Episodes

  • #102 'The Cuckoo in the Nobel nest' - Ep 2 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut

    #102 'The Cuckoo in the Nobel nest' - Ep 2 Lunatics take over the asylum: Neoliberalism uncut
    Nov 13 2024
    How did less welfare, less government regulation of business (aka neoliberalism free market) become a global ‘fashion’ without any evidence of its benefits? Something to do with an imposter ‘Nobel’ prize and a PBS TV series funded by American big business?

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    31 mins
  • #101 'everything absolutely maxed out' - Ep 1 Neoliberalism: lunatics take over the asylum

    #101 'everything absolutely maxed out' - Ep 1 Neoliberalism: lunatics take over the asylum
    Nov 6 2024
    Civil liberty is different from individual liberty. Philosophers have known this since at least the 17th Century. We explore the two fundamental fallacies of neoliberalism to show why neoliberal economics can only bring prosperity to the few, and is incapable of predicting financial crashes. Today in the USA those damaged by neoliberalism have been driven to elect an unhinged criminal...

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    33 mins
  • #78 Remembrance Day - aren't we forgetting something?

    #78 Remembrance Day - aren't we forgetting something?
    Oct 30 2024
    At least 50% of deaths from war in the last three centuries were civilians. In 2001 the International Red Cross calculated that in modern warfare ten civilians die for every member of the military killed in battle. In the two World Wars the vast majority of soldiers were “civilians in uniform” – conscripts or volunteers. But do we officially remember them? (R)

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    21 mins
  • #23 The Last Million Men - Ep 7 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?

    #23 The Last Million Men - Ep 7 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?
    Oct 23 2024
    One day after Britain goes to war - ‘at sea’ - on 4 August 1914 the first War Council unceremoniously throws out the army’s secret plan to send a few divisions to meet the Germans head on and win quick, painless glory fighting alongside the French. Only then do the four men who had single-handedly thrown away the chance of avoiding a general European war, understand what Britain’s most prestigious soldier, Kitchener, has been warning since 1911. That a war with Germany would last at least 3 years and it would come down to ‘the last million men’ Britain could send. (R)

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    37 mins
  • #22 The Bullying of Edward Grey - Ep 6 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?

    #22 The Bullying of Edward Grey - Ep 6 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?
    Oct 16 2024
    A right-wing anti-German contingent call their campaign for war, the weekend of 31 July-2 August 1914 a ‘pogrom’. All talks of peace are, in their words, a German-Jewish plot to keep Britain out of the war for financial reasons. They have the support of the Conservative party, the British and French military, the politician in charge of the Royal Navy, and the press. But how on earth does Grey persuade the anti-war Liberal Cabinet and Parliament? And WHY? (R)

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    30 mins
  • #21 8pm 1 August 1914 the War is Off - Ep 5 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?

    #21 8pm 1 August 1914 the War is Off - Ep 5 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?
    Oct 9 2024
    8pm German time the Kaiser orders champagne, halts the German advance towards Belgium, and sends a telegram of congratulations to his cousin George V at Buckingham Palace. The Liberal British Cabinet had voted to remain neutral on 31 July. Earlier on 1 August Foreign Secretary Grey met the German ambassador Prince Lichnowsky (one of a string of meetings that week) to tell him that France might also remain neutral. A few hours later they met again and Grey added that even if France went to war Britain would not. So what went so catastrophically wrong in the next 72 hours? (R)

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    34 mins
  • #20 Hanging on Russia's apron strings - Ep 4 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?

    #20 Hanging on Russia's apron strings - Ep 4 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?
    Oct 2 2024
    In 1912 a deal between War Secretary Haldane and the German chancellor Bethmann-Holweg to allow Britain to retain naval supremacy if they both remained neutral (if neither side had started the war), was rudely sabotaged. It involved lying to Cabinet that the Germans were demanding a full-scale Anglo-German alliance, which they weren’t. It meant throwing away what the majority of the Cabinet saw as the best chance to contain Russian expansion, by making common cause with Germany. Russia, allied to the French, could now call all the shots. (R)

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    23 mins
  • #19 Bicycling holidays along the French-Belgian border - Ep 3 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?

    #19 Bicycling holidays along the French-Belgian border - Ep 3 WW1: how much was it Britain's fault?
    Sep 25 2024
    How did what friendly chats between British and French generals since 1905 turn into a commitment to send a small British Expeditionary Force to France at the start of a war with Germany? A commitment that had not been agreed by Cabinet, Parliament or the Navy? (R)

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    29 mins