great Depression when the private sector the households defaulted on their debts and caused all the banks to fail, and Freddie Mac did fail and had to be taken over by the government. So at that time, we narrowly avoided a Great Depression, because the government increased its budget deficits by more than a trillion dollars a year for four years in a row, and the Fed expanded. The Fed created three and a half trillion dollars between the end of 2007 and 2014, expanding its balance sheet by about five times. So that's not capitalism. We don't have capitalism. So people who are worried about us abandoning capitalism. They're behind the times that happened a long time ago. That shouldn't be a concern. They should be aware now that we are competing against players who don't play by the capitalist rules of little government intervention in the markets we're now competing against China, and China is one giant sovereign wealth fund intent on dominating the world by investing very aggressively in new industries and technologies. In the year 2000 the United States invested, I think, 10 times as much in research and development as China did. But now China is actually investing more in research and development and the US is and that explains why China is ahead in so many areas of technology. They had 5g years before we did. They are the leaders in electric vehicles and batteries. We have to put up 100% tariffs to keep out electric vehicles from China because they're so much better than our electric vehicles. They dominate solar panels. And are worse, they have hypersonic missiles and we don't, and I'm sure they have other military advantages that we don't, because they invest much more aggressively in new industries and technologies than our government does. And if we don't rectify this quickly, then we are soon going to be overtaken by China militarily, and our national security is at risk, much more than most Americans understand. But this realization has slowly grown on policymakers in Washington, and now both parties are worried about this, and this is why we have this growing fear of China, and why we have proposals to limit technology transfers to China, and this is why we've done things like the chips and science act, where the government has agreed to finance a $280 billion investment in new industries and technologies a couple of years ago, with 50 billion of that going into setting up manufacturing facilities within the in the US to create semiconductors, rather than relying solely on Taiwan to obtain all of our semiconductors, because China could take Taiwan at any moment, and then then he would end up with all the semiconductor chips that go into powering artificial intelligence. And whoever develops Artificial General Intelligence first is going to rule the world, and therefore it had better be the United States rather than China, because we don't want to live in a world dominated by China, believe me.    Keith Weinhold  23:26   Well, a lot of macro voices agree with you. About two months ago, we had the president of the Mises Institute here, and the way he characterized things are in the United States. 100 years ago, we had islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism, and today we merely have islands of capitalism in a sea of socialism. Do you see the US sovereign wealth fund being able to solve all four of the United States big problems that you outlined, debt and deficit conquering by China, political division and creditism. Can it solve all four of those?   Richard Duncan  24:04   Yes, it can. So as you know, Keith, a couple of years ago, I published my fourth book. It was called the money revolution. Yeah? How to find the book? Sure, yeah. How to finance the next American century. It was a subtitle. Now I argue that it would be very easy for the US to invest on a multi trillion dollar scale, new industries and new technologies over the next decade, and if we do that through a sovereign wealth fund, then would generate so much growth and be so profitable that instead of causing the government debt to increase, it would actually make the economy so much larger and generate so many more tax revenues, and the government would make so many profits from these companies that it has equity stakes in that it would reduce the government debt in absolute terms, and radically reduce the government debt relative to GDP, which would grow far faster than it has been growing in recent decades. This problem, number one, solved the high level of government debt. A high level of debt to GDP just make the GDP grow a lot faster, and the ratio of debt to GDP will go down. Problem number two is the US is at risk of being conquered by China. We can out invest China. We can invest more than China can afford to invest. We still have the best universities and the best entrepreneurs and scientists. So if we invest on a large enough scale, we will win, and China will not conquer us. Third, if the economy is growing at 7% a year instead of 1% a year, that is going to alleviate a lot of the domestic tensions that exist currently, much of the reason there's the origins of this domestic political divide that we're now suffering from in the US is because such a large part of the population has been left behind when all the factories moved overseas, countries like China and Vietnam, we de industrialized, and the people who Used to have good factory jobs, good, unionized, high paying factory jobs. All those people were left out in the cold, and they're not happy about it. And so if our economy were growing much more rapidly, these people would have much better jobs and much higher salaries, and they would be much happier than they are at the moment. And the final one was our post capitalist system of creditism requires credit growth to survive. So if the government is financing these investments on a multi trillion dollar scale, it's going to make credit expand, and that's going to keep the economy expanding. So yes, it would solve all four of those problems.   Keith Weinhold  26:35   One of those four problems is the debt and the deficit. I want to dive into that more with Richard as it becomes more and more problematic in the United States, and just how far we can kick this can down the road. You're listening to get rich education. We're talking with macro economist Richard Duncan. More, we come back. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold.    Oh, geez. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings. 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Text family to 66866    Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge lending group, NMLS, 420056, they provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start Now while it's on your mind at Ridgelendinggroup.com that's Ridgelendinggroup.com   Jim Rickards  28:40   this is Author Jim Rickards. