December 24

Ep. 0089: The Christmas Truce

One-hundred-and-one Christmases ago, in the cold, damp, muddy ditches of the Western Front, the rank-and-file of the Allied and German armies spontaneously set aside their hatreds to take a break from mass-murdering each other, much to the dismay of their so-called ‘leaders.’

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • The context of the Christmas Truce
  • How it happened
  • The aftermath, legacy, and lessons to be learned from it

Support the Dangerous History Podcast via Patreon

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Category: Military History, Modern World History, Podcasts, Specials | 2 Comments on Ep. 0089: The Christmas Truce
December 15

Ep. 0088: Thaddeus Russell on Undermining Jihadists with Britney Spears & more

Thaddeus Russell is a historian and cultural critic and the author of A Renegade History of the United States. He holds a Ph D from Columbia University. He teaches American history and cultural studies at Occidental College and has taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, the New School for Social Research, and Eugene Lang College.   He has published articles in a variety of scholarly and popular venues.  Russell has appeared on the History Channel, Al-Jazeera, Fox News, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Join CJ & Thad as they discuss:

  • Thad’s background, including how the material that eventually became A Renegade History of the United States prevented him from getting a tenure-track position at Barnard College
  • Thad’s thoughts on cultural history vs. Marxism, the consumer revolution, the market, and capitalism
  • The tensions between puritanism and hedonism in capitalism and in American history
  • The influence of Michel Foucault on Thad’s work
  • The puritanism and asceticism of democracy
  • How ‘ideology free’ or ‘objective’ history is nonsense
  • Thad’s rejection of objective reality and morality
  • Some thoughts on the present and future of higher education
  • Thad’s current project on the history of American pop culture’s spread & influence around the world

External Links

Support the Dangerous History Podcast via Patreon

Category: American History, Interviews, Podcasts | 1 Comment on Ep. 0088: Thaddeus Russell on Undermining Jihadists with Britney Spears & more
December 11

Ep. 0087: Grain and the State

Wheat close-up

Join CJ as he discusses:

  • How people lived in the Paleolithic Era, which actually encompasses the vast majority of human existence
  • The Neolithic Revolution and the coming of agriculture
  • The domestication of grains and their rise to dominate global food production
  • The rise of “civilization,” including its downsides
  • The characteristics of grains which make them the preferred food crops of states
  • Alternatives to sedentary, fixed-field, grain-dominated agriculture, which states tend to discourage
  • A few thoughts and observations about grains and states in the modern world

Please consider supporting the show via Patreon!

External Links

Wheat photo attribution: By User:Bluemoose (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Category: Ancient History, Podcasts | 8 Comments on Ep. 0087: Grain and the State