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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

23:43

The Culture of Racism in America - The Culture of Jim...

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/10/04

In this episode and the next, I want to make clear the degree of racism in America in the 1950s and into the 1960s. It will not only help us not only understand the civil rights movement, but it will help us better understand America today. Because as I’ve said on a number of occasions, racism is embedded in American society, Trump and the white supremacists haven’t come out of nowhere.

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21:03

Classical Liberalism's Response to the New Deal

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/09/27

What we are going to look at in this episode is the response of classical liberals as they faced up to their first experience of social liberalism or what Americans call progressivism.

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20:32

Roosevelt's New Deal - Taming Capitalism

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/09/20

Whereas the measures we have looked at that help to make up Roosevelt’s New Deal could be seen as emergency measures, necessary in a crisis, now we turn to more fundamental measures in that they introduce controls on capitalism that were intended to be permanent, and were intended to place controls on capitalism’s excesses, in effect to tame it.

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17:55

Roosevelt's New Deal - Saving People

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/09/13

Last week I focused on the impact of the Wall Street Crash on the American economy and what Roosevelt’s New Deal did to, in effect, save capitalism from itself. This week, I’m going to focus on people and what Roosevelt’s New Deal did to help them through the crisis. We would regard Roosevelt’s New Deal as a healthy dose of social liberalism, Americans, however, would regard it as an example of progressivism.

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22:34

Roosevelt's New Deal - Saving Capitalism (from itself)

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/09/06

With the Wall Street Crash, American capitalism and the American people were in an absolute mess. And this week, I’m going to focus on the economy and what Roosevelt’s New Deal did to save capitalism; from itself.

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18:13

Classical Liberalism and the Wall Street Crash

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/08/30

With our eyes firmly fixed on classical liberalism, laissez faire, minimal government; for the second time on this Podcast, I want to look again at the Wall Street Crash.

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20:17

Classic Liberalism in 1920s America

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/08/23

Having looked at the People’s Budget of 1909 in Britain, I’m turning our attention to America and Roosevelt’s New Deal, his response to the catastrophic Great Depression, his attempt, in his own words, to ‘save capitalism’, I’ll add: to save capitalism from itself. Now, if you’ve been following my podcast over the years, we’ve explored the New Deal over some twelve episodes in my series on Industrialisation and Capitalism. I’m not going to repeat all that, the focus here is going to be on how

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16:48

The People's Budget of 1909: British Liberalism's...

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/08/16

I grandiosely bill this as British Liberalism’s Greatest Moment but to be fair, it is. Because the "People's Budget" of 1909, introduced by the then, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, changed the taxation system so as to redistribute wealth and fund Britain's first major social welfare programmes, including old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. It made history as the first budget to attempt the meaningful redistribution of wealth by heavily taxing the rich to help the poor. It

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26:23

Liberalism

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/08/09

In my look at the political “isms”, I’m going to start with the philosophy that nudged us onto the path to democracy: liberalism.

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24:36

Value what you've got

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/08/02

This week, I’ll present a cautionary tale, that contains a message for us all, not just women: what we have can be taken away. And to do so, I’m going to take a look at what happened to women in Nazi Germany. So, much as I criticise democracy because it should be so much better, let’s work to improve it but let's also value what we’ve got.

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21:33

Votes for Women!

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/07/26

Having spent weeks looking at the different roads to democracy in Britain, America and France, 50% of the populations of Britain, America and France – women - still haven't got their vote. And so, it’s to women that I focus our attention on in this episode.

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23:19

Getting to where we are today

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/07/19

In this episode I’m going to take us from British democracy in the nineteenth century right up to today: to votes for women, votes for eighteen-year-olds and other important landmarks.

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23:53

The Not-So-Great Reform Act and the "Leap in the Dark"

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/07/12

So, having looked at the battle to get it passed, was the so-called Great Reform Act worth all the fuss? We'll take a look at that and we'll look at the Second Reform Act of 1867, what Benjamin Disraeli described as a "leap in the dark".

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27:10

The Fight For Reform

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/07/05

I spent last week looking at how the aristocratic elite were doing all they could to prevent any breech on their monopoly of power. Well, much as they tried to keep the door tightly closed. That bew breed of 'urban aristocracy' that Asa Briggs had talked about were banging against the door and they’re not going to go away.

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22:19

The English Path to Democracy

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/06/28

Enough of the French, I say, and their crazy revolutions. Let’s look at how the English did things in the nineteenth century. “Reform in order to conserve” was the English way: give a little when you have to in order to keep what’s most important. You’ll see what I mean, in this episode, and as the next few episodes unfold.

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27:42

The Paris Commune of 1871

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/06/21

Through the English, American and French revolutions and those of 1848, we have been looking at the history of what we call liberal representative democracy, by which today, all adult men and women, periodically have the opportunity to vote for people to represent us, make laws and govern over us. And, actually, we began this journey back in ancient Athens, with Athenian or direct democracy. Well, today, we are going to look at the first attempt at a worker’s democracy because we’re going to look at

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21:36

The Counter-Revolutions of 1848

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/06/14

I said last week that the French weren’t finished with their revolution but when things flared up again, the counter-revolution kicked in. It seemed that everything the workers of Paris had fought for, the democracy that they thought would usher in more social reform, was not going to happen. Instead, things were being taken away from them. And what happened in France, would happen across Europe.

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23:44

1848, the Year of Revolutions

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/06/07

Having spent a couple of weeks looking at the thoughts of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, interesting and relevant though they are, it’s time to get back to the stuff of revolutions because it's 1848 and the French, God bless ‘em, are far from done.

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26:40

John Stuart Mill On Liberty

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/05/31

Having taken a look at the influence Jeremy Bentham has on our world today, I’m moving on to look at someone who had an even greater influence: John Stuart Mill.Why? Because Mill, a man way, way ahead of his time, put liberty front and centre in his political work

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22:24

Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism

Making sense of this crazy world ·

2026/05/24

I said last week that I’d look at how British liberals picked up the baton from the Enlightenment and developed liberal thinking. And I’m going to begin with Jeremy Bentham, the man who gave us utilitarianism and much more. And don’t worry about utilitarianism, I am not going to get too heavy (I can’t) but it is very important and pretty straightforward really.

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