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  28:55   Welcome back to get rich education. We are going big this week, talking about the global economy, although mostly centered on the United States, with macroeconomist Richard Duncan. You can learn more about him at RichardDuncaneconomics.com and Richard I want to talk about the debt in the deficit. The debt is the United States overall debt as it accumulates year after year, and the deficit is just the annual thing, and it's so interesting and concerning. When I look at this, when you look at the line items in the United States government's annual spending, we now see that interest payments are taking the second largest chunk, only to Social Security. Social Security's number one interest is the second biggest expense, even more than defense spending and on Medicare. So I just wonder, as I see the interest payments going up and up and up and projected to be our greatest expense every year. You know, one thing I think about Richard is when our interest payments alone exceed our. Revenue somewhere down the road, is that when it's game over, or is that when we're on the way to game over? So can you talk to us about really, where the concern crops up with the deficit, like I talked about, and with the debt that's now at about $36 trillion   Richard Duncan  30:17   deficit and debt is a real problem. It was the first problem that I mentioned when we kicked off the conversation. There are two components of that. One is the fact that government debt has been increasing very rapidly. At the end of 2007 total government debt was around $9 trillion by 2014 it had doubled to $18 trillion because the government had to respond to the collapse of the private sector in 2008 and prevent us from having a great depression at that time, and then after 2014 it has doubled again, from 18 trillion to $36 trillion now, much of that was due to the need for the government to keep us from having another Great Depression during COVID When government stimulus amounted to about $5 trillion and the Fed created a similar amount over just a two year period. So now we have a much higher level of government debt. But the second component of that is that interest rates are very much higher than they used to be. The federal funds rate went up from 0% a few years back to a high of five and a quarter, actually a range between five and a quarter and five and a half. And recently, the Fed cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points. But you can still say it is 4.9% let's call it 4.9% so interest rates are far higher than they used to be, but they don't have to remain high. The reason interest rates went up is because the Fed increased the federal funds rate. And the reason the Fed increased the federal funds rate is because we had high rates of inflation. Inflation peaked at 9% or so in 2022 but most recently, the CPI has come back down to 2.4% and the Fed's favorite measure of inflation, that PCE Price Index, has come down to 2.2% and that means that the federal funds rate, which is 4.9% is more than twice as high as the inflation rate is. That shows us that we have very tight monetary policy, and the Fed should be able to reduce interest rates very rapidly going forward. They've told us in their dot plot projections that they expect that interest rates will end this year the federal funds rate at 4.4% and then in next year, at 3.4% and 2026 at 2.9% so that reduction in interest rates will bring down the cost of the total interest expense that you mentioned as being so high currently, the risk, however, is that we get a rebound in inflation. We're inflation to surge again, then interest rates won't come down. In fact, they could go higher. So all of my career, more or less, has been spent in Asia. And the main theme that is run through the global economy, the development of the global economy over the last three and a half decades has been globalization, globalization in the form of us running very large trade deficits with other countries. Literally, the US current account deficit since the early 1980s has been $15 trillion meaning countries with the trade surpluses have had a $15 trillion trade surplus, and that's why they've all been transformed economically as a result of their trade surplus with the US, but what the US got out of this was the ability to buy things made with very low cost labor, and that was extremely disinflationary, that drove down the inflation rate in the US, and that allowed interest rates in the US to come down to very low levels that we've seen during most of this century, Up until the time COVID started. The real danger is now, if we do impose very high trade tariffs on China and our other trading partners, then that will cause a very serious spike in inflation. And it won't just be one off, because, of course, when the tariffs are put in place, that will immediately cause everything to be that much more expensive. The US companies importing goods from abroad would have to pay that tariff, then those US companies would pass those higher expenses on to the consumers, so we'd get an immediate spike in inflation. But that would also mean that the companies abroad it wouldn't be so profitable for them to have their manufacturing facilities abroad, they would try to bring those back home. And given that the unemployment rate in the US is so low already, only 4.1% there's not enough labor to allow these manufacturing facilities to come back to the US and start producing goods in the US. So that would cause an upward spiral. In wages and the wage push inflation spiral of the type that we had in the late 1960s and early 1970s so that is a In other words, tariffs would put an end to globalization, and that would cause a such a severe spike in inflation and interest rates, it would essentially be the death nail for creditism, which requires credit growth to survive. The end of globalization would mean this end of this 30 year global economic boom that the world has enjoyed, and therefore it is a very severe threat, and it would push up the interest expense of the US government, which you let off with, instead of lower interest rates, bringing down the interest expense the government has to pay every year, we would have instead higher interest rates, which would make the amount that the government has to pay on its interest even higher than it is at the moment, and make the budget deficit even larger than it is at the moment, and Make the government debt grow even faster than it's growing at the moment. So let's hope that doesn't happen. Instead, the better approach is to invest, to have the government finance large scale investments in new industries and technologies make the economy grow much more rapidly and we can grow our way out of this debt problem that we're currently in,   Keith Weinhold  36:21   yes more inflation, whether that comes from higher tarrifs or any other sources, will lead to higher interest rates to counteract that higher inflation, which will Yes, pump up the deficit in the debt that much more. And you know, one thing that I like about Richard is, you know, a lot of people complain about things, or say, what are we going to do? Or Things look bad, and Richard is saying some of that, but he offers a way forward with the US sovereign wealth fund, like he talked about before, investing our way out of it. So Richard, if we don't invest in this debt and deficit situation gets worse. It could be a hard question to answer, but I'd like your best guess at how far can we kick the can down the road? When is it game over? How big do our interest payments on the debt and deficit have to get?    