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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

19:14

Civil War in England: Parliament vs The Crown

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/12/28

Last week I looked at what led England to civil war. This week I’m going to focus on how things on the Parliamentary side of that civil war really radicalised.

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23:24

The English Revolution

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/12/21

The English Revolution, that took place in England in the seventeenth century, is often overlooked. But it’s important in establishing the principle of parliamentary democracy and so, it’s certainly worth our time taking a look at it. And it was a revolution, even if that’s something we English are not famous for: not only did a king lose his head but the monarchy itself was overthrown and with it the established Church and the House of Lords. And not only was Parliament pitted against absolutism,

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23:34

The Power Relationships in Feudalism

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/12/14

Covering more than a thousand years of history, my focus will be on power and how it set up the conditions that led to the English and French revolutions as well as influencing the American revolution too. I

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22:17

The Roman Republic

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/12/07

If we look carefully at it, ancient Rome stands in contrast to Greece because whereas we can say that Greece, for a period of time, was indeed a democracy, Rome wrapped a democratic cloak around itself, but in fact was an oligarchy of the wealthy. And for us today, we need to be aware that it is the Roman republic that has had a greater influence on the democracies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and their constitutions, than Athens had.

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24:00

Athenian Democracy

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/11/30

George Bernard Shaw said that democracy is the form of government that gives its citizens what they deserve. And that's where I want to turn my attention to: the way in which we are governed in democracies (probably with diversions to alternative ways of governing). Where has democracy come from? What lessons does the past have for us today? What do we mean by democracy? Should we be satisfied with what we’ve got? If democracy is important to us, it seems worth the journey.

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30:02

America today: What state are the workers in?

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/11/23

Having taken us from America in the 1920s to America today, last week I looked at the state of the capitalist system and the state of the richest 0.1%, 1%, 10%. Well, today, I’m going to end our look at America by focussing on the 90%, right up to Trump's current administration.

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24:06

The State of Capitalism in America Today

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/11/16

Having made the link between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009, in other words between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, let’s take a look at how the capitalist system works in America today.

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29:11

Explaining the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Great...

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/11/09

In this episode I’m going to make the worrying link between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009.

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14:10

Capitalists Criticisms of Roosevelt's New Deal

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/11/02

There were those who criticised Roosevelt for not doing more, but it is the criticisms from the capitalists who complained he was doing too much, interfering in the economy too much, that I want to focus on. We’ve touched on it from time to time in the last two episodes, but I want to shine a spotlight on it because their determination to undo what he had achieved would, eventually, lead to the financial crash of 2008.

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17:17

Roosevelt's Second New Deal

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/10/26

Roosevelt's Second New Deal was different in character. Its emphasis was on reform: reforming the capitalist system that had failed Americans; indeed, had failed itself. And providing for a fairer society with protection for workers and better pay and work conditions, and welfare support for the wider population.

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24:20

Roosevelt's New Deal for America

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/10/19

Roosevelt's package of new laws and initiatives that together constituted his New Deal for America, offered three things: Relief, Recovery and Reform. It set out to save Americans from the Great Depression and to save capitalism from itself.

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22:25

Was America close to revolution in 1932?

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2025/10/12

I think it’s important to focus on 1932 in the Great Depression because it shows the depth of the impact the depression had on people’s lives, it shows how choices are important in history as they are in life, and it shows how democracy can work to stabilise a state that’s in deep trouble.

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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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153 results

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