Episodes

  • #98 'So coarse, so manly' - Ep 2 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole

    #98 'So coarse, so manly' - Ep 2 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole
    May 22 2024
    Robert Peary’s backers were the wealthy railway barons and bankers of New York. It didn’t matter to them whether Peary was the first to get to the North Pole or not. What mattered to them in 1909 was that he would say he’d reached the Pole, and then tell a strong, manly tale about it. In their eyes the future of Americans, as the tough frontier people, depended upon it. It may well have pushed Peary, a man who was known to be both ruthless and exploitative, towards murder…

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    44 mins
  • #97 'a day of undiluted hell' - Ep 1 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole

    #97 'a day of undiluted hell' - Ep 1 Murder. Mystery at the North Pole
    May 15 2024
    We may think the main controversy surrounding American, naval commander, Robert Peary’s claim to be the first to reach the North Pole on 6/7 May 1909 was whether he, and the other ‘invisible’ five men accompanying him, actually got anywhere near the Pole. However, it’s a much more complicated and sinister story than that….

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    41 mins
  • #48 'Gunsmoke and Mirrors' - Ep 2 Was the Wild West wild?

    #48 'Gunsmoke and Mirrors' - Ep 2 Was the Wild West wild?
    May 8 2024
    What was the driving force behind the settlement of the American west? Was it the so-called ‘anarchocapitalism’ so admired by the Hoover Institution and some of the followers of President Trump? The violence they fetishize turns out to have been only in those places populated by young men – we’re talking not just cowpokes or gold and silver prospectors, but also vigilantes in the towns back east. The majority of frontiers-people were peaceful Americans.

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    37 mins
  • #47 The Law-less Frontier - Ep 1 Was the Wild West wild?

    #47 The Law-less Frontier - Ep 1 Was the Wild West wild?
    May 1 2024
    A series of land grabs and cruel clearances by the Federal government from 1781 triggered a crazy, barely-contained movement west, spearheaded by gold prospectors, cattle ranchers, homesteaders and the railroads. By 1892 it was generally agreed that the American character was forged in the violence of the shifting frontier. We look at the popular fiction and entertainment that helped create this belief: Deadwood Dick, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain’s Six-fingered Pete and many others. And we examine what really went on!

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    43 mins
  • #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?

    #39 Newton and the Occult - Ep 2 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?
    Apr 23 2024

    Having considered the arguments in favour of defining Sir Isaac Newton as an early 'scientist', we now consider the other side of the coin.

    Newton’s best-known breakthrough – the identification of gravity – belonged not to the latest tradition of European Cartesian rationalism, but to a very English strand of occult philosophy. In fact it was only because Newton worked in this tradition that he was able to think of gravity as an unseen and mysterious force. Europeans like Leibnitz wrote the idea off as magic.

    More striking, like other English philosophers, Newton believed that all this had been known to ancient thinkers going back to Noah, and spent much of his life trying to decode the myths and symbols they left behind. He was, he believed, the only man in his generation privileged to understand them. The last of magicians? Maybe.



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    45 mins
  • #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?

    #38 Newton the Alchemist - Ep 1 Was Newton the last of the Magicians?
    Apr 17 2024
    The short answer to the question, ‘was Newton the last of the magicians?’ is, yes …. And also … no. Newton and alchemy turn out to be ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ We toss a coin and take a heads-and-tails approach. In this podcast we argue that the alchemical experiments he undertook had nothing to do with magic. Newton’s alchemy now looks to historians like good science (although he would have called himself both a natural philosopher and a chymist). It was well conceived and measured and drew on the work of his contemporaries and of many men before him. And Newton was certainly not the last person in Europe to practise alchemy of this kind. Within fifty years of his death it would simply evolve into modern chemistry.

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    37 mins
  • #96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?

    #96 Extortioners and hatchet men - Ep 5 What Wars? What Roses?
    Apr 10 2024
    Henry VII invented the idea of the Wars of the Roses and the notion that he alone could end them. With a comparatively weak claim to the throne he found a novel way to deal with the nobility - through extortioners and hatchet men. He could only get away with this because the Black Death had fatally damaged the status of the nobility and caused the rise of the small independent farmer. Feudalism in England and Wales was over… or at least we thought it was, until now.

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    29 mins
  • #95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

    #95 Murder in the Tower - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?
    Apr 3 2024
    One common-girl-denies-king-until-he-marries-her, two kings, three royal murders in the Tower, and the Queen's mother accused of witchcraft. Just about standard for late 15th Century England and Wales.

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    30 mins