Richard Duncan  37:10   the game is never over. No matter how bad things become, humanity will survive and carry on. So even in the Great Depression, people made it through, even through World War Two that resulted, largely as a result of the Great Depression. A lot of people died. 60 million people died, but the game didn't end. So regardless of how bad the economic system system were to become, humanity will survive and there will be a solution. Now, a lot of people put forward that, the idea that they point out that we have this high level of government debt, and their solution is to reduce government spending. The government spends something like $6.8 trillion last year. That was the amount the government spent. The budget deficit last year was 1.8 trillion so in order to eliminate the budget deficit, the government would have to spend $1.8 trillion less. In other words, it would have to cut its spending by 27% but the government cut its spending by 27% they're going to happen. The economy would immediately spiral into a depression. So even that reduction in spending wouldn't balance the budget, because the government revenues would collapse, and they would have even fewer tax revenues, so the deficit would still be there, the economy would collapse, and the unemployment rate would be 20 plus percent, and would just fall further behind China and be at greater risk from a national security perspective, and much more miserable As a society overall. That's why it's always say people should consider think of the words austerity and death at the same time, because austerity would bring about the collapse of our economic system and the Great Depression unless your civilization would survive it.  trying to answer your question more directly, how high could this go? Well, governments don't default on their debt when push comes to shove. If the government's having a hard time paying interest on its debt, the Fed will just print more money. And in a case where between 2008 and 2014 when the Fed created three and a half trillion dollars, they printed a lot of money at that short space of time, and they got away with it without having high rates of inflation. The highest rate of inflation we had during that period was 3.8% in 2011 and by the early months of 2015 we had deflation again for a few months. Prices actually fell negative CPI for a few months in 2015 so if we have a global economy, as we do at the moment, full of we have nearly 8 billion people, I would guess 2 billion of them at least live on less than $5 a day. So the US could get away with having a lot of paper money printing without having higher, very high rates of inflation and the government could finance itself that way for quite a long time. Of course, if we have a closed domestic economy brought about by extremely high tariff barriers, then we would end up with hyperinflation in the United States. But even with hyperinflation, it would be very painful for people who have all their cash in the bank or under their mattress, but people with assets, those asset prices would appreciate more or less in line with the inflation, and it would erode the government debt relative to the size of the economy, because the GDP would grow in nominal terms very rapidly because of the hyperinflation, and the debt, which is not inflation adjusted, would be evaporated away by the inflation.   Keith Weinhold  40:43    right? that's why here at GRE we are all invested and aimed toward prudent use of leverage with assets like real estate and we sure have been the beneficiaries of that wave of inflation that followed COVID there. Richard, well, we're talking about the debt and the deficit somewhat, which, interestingly, has actually doubled since the first time you were here on the show. When you were here, 10 years ago, it was at 18 trillion, and today it's at 36 trillion. We talked about, how far can you kick the can down the road back then? Well, here we are, 10 years later, and it's doubled. Talk to us. You know, you talked previously about the greatest risk to the United States economy. Tell us now, as we are investors here on this show, about the greatest risk to the real estate and stock market, I would just say within the next year. What are some of those risks to those particular markets?   Richard Duncan  41:38   We've already discussed the main risk that high tariffs would potentially cause a new spike of inflation and force the Fed to hike interest rates rather than cutting interest rates. But there are some other risk as well. One is the fact that we already have a very high level of wealth relative to income. Let me back up a second. You were talking about debt doubling since we first spoke 10 years ago. Here's another statistic for you. Just in the last four and a half years, the total wealth of the Americans, all of their assets minus all of their liabilities. In other words, household sector net worth. Since the end of 2019 it has increased by $47 trillion in four and a half years. That's about a 40% increase. Now, $47 trillion is enough to pay off the entire US government tip, which we've been worrying about with $11 trillion left over. So not everything is as bleak as it sounds on the surface. We've had a huge explosion of wealth in the last four and a half years that's been driven by property and also by stocks. The problem now is, is that the level of income the asset prices, are very inflated relative to their historic norms. And one of the ratios that I always keep an eye on is called the wealth to income ratio. It takes the household sector net worth. In other words, the wealth that we were just discussing, which, by the way, is now $164 trillion of wealth owned by the Americans. The wealth divided by income, disposable personal income, this wealth to income ratio is now an extraordinarily high level. The ratio is 785% whereas the average of that ratio going back to 1950 has been 550% the previous two peaks were in the year 2000 when it hit 620 during the NASDAQ bubble, and then that bubble popped, and the stock market crashed, and we had a recession, and it went back to 550 and then it surged to a new peak of 680 during the property bubble. And then that bubble popped, and we almost went into a depression, and that a lot of wealth was destroyed. We had a severe recession. The government had to bail us out from and that ratio went back to 550 again. Now it is just off the charts relative to its previous peaks, because people 680 now it's 785 so people used to suggest that higher asset prices were justified because interest rates were near 0% but even after the Fed hiked interest rates from near 0% to about 5% The asset prices have stayed inflated. That does suggest that asset prices are very inflated and therefore very vulnerable to any sort of shock that could occur, whether geopolitical or economic or domestic political problems. So that's a concern. Another concern is quantitative tightening is still occurring. Quantitative tightening is the opposite of quantitative easing. When, with quantitative easing, the Fed creates money and pumps it into