In the latter half of the 8th century, events and circumstances around Europe become vastly influenced by a man who ruled a vast empire from the lowlands. This man is the reason why the name Charles - which if you think about it really hard is actually a pretty weird name - is anywhere near as populous as it is today. But this Charles was, apparently, greater than the rest, and so he gets to be called Charlemagne - Charles the Great.
Read MoreWe set off on an epic journey to explore the history of a small piece of land in the northwest part of the European continent known as ‘the lowlands’, which roughly includes today’s Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and bits of northern France. This episode will take us from so called “pre-history” to around the Roman era. So strap in while we deal with 99% of Dutch history... that’s most of it.
Read MoreOn 5 February, 1943, thirteen of the twenty-three defendants from the First Parool Trial were given paper and pens and told to write farewell letters to their families. Hours later, they were executed by firing squad. But the ringleader of the group, Frans Goedhart, was able to win a temporary reprieve and over the next few months undertook various attempts to escape from Vught concentration camp. But would luck be on his side?
Read MoreAfter the botched arrest of Arie Addicks in September 1941, the Addicks group was firmly in the sights of the authorities. Over the course of four months, a series of arrests would take place across the Netherlands, from the streets of Amsterdam to a freezing beach in Scheveningen, which would end with twenty-three people being charged with crimes against the state. But would these freedom fighters survive some of the Netherlands’ most infamous concentration camps?
Read MoreAfter the invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, a group of men from a disbanded socialist youth group called the AJC, came together to fight back against the new Nazi regime. The young members of the so-called “Addicks Group” joined forces with journalist and activist Frans Goedhart and became active in stenciling and distributing the illegal anti-Nazi newspaper Het Parool. But their activities would soon put themselves and their loved ones in mortal peril.
Read MoreBy the 1950s women in the West had been pushed back into the household; their roles in the expectations of society confined to the whims and demands of men. By the end of that decade, a low rumble of discontent had begun amongst women in the US. In the 1960s that rumble grew into a roar, as women around the country stood up and spoke up. They were united, organised and began an inexorable push for social, legal and economic change that would bring them into the realm of self-empowerment. Although that push must continue to this day, it was these women who built the scaffolding, from the frames of which women’s rights could begin to be constructed.
Read MoreOn a summer's night in July, 1985 a ship called the Rainbow Warrior lay moored at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand. Just before midnight, it suddenly exploded. The bomb which blew it up had been expertly attached to the hull by trained military divers. The attack was aimed at the heart of the international anti-nuclear movement, and it was conducted by the foreign intelligence agency of one nation, and committed on the soil (or water) of one of their allies. The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior showed how very much the fears and insecurities of powerful nations had become misaligned with public opinion, and the positions of their allies, around the world.
Read MoreDespite over half a century of abolitionist activity, including subversive activism, dissent, debate, protest and attempts at electoral process, by the end of the 1850s the demise of slavery seemed to some to still be as far from becoming reality as ever.
Enter John Brown. Whereas the division over the issue of slavery had riven the young federal society of the US apart, John Brown never wavered, questioned or acted against the defining principle of his life: slavery was an abomination that must end.
Read MoreIn the second "Coup de Pod" episode in Stuff What You Tell Me history, the show is finally taken over by someone capable. Awesome storyteller Dominique Reviglio takes us down the path of the history of women's rebellion; on a journey through the millennia of both oppression and rebellion, before exploring the militant Suffragette movement that erupted in Britain in the first decades of the 20th century.
Read MoreThe passing of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 opened up a new battlefront in the United States between those for and against the institution of slavery. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who sponsored the bill, supported the notion of popular sovereignty; that the people who lived in a certain territory could decide by themselves whether or not to allow slavery. In so doing, he began a race between rebellious free-staters and resistant pro-slavery partisans to claim Kansas as their own, which lead to an outburst of violence that history remembers as the Bleeding of Kansas.
Read MoreIn antebellum United States, in the first half of the 1800s, chattel slavery was deeply embedded. It was an integral part of the socio-economic systems of the various states, and thus protected by the constitution. The 'Railroad Rebels' didn't care. They knew that slavery was wrong. They were the ones who suffered from it, the ones who escaped from it; they were those who harboured fugitives, and who helped them move from servitude to liberty; people of all colours and classes who flouted the law on a daily basis, because their principles and beliefs demanded it of them. They are the heroes who would form what became known as the Underground Railroad, a loose, organic, grass-roots system helping fugitive slaves. It is because of them, that institutional slavery is now dead. And thank fuck for that. Long live the Railroad Rebels.
