Episodes

  • #94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?

    #94 'Political gangsterdom' - Ep 4 What Wars? What Roses?
    Mar 18 2026
    By the time Henry VI finally lost the last bit of England's French Empire in 1453 he could no longer go to war in France to occupy and enrich his nobility. This small, interrelated and bickering group, cooped up in England with an agricultural depression settling in, now resorted to what the historian Michael Postan long ago (in 1939) famously called ‘political gangsterdom.’ (R)

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    35 mins
  • #93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?

    #93 'A plague on both your houses' - Ep 2 What Wars? What Roses?
    Mar 11 2026
    Why was the 15th century in England and Wales so violent? It certainly wasn’t York v Lancaster, white-rose v red-rose rivalry. Monarchs were useless but that’s not unique to the 15th century. So what was it that defined this period? It has everything to do with the plague… (R)

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    31 mins
  • #92 'Welcome traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?

    #92 'Welcome traitor!' - Ep 1 What Wars? What Roses?
    Mar 4 2026
    Why do we know so little about medieval history? About England and Wales in the fifteenth century? The Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York) lasted 4 months not the traditional 85 years. Even the roses were (mostly) inventions. And was it even medieval? The execution of the King’s chief minister as a traitor in 1450, by sailors dissatisfied with an ineffective king, was shocking. It revealed that the common people believed the true crown was the community. You can’t get more modern than that. (R)

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    28 mins
  • #107 This is Armageddon - Ep 7 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut

    #107 This is Armageddon - Ep 7 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut
    Feb 25 2026
    We present the final, damming evidence that the neoliberal case for freedom from all government regulation was always a dangerous deceit. It was always intended to make us prisoners of the unaccountable rich, as we are today. This is not liberty. It is not even the twilight of sovereignty. This is Armageddon. (R)

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    31 mins
  • #106 Dark make-believe - Ep 6 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut

    #106 Dark make-believe - Ep 6 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut
    Feb 18 2026
    Unbelievable, sinister. Milton Friedman advises apartheid South Africa that neoliberal free-market economics can solve the problems of the Soweto riots, in the same way it delivered a ‘miracle’ of liberty under the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile. (R)

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    29 mins
  • #105 Smears, imprisonment, assassination - Ep 5 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut

    #105 Smears, imprisonment, assassination - Ep 5 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum - Neoliberalism uncut
    Feb 11 2026
    Neoliberalism was welcomed, finally, as a way to tackle what seemed to be a breakdown in American society in the late 1960s. Big business and FBI under J Edgar Hoover felt threatened by Keynsian consensus on welfare and the eradication of poverty. They had plenty to gain by provoking the extremism, and clearing the way for Milton Friedman. (R)

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    28 mins
  • #104 Catch 22 - Ep 4 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut

    #104 Catch 22 - Ep 4 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut
    Feb 4 2026
    The breakdown of American post-war consensus in the 60s calls for desperate measures on all sides: a government war in Vietnam, inner-city rioting, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Alarmed, US businesses seek salvation from the previously dismissed economic theory of neoliberal free-market capitalism. (R)

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    31 mins
  • #103 Disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump - Ep 3 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut

    #103 Disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump - Ep 3 Lunatics Take Over The Asylum: Neoliberalism uncut
    Jan 28 2026
    We look at the roots of free market Neoliberalism and discover that big business in the US has been championing freedom from regulation since 1895, even claiming in 1923 that the anti-child labour movement in America was secretly being run from Moscow… (R)

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    34 mins