the financial markets, and that tends to make asset prices go up, and it also tends to make interest rates on government debt stay low, because if it pushes up bond prices, it pushes down. Bond yields. Well, now the opposite is occurring. Over the last two years, the Fed has destroyed roughly $2 trillion it created $5 trillion from the end of 2019 till about 2022 during the COVID pandemic, and the policy response to that, the Fed created $5 trillion but now it's destroyed 2 trillion of that five that it created, and is still destroying dollars at the rate of about $60 billion a month, or $700 billion a year. And as it does, as it destroys dollars, it takes dollars out of the financial system, which all other things being the same, tends to make financial conditions tighter, putting upward pressure on bond yields and downward pressure on asset prices. So as this continues, this is a concern, because reduce the liquidity in the system by another $700 billion if it continues for another year, having said that there is still an enormous amount of excess liquidity in the system as a result of all of the money that the Fed has created, going back to 2008 I estimate that the excess liquidity is somewhere around three and a half trillion dollars. If you look at bank reserves and the reverse repos at the Fed is about three and a half trillion dollars of excess liquidity, and the Fed actually has to pay interest to the banks on their bank reserves to hold interest rates up. That's how the Fed controls the federal funds rate now. It pays the banks roughly right now, 4.8% interest on all of the banks bank reserves, and so the banks will not lend money to anyone at less than 4.8% interest, because the Fed will pay them 4.8% interest. Why would they lend to anyone else for less if it suddenly stopped paying interest on these bank reserves, these banks would look around and where would they invest their three and a half trillion dollars in? No one's going to pay them 4.8% or even 3.8% or 2.8% interest rates would plunge because of all the excess liquidity that exists. So this excess liquidity has been a thing that's been driving the economy since COVID started, and it's why we've managed to avoid recession, which everyone is expected to arrive any moment now for the last two and a half years. So there are concerns, but there are also, as always, other reasons for optimism.   Keith Weinhold  47:24   Well, that wealth to income ratio that Richard talked about, that's a calculation that you yourself can do. One's net worth is almost eight times their income now, which is at a historic high, which is one concerning point that Richard brought up. Well, Richard, I want you to tell us about your terrific video newsletter, macro watch unless you have any other last thoughts first.   Richard Duncan  47:51   well, just one last word on the US sovereign wealth fund. Thank you very much for giving me a chance to discuss that and to explain why both Democrats and Republicans are now in favor of establishing a US sovereign wealth fund, one of the few issues that has bipartisan support. And this must come as a surprise to many of your listeners and most Americans, in fact, why have both parties agreed on really setting up a US sovereign wealth fund? So I'm glad I've had a chance to explain it and why it's so urgently necessary. I'd just like to emphasize the extraordinary benefits that this delivers to the American people, both individually and at a national level, individually, in terms of medical breakthroughs and better health and much more rapid economic growth for the economy, so much more wealth and much more national security as well. So I hope the Americans will get on board with this idea and give it their full support, because it's exactly what our country needs to solve all the four issues, the major issues that I laid out at the beginning of this conversation. But with that said, if your listeners would like to learn more about my work, Macrowatch. Microwatch is a video newsletter. Every couple of weeks, I upload a new video discussing something important happening in the global economy and how that's likely to affect the stock market, property, currencies and commodities. They can find macro watch on my website, which is RichardDuncanEconomics.com that's RichardDuncanEconomics.com Macro Watch has been going on now for 11 years, they'll find more than 100 hours of videos in the microwatch archives. They can begin watching immediately, and they'll receive a new video every couple of weeks. And I'd like to offer your listeners a subscription discount. If they go to Richard Duncan economics.com and hit the subscribe button, they'll be prompted to put in a discount coupon code, if they put it in G, R, E, they can subscribe to macro watch at a 50% discount. That's great. That's GRE so I hope they'll check that out, and at the very least, they can sign up there for my free blog and follow my work that way.   Keith Weinhold  49:56   And I have benefited from consuming macro watch content myself over the years, allowing me to sort of stretch my thought process and go macro, which we don't always do as real estate investors. Oh, Richard, it's been valuable as always, and you really offered a solution, a way forward here, something that's really refreshing. It's been great as always, having you back on the show.   Richard Duncan  50:18   Yeah. Thank you very much. I look forward to the next time   Keith Weinhold  50:21   me too. when it comes to the term capitalism, if that's truly a system that we're no longer in, you know, it seems to get replaced with the word meritocracy, and that is a word that I like, meritocracy, where producers get rewards for being productive, but even that is under attack, and the government just always seems to be stepping in with a safety net. Seemingly everywhere you look, it won't let banks fail. We saw them jump in early last year with Silicon Valley Bank and other bank failures, the government won't let homeowners fail either. I mean, you don't have to think back very far with mortgage loan forbearance in the COVID era, on issues of the debt and deficit. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself has called it unsustainable. That's the word that he used. Like Richard said today, we won't default. We'll just print more. So when it comes to the inflation versus deflation tug of war, the future keeps looking inflationary, but at what rate of inflation? That's what I don't know, and no one really knows. If you like Richard Duncan's content, and you sort of wished he and I's conversation would go on. Well, he is a regular guest here, so I expect him back. But if you're telling yourself, I want more of his content and I want to make it visual at the same time to help really bring this to life, well, visit RichardDuncanEconomics.com hit the subscribe button and get 50% off. That's five zero, 50% off with the discount code. GRE. Happy Veterans Day. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 2  52:17   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. 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 you   Keith Weinhold  52:46   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com

