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PODCAST

Making sense of this crazy world

historymadeeasier

I am a student of history, a teacher of history and a writer of history. You could say history is a passion of mine. I have a website for students and I had been mulling around this idea of a podcast for some time. Would people be interested? Would I make it interesting? That’s essentially what was holding me back. But with a new year starting, the craziness still all around us, I thought what the hell – give it a go, John! The primary purpose of the podcast is to use history to help us make a

history documentary

All Episodes

21:52

The Impact of the Wall Street Crash on the Economy...

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/10/05

I’m going to begin this week with a song. But don’t worry – I’m not going to sing it! The song depicts how men who had contributed to America’s economic well-being and who had fought for their country were now left begging for small change. Because this week, we’re looking at the impact of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that followed in its wake.

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22:15

The Wall Street Crash of 1929

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/09/28

A tragic tale of how badly things can go wrong when capitalism is unregulated.

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26:58

Prejudice and Intolerance in America - African Americans

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/09/21

If radicals and newer immigrants faced American intolerance, so too did a group of people who had been in America much longer, had not asked to be there but who, as a consequence, had already suffered in ways no human being should have had to endure: African Americans.

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19:47

Prejudice and Intolerance in America - The Red Scare

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/09/14

Last week we were looking at divisions in American society, well America was not only divided, it was a remarkably prejudiced, intolerant society. Examples are many but I will focus this week on immigrants and the ‘Red Scare’, and particularly on the trial of two Italian-born immigrants: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

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24:51

Rural America versus Urban America

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/09/07

We can see divisions in American society on a number of fronts: politically, racially, between the poor and the rich, but America was no more split than it was between the city and the countryside. Rural America was ill at ease with the apparent self-indulgence, materialism and the looser morals that they saw in city life. They were concerned that Christian values seemed to be breaking down, and with them, the traditional country values of clean living, hard work and thrift. I’m going to look at two

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22:41

The Jazz Age or the Age of Contrasts

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/08/31

I’ve been looking at industrial revolutions and the development of capitalism. First, in Britain, the world’s first industrial revolution, and then moving across the Atlantic to America and this week I want to dig a little deeper into the kind of society that developed in America in the 1920s.

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19:45

Capitalism in 1920s America: the dark side

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/08/24

Last week I gave you the positive spin on the way capitalism developed in America in the 1920s. Well, this week we’ll be looking at the worrying side, the dark side even. It shows that there are always, or nearly always, two ways to look at things, and it also shows the shortcomings, even the danger, of capitalism

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23:39

Capitalism in 1920s America: the positive spin

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/08/17

Herbert Hoover, in accepting the Republican nomination to run for president in 1928, said ‘One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human activities has been the abolition of poverty … we in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of our land.’ And that’s what were setting off to look at next: capitalism in America.Intro and outro music curtesy of slip.stream: https://slip.stream/tracks/58fb6726-c035-4d10-a8e8-eba70e5164ad

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16:15

Capitalism: then and now

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/08/10

This week, I'm going to take a deeper look at capitalism and present a sweeping history of it from the first industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Britain to today. And I'll leave you with a question: should capitalism be controlled by government?

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19:01

Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/08/03

The focus for this, and the next episode will be the economic and political system that formed the basis for the first industrial revolution in Britain and looks ahead to the development of Western economies: capitalism and the profit motive.

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24:29

The creation and development of a working class

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/07/27

The industrial revolution created a new class: the working class, with its own experiences, its own culture and its own needs. It is a class that has come a long, long way since that first industrial revolution in Britain and this episode sets out to sketch that journey.

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21:47

The development of a middle class

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/07/20

As well as bringing about the rise of the city, the industrial revolution brought about a social revolution that utterly transformed society. It developed a middle class and created a working class, giving shape to the society we live in today. In this episode I will focus on the development of the middle class.

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26:59

What industrialisation looked like at home

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/07/13

In 1801 25% of British people lived in towns, 75% in the countryside; by the middle of the century, it was roughly 50-50; by the end the century those first figures were reversed with 75% of the population living in towns and cities and only 25% in the countryside. But what was life like in those towns and cities.

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26:47

What industrialisation looked like in the workplace

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/07/06

Having tried to explain why Britain was the first industrial nation and how an industrialised world began to take shape, in this episode I want to go further into what changed and not just describe what it was like for those who lived through it but show how the miserable lives of the foot soldiers of industrialisation, focusing particularly on agricultural workers, factory workers, coal miners, with a spotlight on children, was a result of the profit motive.

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17:48

Britain knocked off its perch

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/06/29

This episode looks a little deeper at the period in which the industrialising world catches up and overtakes Britain.*Do note that since researching and recording this episode, India has overtaken Japan to become the world's 4th biggest economy. How fast this world of ours is changing!

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16:46

The Industrial Revolution Goes Global

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/06/22

I’m continuing my look at the industrialising world by focusing on the globalisation of the industrial revolution, well at least its spread to Europe and America!

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14:38

The Second Phase of Industrialisation: The Railway Age

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/06/15

I’m looking at the first industrial revolution in Britain that did so much to shape the world we live in today and in this second episode I want to highlight the key motivating factor: the profit motive, as well as the importance of the railways.

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17:42

The First Industrial Revolution

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/06/08

I’m changing tack completely in this little series to look at some of the truly big events that shaped the world we live in today. And I’m beginning with the industrial revolution in Britain. Hugely significant because not only did the British economy rapidly grow, and eventually the world economy, but it did so because of a technological revolution, simple though that may have been at first, and because of, and through, a social revolution that utterly transformed society.

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20:45

The UN in trouble in the Congo

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/06/01

This week we are going to look at the UN embroiled in a civil war in the Congo at the beginning of the 1960s. A sorry tale that also serves to illustrate just what imperialism had done to Africa.

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18:01

The UN in trouble in KOrea

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/05/25

The way the United Nations is being ignored by the Soviet Union with regard to Ukraine, ignored and attacked by Israel in Gaza (more than 280 UNWRA and other UN Humanitarian personnel killed by the Israeli Defence Force), it seems as if we are witnessing the end of the UNs usefulness. But this isn’t the first time the United Nations has faced huge controversy, has seemed to be finished as an international peace-keeping body, as a force for good. There are two truly massive crises that I’m aware of

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161 results

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