Read MoreOver 300 years, the transatlantic slave trade caused the abuse, suffering and enslavement of an estimated 10-12 million people. This episode takes a look at what some of that experience would have meant for these groups and individuals forcibly removed from their homelands. Specifically, we look at the slave uprising on the Spanish ship Tryal, in 1805, and ask some questions that set us on the path of this series about the abolition of one of the oldest human institutions. What were the social, political and economic conditions that led to the uprising on the Tryal? How did it go down and what were the repercussions? Furthermore, how did American author Herman Melville (of Moby Dick fame) write about the Tryal uprising, some 50 years after it had occurred, and during a period where his country was at that moment tearing itself apart over the very question of slavery? All this and more, in Slavery's Tryal.
Read MoreIn the years 69-70 CE, the Batavian people, who inhabited the lower reaches of the Rhine and Waal rivers, that form a part of today's Netherlands, went into open revolt against the Roman Empire. They were led by Claudius (Julius) Civilis, and would ultimately fail. But what he and this rebellion spurred, seventeen hundred years later, would be way beyond anything they could have imagined. This barbarian uprising would come to affect and inspire ideas of rebellion within the lives of the wealthiest people on the planet in the 1500 and 1600s. In 1661, Rembrandt would paint 'The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis', but in a totally rebellious way. It was rebellion inspiring rebellion within the celebration of rebellion. Rebellion inception.
Read MoreStuff What You Tell Me has been taken over this episode for a coup de Pod. Violently imposed upon and hosted by Geert Sillevis, here we explore the story of the rise and fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in the 20th century. It was an authoritarian rule that embedded itself deeply within the fabric of modern Portugal, and it would take nothing short of daring and decisive rebellion to change it. That rebellion was the Carnation Revolution of 1974.
Read MoreThis Episode looks at the journey of western thought from the perspective of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Using a (very) extended metaphor, in which all of humanity is on a raft, setting out to sea from the Bay of Ignorance, in search of the Island of Truth, we look at Kuhn's "paradigm shift" explanation for how we have arrived at what we know today.
Read MoreIn May 1940 German troops occupied Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands and one of the most diverse and liberal cities in Europe. Not only was Amsterdam's large and prosperous Jewish community about to endure 5 years of brutal deportation and execution, but every person in the city would have to face varying hardships. The experience of each person during the occupation would have been determined by the decisions they made; decisions on whether to resist, or abide; to fight against the occupiers, or to collaborate with them; decisions on whether to help their fellow Amsterdammers, or to leave them out in the cold, dark realm of hopelessness and fear. This episode is our interpretation of these events; a look at what some of those decisions might have been, and how different, resultant experiences would have been felt.
Read MoreIn the late 1970s, a band called the Sex Pistols helped kick off one of the great anti-establishment movements of the modern age; punk rock. It was a decade of social unrest and political uncertainty in the United Kingdom, with striking miners, IRA attacks, severe inflation and an IMF bail-out. When there seemed to be no future for the youth of Britain, the Sex Pistols were at the forefront of the new music and fashion movement which defiantly stuck a middle finger up to everything and everyone. But how real is an anti-materialistic rebellion when some people make themselves very rich off of it?
Read MoreHow we tell ourselves about our histories goes a long way to how we form our senses of identity. As societies and as individuals, we work through events and issues, and how we look at them later helps us define who we say we are. But what happens when we cannot agree on our past? Why do we feel the need to fight over statues, and how can we deal with it? This episode is about dealing with this problem - dissonant heritage - and about the on-going pursuit by both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to re-define Australian history. How have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians struggled to recover a rightful role in modern Australia and Australian history; a role that recognises their journey, their resistance and their achievements, as well as what they've gained and what has been lost throughout?
Read MoreHistory has come to represent more than just the account of the past. It helps us define who we are, and what we represent. In the 1960s a group of Australian aboriginals went on a strike, demanding not just living conditions, but their recognition as the original custodians of the land. Their strike would force a 'reversal of history', and so send Australia on a path to amend how it saw and defined itself. The path continues to be uneasily trodden to this day.
Read MoreWilliam Buckley, who would at various times also be known as "The Wild White Man" and "The Anglo-Australian giant", was a man who bore little respect for convention, authority, nor the confines of society. Over the course of his life his experiences would range from fighting in the Napoleonic wars, sailing across the globe, and spending a significant part of his life living in the Australian bush, prior to the settlement of the continent's south-east. After him, the expression "you've got Buckley's chance" has come to describe having no chance for success, or endurance. So was his life a success or failure?
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