In the grand tradition of such intimate war epics as Dunkirk and Black Hawk Down, Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall) directed this ground-level journey of two young British army privates (Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay) who are sent on an urgent mission during World War I to deliver a message that will hopefully stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap set by the enemy.  And everything which transpires on-screen is conducted within ONE continuous shot. :o One of the more acclaimed and successful war epics of recent years, this film nonetheless was dismissed by several as relying more on its central conceit than telling a compelling story....it was also nominated for ten Oscars including Best Picture, and ended up winning three.  Let's embark on this harrowing mission with Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield to see how this holds up five years after it was released.....Host & Editor: Geoff GershonProducer: Marlene GershonSend us a texthttps://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/

The film Oh what A Lovely War! based on Joan Littlewood's play was released in 1969 and influenced a whole generation of people in what the Great War stood for. But what does the film really tell us about the First World War and what is its value more than 50 years on?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

This week on Storylines, the voices of Canadian World War One soldiers, sharing their stories of the front lines. You'll hear these veterans talk about poison gas attacks, shellfire, the mud, the air war, and even the food.   The stories come from interviews with World War One veterans done for the CBC program Flanders Fields which first aired on November 11, 1964. Also, a story from Montreal about a century-old Catholic church that faced a dilemma over what to do with its bells.After the bell tower was damaged, the church faced the prospect of losing bells that had rung out for generations during worship services, weddings, and funerals. Instead, the choir director at Sacré-Coeur-de-Jésus found a way to preserve them, ensuring they will continue to resonate with the congregation and community for years to come.Produced and reported by Simon Nakonechny and originally aired on The Sunday Magazine. Hear the Soldiers of WW1 Speak was produced by Craig DessonStorylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

With special guest: Dr Will Davies… in conversation with Bill Kable Surprisingly little has been written about the last 100 days of World War 1. This is the time when the Australian Imperial Force had some of their greatest victories. It was also the time when Adolf Hitler was wounded in battle before coming to the unshakeable conclusion that Germany had been betrayed in agreeing to sue for peace. This imbalance in the accounts of the conflict has been addressed by Will Davies in his new book The Last 100 Days: The Australian Road to Victory in the First World War. In his book Will reveals why he has been described as being more than an historian because he has the rare gift of being a story weaver. As with his other books on the events of World War One this story will remain etched in your memory. Podcast (mp3)

Just ahead of Remembrance Day... a new podcast series by St. John's Storytelling that captures the untold stories of our province's World War One veterans is launching Thursday night. A member of the St. John's Storytelling Steering Committee for the project who's also one of the story gatherers is the host... and a singer/songwriter from Renews who wrote two songs about WW1 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment from the Southern Shore will be singing at the event. (Guest host Todd O'Brien with Randy Crane and Larry Brazil)

In the western nave of Westminster Abbey, nestled between illustrious tombs and beneath a slab of black Belgian marble, lies the body of an unidentified soldier of the First World War. He is remembered as the Unknown Warrior, a symbol of the half a million Commonwealth servicemen who went missing between 1914 and 1918, their earthly remains lost to the chaos of conflict.As Remembrance Day approaches and guided by John Nichol, former RAF navigator and author of 'The Unknown Warrior', we journey from the horrors of the Western Front to Westminster Abbey. He explains the profound importance this monument held for the many millions suffering from collective grief after the incomprehensible losses of World War One.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW'.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.You can take part in our listener survey here.

We are joined by Dr Ilia Xypolia, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen; and Dr Zana Gul, Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling.They discuss their SCGA-funded project on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the first negotiated peace settlement post-World War One, its aftermath and its lessons for the greater Middle East.Considered by some as the introduction of partition as a policy, and as the “birth certificate” of modern Turkey, the Treaty created a legacy that persists today.While the Treaty also marked the beginning of the end of British foreign policy predominance, this episode discusses the UK's persistent and discrete role in the greater Middle East today, the place of Turkey at the hinge of regional affairs, and touches upon aspects of gender. It also looks at how the Treaty prefigures the reconfiguration of power and influence that continues in global affairs today - with lessons and opportunities for Scotland's role too.Also mentioned: United States Institute of Peace and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a wargraves special, we follow up on the recent episode about the new Loos British Cemetery Extension and we take some Questions relating to the work being carried out there, along with the recovery and identification of the dead from the Great War, both in the past and the present. 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

Donald Trump says he's the opposite of a Nazi and his opponent Kamala Harris is a fascist, not him.But what do his own words and actions show us?  Today, Jennfier Mercieca, historian of political rhetoric from Texas A&M University on how Trump's language can be likened to Hitler's and how he uses it to win over his supporters. She says Trump's campaign strategy involves terrorising voters into supporting him by exploiting their fears. She highlights how Trump's rhetoric includes derogatory comments and fear appeals to create a sense of loyalty among his followers. Dr. Mercieca also notes that Trump's repetition of key messages mirrors tactics used by historical fascists to manipulate public perception.Featured: Dr Jennifer Mercieca, historian of American political rhetoricCorrection: This episode includes a comment that Hitler was a propagandist during World War One. In fact, Hitler joined the newly formed Nazi Party following World War One in September 1919 and took charge of party propaganda in 1920. Key Topics:Donald TrumpKamala HarrisFascismPolitical rhetoricFear appealsAuthoritarianismElection campaign strategiesAdolf Hitler

Donate to our October 2024 OVERCOMING THE DARKNESS campaign at https://weirddarkness.com/overcoming. Weird Darkness is narrated by professional full-time voice actor Darren Marlar. No A.I. voices are ever used in the show. *** Darkness Syndicate members received the early release ad-free version with all artwork created for the YouTube and podcast thumbnails: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/59cej2c8IN THIS EPISODE: On September 1, 1969, about 40 people in Berkshire County, Massachusetts reported seeing a UFO — and one boy named Thomas Reed claimed that he and his family were all taken aboard. (The Berkshire County UFO) *** 
On the south-west corner of Carfax, in Oxford, a small, inconspicuous inscription on the side of an old building marks the site of one of the bloodiest bar fights in history… and I'll tell you the story. (The Bad Beer Brawl) *** On June 28, 1914, while riding in a limousine, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were killed by an assassin. As if that were not horrific enough, the incident triggered World War One. Ever since, the limousine is considered cursed, and few people who have come into contact with the car since then have survived. But why? (The Cursed Car That Started WW1) *** The radio station is officially known as “MDZhB” in Russia. It's been continually broadcasting since 1982. And no one knows why. Because, you see… nobody works there… so who is doing the broadcasting? (The Radio Station Run By Ghosts)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Disclaimer, Cold Open, and Show Intro00:04:39.423 = Berkshire UFO Incident00:15:37.864 = Cursed Car That Started World War 100:21:46.615 = Bad Beer Brawl00:30:45.180 = Radio Station Run By Ghosts00:44:54.811 = Show CloseSOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…“The Berkshire County UFO” by Natasha Ishak for All That's Interesting: https://tinyurl.com/ybhqlyh3, and Debra Kelly for Grunge: https://tinyurl.com/y29ha5w5.“The Bad Beer Brawl” by Kaushik Patowary for Amusing Planet: https://tinyurl.com/y43tnnm8“The Cursed Car That Started WW1” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://tinyurl.com/y4f36zyy“The Radio Station Run By Ghosts” by Zaria Gorvett for BBC: https://tinyurl.com/uhyatpuWeird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.= = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.= = = = =Originally aired: August 11, 2020CUSTOM LANDING PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/BerkshireUFO

Our latest questions submitted by podcast listeners lead us to discuss what was a 'British Warm' and how did uniforms change during the Great War, ask if we could go back in time what would we want to see, look at the quarries that were part of the battlefield at Beaumont-Hamel on the Somme, and ask what happened to Allied Prisoners of War taken in the final days of the conflict in November 1918?The Western Front Association Online Trench Maps: WFA TrenchMapper site.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

We take the podcast across to Northern France and visit Loos British Cemetery on the battlefields of 1915, seeing the new Extension that has been constructed here, looking at the initial burials and asking how this brand new cemetery might develop over the coming years.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

In this new mini-series, Scott Rank is rejoined by James Early (his co-host on many other military history mini-series, covering the Civil War, World War One, and the Revolutionary War) to look at a little-known war that pitted the infant United States against the Barbary States of North Africa. The Barbary Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa (modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) from 1801 to 1815, fought over the piracy and tribute demands imposed on American ships. These wars marked the U.S. Navy's first significant overseas military engagements and helped establish American maritime power. We also see the birth of of the U.S. Marines and how they literally fought on the shore of Tripoli.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Read by Christopher Kendrick Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

In this new mini-series, Scott Rank is rejoined by James Early (his co-host on many other military history mini-series, covering the Civil War, World War One, and the Revolutionary War) to look at a little-known war that pitted the infant United States against the Barbary States of North Africa. The Barbary Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa (modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) from 1801 to 1815, fought over the piracy and tribute demands imposed on American ships. These wars marked the U.S. Navy's first significant overseas military engagements and helped establish American maritime power. We also see the birth of of the U.S. Marines and how they literally fought on the shore of Tripoli.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Notes Oh, for a simpler time, when men were men, women were women, and everyone had PTSD from World War One. We hearken back to that time with The Ship Of Ishtar, by A. Merritt, a pulp fantasy (exactly 100 years old this year!) that may have influenced the likes of Robert E. Howard and dabbles in philosophy and mythology, as well as revealing some weird dark subconscious strains in both the author and American society in the 1920s. Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! Adam's Patreon Phil's Patreon What Mad Universe?!? on Bluesky What Mad Universe?!? on Twitter Philip's Bluesky Philip's Twitter Adam's Bluesky Adam's Twitter What Mad Universe on Facebook What Mad Universe on Instagram What Mad Universe RSS Feed Engineer/Producer: Alex Ross Theme song by Jack Feerick Additional Music: Desert City" by Kevin MacLeod (c) 2024 Adam Prosser and Philip Rice. Music (c) its respective creators. Used under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution 3.0 International License.

In our latest selection of questions from podcast listeners we look at the circumstances of the end of the First World War on the Western Front on 11th November 1918, ask why Albert Ball VC has a private memorial over his grave in France, discuss what happened to the Last Post Ceremony during WW2 and examine the 'War of the Guns' in the Great War - the use of artillery.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

This week we're traveling back to 1920s Minnesota with Sweet Land! Join us as we learn about immigrant marriages, German acceptance in Minnesota, English-only churches, and more! We also debut the new Tina Belcher Film Grading Scale, and award this film a respectable score of Two Butts. Sources: La Vern J. Rippley, "Conflict in the Classroom: Anti-Germanism in Minnesota Schools, 1917-19," Minnesota History 47, no.5 (1981): 170-83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20178699  Tina Steward Brakebill, "From "German Days" to "100 Percent Americanism": McLean County, Illinois 1913-1918: German Americans, World War One, and One Community's Reaction." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 95, no. 2 (2002): 148-171. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40193520  Ehsan Alam, "Anti-German Nativism, 1917-1919," MNOpedia, https://www.mnopedia.org/anti-german-nativism-1917-1919  Becky Little, https://www.history.com/news/anti-german-sentiment-wwi  https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2022/09/german-immigration-loclrblogint/  Mark Kuss, "Hey Man! Watch Your Language: Treatment of Germans and German Americans in New Orleans during World War I," Louisiana History 56, no.2 (2015): 178-98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24396453  Paul Ramsey, ""The War against German-American Culture: The Removal of German-Language Instruction from the Indianapolis Schools, 1917–1919." Indiana Magazine of History 98, no. 4 (2002): 285-303. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27792420  Elizabeth Dorsey Hatle and Nancy M.  Vaillancourt, "One Flag, One School, One Language: Minnesota's Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s." Minnesota History 61, no. 8 (2009): 360-371. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40543955  Gary Marks, Matthew Burbank, "Immigrant Support for the American Socialist Party, 1912 and 1920," https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171437  "Go West, Young Woman! An Exploration of Mail Order Brides in America." Smithsonian, available at https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-articles/go-west-young-woman Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, "Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920-1930," Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 93) Marian L. Smith, "'Any Woman Who is Now or May Hereafter Be Married': Women and Naturalization, ca 1802-1940," Genealogy Notes 30, 2 (1998) Seema Sohi, "Barred Zones, Rising Tides, and Radical Struggles: The Antiradical and Anti-Asian Dimensions of the 1917 Immigration Act," Journal of American History (2022) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Land IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428038/ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-nov-16-wk-movie16-story.html

Trench Warfare saw the use of existing weapons on the battlefield and the development of new ones to cope with the static nature of the Western Front. In this episode we examine five of those weapons from handguns to trench clubs to mortars, and include a surprising 'weapon' of trench warfare.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

This week we answer questions about British Prisoners of War held in Switzerland, ask what kind of permission you need to explore the fields and woods across the landscape of the Great War, discuss if any Estaminets survive from the Great War and look at events on the Somme on 1st July 1916 and what the experience of soldiers was on that evening as darkness fell.Red Cross Records from WW1 are found here: Red Cross Prisoner of War Records.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

After an extended intermission, Dimitri and Khalid resume THE LAND BELONGS TO WHOM IT BELONGS and embark on a deep examination of the British Mandate in Palestine. We start with a close reading of epic TV showrunner David Simon's recent anti-Irish, anti-mook screeds about DA MUFTI and other Zionist tropes concerning the Mandate period, followed by some theoretical framing from “A Discourse on Domination in Mandate Palestine: Imperialism, Property and Insurgency” by Zeina Ghandour, the problem of epistemicide, Pete Shambrook's “Policy of Deceit”, British perfidy and gaslight diplomacy towards Faisal and the Arabs after World War One, sus Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (attempt to outflank Lenin), clever manipulation of antiquities laws to slander/erase the legacy of Ottoman rule, the Jewish Agency's COINTELPRO/Mockingbird-tier espionage activities, and more. For access to premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, live call-in specials, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, become a subscriber at patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Fismes is a small town on the Aisne, close to its neighbour Fismette and divided by the Vesle river. Here in the summer of 1918 men of the American 28th Division took part in a bitter battle for possession of its houses and the bridge over the Vesle, a story retold in possibly the greatest American memoir of the First World War: Toward the Flame by Hervey Allen. Here too a memorial bridge was built commemorating their sacrifice, just a dozen years before Europe went to war once more. 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

September 2024 The Government Code and Cypher School employed thousands of people during the war. These varied from Cambridge dons who had broken codes in World War One to machine workers with very specific skills, to female conscripts from the three armed services. How did all these people know what to do? As usual at BP, the answer is a complex one: a mix of training courses (some well organised, others less so) developed as the organisation grew exponentially as the war progressed. In this month's ‘It Happened Here' episode we are joined by Bletchley Park Historian Dr David Kenyon to explore the varied experiences of new recruits finding out how to do their job – sometimes on an organised course, sometimes learning on the job, and sometimes literally making it up themselves. This episode features the following Veterans from our Oral History archive: Betty Webb Iris King Joan Joslin Many thanks to Sarah Langston for voicing our archival documents. Image: ©Will Amlot for the Bletchley Park Trust 2024 #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Enigma,

Almost 110 years ago, during World War One in 1915, an unmarried, 40-year-old woman - Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks - was hand-picked for the role of South Australia's first policewoman.

In this latest Question and Answer Episode we look at several questions about the changing nature of the British Army in the Great War, and its Regimental system, examine one aspect of how WW1 meets WW2 and discuss whether it is possible to trace a fatal casualty for every day of the Great War.The image for this episode shows British tanks passing Villers Bretonneux Military Cemetery on the Somme in September 1944. (IWM BU 272)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